What do You Mean When You Say God?

Readings

Sermon

This morning I'm happy to fulfill a commitment to Dick Luke who purchased a sermon at the Service Auction last spring. I think I'm just under the wire for delivering this service within a year of the purchase date. Dick asked me to talk about what I mean when I use the word God.

And that's my intention, although the sermon title doesn't make that clear. Indeed, the sermon title seems to pose the question to you; what do you mean when you say god. For some of you the best answer might have been nothing. The word God has no meaning in your life. Or perhaps your answer was An illusion that some people hold on to even though they can't justify the existence of a supernatural being in rational terms.

I'm well aware that for some folks in the congregation, the word God either has no meaning or represents an idea that they now reject as having any reality. Their argument is that there is no scientific proof that a divine or supernatural being exists. And it's true, I have yet to read anything that proves God's existence in objective scientific terms that can be measured and replicated. Even a brilliant man like Alfred North Whitehead, a respected mathematician, an honored philosopher, and a profound theologian, acknowledged that the existence of a transcendent being cannot be proven by rational methods. But Whitehead sees the problem as the limitation of rational methods, not in the existence of such a transcendent being. In fact, Whitehead says that our ability to know anything about the transcendent is limited because we cannot prove or measure anything outside the physical world by objective methods. Therefore, we must rely on what we can infer from aspects of the universe that we can experience. He also points out that language is inadequate to express our deepest thoughts, that our conscious mind is inadequate to express our subconscious. He wrote, The curse of philosophy has been the supposition that language is an exact medium. I think that it is fair to say that the limits of language also apply to theology. What this means is that anything we say about God is inadequate, partial, and therefore false to some degree.

This takes some of the heat off of the sermon and the writer, but it raises a good question: Why bother? Why spend our time together talking about something we can't really talk about with any certainty or accuracy? Aren't we just frustrating ourselves by forcing the tools of language and logic to do the work that is beyond them? Wittgenstein, another heavy-duty thinker, addressed this question in a lighthearted way that we can all understand. He says if we can't describe something as commonplace as the taste of coffee, a beverage that most UU's claim as essential to a good Sunday service, why are we trying to describe God? Why not just accept that we can't say very much about God and get on with life? What does it matter?

To me, it matters a lot. Our ideas of God, provide the foundation of what we call religion. I see religion as a tool we use to interpret human life and experience, to help us come to terms with matters of ultimate concern. Why is there something instead of nothing? Does my life have purpose an if it something more than the propagation of the species? How do we live in the face of death? How do I treat people who aren't part of my family group and who might even compete with my family for resources and power? I know that the way I think about God has a huge influence on the way I think about everything in life. If my God is a judge who punishes me for my sins after death, I would be more inclined to follow the rules, to conform to what other people say I should do. If I see God as a relationship between human beings and the source of creation, then I might have a sense of empowerment and freedom about my work. If I believe that God is a source of on-going revelation, the change might feel less threatening, knowledge and new ways of finding truth might not be viewed as a violation of God's will or dangerous heresy. If I conclude that God does not exist, then I will frame my sense of life's meaning in terms of this world, the here and now, without any reference to a cosmic scheme.

I'm not making the claim that we need to believe in God in order to live an ethical life. I would argue that the belief in God, as it developed over human history, was instrumental to the development of the Jewish and Christian ethics that are at the basis of western civilization. But that's another sermon. So what I mean when I say God?

When I say God first and foremost I am referring to ultimate mystery or that than which nothing greater can be conceived. This odd little phrase comes from the medieval theologian, St. Anselm and I find it very helpful because it reminds me a human limitation and the folly of human certainty. Although I'm not a true apophatic theologian, that is, I wouldn't say we must never apply human categories to a description of God, I would maintain that any human category is insufficient. Anslem's definition keeps me humble. It reminds me my ideas about God are not the truth about God. Some people say that we create God in our own image and I'd agree. We can't do anything else.

