In an article for Guidepost, Eric Fellman describes his experience on a lake in a canoe. He writes that he had been on the lake in all kinds of weather. He had been frightened to be on the big water when the wind was whipping the surface into three-foot waves, threatening to swamp his small craft. However, he writes, his most memorable day on the lake was a day of perfect calm. It was just after sunset, and the air became so perfectly still that the water was as smooth as glass. The night was clear and cloudless, and the star-filled sky was perfectly reflected in the mirror that was the lake. He said he felt as if he were sailing among the stars, and that he could reach out and touch one with his paddle. Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the perfect calm was gone, the wind returned, and the stars were swallowed up in the movement of the water. Fellman says that at first he was disappointed and angry, but after a moment he realized that to see the stars, he only had to look up.
How nice it would be if all we had to do to see God was to look up. How nice it would be if every cloudless sky would reveal the features of the one that Jesus called “Our Father in heaven.”
Of course, it is not so. From the time of Abraham, the Father of all those who have faith, until the present day, those of us who worship the God of the Bible have believed in a God who is “immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light in accessible hid from our eyes. ” By faith, we worshiped a God who cannot be seen. As St. Paul says In 2nd Corinthians 4, “We look not to the things that are seen—for we know the things that are seen are transient; but we look to the things that are unseen, for we know that the things that are unseen (including the Unseen God) are Eternal.”
This morning, our four assigned lessons from Scripture look for the unseen God in a variety of ways.
The author of Genesis 1 looked back to the beginning of time, before any human being existed, and by faith saw what no human being could have seen. He saw God the Creator.
“How did he do this?” you ask.
Christians believe that with the help of the Holy Spirit, the author looked not with the eyes of his head but with the eyes his heart. We believe that the author listened, not just with his ears, but with the gray matter between his ears, with his brain and his mind.
He looked and listened, or he listened and he looked, and he heard and saw the invisible God at work in Creation.
He heard the Voice of God say, “Let their be light,” and he saw how God separated the day from the night, and there was morning and evening, the First Day. Ironically, it was not until the Fourth Day that he heard the voice of God say:
“Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.”
And it was only then, after three days of light, that he saw the sun, and moon, and stars stand forth in the heavens.
Some people think that Genesis 1 is a coded scientific history. They say some future generation will discover the code, and unlock its secrets, and the text of the Bible will be seen at last to perfectly agree with the findings of science.
Other people think that Genesis 1 is not a coded scientific history, but poetry. They point out that since the sun and moon were not created until the Fourth Day, it is not necessary to believe that the Invisible God created in the earth in six 24-hour days. They say that the text meant just as much to the first generation who read it as it means to us. Its truth is transparent: before the world was, God was. They say we must look outside the Bible for a scientific account of creation.
And some will say, “Worth, what do you believe?”
I think that Genesis 1 is neither pure scientific history, nor pure poetry, though it contains some of each, but mostly theology. Consider this: Every culture of the Ancient Near East worshiped the sun and moon and stars as gods, but the Jew who wrote Genesis makes the sun and moon and stars a part of the creation that was made by the One God we cannot see. Ultimately the author of Genesis 1 is saying the same thing that St. Paul says in Romans 1 when he writes:
20 Ever since the creation of the world (God’s) invisible nature, namely, (God’s) eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.
By faith the author of Genesis 1 looked back to “the beginning.” and saw the Creator God. By faith the author of Psalm 29 looked at the natural world and saw the Ruler God who controls and sustains the creation. The Psalmist describes a storm, and tells us that every storm is a visible manifestation of the invisible God. He says that God sends the storm “that breaks the cedars,” and “shakes the wilderness,” and “causes the oaks to whirl.” The Psalmist certainly sees and hears the natural phenomena that we associate with thunder, and lightning, and high winds, and storms as coming from God. He even calls thunder “the voice of the LORD,” but the Psalmist never identifies God with the storm. He says, “The LORD sits enthroned over the flood…enthroned as king forever.” (Psalm 29:10)
Now I tend to think of the world’s weather as a closed system. I doubt that God is as busy making the weather as the National Weather Service is in trying to understand and predict the weather. But I have never doubted that the weather ultimately behaves according to the rules that God laid down for weather from the foundation of the world. And I can think of several times in my life when I have asked God to change the weather. Off the coast of Columbia, I watched the waves break over the bridge of LPA-249 during a hurricane and I asked God to still the storm. Once, half way through the front nine at Pine Tree Golf Club, I did what no golfer should do, I took to the trees to hide from the thunder, and lightening, and rain. As I stood there under the trees, I saw another man approaching, the only other man I had seen on the course that day. I said to myself, “That man is crazier than I am.” Then, as he drew near, I saw that it was my father. I prayed for protection and joined him on the course. I am told that Lee Trevino once walked right down the middle of the fairway during a thunderstorm holding aloft a golf club like a lightening rod. The story goes that when asked what the heck he was doing, Trevino responded, “It is a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a one iron.”
