Saturday, October 10, 2020               (today’s lectionary)
Questions and answers
All day we talked … panentheism, divinization, God within us, partnership between God and me … now Paul says what Luke says that Jesus says, “Hear the word of God, and keep it.”
Who is God, what is the word of God? And how often, how long, howsomeever … do I keep the word of God? As often as I can? Always? Is this with God’s help “within me” or on my own? I think the questions are good ones, and they can be answered a lot of ways. What’s more important, I think than answers, is that the questions are attended to. Sit with them. Let God sit with you while you sit with them. Pay attention to each other, you and God. Answers mostly come in the middle of the night.
Through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. When you were baptized in Christ you were clothed in Christ. You are all one in Christ Jesus.
Jesus, like the statue of liberty, puts out his shingle that says, “Give me your tired, your poor. All will find sanctuary here.” No matter who you are, you are welcome.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, Mexican nor Iranian,
There is neither slave nor free person, white nor black, man nor woman,
You are all one in Christ Jesus.
I don’t want to belabor pointed questions about keeping the word of God, because the questions are not the right ones. God points that out all the time. Change the question, he says. My thoughts are greater than yours, so don’t try to do what I didn’t make you to do.
But even as I write that, I bridle. Make me to do? Am I not the Lord that all I survey, the captain of my own ship? Isn’t my individual salvation really up to little individual me? Do I have to be part of this community of God’s children and let God be my guide?
How’s that working for you?
I notice that I’m pretty good at asking the wrong questions, and making them sound rhetorical, as if I know the answers to them all. But there are better things to do with my time.
Sing to him, sing his praise, proclaim all his wondrous deeds.
Look to the Lord in his strength
Seek to serve him constantly.
Those are worthy activities that do not require God’s answers to questions he doesn’t encourage us to ask. I think we do keep coming back, however, to “Who are you, anyway?” And he does provide the short answer, doesn’t he?
I am that I am.
So … just relax, David. I don’t need to know any more than that, I guess.
Blessed is the womb that carried you, Jesus!
But Jesus knows that blessings goes far beyond Mary of Nazareth. Keep the word.
Sing, proclaim, look to the Lord, seek to serve him
Constantly.
Listen. God will tell you how.
Look. God will show you how.
(Galatians 3, Psalm 105, Luke 11)
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