Luke 13:18-21
Jesus lived in a difficult time. We’ve highlighted all the troubles of the first century many times – Roman occupation, income inequity, disease, poverty, hunger, violence, war, slavery, religious and political divisions. Maybe we talk about how hard life was then because when we make the list it sounds like today. What goes around comes around.
In those difficult times Jesus talked often about the Kingdom of God.
“The Kingdom of God is among you.”
You are invited into the Kingdom. Today we read about the nature of God’s Kingdom. It’s like he’s saying that despite how hard life seems, a better way is possible. In fact, it’s already here if we learn to see it and to live it. Like the seed planted that grows into a tree or the yeast that makes flour rise into bread. Small things can make a big difference over time if we encourage them.
You are often at the mercy of whatever I’ve been reading lately as the things I learn creep into the sermons. Today I want to share with you something from the book God: A Human History by Reza Aslan. It’s a big idea and sermons are short, so stick with me. We know that throughout history there have been many ways to think and talk about God. In earliest prehistory people seem to have seen God in the things that made life possible – the pregnant female figures of most ancient times, the beast-man god which blessed hunters, the sun & rain gods that made crops grow, the war gods which protected from dangerous neighbors. These became over time the Greek, Roman, and Norse pantheons, or household of gods in charge of everything that happens. Eventually they became the Jewish god Yahweh, father of Jesus, recognized as Allah by Islam. This is the God we know and love.
Behind this urge to know and to name God is an eternal sense that there is more about life than just what can be seen or touched. That life has a soul that connects with humans and with all creation, making us who we are. People who know nothing about God still innately connect with something larger than individual life and even larger than community. Something beyond.
In his book Aslan traces the history of all the ways people have thought about God as they evolved into more complex societies. There are two common threads –every society believes there is something indescribable that they call “God,” and everyone describes that something in human terms. God loves, blesses, holds, creates and sometimes judges and destroys. God exhibits both positive and negative emotions we experience – because we have no way to talk about God except in terms of what we know. We want to relate to God but we don’t know how to do that except in terms of personal relationships – so we understand God in personal ways. We don’t have vocabulary for something or someone so exceptional, so we use the personal words we have and then say, “only bigger and better.”
That is part of what it means to be human and it’s perfectly okay. I would never suggest that however you connect with God isn’t right. Any relationship we have with God that works for us is to be celebrated. But today I want to suggest that you consider adding to that relationship an idea Aslan gives us. Here it is:
Drawing on his personal experiences in Christianity and Islam, particularly on the mystical Sufi tradition, Aslan starts with the understanding that God created everything that is. We’ve read stories about that this Lent! The question is – if God created everything, then what did God create it from? The logical answer is God created from God’s own being – because there was nothing else. Before creation there is only God and therefore anything that exists as part of creation had to come from God. Which leads us to say, “everything that exists IS God” – in essence. That doesn’t mean that each individual is the totality of God, but that every person, creature, or thing was made from the being of God. Like a drop is part of the ocean or a leaf is part of a tree.
Several years ago Oprah Winfrey was interviewing Eckhart Tolle and asked him what he thought of God. He replied, “I am God.” Which led Oprah to panic, thinking of all the angry emails she was about to get. But by the end of the interview series she understood what he meant – not that he alone was God but that God was fully in him because God is fully in everything that is. Eckhart was God because every person is God and all that exists is God. And still God is more. This is what Aslan concludes from his study of the religious impulse throughout history. It’s what I hear when we read that God created humans “in God’s image.” I offer the thought to you to hold alongside what you already know about God. In addition to your connection with the God you have come to know, consider that God is also a part of you – of everything – and that your life then reflects the presence, the very being, of God. The air you breathe, the energy moving in every cell, the mystery we call “Life” is God.
Then let’s come back to today’s scripture and the idea that the Kingdom of God is growing in the world, through the world, through us. It’s certainly true that not everything happening in the world today is godly. People and systems have the freedom to ignore what we call God and to act in terrible, hurtful ways. They also have the potential to act in loving and healing ways. I think Jesus tells us that the reign of God comes from that potential. Yes, we live in troubled times, but we can transform our times by the way we live. Yes the world is at war in Ukraine and many other places, AND the world is standing up to injustice, feeding and housing refugees, offering love in the midst of fear. Yes the need in our own community can be overwhelming AND we can cook a meal, plant a garden, give blood, help a friend.
I believe that God is the life that moves in us all and that it’s possible for God to be known in our living. Every day you are making God visible and others are showing God to you. I hope you see some bit of that today. I hope you claim the promise that gives our world.