I am not so sure about that. And I am not so sure that God always wants to stop the storms that rage around us. The Bible says that there are times when he brings the storm. In 1 Kings 19:11-13 the LORD speaks to Elijah saying, “Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD.” And Elijah obeyed, and this is how the text describes Elijah’s experience:
The LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.
And you know the rest of that story: God was not in the wind, and God was not in the earthquake, and God was not in the fire, but God was in the still small voice.
The Invisible God still inhabits the small voice in many ways. We read the Bible. The scripture does not shout at us. It simply speaks, pointing out the difference between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, love and hate, the way that leads to true happiness and the way that leads to disaster. And deep within us there is a still small voice affirming the Word of Scripture as the Word of God to us. And what about that still small voice called conscience. Sometimes we hear it from within. Sometimes our friends are our conscience and speak truth to us. We Christians believe that God the Holy Spirit speaks to us through the voice of conscience, and calls to us, and offers us direction. When we obey, the voice we believe to be God’s voice speaks in clearer and clearer tones. When we refuse to obey, gradually, little by little, the voice grows quieter and quieter, until it no longer calls to us. If we are wise, this makes us sad. We want to hear the little voice that we associate with the Holy Spirit.
How can we encourage the voice to speak once more? John Bailey, the first president of the World Council of Churches once wrote, “We cry out for some fresh revelation of God and it does not come. It does not because we have failed to act upon that revelation that has already come.” The only way to ensure that the still small voice speaks to us is to obey it when we hear it.
The gospel lesson tells us that there is a third way to see the unseen God. The Evangelis we call Mark says that we can look at Jesus and see God the Father at work in God the Son, the Messiah, the one for Whom Israel was Waiting, and the One Who brought the light of life to Jews and Gentiles.
According to our gospel lesson, early in the first century of the Common Era, a prophet by the name of John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness of Judea preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people went out to him from Jerusalem, and from all over Judea, and they confessed their sins, and were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John was a commanding figure. He was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey. John was a natural leader, and many people wanted to follow him. But John pointed away from himself to another. He preached saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when Jesus came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”
That is the story of Jesus’ baptism by John according to Mark. Luke agrees with Mark. According to Matthew, Jesus saw the descent of the Spirit, but the Voice was heard by many, for it spoke not in the 2nd person, but in the third saying, “This is my beloved Son; with whom I am well pleased.” The 4th Gospel does not record the actual baptism of Jesus, but John the baptiser himself tells the story. He speaks of one who comes after him, but ranks before him. He says, “I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water (God!) said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”
The very next day, John, standing with two of his disciples, looked at Jesus as he walked and said, “Behold the lamb of God!” (John 1:19-36)
It requires more faith to see God in Jesus than it does to see God in the natural world, but we get more for that faith.
The witness of nature to nature’s God is ambiguous. Some people think that nature is kind, and gentle, and good, all sunsets, seascapes, and quiet forests. They think that only human beings are cruel, but they don’t know nature. The natural world testifies to the survival of the fittest. It is red—blood red in tooth and claw. In one of his darker works, Mark Twain used the existence of the common housefly and the disease, death, and destruction it brings to deny the existence of God. And no less a naturalist than Charles Darwin warned us that nature often lies to us and will trick us if it can.
Rabbi Harold Kushner says that only one question matters to most of us. “Is God good? Can we trust him.”
Only Jesus answers that question. Only Jesus shows us a God who is One with Humankind, making atonement, providing a sacrifice for sin, and raising a Human Being from Death to God’s right hand.
Some people say, “I can see that!” If there is a God, God has to be like Jesus, or Jesus has had a better Idea. Other say, I would like to see it. I would like to see God in Jesus, but where can I look.
There is a place to look, and that leads us to fourth way of seeing God. According to Acts 19, there are times when the Spirit of God reveals the presence of God in the people who worship God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. According to the total witness of the New Testament, sometimes this revelation takes a spectacular turn. Sometimes people speak in languages they never learned, and perform miracles like those performed by Jesus and his apostles. But, at other times, the revelation is a quite one. Like the Christ Event itself, it is a revelation in hiddeness. It happens like this: We look out at another human being, and though we are not quite sure how to explain it, we look through that human being, and we see God. That person’s faith, grace, love, enables us to see beyond to God, who is the source of all love and goodness.
Some years ago, a dear friend sent me a picture of the back of the pulpit at Lititz Moravian Church in Lititz, Pennsylvania. On it, the congregation had placed a sign that only the preacher could read, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” This pulpit does not have such a sign, but each time I mount it, I am reminded of the sign in the photograph, the plea of a congregation to a preacher, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Now I know that I am a flawed man. You know it, too. I can tell by the chorus of “Amens!” I will let you in on a secret. You are flawed, too. But the wonder is that God chooses to reveal God’s Self through flawed people. Indeed, it is often in looking at the flaws made whole by God that we see God through others.
So, that makes four ways,not exclusive, but four ways of seeing the unseen God: 1) Creation, 2) in God’s rule of nature, 3) in Christ Jesus, and 4) in flawed human beings like you and me.
Finis