Longing for the infinite

 

Psalm 19
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
October 4, 2026 – World Communion Sunday

Photo of a mural painted on the wall of a concrete underpass. The mural is in black, white, and gray: a painting of a close-up of a bicycle wheel and gears. In the wheel are the words "Let's love our community".

The summer I turned 25, I was a chaplain intern at a state mental health hospital and I was living on the seminary campus. I had changed my driver’s license to my address at school as a sort of declaration of independence, but I knew this was only temporary. I came to the realization that though I had a place to live, I had no home, no place to call my own. This feeling of impermanence was heightened by a sense of knowing that no one else could see the world as I did, could understand my feelings, my reality the way I did. I entered a year of counseling with a pastoral counselor who called it “existential loneliness”, the feeling of being alone in one’s unique experiences.



We all have these experiences of profound emptiness, even in the midst of belonging. It’s an inescapable part of the human condition. Franciscan sister Ilia Delio writes, “…the inmost center of the human person is nothing less than the infinite depth of desire.” Advertisers and influencers would have us think that the hole in our gut, in our heart, our mind, our soul, is unnatural and should be filled or numbed with whatever they’re selling, whether it’s food or drink, weight loss or mood boosters, a certain look or lifestyle, or something you should talk to your doctor about before using.



We all long to fill that void with something, whether it’s meaning or purpose, a grand narrative, one kernel of truth that we can hold onto. Of course, religion has been used as means to satisfy that longing, that emptiness or even wield that emptiness as a weapon for power, greed, control, and wealth. I think of faith as a means of how to deal with grasping the ungraspable, because it's like nailing Jello to a wall. It seems like the only way we can try to get our hearts and minds around the infinite is to make it finite. We try to give it shape and speech, gender and color, when it is none of those things and yet all of those things and so much more beyond our understanding.



I think of David’s psalms as testament to his attempt to live within the ineffable, his infinite depth of desire. There is no speech, there are no words, their voice is not heard, and yet as Eugene Peterson puts it, “…their silence fills the earth: unspoken truth is spoken everywhere”.



We are a sensory people and so we use imagery for God, for the infinite. Rainer Maria Rilke, in his poem, “You, Neighbor God”, says that between us and God there is but a narrow wall,

“and by sheer chance; for it would take
merely a call from your lips or from mine
to break it down,
and that without a sound.

The wall is builded of your images.”



Our images of God bring us closer to God but they cannot nor should not satisfy our longing. At some point, we leave them behind, remaining in that light beyond seeing, that deepest dark beyond not knowing.



But there is one image I want to hold onto this World Communion Sunday, and I feel as though I have been following it like a thread. Father, Mother. Brother, Sister. Kindom and Kindred One speak to this longing for humanity to realize its kinship with all living things. And then Rilke gave me “Neighbor God”. Written in 1899 and I’m only hearing about it now.



Neighbor God, who invites us not only to this Table but to every table where the vulnerable and outcast are welcome and fed and made safe. Neighbor God, who longs to know their neighbors and to be known. Neighbor God, who knocks on our door with a need, a request, a desire: 

Are we paying attention to what God pays attention to, the way children notice everything? 

 Are we hoping for what God hopes for, like Gen Z protesting the climate crisis? 

 Are we working on what God is working on, like college newspapers that boldly tell the truth? 

 Are we feeling what God feels, like women who never really feel safe? 

 Are we experiencing what God experiences, when bombs are dropped in Gaza, in Ukraine, anywhere bombs are being dropped? 

 Are we reaching out for God just as God reaches out for us?



The bread that is broken at this Table is Neighbor God reaching out for us. The fruit of the vine poured out at this Table is Neighbor God poured out for us. The food shared at this Table is Neighbor God who is hungry, food insecure, who shares the same desire we do: to be filled.



Send us away empty but not empty of desire, Neighbor God, that those who long for you would know that they are not alone. Amen.

Benediction – ideas and images borrowed from Babette Deutsch in her preface to Poems from the Book of Hours, Rainer Maria Rilke,1941.


Take heart, beloveds
God is present in all that truly lives
But God is not yet perfected
God is also the future, the incomplete, the unachieved,
The cathedral still in the building,
The wine that has not yet ripened
In all of us and in our life together
Still becoming, still building, still dreaming
God is in the answer to
What will we do next?

Amen.