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Revealing What Binds Us · Faith at Work

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  There are some passages in Scripture,
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  certain stories that just feel like home.
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  SPEAKER_00: These are stories in which we can find tremendous affinity and resonance.
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  SPEAKER_00: Descriptions of happenings long ago that we find ourselves in.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are stories that proclaim that,
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  SPEAKER_00: in fact,
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  are all in this life together and that an us-them worldview is
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  not the intention of
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  SPEAKER_00: God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead, a we worldview is more to God's liking and timeless design.
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  SPEAKER_00: We is such an ordinary word.
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  SPEAKER_00: We use it all the time.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm using it now.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've used it all morning.
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  SPEAKER_00: We.
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  SPEAKER_00: But just stop to think for a moment and consider what we means.
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  SPEAKER_00: The word we is never used to refer to a single person.
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  SPEAKER_00: It requires at least two
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  SPEAKER_00: It is by definition a relational world.
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  SPEAKER_00: You cannot say we and mean yourself.
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  SPEAKER_00: At least you shouldn't do that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But what if that is not just a grammatical feature of human language?
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  SPEAKER_00: What if it is actually a characteristic feature of God?
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  SPEAKER_00: In Acts chapter 17,
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  SPEAKER_00: Paul arrives in Athens as a walker,
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  SPEAKER_00: as an observer,
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  SPEAKER_00: as someone paying attention to his surrounding.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Luke tells us that he walked through the city and studied its altars.
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  SPEAKER_00: I remember days just like that.
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  As I walked ancient stone Greek and Roman roads and amongst
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  ruins of temples and
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  SPEAKER_00: homes and amphitheaters and aqueducts,
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  SPEAKER_00: feeling in awe
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  SPEAKER_00: Wondering what kind of people could not only have built things like this,
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  SPEAKER_00: but what it must have been like to be there,
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  SPEAKER_00: for them to live there,
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  SPEAKER_00: what might have life looked like for them.
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  SPEAKER_00: But then I realized all I needed to do was just look to the right.
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  SPEAKER_00: and see all of the modern-day apartment buildings,
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  SPEAKER_00: street-side businesses,
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  SPEAKER_00: restaurants,
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  SPEAKER_00: and cathedrals to know it was these kinds of people,
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  the same kind of people that I was meeting every day as I lived
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  in Sicily for
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  SPEAKER_00: nearly ten years.
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  I too had arrived as a walker a young missionary taking the
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  news of Jesus to an
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  ancient land and somewhere on that long attentive walk through
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  a city full of gods
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  SPEAKER_00: Paul found something that just stopped his search an inscription
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  SPEAKER_00: on a stone altar to an unknown God.
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  And he does not see it as evidence of Athens' failure so much
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  as he sees it as a
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  SPEAKER_00: door,
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  as a place where longing and awareness have already been carved
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  into stone.
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  Someone had enough honesty to admit there is something that we
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  are reaching for
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  SPEAKER_00: that we have yet to been able to name.
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  that is not a pagan condition that is not an ancient condition
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  that is not a
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  Mediterranean condition that is a human condition that is a
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  valley condition
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  SPEAKER_00: Most of us,
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  SPEAKER_00: if we are honest,
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  have felt or are feeling as if there's just something missing
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  in our lives,
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  SPEAKER_00: something that is worth our efforts,
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  SPEAKER_00: our creativity,
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  SPEAKER_00: and our devotion.
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  SPEAKER_00: We just can't seem to put a name to it yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Paul, he does not condemn that.
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  SPEAKER_00: He says, let me tell you about what you have been reaching for.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is the posture that I want to hold.
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  SPEAKER_00: The curious preacher.
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  SPEAKER_00: The attentive walker.
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  SPEAKER_00: The one who meets people where they are already reaching.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a posture I actually needed to learn about.
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  SPEAKER_00: When I walked along those ancient streets in Sicily,
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  SPEAKER_00: I thought that I was bringing Jesus to the lost.
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  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was going overseas to be a witness for Jesus.
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  It took me years to realize that God had been there and
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  elsewhere else long ago.
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  SPEAKER_00: before I had gotten there.
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  SPEAKER_00: I finally learned what Paul seemed to know in Athens.
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  SPEAKER_00: God is much bigger than me.
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  SPEAKER_00: God is the God of wheat.
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  SPEAKER_00: When Paul finally speaks to the Athenians,
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  SPEAKER_00: he does not begin with center judgment,
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  SPEAKER_00: he begins with creation.
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  SPEAKER_00: The God who made our world does not live in temples made by human hands.
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  SPEAKER_00: This God is not a local deity,
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  not divinity containable inside of any one tradition or
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  building or group.
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  SPEAKER_00: Acts 17,
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  SPEAKER_00: 27,
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  SPEAKER_00: and 28 says this,
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  SPEAKER_00: Yet God is actually not far from each one of us,
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  SPEAKER_00: for in him we live and move and have our being.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is not a casual statement.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a cosmological claim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Paul is not saying that
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  that God is nearby,
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  as in right around the corner if you know where to look.
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  Nor is Paul proclaiming that he is bringing God to the
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  Athenians in his purse.
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  Instead,
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  Paul is saying that your very existence is already inside of
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  God's life.
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  SPEAKER_00: You are not reaching across a gap toward a distant God.
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  You are already held,
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  already encompassed,
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  already embedded in the life of the one who made you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Paul is noticing that God has already been there for quite a long time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Long enough, it seems, to have been noticed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Long enough, it seems, to have been etched into a stone.
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  SPEAKER_00: Paul is being a witness of
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead of a witness for.
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  Think about the last time something felt like more than it had
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  appeared to be.
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  SPEAKER_00: A moment beauty just stopped you in your tracks.
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  SPEAKER_00: A conversation that reached somewhere unexpected.
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  A sunset over the valley that made you feel just for a second
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  the world was saying
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  SPEAKER_00: something you could not translate.
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  These are the moments when the membrane between your daily life
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  and the life of God goes thin.
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  That is what it feels like to live and move and have our being
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  in something that is
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  SPEAKER_00: larger than ourselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is what it means to be a witness of instead of a witness for.
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  I've been mentioning Richard Rohr these days and continue to
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  read his books,
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  SPEAKER_00: so I'm going to mention another one of his books this morning,
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  SPEAKER_00: The Universal Christ.
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  In that book,
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  he says that the incarnation is not primarily a one-time event.
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  It is the revelation that God has always been present to and
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  with creation.
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  the Christ who came to us in Jesus the word through whom all
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  things were made John
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  1 the firstborn of all creation Colossians 1 did not begin in
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  Bethlehem Jesus is
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  simply the clearest most fully embodied expression of something
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  that was always
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  SPEAKER_00: cosmically true
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  SPEAKER_00: God is not at war with creation.
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  SPEAKER_00: God is in it and thinks of it as good.
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  The Christian tradition has long confessed that God is Trinity,
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  Father,
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  Son,
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  and Holy Spirit.
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  Three persons,
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  one God,
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  and I am not going to try to explain the Trinity to you today.
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  SPEAKER_00: One, I don't have time for that.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's taken more than 2,000 years for other theologians to do that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But here is what the Trinity tells us, I think, this morning.
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  SPEAKER_00: At the center of the universe, there is relationship.
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  SPEAKER_00: There is no lonely God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead,
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  SPEAKER_00: there is from eternity something that functions like conversation,
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  SPEAKER_00: like family,
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  SPEAKER_00: like mutual love,
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  SPEAKER_00: like self-giving.
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  SPEAKER_00: The God we worship is by nature a community, a we.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if we are made in God's image,
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  If we live and move and have our being in this God,
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  then we are made for the same thing.
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  And everyone seems to know somewhere deep inside of themselves,
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  even if they cannot name it.
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  We hear it often,
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  at least I do,
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  there's just something missing in my life.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why?
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  SPEAKER_00: Why?
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  because we are made from the we of God and we are being drawn
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  back into it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Imagine Paul walking through our community,
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  SPEAKER_00: through Weir's Cave,
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  SPEAKER_00: through Harrisonburg,
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  through all the places that we live and move and have our being
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  as we live and work
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  SPEAKER_00: in this community.
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  Where would he see the inscriptions of God's presence
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  proclaiming,
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  hey,
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  I'm here.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think he'd find them everywhere.
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  In the farmers who get up before dawn oriented toward the land
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  and the seasons.
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  In the parents who sit in their children's bedrooms and find
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  something that
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  SPEAKER_00: functions like prayer rising up in them.
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  in the neighbors who show up with casseroles after a loss
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  because they just don't
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  SPEAKER_00: know what else to do.
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  SPEAKER_00: These are not people who are far from or absent to the presence of God.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are already living and moving and having their being in God
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  SPEAKER_00: And our job,
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  it's not to inform them that God has now noticed them or that
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  God is arriving with
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  SPEAKER_00: us.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our job is to point to what is already true.
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  SPEAKER_00: The love that holds everything together,
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  SPEAKER_00: even when everything feels like it's falling apart,
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  SPEAKER_00: is the thing we call
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  And the best picture we have of what God looks like is a man
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  from Galilee who loved
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  SPEAKER_00: people recklessly,
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  SPEAKER_00: ate with the wrong crowd,
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  SPEAKER_00: died refusing to answer violence with violence,
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  SPEAKER_00: and who the tomb could not hold.
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  SPEAKER_00: In Him we live and
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  SPEAKER_00: And move And have our being All of us Together Already Amen