God for Us All
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
October 20, 2019
Philippians 2:1-11
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Since this morning we are going to be talking about God, I thought as good Quakers we should start by going to the authorities on God – children. If you thought you had some questions about God, just listen to some of the questions that children out there have. They will get you thinking (and possibly laughing). These are actual questions children have asked which I found on a parenting blog titled, “CafeMom.”
"Why did God make mosquitoes? All they do is bite you? Why would God do that?!"
"Why does God stay in heaven and not come down to earth to visit?"
"I think my 4-year-old son got confused when we told him that God watches over us. He said 'Wait, so God is Santa Claus?'"
"Did Jesus get potty trained as fast as me?"
"How did Jesus even rise from the grave? Did he punch out of his grave and say, 'This isn’t the last of Jesus!'?"
"Is Jesus a zombie?"
"Can God read our minds?"
"Is Santa God's really rich brother?'
"'Mommy, is that God?' referring to the priest marrying my sister-in-law and her husband."
"When my son was about 4 or 5, and it started to rain while we were walking back from the park, he asked me if it was God peeing on us."
"If God saw that it was not good for Adam to be alone... how come He never made himself a wife?"
"If God sees everything, does he watch us in the shower?"
"I teach preschool Sunday school and ... I talked about Jesus as the Good Shepherd and how He will leave 99 sheep to find one lost one. One little boy piped up, 'Did Jesus live in a zoo?'"
"Why does he have horns? Does he headbutt the other gods?"
"So, was he a vampire?"
"When my oldest was about 3, we found a baby bird in the yard that had fallen from its nest. When I went to check on it the next morning, it had died. When I took the kids out to play, I discreetly scooped him up, put him in a bag and in the trash. When we came in, my son said, 'Mama, what happened to that baby bird?' Trying to skirt the issue, I said, 'Oh, you don't have to worry about that baby bird, he lives with Jesus now.' He looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments and said, 'Jesus lives in the trash?'"
"Did Jesus practice walking on water first? How can I do it?"
"If Jesus doesn't have a sister, why do I need to have one?"
This morning, I would like us to explore what we know and believe about God. And just like those kids, it is always acceptable among Friends – and especially here at First Friends to ask questions. So, allow yourself to be open and inquisitive this morning.
Much of what I talked about last week, as hard as it was to wrestle with and try and understand, reflects too well what many people believe about God.
Countless people have a picture of God that is violent, domineering, controlling, and supreme in many of the wrong ways. This concept and understanding of God often comes from what traditionally theologians call “omni-theology.” Now, many of us in this very meetinghouse were probably raised with omni-theology where we used these descriptors to explain God
omnipresent – God is everywhere.
omniscient – God is all knowing.
omnipotent – God is all mighty or the supreme being.
Yet, while I was being taught this omni-theology in my conformation class at the age of 13 a fellow classmate raised his hand and asked a poignant question,
“If God is all powerful, can He create a rock so large He cannot pick it up?”
and the questions continued to grow. Sadly, the bible didn’t help me on this one…because if you look carefully you will find verses and stories in the bible that refute every one of those attributes. As well, the bible is filled with paradoxes that get one’s mind spinning in thought. I remember a time when my mind went spinning and this is what it kind of sounded like…
Either God wants to abolish evil and cannot,
or he can, but does not want to,
or he cannot and does not want to.
If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent.
If he can, but does not want to, then he is wicked.
If he neither can, nor wants to, he is both powerless and wicked.
Like I said, all this can very quickly have our heads spinning. If you enjoy this type of thinking…I have an opportunity for you…it’s called seminary…there is a lot of head spinning that goes on there. Just ask Beth Henricks about that with her current class on postmodernity in her Master of Divinity program at Earlham School of Religion.
Anyway, as soon as the questions were adequately satisfied (which they never were) my confirmation teacher (who was also my pastor) would quickly move to another statement about God, which went like this,
“To really see who God is, we must look at Jesus.”
Now, Jesus was much more relatable. Jesus was much more tangible. Jesus was much more human and did things that humans, like me, did. And yet, Jesus wasn’t really much like this “God” we were just discussing. Rather confusing if you really think about. So many other theologies and explanations had to be created to make it all work and make sense, that often we just went with it. Since most of the confirmands just wanted to get through the class so they could take communion and say they drank wine at church. We often moved on, leaving me with lots of questions.
Actually, looking at Jesus was probably the best suggestion or move we could make (back then and today), because the God we would see in Jesus is much different – instead of lightning bolts or wrathful threats the God of Jesus took up a water basin and a towel and declared forgiveness, brought reconciliation, proclaimed good news for all, and had compassion for people who did not know the way of shalom and love.