I also believe that we all carry the image of God within our being. The belief is the foundation in my faith in our first principle that proclaims the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This belief of God within, or as William Ellery Channing would say, as seed of the divine within every soul, pushes me to accept differences and to see them as a sign of God's love of variety (another old Unitarian doctrine). It is the foundation of my concern for justice issues, and my concern for people in need. This sense of God within can transform my attitudes and embedded assumptions about people whose life experiences are far from my own. Let me explain.

As part of my preparation for ministry, I took part in an eleven week chaplaincy training program at Parkland Hospital in Dallas . This is a huge hospital and many of the people who come there for treatment are the very poorest people in Dallas. The chaplain's office was just off the main hallway and all day and night there was a river of people going back and forth, up and down that hallway. It was not a pretty parade. There were people in wheelchairs with bloody bandages on their arms and legs, people who were amputees who struggled along on crutches, people with bandaged heads, eye patches, and casts, There were very old people who were stooped and thin and who looked so sad as they shuffled along. Some of these people looked and smelled like they had not washed or put on clean clothes in weeks. There were pregnant women who were in the throes of labor, little children wailing in fear and pain. Often people were screaming at one another. It wasn't unusual to see a adult cuff a child who wasn't moving along quickly enough. Occasionally a security guard accompanied someone who was obviously hallucinating.

One of my fellow trainees called this hall the river of misery. I hated to walk in that long corridor, to have to look all those sad, sick, dirty faces. Frankly these suffering people offered a very potent reminder of just how unappealing, how unlovely, how unholy, we humans can be. Then one morning, I tried something different. As I saw each face, I said to myself, The face of God, the face of God. I don't know why I did that, I certainly didn't think of doing that before I entered the building. If I had thought about it, I probably would have said my sister, my brother as I passed each person. But for some reason I said the face of God as I passed each person and that seemed to lift me above the suffering and to see the beauty, the light that was in each person, and to love that beauty.

I carried that little mantra with me as I made my rounds in the hospital and over time my work became less difficult and heartbreaking too. Perhaps I was becoming accustomed to the environment, but perhaps the idea of each face being the face of God helped me to be more humble and compassionate, to see each person as a part of the web of human experience of which I am also a part. I was able to serve these people with my heart more open to their suffering and their needs. I has a sense that by recognizing something of God in each person, our relationships were transformed.

So this God-in-us, this divine seed is not resting quietly. It is in motion, it moves me toward love. And this makes sense to me because I believe that love is an essential characteristic of God. This love is the agape love that Martin Luther King Jr. called, indifferent as opposed to affectional love. This is the love that Paul wrote about in his letter to the Corinthians It isn't based on the individuality of the person, or dependent upon the quality of relationship.

Obviously I don't love the people who lost everything they owned in a tornado or an earthquake in the same way that I love my children. But my emotional response is similar in that I want to act to relieve their suffering, to share what I have in the hope that their pain will be eased.
It is this kind of love that Jesus spoke of when he said that we must love our enemies and pray for those who cause us hurt. This sounds absolutely absurd and even unhealthy, yet this is a love that has power to transform people and society. I don't think that this love requires us to passively accept evil, or to be willing victims. But I believe that this kind of love has the power to transform the world because it liberates us from the prison of hatred and violence. This kind of love carries the potential for a creative, transforming response. This is God's love.

To use the words potential, creative, and responsive when speaking of God eliminates other words that have long been associated with the God we meet in the Jewish and Christian scripture. Very early in the history of Christianity, God was defined as all knowing, all powerful, and dwelling everywhere. God was also impassible, that is not affected by human passions, human suffering. This God was a harsh judge, a tyrant. This God wanted things done her way or no way! This is the great grandfather in the sky god and it is not the God that I believe in at this point of my life.

