“Where
Is God in a World Like Ours?”
The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
Every
year I struggle with the Christmas Eve message, whether I should go in the
direction of comfort because it is nearly midnight and many of us are weary and
tired and life, after all, is difficult, or whether I should go in the direction
of controversy since the birth of Jesus, according to the story, was nothing if
not controversial. Comfort or
controversy? This year I have
decided to go with…controversy…but only because the end of it is comfort.
Or at least that is what I hope.
Gathered
as we are in this warm and beautiful room tonight, awash in candlelight and
bathed with music so lovely that heaven itself no doubt has paused to listen, it
is hard to believe that all is not right with the world.
But we know it is not. The
war in
And, if all is not right with
the world, all is not right with us, either.
Not with most of us anyway. Some
of us carry within us “sorrows so deep,” as the poet puts it, “that
even a choir can’t reach them when they sing.”
Others watch loved ones
linger and languish before they die. Dreams
fade. Prayers go unanswered.
Depression wreaks its havoc. Relationships
are breached or broken. Health woes
wound. (One older person said to me
that at his age “what does not fall off has to be surgically removed.”)
“How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?” is
another poet’s summary question about the way life seems to be.
Where is God in a world like ours?
You might object that I have not
told the whole story…that there is also great beauty in the world, unspeakable
kindness, plenteous grace, every now and then a gesture toward peace.
All of that, of course, is true. But
when we talk about God, we have to be sure that what we say makes sense in the
hard places and that is where so much of our religious talk falls short.
I remember so clearly the day several years ago when I received, within
minutes of each other, an email from a rightfully ebullient mother in which she
announced her son’s safe arrival home from a tour of duty in Iraq and an email
from another mother relating the anguishing news that her son had died in the
line of duty on the streets of Baghdad. “I
am grateful to God for bringing my son home safely,” the first mother had
written. But what would she say to
the second mother? That God had
forsaken her son? Is God
really responsible for such vagaries of life?
I have been carrying on some
intermittent conversations with an internet reader of my sermons from
I think the answer might be
“yes.” How wonderful it would
be, it seems to me, if Palestinians and Israelis directed their prayers to and
for each other. How hopeful it would
be if Americans and Iranians were trading prayers instead of polemics and
politics. And while most of our
prayers for loved ones and friends are well-intentioned, there are times I think
we opt to “talk to God” as an easier course of action than facing up to hard
conversations we need to have with each other, which is the way I think God
would prefer it. And sometimes our
prayers we ostensibly make for others really are more for ourselves.
So many times across the years I have visited with an older person
praying to die but the children are praying for their mother or father to live
and I leave the room thinking that they really should be directing their prayers
to each other. Prayers directed to
each other seem not to be a bad idea at all.
I can say that because I trust
God with my life and my death. I do
not think we need to tell God anything, really, except, maybe, for our own peace
of mind. And I do not think we need
to plead our cases. Why?
Well, here , in my opinion, are three of the most important passages in
the Bible:
Acts 17:28 – “In God we live and move and have our being.”
Luke 15:31, near the end of the
parable of the prodigal son, when the elder brother is grousing about his
father’s generosity toward the prodigal upon his return, the father, the God
figure in the parable, answers his son, saying, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”
1 John 4:20-21 – “Those
who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for
those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God
whom they have not seen. The
commandment we have from God is this: those who love God must love their
brothers and sisters also.”
Do you see?
We already abide in God. Remember
how
Is that not the deeper meaning of Christmas?
Is that not why the gospel
poets wrote their stories? To tell
us that just as the Christ of God, that supernal Spirit of the eternal God, came
to life in Jesus of Nazareth, so, too, the Christ of God is waiting and wanting
to be born and borne into the world in us. Is
it not the case that we all of us are children of God in whom divinity is made
visible as we live more and more fully into our humanity?
Is that not the message of the
incarnation, of Christmas…that we may grow up, as Jesus did, no matter our
age, to be human in such a way as to bear the heart and hope of God and, in so
doing, help to bring peace, goodness, and joy to the world?
I think it is.
I think that is the message.
Where is God in a world like ours? All
around us. And in us.
We live in God. The Christmas
message is that God also desires to live in us.
Or, as Meister Eckhart, the
German mystic and theologian, said some seven centuries ago, “What
does it matter if Christ was born in Jesus two thousand years ago if Christ is
not born anew in us today?”
To the birthing rooms, then!
Now! This is our Christmas,
too!
Amen.
© Copyright 2007 First Presbyterian Church