"Hello"

 February 11, 2007
    The Rev. Charles Holmgren      

God…if you are really there, flash the lights

God…if you are really there, shake that cross

God…if you are really there, a bolt of lightening, please.

Hmmm…I guess I wasn’t loud enough…God doesn’t seem to be listening, or that tactic doesn’t work. How do we approach God?  How do we understand God?  How do we appreciate that which is holy?  What is “divine”?  It is interesting that today is the celebration of “Evolution Sunday”, the celebration of the birthday of Charles Darwin.  Evolution is an interesting idea or theory.  It makes me think about the evolution of my attitude about what is holy…the idea of the holy.  What is holy to you?  We say we believe in God.  What is it that you are referring to?  What causes you to make that assertion?  What leads you to say “This is it”?  God...the holy.  God…the creator.  What is divinity to you?  That is one of the fundamental questions of the “Four Fundamentals of a Forward Looking Faith.”  In seminary I read a book entitled The Idea of the Holy.  It caused me to think about what is holy.  Sometimes in my life I experienced things that were labeled “holy” but that were not holy. (“Holey” maybe; as in being full of holes.)   For me, to begin to really look at the nature of what is divine, I have to look at a person who lived a long time ago.  A man called Jesus.  He made the reality of God closer for me.  Some people say that was because Jesus was God.  But for me, what I saw in Jesus that made him special is what I have seen in other people that I have met.  They exhibited kindness, caring and acceptance of all.  There are people who have been living examples of the divine.

How have our ideas about God developed throughout the history of the church?  Early in the church there was a broad spectrum of beliefs about God.  There was a diversity of the understanding of who God was, and how God existed and how God worked in our world, and how faithful people expressed their belief in God.  Their understanding of God was as One who accepted all.  God existed in all.  In everything that was, there was a spark of God. In all that lived, God lived.  Then in the fourth century when the Christian Church was declared the official religion of the Roman Empire, we got creeds so that everybody would have the same beliefs.   

Today, there are battles being fought.  Extreme radical fundamentalists in all major religions are conducting crusades against each other.   They want to preserve beliefs as they see them and understand them.  There are those, however, who believe in progressive forms of faith, and who believe that the reality of what is “divine” is found in being able to find new solutions, new understandings of acceptance and tolerance and new hope for a humanity unified, not in beliefs, but in relationships of freedom and compassion.

There are those who say we have gone from the “modern world” to the “post-modern world” in terms of theology.  That means we are less interested in facts about the divine and more interested in our experiences of the divine.  It doesn’t mean that facts aren’t important, but it means there are some things in our lives that are important and significant that may not be factual.  The older I get, the more I realize that the things that really matter to me are things that I cannot explain.  I cannot explain why it is that I get irritated over a missed stop light, but I can stand and watch a beautiful sunset and not think two seconds about “wasted” time.   

What is divine?  How does it influence our lives?   Are we able to be surprised by the power, or force, that is present in all of life.  Are we able to abandon the idea of an anthropomorphized God?  Can we instead see God in the eyes of a homeless person being served at the shelter?  Or when we are with a friend who has experienced an unfortunate circumstance, just holding hands.  There is an energy that exists between us.  I believe that which is divine, that which is the object of worship, can be seen within each other.  That force exists in all of us…. that power, that love.  May that God in you meet the God that is in me.   Our neighbors are not objects or ideas, they are beings like us, possessing the spark of God.

We are not perfect.  We err.  We fall short.  We have blind spots.  But the divine exists as we experience each other. 

God, You are here.  The lights flash, the cross shakes, the lighting strikes.  God speaks because we hear, listen and care.  Amen