Sermon for Year C, Proper 15: "Keeping It Real"

Preached on Sunday, August 15th at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary texts this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

“Keeping It Real”

Well if we can say anything about our readings this week, we can say that this is God “keeping it real” as we say up in my Harlem neighborhood. Lest we forget the name of the Lord, or forget who God is, lest we try to simplify God, and edit God down to an idea or image that we find more palatable, this set of readings is here to remind us that we do so at our peril.

But who God is, who God really is, is hard to understand, hard to decipher, isn’t it? There’s the mystery part to contend with first of all. We know that the awesome power and majesty and love and omnipotence of the Almighty God is more, much more than we can fathom, more than we can comprehend, more than we can describe with human words.

Last year, when I was preparing for our Adult Ed forum on the history of the feast of Christ the King, my research entailed reading papal bulls and encyclicals– not something I often do. In the introduction to one such papal encyclical, Pius XI wrote, “From the very hour when in the inscrutable designs of God, We though unworthy, were elevated to this Chair of Truth and Love…” Of course, rather than ponder the meaning of ‘inscrutable’ I simply Googled it and found that it means ‘difficult or impossible to comprehend.” The inscrutable designs of God -- the inscrutable God. Many have described the designs of God as inscrutable, and not just when they are listing the more infamous occupants of the see of St. Peter -- but God is inscrutable in many other ways too.

So, in trying to answer the question “Who is God” we have the mystery of God to contend with, and then we have our own deepest desires for God, for a particular kind of God, and our own images of what that God should be to contend with as well.

We all have our images of God. The old guy with the white beard who will be for us the most benevolent, the most grandfatherly, of fathers – that’s a popular one, isn’t it? And even if we’ve developed enough spiritually to have a more evolved image of God, chances are the old guy with the beard is where we started, what we reacted against -- and chances are he lurks around a bit no matter how we try to move past him.

But stronger than our images of God are our expectations of God. We expect God to be good, don’t’ we? God wants what is good for us and those we love, doesn’t he? God hears and heeds our prayers. God is for us, like us, on our side, right?

But as we know, these expectations, which are, in a sense, really requirements of God, are often not met, not fulfilled. God does let bad things happen. God does not give us all that we pray for. God doesn’t always come when we call. God does not keep us from all harm and every hurt. God, on occasion, lets us down.

And when God lets us down, we are likely to become disillusioned. And we think of that as a bad thing, to be disillusioned. But Episcopal priest and noted preacher Barbara Brown Taylor thinks that disillusionment might not be such a bad thing after all. In her book, “The Preaching Life”, Taylor writes, “Disillusionment is the loss of illusion -- about ourselves, about the world, about God –- and while it is almost always painful, it is not a bad thing to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth… (If) we review our requirements of God… (we come to) recognize them as our own fictions, our own frail shelters against the vast night sky. Disillusioned, we find out what is not true and are set free to seek what is – if we dare… Every time God declines to meet my expectations, another of my idols is exposed. Another curtain is drawn back so that I can see what I have propped up in God’s place…” (p. 8-9)

But when we lose our illusions of and about God, then we are left with the same old, now almost tiresome question: Who is God? That is, of course, not a question that a single sermon can answer, but rather the question of a lifetime of study and prayer and devotion. But try to answer it we most certainly should. And sometimes it is better to try to answer this question in both positive and negative terms: What and who is God; and what and who is God not?

From our reading this morning from Jeremiah, we learn that God is omnipotent, that there is no where we can hide, and no thing we can keep from his gaze. Now Elijah found God on the mountain of Horeb, not in the fierce wind and not in the earthquake but in the ‘still small voice’. Yet Jeremiah finds that God is also one that speaks with words like fire, words like a hammer that can break a rock into pieces. No ‘still small voice’ could do that.

In our reading from Hebrews, we learn that God is a disciplinarian, one who sets for us trials and tasks and teaches us with what might appear to be – at times – quite harsh tactics, hard lessons, what might be called a kind of ‘tough love’. Contrast this Teacher God with the words of Jesus from Matthew’s chapter 11, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." It’s time to register for school here in New York City, and given a choice, I think I know which teacher I’d sign up for classes with. I think I’d sign up for the one whose ‘burden is light’; sounds like a lot less homework.

And in our gospel reading from Luke, we hear Jesus, the so-called Prince of Peace, proclaim quite boldly that he has not come to bring peace, but rather division – that he has come to bring fire to the earth and to set us against each other, to sow conflict, even heartbreak, within the bosom of our families. Now contrast this fellow with the Jesus who says in John Chapter 14, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

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Bet they didn’t teach you this scary stuff in Sunday School, did they? I don’t think so, and that’s because this is God for grown-ups. This is God ‘keeping it real”, the real God for the real world.

Now, you might ask yourself, why on this lovely August day, when the heat has finally broken and the world seems a little kinder and more hospitable place, why, you might ask, am I standing in this pulpit with promises of disappointment and disillusionment rather prophecies of peace and prosperity; why am I warning of conflict rather than preaching comfort?

Well, these might not seem to be words of comfort, but I want them to be. I want them to be a reminder to you that disillusionment and disappointment, division and conflict, hard times and broken hearts are part of this earthly life. And they are part of the process that is the spiritual life, part of our progress through this life into the next. And the challenges and the losses and disappointments and broken hearts are not the end, they are never the end.

Across the street at Lincoln Center, they might tell you that it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. Well, here in this place, we say that it ain’t over til you hear the angels sing. Our trials and tasks are not the end. They are part of the journey, but they are not the end. As our reading from Hebrews tells us, Jesus, our example of the godly life endured the pain and shame of the cross for the sake of the joy that lay beyond it. The end is in God and the end is in glory, and peace and comfort and great joy.

Now, we’ve left a big question unanswered, haven’t we? Who is God, after all? Sometimes all we can know of God is what God is not. If God doesn’t come when we call, we can know that God is not a minion to be ordered about by the likes of us. When God doesn’t fix our problems, then we can know that God isn’t always a fixer. When God doesn’t quash our enemies, then we can know that God isn’t a partisan. And when the Yankees loose, we can know that God isn’t a pitching coach or a batting coach – much as we wish he were.

As to who God is, who God really is… well, that will take some more investigation. We’ll have to weather our storms and triumphs alike and keep seeking after God, if we dare. And if we dare, we’ll know times of peace and times of discord. We’ll learn easy lessons and hard ones. We’ll hear the harsh sound of God’s condemnation from time to time, and we’ll here the still small voice of the God of comfort. We’ll have to keep coming back to hear the word of God, and to taste and see God around this table. It’s a holy process, fraught with trials and pitfalls as well as blessings; it comes with disappointments and struggles as well as rewards, and the only aspect of it all that we can be sure of along the way is how it ends, for we know that it ends is glory -- when we hear the angels sing. Amen+

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins