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Sunday September 17, 2006 - Proper 19, Year B

Recently
I've been reading a book called
Girl meets God
by Lauren Winner.
It's come pretty close to a best seller, ranked number 27,800 or so
on Amazon
which is unusual for something about religion.
It's the story of a young woman's search for God.
She begins
as nominally Jewish, born to a Jewish father and nominally Christian mother;
her journey initially takes her
orthodox Judaism;
she converts in her first years at college,
and takes on a whole new lifestyle with rules about how to dress and what to eat
and how to spend her Saturdays.
But something
doesn't quite work, there's something missing.
And so she continues her search, and as she describes it,
is captivated by Jesus.
She is baptized
while studying in England,
and comes back to the US
changed.
She still holds
many of the traditions of Judaism dear,
but it is her newfound discovery of God in Christ
that becomes the center of her life.

Maybe it's because I've been reading Winner's story,
that when I read the readings for today
the thing that caught my attention,
especially in the psalms and the gospel
was the ways in which they describe
how we come to know God.

And between those two readings
there are three ways
that we can know God.

It begins in the psalm.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament shows his handiwork.
One day tells its tale to another,
and one night imparts knowledge to another.
Although they have no words or language,
and their voices are not heard,
Their sound has gone out into all lands,
and their message to the ends of the world.
You can know God
says the psalmist,
you can know God,
or at least, something about God
from creation.
Every time you look at the sky,
every time you see the sun
reliably cross from east to west,
every time the moon reappears, silver bright after fading to a blurry shadow,
you know God exists.
The vast complexity of plants and animals,
the incredible interrelationships and variety in this world of ours,
from a tiny bug to a mighty mountain,
when you see them,
you know God exists.
when you see them
This isn't about debating science versus religion,
it's saying what countless human beings have said as they look at the wonder of creation.
This can't be an accident.
Something, someone, must be behind it.
Thank you.

And not only do people look at the glory of creation, and conclude that there is a God,
creation tells us something about God.
It tells us
that God
is one who creates, God is a God of creativity. It tells us
that God loves beauty — not the kind of beauty you see in beauty pageants, but the beauty of the sea at sunset,
or fall leaves,
or the delicate rainbow of a beetle's back.
It suggests
that God might have a sense of humor — after all, who would ever come up with elephants and giraffes and kangaroos

Sometimes when I'm stressed,
or just finding it hard to pray,
I go hiking.
All alone in the woods,
creation fills my eyes and heart and soul,
and I can't help but talk to God.

Look at creation. And begin to know God.

But the psalm has a second answer.
You know God
or at least, you know about God
from the law of the Lord.
In Jewish tradition, the law of the Lord
is the Torah,
the first five books of the bible.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
It's not just laws;
there are stories, and descriptions, and names and places,
all the things
that are at the center
of Jewish identity.
This is the word of God,
the central way that they knew who God was
and who they were.

We think the same way about the whole of Scripture.
The Old Testament
tells us about our roots,
the years and generations
of faithful worship
that prepared the way
for the coming of Christ.
The New Testament
tells us about Christ
and about the early church;
with stories and explanation, description and advice.
We open this book,
and we find out who God is.

Yesterday I met a young guy
who was brought up
with no church background
other than maybe
Christmas and Easter.
But as a teenager
something drew him to read the gospels.
And as he read them,
his kind of unformed interest in God
became a desire to go to church.
And so he went to his mother, and asked her to take him there,
and now his whole family are active
and he is thinking about ordained ministry.

Look at creation. Read the book.
And begin to know God.

But there's a third way of knowing God, a way that distinguishes Christianity from Judaism.
And that comes from our gospel reading.
Jesus and his disciples
are walking along the road on their way to Caesarea Philippi.
They've been chatting away,
and suddenly Jesus says to the others,
"Hey, you all listen to people talking about me. Who do they say I am?"
Someone says, "well, I've heard, John the Baptist." And someone else says, "Or Elijah."
And another one adds,
"or one of the other prophets."
And then Jesus looks at them and says,
"but who do you say I am?"
And they look at each other,
and avoid looking at him,
and finally Peter blurts out,
"You're the Messiah."

Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the chosen one of God.
The disciples had traveled with Jesus,
had watched him teach and preach and heal.
But what they hadn't seen,
not so far,
was what we have seen:
Jesus dying on the cross,
declaring forgiveness;
Jesus rising from the grace, bringing new life.

What we know, is that Jesus is not just the Messiah, the Christ,
but Jesus is Emanuel,
God with us,
God incarnate.
We look at Jesus,
and we see God.

But it's not enough
just to know about Jesus in our heads, to know about God from Jesus.
We're invited to know Jesus. To answer for ourselves the question, "Who is Jesus to you?"
And to invite Jesus to be part of our lives.

Remember Thomas,
the doubting one,
that said he wouldn't believe that Jesus was alive,
until he saw the holes in his hands and his side.
And then he saw them,
and he fell on his knees.
"My Lord and my God!"

Look at creation. Read the book. Talk to Christ
and invite him
to be part of your life.
And know God.

But there's one more step.
Because just knowing God isn't the end of it.

This week
I received a slightly belated birthday present from my brother.
It's this cross.
It doesn't look anything special: small, a kind of dirty iron color,
but this cross was made
in the tenth or eleventh century —
that's a thousand years ago —
and it was worn by a pilgrim,
going to visit
a holy site.
When I put it on
I become part of a tradition
that goes back generations, centuries,
of people of faith.
It's an incredible connection.

But of course
we don't need a pilgrim's cross
to be part of that tradition. Each and every one of us
is part of it,
stretching back
not just a thousand years
but right back to the time of Jesus.
Most people come face to face with God first
by looking at people who know God.
We learned our faith, we were invited to meet Jesus,
by other people. Someone invited us to church,
or brought us to Sunday school,
or talked to us about their own faith. It might have been our parents,
or friends
or just someone we met.
But they became a link in that chain
all the way back to Jesus.
And each one of us
will be a link in that same chain
to someone else's faith.

Look at creation. Read the book - not "Girl meets God, though it's a great book to read as well, but the book, the bible. Talk to Christ
and invite him
to be part of your life. And tell someone.
Share the good news
about the God that you know.

 

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2006