Easter 6 - We too are God's offspring

In Nikari’s global project “5 Studies for Nature”, the 5th and final design comes from industrial design student Jari Devad in Stockholm as part of a competition by the university Konstfack. The Stockholm study is a wooden #stool that emphasizes the angle
From "5 Studies for Nature" by Design Milk, on Flickr

Acts 17:22-31
Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

John 14:15-21
[Jesus said to the disciples:] “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

--
The first childhood nightmare I ever remember having was a dream where my family left me behind in a parking lot. In the dream, we were all sitting together on tall stools inside an airport, waiting. All of the sudden, my parents decided it was time to leave, and they stood up and walked out, leaving me to carry all the stools. They, unburdened, pushed open the glass doors to get outside, and didn't hold the door for me. I shoved my way through the doors, still carrying the stools, and fumbled me way to the parking lot. I could see everybody up ahead of me, but no matter how fast I walked, I couldn't catch up to them. The distance between us kept widening, until I couldn't seem them anymore and I was left all alone.

I think that the reason I remember this dream more vividly than any other nightmare about monsters or ghosts or sharks is that it taps into one of our most primal human fears: the fear of being abandoned, alone, and vulnerable.

From an early age, we come to learn that love and trust go hand in hand. We come to believe that those who love us will never leave us or forsake us. It is why we feel grief when loved ones die, why we feel pain when relationships break, and why we feel fear when it seems like we have been abandoned. And how much more do we feel these things when we seems like we have been abandoned by God himself; when it feels like God is hiding from us.

When you feel particularly sensitive to the sufferings of the world, or when you feel like evil has triumphed, or when you feel utterly hopeless, have you ever found yourself asking the questions, “Where is God in all this?” or “Why isn’t God doing anything about this?” or “Doesn’t God care at all?”

These questions are not new to our generations. A common refrain in the Psalms: “O Lord, why have you hidden your face from me? Why are you far off? Do not hide yourself from me.”

All over the Bible, and especially in the Old Testament, we hear about the hiddenness of God. The prophets urge God's chosen people to seek God where he may be found, to look for God and to search for his will. Psalmist and prophets alike lament the darkness that covers the land and their souls whenever God has hidden himself from them.

The idea that God would go into hiding is not an idea that comforts us these days. We want a God who is always in control, always attentive, always working good in the world, always fighting evil, always healing brokenness, always present.

But for the ancient Israelites, the idea that God would hide is not, for them, a negative reflection on God's character. "God in hiding" is language that they use to describe and make sense of the broken parts of the world; language that is borne not out of doubt or despair, but out of faith.

Language of the hiddenness of God gave them a way to talk about evil in the world without either ascribing evil to God or implying that human brokenness or the power of evil have triumphed over God. Evil simply exists where God's face does not shine, but God is not the source of evil, nor has evil overcome the goodness of God.

Language of God hiding himself lets them articulate feelings of forsakenness and loneliness while still trusting in the presence of God. Because hiding is different than bailing. A God who is hidden is a God who can also be found. For the Old Testament prophets and poets, they described their feelings of distance from God in terms of hiding because hiding is temporary, a signal that they trust God to reveal God's self in the future, even if they cannot see God's face right now. Their words reveal a longing for God’s presence, and a fervent hope that the God who is veiled from sight is yet a God who has not abandoned us, and a God who is likely to show up in unexpected places and unexpected ways, as we open our eyes to look at our world.

This is what Paul is talking about in his sermon to the Athenians in our Acts reading today. He is affirming that the hidden God is now the visible God, and the God whom they deem "unknown" is actually known. Paul says that the God whom they deem elusive is not actually hidden or far off, but is as close as our own breath; God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being. And how do we know this? Because of Jesus Christ. Paul argues that God stands in plain sight in the person of Christ. What might have felt unknown, unknowable, or mysterious about God has been made tangible, evident, knowable, and known in Jesus, God-made-flesh. In Christ, God has come out of hiding.