In the biblical chapter of my doctoral dissertation I traced the concept of shalom (which means to bring into peaceful wholeness) from Genesis to Revelation and found often in both the Old and New Testaments a God who was seeking first and foremost this way of shalom rooted in love. Too often scripture shows this shalom-seeking God being overshadowed by the actions, beliefs, or desires of the God-followers – leaving God waiting patiently on them to seek the way of shalom and love for themselves. (To me, this “waiting patiently” definitely shows that God must be a Quaker).
Finally, when Jesus appears on Earth or as it says in The Message, “when he moved into the neighborhood,” he was able to show them tangibly a new way. Yet many still refused to follow His way, always adding more and more to convolute and detract from his simplicity. Ironically, this was exactly what Jesus was always questioning the religious authorities of his day about – they loved adding rules and hoops to jump through. Yet, Jesus was trying to get them back to the essentials of shalom and love, all while they believed they had better ideas. Ideas that would lead to many of the atrocities we talked about last week.
Also, for Jesus, God was supreme, but not in a supremacy as-we-know-it-today kind of way – Instead Jesus always was trying to show God as the supreme healer, supreme friend, supreme lover, supreme life-giver…so much so that God would ultimately empty himself for the benefit of ALL people. Listen again to how Paul explained it to the Philippians:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
What Jesus did was give us a brand new and radical understanding of God. He flipped our understanding completely upside down. The domineering, wrathful, violent God had now become just the opposite – nondominating, nonwrathful, nonviolent, and supreme in self-giving and service.
Let’s be honest, this God that Jesus was trying to show us, I believe, makes much more sense, because first and foremost we hopefully want to relate to this image of God.
Actually, as Quakers who believe that there is that of God in every person, this means even more. It means that we not only can relate, but we should be emulating, or even better yet, incarnating this God that Jesus is showing us in our everyday lives.
We should be working hard on becoming nondominating, nonwrathful, nonviolent people who seek ways to be supreme in self-giving and service to ALL people. Then our neighbors will be able to see “that of God in us.”
Now, before we embark on emulating and incarnating this way, we probably need to do some self-work. That means we are going to have to ask ourselves some difficult queries to help us process where we are struggling with living this way, currently.
We should ask ourselves something like this…
· Who deep down do I want to dominate? Who do I want to exercise control over? Who don’t I mind belittling, shaming, or making feel less-than for my own benefit or desires?
· Who experiences my fierce anger the easiest? Do they deserve it? Have I tried to understand him/her, and have I taken the time to look inside myself at the root of my own wrath? (If wrath is truly at its deepest root a corollary of love – let’s seek to tap into the love instead of producing angry responses.)
· Who undeservedly receives my violent responses, or who do I wish them upon? How often have I wished someone removed from my life (even dead), or wanted to physically hurt someone to make myself feel better? (I used to think this sounded out there, but violence today takes many forms. – bullying or emotional violence or intimidation is a violent act that is often used by youth on the internet, as well as people in Fortune 500 companies. I don’t know how many times, I have heard people say, “Well, if we could just get rid of that person (or those people) our problems would be solved.” Do we really mean that? All you have to do is a take a look at a list of the things that cause PTSD in people and you will see how varied violent responses really are and the effects they have on each of us.)
Just by asking ourselves those three queries we are quick to realize how important it is to work on becoming less dominate, less wrathful, and less violent. As we do, it is easier to see how we might be able to give, serve, and ultimately begin to seek shalom and love our neighbor as ourselves.
Instead of emulating the old view of God which produces many of the things we talked about last week, if we emulate the God we see in Jesus then we might just begin to heal our world starting in our own areas of influence (family, work, relationships, church, etc.) I will be the first to admit, it is never easy being humbled. It isn’t easy trying to focus on putting others before ourselves. And often the last thing we want to do is willingly sacrifice our own desires to see others healed, reconciled, and successful in their pursuits. But when we do, others will be able to see that of a hopeful, loving, gracious, and kind God inside each of us.
That there is the way of Jesus rooted in love that we have been talking about throughout this series.
During our time of waiting worship, I challenge us to sit on those queries I read earlier, which can be found on the back of your bulletin.
· Who deep down do I want to dominate?
· Who experiences my fierce anger the easiest?
· Who undeservedly receives my violent responses, or who do I wish them upon?
And allow your Inner Light to speak to your condition this morning. If you feel led to share out of the silence, please stand and a microphone will be brought to you.