Pointing to God at Work

It is a rhetorical question that the child asks, for even as the child is climbing up to demand your answer, he already knows that God is about the business of the other parts of his creation: making snow for sled-riding, making snow for gently covering and protecting plants until spring, making snow for slowly watering creation when the snow melts.

Ah, yes, we say, those were the times when we believed that God worked in such common ways as making snow fall.

But it won't be long until they realize that adults will look at them with polite amusement and disbelief.

Someday soon, a teacher will be telling them that snow is the result of the interaction of wind and water, with the work of clouds and the jet stream thrown into the mix as well.

But it may be that the children are better theologians than the adults,

that they better understand the truth of what is going on, before their minds are all cluttered with adult observations.

Because, together with adult enlightenment may also come several other possible views of the nature of God that have not been part of their thinking.

(1) God may be tossed out of their thoughts altogether as irrelevant, or

(2) God may be affirmed as a kindly old gentleman who once upon a time did work in this world, but who has been in retirement for a long time, and not like to decide to do anything in the future.

And if the child settles on one of these operating assumptions, he will have joined a large crowd in wandering far from his naïve, but very Christian, understanding of the world.

After reading today's lessons, we might wish to dream back to the simple days, the time of uncomplicated faith.

If only we had been confronted by God in that startling and dramatic way that Luke says happened to Paul on the road to Damascus.

If only we could have heard him preach shortly afterward. If only...if only.

We of the scientific age think of things differently.

God hasn't lead anyone around with a pillar of fire for ever so long, it seems.

And we quietly wonder if God ever did work in those ways.

Were the plagues of Egypt just natural calamities?

Was Paul's experience just an emotional breakdown brought on by overly zealous work?

Does God disrupt the so-called natural laws, the observations that we say are the rules of the world?

We have trouble with these things because we have lost the sense that God may and will act at all in his own creation, or, even taking things a step farther, we often think that God is completely divorced from creation.

But children are better theologians than that! They know that God, if he is God at all, is not a part-time god, but an all-the-time God.

They can see him acting in everyday cause and effect, and in the freedom to create new, unexpected, and unlimited futures.

They are so wonderfully foolish as to know that parents and grandparents are God's helpers: that somehow all of the diaper-changing, storybook reading, bill paying, and spectacularly inept advice-giving that we do...somehow all of this is a part of God's plan too.

So then, what shall we make of this tale about Paul?

Our questions about God and his relationship with Paul can't be avoided, since we have read Luke's account and Paul's own words.

Was Paul just a crackpot, who made a big commotion around the Roman world with a story from his fertile imagination?

Perhaps we should ask a different question first.

Which kind of a god are we talking about today?

Is he the God who acted once in the past, but no longer, who is ever and always the same, who hangs onto things the way they have always been?

OR, on the other hand, is the God we trust the one who is active now even in the ordinary things of life?

Is our God the one who is the universal innovator, forging new solutions to problems for the sake of Jesus Christ?

A do-nothing god is no god at all.

Our active God is always with his people.

The Lord God is the one who causes the big upset, who scores the ultimate triumph in the resurrection of Jesus...

...and also in a host of less dramatic actions along the way with some plain and rather unlikely people.

After all, he chose a carpenter and a young peasant woman to parent the Son of God.

He chose tax collectors and fishermen to be his messengers.

He chose Saul, that short, ailing man with a nasty temper, who was not a very good public speaker, and who had certainly made himself unpopular with the young church because of the persecution in Jerusalem.

Exactly how this choosing of Paul took place is not the point of the story.

Luke points out similarities with the call of other folks in the Old Testament.

Paul himself doesn't dwell on the “how”.

As he looks back on it, it is clear to him that the same God whom he had been serving as a Pharisee suddenly presented him with a new direction,

a new direction he was to share with all people.

What was important was not what happened to him but what happened through him.

The central emphasis of his life was no longer on how closely he followed the Mosaic law, but on how widely God's news of the risen Christ might be proclaimed.

And he understood it as God at work, God changing things in his creation.

And, just as Christ's resurrection was an interruption in the world's usual and expected ways, so is our baptism into Christ's death and resurrection.

Some will look at it and see only some water being poured and hear a long prayer. For them it is an empty ceremony.

But with the eyes and ears of faith, others will see and hear God at work in those words and in those actions, changing things for that person and indeed for the entire community of the church.

Even with our prayers, still we are surprised at what ordinary ways and means that God may use to change things in and around us.

Very seldom is it going to be with a dramatic voice from heaven, accompanied by thunder and lightning.

Remember another of those Bible stories:

Two men walking toward Emmaus, wondering about the events of the previous week.

Jesus had seemed so promising, and yet he had died horribly, just like so many others.

The kingdom had not come with a clap of thunder or a revolutionary army.

A stranger walked with them, questioned them, and then explained what was really happening in Jerusalem that week, and said that they were foolish not to believe that God would act in ordinary ways to surprise them.

They invited him to supper, and they shared in the regular, ordinary table-blessing practice that good Jewish people always use, and in the taking and blessing and breaking and sharing, suddenly the Lord Jesus was known to them.

He might have called down a legion of angels or a little heavenly fire, but instead, they knew Jesus in the breaking of bread.

He will be known in the ordinary events of life, his will to transform things becoming known through the decisions we make.

He may use dreams and visions,

prophets and seers, but just as likely,

he will use preachers and teachers,

parents and children,

and talking and singing,

a bath in the name of Jesus,

shared bread and wine,

and our stumbling steps in prayer.

Perhaps the thing for each of us to discern this week is this:

In what seemingly quiet, ordinary way is God working in me, changing me?

How is my life not just one repeated dumb thing after another, but somehow caught up in the purposes of God?

What opportunity is come my way to say and do something that really matters for the kingdom of God?

It may seem ordinary, and yet be shown as life-changing for us or for someone else.

Maybe Paul had to have the full treatment of heavenly voice and blindness and all the rest because he was such a tough case!

Perhaps we should not pray for such visions to come our way, but rather pray that God choose to reach us to do his work of conversion and transformation in the quiet ways, without all of the fireworks.

May the Lord open our eyes and ears, our heart and spirit to his life-changing activity....

in meal-time and bath-time,

in storybook-time and prayer-time,

in Bible-reading alone and worship together,

in gardening and in quiet exercise,

in a job well-done, or just started,

in comforting a grieving friend and in rejoicing at a new beginning.

It is in all those times and places that our all-the-time God is at work.

It shouldn't be such a surprise to us;

our children have known it all along.

Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.