John's gospel begins by proclaiming Jesus as the word-made-flesh. That is, Jesus gave God a body, which is this incredible moment of assurance, because it tells us that we don't have to worship a mysterious, other-worldly God who we can't hope to know or see, who hides in the shadows. Jesus proves that fullness of God's love, grace, and mercy are as tangible as a baby born in a manger. Jesus says, many times over, that to know him is to know God. Jesus is God, hiding in plain sight.

The catch, however, is that God is to be found where God wants to be found, and not necessarily where we would look for him.

One way that Martin Luther talks about sin is by talking about human dissatisfaction and mistrust in God's self-revelation. That is, he makes the claim that Adam and Eve sinned because they weren't satisfied by seeing God face-to-face, and thought that God was hiding something from them. They ate the fruit because they thought God was holding out on them.

We do the same thing. We buy into a mistrust of God's goodness shown to us face-to-face in Christ, and we try to seek out a God of our own creation. We look for God where we would want him to be found, in places of power and might.

But we will not find God in those places, because God will never be found in found in corruptible human authority, in wealth, in arrogance, in self-centeredness, in domination and desolation of creation, in empty displays of power, in selfish acquisitions and vain pursuits, in attitudes of might-makes-right, or in the exploitation of privilege for the sake of supremacy.

By contrast, it is by looking at the life of ministry of Jesus - and looking in all of the places where Jesus went and looking into all of the faces that Jesus blessed - that we will find God, right where God wants to be found. We will always find God in places of holy weakness and vulnerability, in the faces of those who are outcast and oppressed and those who are seeking justice, in acts of love and mercy and compassion, in the fragile balance of creation, in the honest grief of suffering, in surprising moments of grace, in places of gratitude and simple joy, in the triumph of humble love and self-giving, in places of emptying and emptiness, and in places of need.

In short, we find God when we look at the cross. Because to know the true heart of God is to walk with Jesus to the cross, where God reveals self-giving love beyond all boundaries, love hidden in death that defeats death.

There on the cross, Jesus knew the excruciating pain of feeling abandoned by God - “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he cries. And yet in that moment, Jesus was, ironically, not far off from God, but as close to God as one can get, because the paradox of the cross is that God’s power is found in weakness, and God’s promise of life is born from death, and God’s greatest love is demonstrated in God’s greatest act of self-emptying.

The promise of Jesus is that even when God seems hidden, we are never actually left alone. Jesus is the God whom we can see and touch. Jesus in the bread and the wine is the God whom we receive into our waiting hands.

And if that weren't a brilliant enough assurance of God's love and trustworthiness, Jesus also promises us the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Comforter, who sustains us, who walks with us, who clings to us, that we might never be apart from God's presence, even when we cannot see that presence or understand it.

The Spirit who walks with us for all eternity is God without boundaries, love without constraint, hope without limits. The Spirit is the most limitless expression of God and God's love.

The Spirit breathes through the world and calls all people into God's family, adopting us and making heirs and children of God. The Spirit walks with us and reminds us, over and over again, that we are God's offspring, that we belong to God, that God will not abandon us. The Spirit draws us to the waters of baptism, and then leads us back to the font, over and over again, to touch the water and to we remember that we are beloved children. This water also reminds us that God in baptism has promised never to leave us. Never to forsake us. Never to cast us out of his holy presence. And God keeps God's promises.

And so whenever it feels like the world has left you behind,
Whenever loneliness threatens to crush you,
Whenever despair, like a vacuum, leaves your soul feeling empty,
Whenever all other helpers have failed and all other comforts have fled,

Know that you have in Christ your greatest comfort, and the Holy Spirit as your unfailing advocate and partner on the journey. For God is never far off. And you are never beyond hope.

Cling to this assurance.
May it be balm for your soul, and joy for your spirit,
now and forever.

Amen.

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