we are the children of the light, let us live in that light as we enlighten the world. To the only wise God our Savior be majesty and glory, dominion

Transcription

1 Who is God for You? As a priest in good standing in the diocese of Arizona, one of the things I get to do is go to our annual diocesan convention with both voice and vote. This year s convention, which happens in 3 weeks, we ll be electing a new bishop. And the committee has offered us 3 candidates and they had given them a list of 12 essay questions that they were required to answer very good stuff all of their responses are available on the diocesan website. So the other day I m taking seriously my duty to digest all this material about them and reading each of the 3 candidates responses to the 12 questions. Most of the questions are your basic job interview questions that ask the candidate to brag about accomplishments they ve had in ministry and all of that IS important. But for me, the most telling, I believe, of the 12 questions is the very first one and here it is: Who is God for you? And I thought: What a great question! Who is God for you? What would your answer be? It s a very telling question because your concept of who God is determines what kind of person you become in the world. I think that how you answer this question determines how you act, how you behave, how you interact, how you live, how you love, how you forgive, how you organize your life. Your answer to Who is God for you even determines what you do to make money, how you spend your money, what kind of car you drive, which news outlets you pay attention to, which books you read, what kind of television and movies you watch. I think your answer to this question is your rationale for basically everything you do. Now I never intend on running for bishop of anything, but when I saw that question and I realized how rich it is, it drew me in to the point that I felt compelled to ANSWER that question Who is

2 God for me. And I opened up my Microsoft Word and started writing and I ll get to that eventually. But first I think its necessary to relate to you who God IS NOT for me. Who God is NOT for me is God is some celestial tyrant who has set up this life on earth, your life on earth, as a huge test to see if we can get it right and if we DO get it right which is characterized by us endlessly placating this angry overlord then our reward is to spend the rest of eternity with this placated deity in heaven and if we don t then we go to a fiery hell where we re tortured and burn FOR-EV-ER. Now, in our gospel reading this morning Jesus talks of something called hell so this is a very salient point we re addressing. Preachers and teachers of Jesus day would frequently use exaggerated hyperbole to help their words really pack a punch Jesus is using this method right here. The concept of hell is one of the more interesting evolutions of biblical lore. When we read the Old Testament, for example, there is no hell it says so right there in Genesis 1 when God creates everything light, the sun, the moon, the stars, dry land, the plants, the animals and humankind where does it say that God created a fiery pit for dead, bad people? Jerusalem, you see, was built on a hill, basically. Around the city, outside the gates were valleys on every side. One of the valleys outside the city walls of Jerusalem was called gai ben hinnom or simply the Hinnom Valley. It was a valley that had been used for pagan child sacrifices to the native deities of the old Canaanite period. Later it came to be used as the town dump where refuse was burned and it burned and burned and burned. It came to be referred to as Gehenna which literally meant the Hinnom Valley. Gehenna is the Aramaic word Jesus used which was translated into English as hell. So when Jesus talks of hell, he s using the word Gehenna (the Hinnom Valley) he is referring to a physical space that you could point to and see just outside of Jerusalem, because it s just down the hill. Gehenna had become infamous as a place of rot, of mutilated bodies and

3 revulsion and how do you get rid of all that stink? You burn it. So Hell, Gehenna, in Jesus day, is a dump. It's a place for the refuse of our lives, not anything that anyone might aspire to. I mentioned in a sermon about a year ago that TV show The Good Place and I know some of you are still watching it. Season 3 just premiered this week. The Good Place, in case you don t track this show, is the story of 4 humans who are essentially guinea pigs in an elaborate experiment by Satan (named Shawn in the TV show) and his demons to find new and exciting ways of torturing humans in the afterlife. The ruse is to make them think they re in heaven, but let them do what they normally do on earth, like never being able to make a decision or thinking much too highly of oneself or being extremely self-centered. The effect of them being and acting the way they always do amounts to torturing EACH OTHER, for eternity. So even in that show, the Bad Place doesn't have to be an eternal fire for people to be perpetually miserable and unhappy. We do nicely making our own Hell, God doesn t have to create a Hell for us; we do just fine making ourselves and the people around us miserable. So, who is God for you? I don t think God is the one who tortures us for being bad WE ve already got that one covered. So, if there is an eternal burning hell waiting for us in the afterlife, I m pretty sure we ve invented it. So when I paused and thought about it Who is God for me? Here is what I wrote, and its just 6 sentences I m not going to comment on them, I m just going to throw them out there and pause after each one to kind of let it soak in: Who is God for me? God is the eternal fire in my soul who has created me, recreates me, blesses me, marks me, sustains me and owns me the ONE to whom I owe my life and all my passion.

4 Who is God for me? God is my deep yearning for connection love, union and re-union with all humanity and creation. Who is God for me? God is the source of all that I can perceive as good, wonderful, and beautiful in the world, as well as all the good, wonderful and beautiful I cannot perceive, understand, fathom or digest but all the same still exists in reality. Who is God for me? God is my biggest and greatest joy, as well as the One with whom I contend, strive and wrestle. Who is God for me? God is the mysterious not known whom I cannot stop trying to know, personally, intimately and deeply. Who is God for me? God is the revealed One in Jesus of Nazareth whose life and death paints a picture of love that forever and unceasingly draws me out from my self-centered torturing inclinations again and again and again out into the world to serve his people. Now. I m not asking you to grade me on this self-assignment, but I do hope to have stirred something in you that prompts you to take on answering this question for yourself Who is God for you. The impact for me of taking on this self-assignment is experiencing a renewed sense of purpose and verve in my own life. I feel like I can see more than I used to see, and hear what I hadn t been hearing, especially, what people are telling me, because usually I m just hearing the voice in my head which never stops criticizing what people are telling me. I would even characterize taking on the answering of this question as providing a little relief from living in the Bad Place you know, that hell that we create for ourselves. We, I, create plenty of bad for myself right here right now. I now see a clearer path to the Good Place and with the grace of God it will get even clearer. May our Creator God bless YOU in your discernment in this question, do take it on, let yourself see the extent to which your life is informed by it. Folks,

5 we are the children of the light, let us live in that light as we enlighten the world. To the only wise God our Savior be majesty and glory, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.