October 24, 2010
Pentecost 22
Joel 2:23-32
Luke 18:9-14
(prayer)
I want to invite you to use your imaginations this morning. But I am not asking you to stretch into fantasy (not that there is anything wrong with that), but I invite you to imagine the edges of reality.
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As best as you can focus your thoughts on the smallest object you have ever seen with your naked eye. In your mind’s eye look at the detail on this object – is there texture? Is there colour? It is moving or static?
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Now let your mind imagine something smaller – in fact try and focus on the smallest thing you can imagine, the smallest part of a thing. Let the chemical-physicist in you picture the very basis of matter itself. The inner space of molecules and atoms, the dynamism of electrons and protons and neutrons and the sub-sub-atomic particles that make up these once imagined smallest things. Have you got it?
Can you imagine God being aware of that same reality which you are focusing on? Can you imagine God understanding it even more fully than you can possibly imagine. God sees deeper and closer right to very heart of existence itself. Imagine that.
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Okay shake that off. Now lets go the other way. Imagine the largest thing you can imagine. Go beyond the largest thing you have ever seen with your naked eye and let your mind go interstellar, let it go universal. Do you see the planets and solar systems and galaxies and galaxy clusters? Can you imagine all the way to the totality of the universe? Is your mind even open to what else might be out there?
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Now can you imagine God being aware of that same reality which you are focusing on? Can you imagine God understanding it even more fully than you can possibly imagine. God sees further and more broadly right to very reaches of existence itself. Imagine that.
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When you had that very small image in your mind, were you also mindful of where you were in relation to that speck. You were huge. Lost in the vastness beyond the tiny.
And when you were at the edge of the universe, could you see back to your life on this world. You were miniscule, lost amongst billions of brighter and larger realities.
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Can you imagine that in that vast reality that is the spectrum from the very, very, very small to the massive “totality-of-all-that-is”, that God is present and aware?
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Many modern theologians describe God as “panentheistic” – the assertion that God exists within all things and beyond all things at the same time. That the old debates of whether God is ‘out there’ or ‘in here’ are simply answered “yes”.
And how is this possible – well that possibility is part of the definition of God – it is that God is mystery beyond our understanding and knowable (to a degree) in how well we know ourselves, each other and the world/universe we live in.
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This admittedly is a big God who I am talking about. And this is a risky God to get to know, because this God will challenge the walls and limits you want to put around people and ideas that you might prefer to stay out of God’s reach.
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“I am so thankful God that I am not like that traitor over there – one who is betraying his own people by working with the empire to export resources out of our land to feed the lusts of Caesar in Rome. I do and say all of the right things, everyone can see that – so, focus your attention, O God, on me and not on that tax collector over there.”
To the Pharisee, God was simply not big enough to have room for the tax collector in the divine heart. I suspect that if we could catch ourselves in a moment of pure honesty, we can recall times when we have held the same attitude as this Pharisee from the story in Luke. Certainly, we have judged others as unworthy of our attention and I suspect that many (if not all of us) would have liked to assume that God agreed with us.
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Inclusivity is one of the most challenging biblical concepts we deal with. And inclusivity is always related to a sense of worthiness. Is compassion, acceptance, respect deserved?
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The prophet Joel lived through a time of drought. The traditional rains had been sparse for a season or two. The insect population had grow and strived on the stumped stalks of dry grain.
The passage Sherrill read today was written after a wonderful spring rain. It seemed to bring hope out of the dry ground and held the promise of great things to come.
It was a real experience in the here-and-now that Joel’s audience had longed for. They did have hope.
Joel used this time of shared hope to also speak of hope in God. Often times, the rains can seem fickle: bathing some fields and leaving others dry; and as they knew too well, sometimes the rains must be elsewhere, because they sure ain’t here. But every once and a while, you get one of those soaking rains that seem to stretch as far as one can imagine.
We have the advantage of satellite weather maps to be able to see these times more directly. We have all looked at those days where the rain clouds stretch from one corner of the province to another. Rain falling on all!
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Well the days are surely coming, says the prophets, when God will rain down Spirit in everyone. Not just a few here and ignoring others. Not just the worthy or pious, but on all flesh – men, women, the young, the old, the slave, the free. All will imagine the vastness of God from the youngest boy to the oldest woman.
A socked in soaking rain, does not discriminate – everything gets wet. That’s the image of God’s outpouring that Joel is talking about. No one is left unaffected by the Spirit.
No one is left unaffected by the Spirit.
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Centuries later, after Jesus’ crucifixion, a few of the disciples had had glimpses of resurrection, but only seven weeks later, at the spring harvest festival (known as the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost), they experienced a radical sense of inclusive community with a large group of total strangers. In spite of the obvious differences of language and nationality, they were able to find a common sense of Spirit. It was Peter who raised Joel’s old words of promise. We have been witnessing an outpouring of Spirit of Biblical proportions. God is literally raining over us.
Our women see visions;
our men clear their eyes.
With bold new decisions,
your people arise!
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When God’s spirit indiscriminately pours out over us, we all get covered in the life giving rains. We all get wet – the old and the young, the Pharisees and the tax collectors, the men and the women, the worthy and the unworthy (how ever you define that).
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Earlier this week, I was among four of us from St. David’s who attended the regular fall gathering of Yellowhead Presbytery (the regional body of the United Churches that includes Leduc). A main function of Presbyteries is to oversee and nurture and support the congregations within its bounds. Practically, since the members of the Presbytery is mostly the ministers and lay reps from the congregations, when the Presbytery visits with a congregation, it is usually people from one church working with another.
I have visited lots and lots of churches as a Presbytery rep over my 20-plus years in paid accountable ministry.
I have heard almost single church describe themselves as welcoming. We’re no different here: look at the sign at the back with all of the name tags.
[Aside, you know it might not be a bad habit to re-claim to wear those more often. After all, we have a new student inter with us for a few months and no matter how outgoing and popular any of us is, we can’t possibly know everyone or expect that everyone knows us. If you don’t have one, there is a list to sign at the back to get one made by the office. But I digress ...]
Lots of churches want to known as welcoming. Any many churches try really hard to be. But as I have said a few times over the years on those presbytery visits, ‘if you want to have an open door policy, you’d better be ready for who ever comes in those doors.’
When the make up of a community changes, the whole group is affected. When new people come to a church, they are just welcomed into the community of faith that is already here, they change the very dynamics of that community because, they, too, bring a glimpse of the holy with them. If God is indeed in and through and around and beyond all of us, each new configuration of people brings a fresh insight into the width and length and breadth of God.
I know in the 70s and 80s when churches first began to be more sensitive to the inclusivity of language, when it comes to male and female words and imagery, it was a struggle for many people to imagine that their faith could hold all of that newness. But here we are 30, 40 years later still being drenched by the Spirit. God was big enough for us all.
That continues, even today, as other barriers to faith and community are challenged. I believe that God is big enough for us all.
Inclusivity is a gift because is shows us more of God that we could possibly experience on our own. If that gift remains a challenge, I encourage you to continue to imagine how vast the love God, which we celebrate and glimpse in the life of Jesus and the resurrected Christ, can be.
Thank God for the outpouring of Spirit that unites us all
Let us pray;
God, help us open ourselves to our innermost depths and to the far reaches of your love and influence. Hold us under the wonder of your Spirit. Amen.
#144MV “Like a Healing Stream”
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