The God who lures us to express a love that is creative and transforming is a God who wants good for all creation. I find again that Whitehead's view of God gives voice to my own experience and convictions. Whitehead says that what we call God is identified with value or worthiness, freedom, spontaneity, variety. When we are engaged with the world, working to give value to life, participating in the creation of freedom and the realization of potential for good, then we are engaged with God and doing God's work. This God gives me a sense of meaning for my life and my activities, even when things go badly and I am feeling frustrated and alone. I find hope in the long view, in seeing that positive changes have taken hold and that good has come from grief and suffering.

I have also been amazed at times, when my own personal struggles or the struggles of a nation or people unexpectedly begin to bear fruit. These time of sudden change feel as if a dam that has been holding back the potential for creativity and freedom suddenly bursts and the world is transformed. I overcome a fear or anxiety that has limited me, a country that has known violence suddenly takes a turn toward justice and reconciliation. Enemies sit down at the negotiating table and begin to address the old wounds and hatreds that have been their reason for mutual destruction. Obviously, in these complex situations many aspects of the situation have transformed. To me, these instances are a sign of that transcendent, freeing power at work in the world, transforming us when we are unable to transform and heal ourselves. And I call that power God.

I would also say that God does not intervene alone to address evil and suffering. Human action and energy are essential to bring and end to the hurts of the world. We humans are not free to do whatever we please with the expectation that when the mess gets too messy that Big Daddy God will step in and set it all right again. And God is not unaffected by the suffering that goes on in the world. With Whitehead and other process theologians, I would agree that God created the world and the world creates God. This means that God is forever growing, forever potential, forever becoming. God lures us to grow too, to realize our potential for freedom, for the actualization of human values. And as we grow, as we realize our God-given freedom and actualize our God-given potential for love, for authentic relationship with other people we enter into relationship with God. When we stand for human values of justice, compassion, respecting the natural world and the web of life, when we accept one another as partners in the work of creating a world that includes all in the vision of healing and wholeness that is God's perfection, then we truly dwell in that Holy Ground that is beyond form and time, that gives us life and being. But we must be clear that while we dwell within God, God acts through our human hands.

What does this vision of God offer us? I would say that if offers us a future that is truly open. Neither our survival nor our self-destruction are inevitable. The future is not bound by the past and creative possibilities and the value of spontaneity mean that what never was may yet come to be. But our future will depend on our willingness to trust in God and to discern God's call that is present in every situation. As theologian John Cobb Jr. writes, God offers possibilities that would lead us into the new life we need. God lure, urges, and persuades. We decide. If we decide to enter into the reality into which God calls us, we chose life. The choice of life, which is the choice of God's call, is the highest freedom in itself. The refusal of life expresses bondage to the past and the self and it progressively reduces our capacity for freedom and life. Hope grows with the ability to respond; despair grows with the self-chosen closing in of horizons. For me this requires that I take the risks of love, that I loose the bonds of the past and enter into the divine adventure in the world. There is so much in the world that is unfinished, that calls for healing. The outcome is not a given, but the potential for transformation is worth the risk.

This is what I mean, today, when I say God. I find that it helps me to make sense of my life and to act with compassion and, as I said earlier, this is what I need from my religion.

What do you mean when you say God? If you take the question seriously, you have to think about the beginning and end of life, the source of your values, the over-arching principles that guide your relationship with others. How do you explain suffering, love, selfless compassion. There are no pat answers for Unitarian Universalists, no one book to read, no one person who knows it all. For us, the meaning is in the quest, the joy is in the experience of freedom and growth.

I would suggest that one of the best reasons for being a part of this beloved community is to share together our discoveries and our faith in the values that give meaning and purpose to our lives. I have no doubt that we will differ in our opinions, that what satisfies my mind and heart and soul will not entirely satisfy your. But as always, I find encouragement in our conviction that our commitment to one another and our free faith will soften all our differences and keep us willing to listen to one another as we companion one another on our spiritual journeys.

May it be so.

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