Sunday, March 14, 2021
Listen and You Will Hear
the Colours of God’s Word
in the Sun Setting Through the Trees
Amos 8:11-12
The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
Luke 11:28
But Jesus said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’
Words of Grace For Today
A great many religious efforts through history and on-going today are well described by Amos’ Words from God: They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
To make up for the futility of our great and desperate searchings, we humans make up all sorts of things, religious things, rituals, ‘truths’ which are certainly nothing of the sort, ways of speaking, judgments against other people, wars, and great empires and ideas.
It is as if we have ourselves convinced that if we are seeking the Other, the divine, then what we do must be other than … well other than everything sane, practical, real, truthful, reasonable, understandable, and even reverent.
Yes, God is OTHER than we are, so other, infinite, immortal and on goes the list of how great God is compared to how miserably un-great we are.
All our efforts to bridge the gap between us and God are doomed to fail. That is the kind of gap that it is between Divine and us humans. Ah, you say, then with a long tradition behind you, ‘Why bother with God at all! Most likely God does not even exist!’ There certainly is no irrefutable proof of God’s existence, for sure!
The origin of our very idea of God is not knowable.
And for the faithful it does not matter.
We do not bridge the gap.
God created us and has gone to great lengths (in human terms of reference) to demonstrate to us that God already has bridged the gap between the Divine and us humans.
In a word we refer to it as God’s Word.
Jesus, the Word of God, God’s self, become human, so that we could encounter God as one of us, points us to how we can respond.
First off, we stop trying to reach God, or win God’s approval, or become one with God. God has reached us, given us God’s approval (freely, that’s Grace), and has become one with us.
We do not and cannot ‘have God’ in anyway, not in our hearts, minds, souls, or special religious rites of any kind.
God has us.
Second Jesus points us to obedience: Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it! We’ve made great traditions of obeying in order to be good enough for God. It’s all and always futile and destructive to us and those around us. Hearing God’s Word and obeying it is to trust that God has provided the Word for us to hear. It is trusting that we can hear it, without some special rigmarole or religious effort. It is trusting that we can obey it, not to earn God’s favour, but in response to knowing God has already granted us God’s favour, unconditionally and overwhelmingly abundant, so that we have enough to share with everyone else.
So we all know where that leaves us. We humans fight with each other who has God’s ‘real’ Word, and who ‘really’ hears it and obeys it.
Ahh Quatsch. Get over ourselves. God’s Word is not something we can claim over other people’s claims. It’s there. Written by our ancestors as they encountered God, mind you quite imperfectly so. God has put God’s Word all around us, in nature, in the materials we build houses and cities with. God’s Word is the stuff that makes a city a community, and a house a home.
Obedience is simple. Listen. Hear the ten commandments. They set limits. Hear Jesus’ Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself and love even your enemy.
Limits and goal. Life is pretty simple. Listen and give it all you’ve got. You cannot take anything to the grave with you, so ‘spend’ it sharing God’s Word here and now.
If not now, when are you going to do what God created you to do?!