Where Is God?

 

Where Is God?

Rev. Dr. Thomas C. Sorenson

for

Richmond Beach Congregational Church, United Church of Christ

August 25, 2024

 

Scripture: 1 Kings 8:6, 22-30

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

I mentioned in my sermon last week that my mother attended First Congregational Church of Eugene, Oregon, for most of her adult life. When I was a child I often attended Sunday worship services at that church with my mother and father. I have a few fairly strong memories of those worship services. The minister was the Rev. Wesley Nicholson, the minister who would marry me and my late first wife years later. I can’t say that I remember anything that he said in those services, though I now know that he was a fairly typical liberal Congregationalist minister, and quite a good one.

There is, however, a bit of music that stands out in my memory of those services. At the beginning of every service we would sing: “The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent, let all the earth keep silent, before Him.” Of course, we didn’t all keep silent. I mean, you wouldn’t have much of a worship service if no one ever said anything (unless perhaps you were a Quaker). That bit of singing isn’t exactly an invocation. It doesn’t call God to be present. It says God is present there in the church.

Now, I believe that it was true enough that God was present with us there in our church; but I have a problem with those words nonetheless. At least when I was a child, I heard them as saying that God was present with us in church but wasn’t present with us anywhere else. We came to church, I guess I thought, if I thought about it at all (which I doubt), because that’s where God was.  After all, we always sang, “God is in His holy temple,” which I took, correctly I think, to mean God was in the church. We didn’t call the church a temple, but never mind. And I took those words, incorrectly, to mean that’s the only place God was.

Many years later I thought a bit more about where God actually was and is. Put another way, I wondered what God’s physical relationship with the earth and those of us on it actually is. I learned that there are three primary possible answers to that question. One of them is called pantheism. It makes God and creation identical. There is no distance or distinction between them. Another is called classical theism. That’s the old thinking many of us grew up with that puts God up in God’s heaven, distant and separate from the earth though occasionally becoming present in it.

The third is called panentheism. Panentheism asserts that God and creation are not the same thing, but they overlap. God is bigger than creation, but all of creation subsists in God. There’s a biblical basis for it if we need one. There’s a line in Acts that says: “For in [God] we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28. We and all of creation live in God, move in God, and have our being in God. We are not God, but we are in no way separate from God.

Of course, for panentheism, God also transcends us absolutely. If God  transcends us as panentheism says God does, then God cannot be only in one particular place, for God transcends worldly concepts like place. In panentheism, God is both utterly transcendent of creation and intimately present in creation at the same time. That , of course is a paradox. In his great hymn Bring Many Names, Brian Wren, brilliantly, calls God “joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing.” God is indeed ultimately unknowable because God is so transcendent, yet God is also immediately present in creation. Everywhere. All the time.

King Solomon seems to have recognized this paradox in this morning’s scripture reading. In that reading, we find Solomon praying at the dedication of the Jerusalem temple he had constructed—with lots of help of course, including slave labor, but never mind. The first line of this morning’s reading says that during that dedication ceremony priests brought the Ark of the Covenant into the temple and put it “in its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, the most holy place.”

If you’ve seen the movie “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” you know that the ark of the covenant contained God, though God would never be violent the way the power in the ark is in that movie. The ark of the covenant was where Yahweh, the Hebrews’ only God, supposedly lived. That, really, is why the “inner sanctuary,” also called the Holy of Holies, was the most sacred place in the temple. At least in Jesus’ time, only the High Priest went into the Holy of Holies, and he did it only once a year.

Solomon isn’t a priest though he acts like one here. He is praying at the dedication of the temple he has built.. He has had the Ark of the Covenant placed in that innermost sanctuary. Yet he seems to have known that it isn’t realistic to say that that’s only where God is. In his prayer he says: “But will God indeed dwell on earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” 1 Kings 8:27. Solomon got it that, while his new temple may have a most sacred inner sanctuary, and though God was indeed present in that sanctuary, The sanctuary could not contain God.

So where is God? I was recently reading Diana Butler Bass’ book Grounded. At one point in that book she address that very question. She sort of talks in circles, and it takes her forever to get to an answer; but, when she finally does get to an answer, she says that, in today’s world, after all of the horror of the twentieth century, that we cannot blame on God, people are saying: God is right here. God is everywhere.

