I am because we are

 

Isaiah 40: 21-31
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
February 7, 2021

Whenever you hear someone talk smack about the angry, vengeful “Old Testament God”, resist it, especially if they call themselves a Christian. First, from what we read in the gospels, Jesus was steeped in the Hebrew scriptures, especially the prophets. And second, a hot take such as that reveals at least, ignorance, and at worst, borders on anti-Semitism.



Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? The God of the Hebrew scriptures was and is a revolutionary god. Yes, Yahweh enabled a land grab and approved of the destruction of other peoples, but even so he was in opposition to the gods in the region. Besides, who are we to talk? For all our progress, humanity is still violent. Evolution isn’t binary: one way today, completely different tomorrow. Change is progressive. Other gods of Mesopotamia—Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian—were gods of empires. Marduk, the national god of Babylon, was particularly violent, destroying his mother, Tiamat, as she gave birth to him and created the earth from her body.



The God of Sarah and Abraham, of Rebekah and Isaac, of Leah and Rachel and Jacob speaks the creation into being: Let there be light, and there was light. When God calls Moses to bring God’s people out of Egypt and Moses says, “When the people ask, what is your name?”, God responds, “I Will Be Who/What I Will Be” or “I Am the One Who Endures” or “The One Who Brings Things into Being”. God is unlimited, unconditional Being. As God’s people make their way home from exile, Isaiah has God speak tenderly to their people. Chapter 40 begins with the words, “Comfort, O comfort my people…speak to the heart of Jerusalem…”.

We say God is Love, God is Life and Breath, God is embodied, enfleshed, and yet God is also Mystery. God lives up to the holy name that cannot be spoken, that is no name and all names and beyond names. 

God is known and unknown, 

strength and weakness, 

power and powerless, 

active and inactive, 

comfort and challenge, 

spoken and silent, 

bidden and unbidden, 

seen and unseen, 

within all of creation and beyond anything created. 

God is inexhaustible. 

We cannot come to the end of God.

How do we find God’s presence? How do we find the inexhaustible when we are exhausted? How do we find God’s presence when it seems God is absent? How do we find God’s presence when our access to community is limited? Perhaps now we understand at a deeper level how privileged and ableist those questions are. Is not the presence of God available to those whose spirit is depleted on the front lines of this pandemic? Is not the presence of God palpable to those who grieve? Is not the presence of God accessible to those who are homebound, hospitalized, or in nursing care, to those who are detained or incarcerated? It is our presence, the presence of other human beings, of God enfleshed that is missing.



St. John of the Cross was of the mind that any ideas we have about God, any rituals or practices we use to feel closer to God, our attachments to and about God—all of these are substitutes for God. St. Augustine said that if you understand it, it is not God.

While he was in prison awaiting trial for his part in the German resistance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words: “So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as [those] who manage our lives without [God]. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets [God’s self] be pushed out of the world on to the cross. [God] is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which [God] is with us and helps us.”



As was said to me earlier this week, is it enough that “We Are” in the same way when God says “I Am”? Is it enough that we are Church even when we cannot be together in person? Is it enough that though we are without each other, we are also with each other in solidarity? Can we allow the hope of being together again be enough for now? Can we allow the hopefulness of others to be our hope?

God is a verb

Years ago, in a monthly clergy group we would take turns leading and offering Communion to the group. When it was her turn, my colleague Bryn Smallwood-Garcia invited us to say these words as we served the bread and wine to each other: “I am willing to disrupt my life for you.” This past year we have been willing and sometimes reluctant to disrupt our lives and our life together for each other’s sake and for the sake of others in our communities. And yet in that act itself, the disruption of our lives for others’ sake, is the presence of God. The acts of wearing a mask, staying home, washing our hands, worshiping online are power given to the faint and strength to the powerless. The disruption of our lives for others’ sake means we will one day mount up with wings like eagles.



We are willing to disrupt our lives for others.

I am willing to disrupt my life for you.

This is my body broken for you, this is my blood poured out for you.



Amen.



Benediction – Richard Bruxvoort Colligan


Lift up your eyes, behold the hills
From where will help and rescue come?
We call on One who made the earth,
Who blessed the stars, the moon and sun.


God is holding your life, God is holding your life,
God is holding your life, we believe.
God is holding your life, God is holding your life,
God is holding your life, we believe.