And that is indeed the answer. God is everywhere! Yes, God was in Solomon’s temple, but that wasn’t because there was anything special about the temple. It was because God is everywhere in creation, and the temple was somewhere in creation. So, at First Congregational Church of Eugene, Oregon, all those years ago, was God in “his holy temple?” Yes, of course God was, for that church was also somewhere in creation, and God is everywhere in creation. Absolutely everywhere. Which, of course, means that God is with us here in this holy temple this morning. Both a comforting and a frightening thought, don’t you think?

I don’t know about you, but, while God may be everywhere, a great many people experience the presence of God particularly strongly in special places. Many people experience God in nature. In the mountains. By the sea. On Puget Sound. I had an experience like that once. It was a long time ago, but it is still so powerful for me that I can hardly speak of it without choking up, so forgive me if I do.

Back in 1986, my family and I had gone to the world’s fair in Vancouver, BC, that was held that year. After we went to the fair, we took a BC ferry to Vancouver Island, then we were taking a Washington state ferry from Vancouver Island to Anacortes. It was a beautiful summer evening. The sea was calm. There was no wind. The ferry approached the San Juan Islands.

I had never seen the San Juan Islands before. As I stood at the rail of that ferry and saw them for the first time I thought: “Now I know where I want to spend eternity!” The scene before me of the water and the islands was so beautiful, so idyllic, that I could hardly believe it. I had been all over much of the United States and at least western Europe and had seen much of the USSR by that time of my life, but I had never seen anything to rival the beauty of the San Juan Islands on that summer evening so long ago.

I’m not sure I thought of it this way at the time. In fact, I’m quite sure I didn’t. Back then I was practicing law in downtown Seattle. If someone had said to me that one day I would go to seminary and become an ordained clergyman, I’d have sought to have them committed for psychiatric evaluation. But in hindsight I know that God was in that place and that I had been touched in an intimate way by God the Holy Spirit. In the beauty of that scene, I was with God. So, where was God for me that evening? On a ferry boat approaching the San Juan Islands.

Another way to think of the experience I had that evening comes to us from Celtic spirituality. That spirituality speaks of what it calls “thin places.” A thin place is anywhere where contact with God is easier than it is at other places. Any place can be a thin place. Nature is sometimes a thin place for many of us. For others of us, perhaps a powerful worship service is a thin place. Perhaps being with someone you dearly love and who dearly loves you is a thin place at times. Any place can be a thin place because God is indeed everywhere.

Now, experiencing God in a thin place in no way means that God isn’t anywhere else. See, God is everywhere. That is a truth we get when we understand panentheism. Everything that exists subsists in God. God utterly transcends us of course, but, like I said, we have a great paradox here. God both utterly transcends us and is intimately present with us at the same time. The utterly transcendent God permeates all of creation. All of it.

And here’s a truth that most of the time I struggle with really getting. God permeates even me, failings and all.  And God permeates you too, though you may find that as hard to believe as I do about God permeating me. God is all around us. God is within us. We are never separate from God. Oh sure. We convince ourselves at times that we are. But we aren’t. We just flat aren’t.

So, the next time God seems remote. The next time you want to cry with Jesus on the cross, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” please know that God has not forsaken you. Please know that God is with you, all around you, and within you, offering you unconditional love, unconditional grace. God is there, always, no matter what, for you to cling to. For you to turn to. For you to lean on. For you to laugh with. For you to cry with.

There is no doubt that God is there. All we have to do to get beyond our belief that God isn’t there is open our eyes, our minds, and our spirits to God’s presence. Pray, preferably in silence at first. Then pour your heart out to God. Pray for what you need. Get mad at God if you want, for God can surely handle and forgive your anger. Give thanks to God for the blessings in your life. Pray for those who are causing you pain. Pray for yourself. Pray for your loved ones. Pray that the Holy Spirit may open your mind and your spirit to the presence of God with you and within you.

Where is God? Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. No, folks. We are never separate from God. The psalmist of Psalm 139 asks God rhetorically: “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?” That ancient poet know that the answer to his rhetorical questions was: Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere can we go from God’s spirit or flee from God’s presence. That’s because God is everywhere, absolutely everywhere, all the time. May we all open our hearts and minds and spirits to that incredible divine truth. It makes all the difference. It can get us through. May it be so. Amen.