“God…? Are you out there?”

Jeremiah 18:1-11, Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

Sep. 8, 2019 

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

One of the great gifts of my sabbatical time this past summer was having the opportunity to worship with many different faith communities. I sang traditional hymns and contemporary songs with our UCC kindred in Oklahoma. I was warmly welcomed by our friends at Bethel AME just down the street. I visited my old stomping grounds at College Avenue United Methodist. I meditated and chanted with Buddhists in Topeka. 

I spent several Sundays with our local Society of Friends, better known to most of us as Quakers. The local meeting here is an unprogrammed one, meaning it’s primarily a time of sitting together in silence. A time to gather in community and turn towards the Holy...sitting before God with the hope of knowing and being known. 

The first Sunday that I worshiped with the Friends I had a bit of an “Are you there, God? It’s me, Caela,” moment. It was one of those days where I just couldn’t settle my spirit down. Do you ever have those? Like, you’re really pumped to have finally set aside the time for prayer and contemplation...you’re there...you’re ready to go. And you sit down to pray and...nothing. Nada. You feel as alone as can be. And you’re thinking, “Hey, God. I did my part. I showed up. Where are you, exactly? Because I sat aside this time to be with you and now it feels like you’re off somewhere else.”

So I shifted in my seat some more and I looked out of the corner of my eye to see what others were doing and I may have sighed in exasperation (hopefully internally, not audibly). Finally, I found the words that felt right. Tentatively, I spoke to God (in my head, not out loud) and said, “God….? Are you out there?”

And, I kid you not, the voice came back to me instantly. It was neither male nor female, young nor old...felt familiar but at the same time was not a person I could place...and the voice said, quite clearly, “No, silly. I’m in here.” 

I almost laughed out loud. Because the whole thing just summed up so many of the struggles I have had with my prayer life. I was taught as a child that “prayer is talking to God,” and God, in my childhood faith, was an old man who lived up in the sky. He had a white beard and a kindly face. He was big and tall and strong. He was definitely a he and he looked like a person. And he lived somewhere out there...far away from me, up in the heavens. 

Over the years, my image of God has shifted and changed. God no longer feels like some person up there in the sky. God feels as close to me as my own breath...but somehow outside of me, too. I guess speaking of God as a Spirit or a Force feels more authentic to where I am right now...but calling God “it” feels too impersonal. My spiritual director recently referred to God as “them” and that felt interesting...but, also, not quite right. 

Humans have been struggling since the dawn of time to figure out how to talk about God. Is God out there, up there, in here? Is God a man, woman, child, community of people-like-creatures? Is God a force, spirit, idea? It seems whenever any of us says “God” it conjures up an image in someone else’s mind that is completely different than what you’re thinking of. 

Our ancient faith ancestors frequently used metaphors and images to try and convey their experience of the Divine. In today’s passage from Jeremiah, we have the image of God as a potter, working steadily at a craft. In this illustration, God’s people are the lumps of clay being formed into new vessels. When God wants to speak to Jeremiah, the word comes to him and says, “Go down to the potter’s house.” Apparently there is something about being present with the clay and water and table and wheel that is meant to open Jeremiah up to receive a message from the Holy. 

He goes and listens. But the message is….complicated. Even in this image of God as the potter, there is tension and confusion. Is God the warm, competent craftsman who lovingly shapes each piece of clay into the vessel was destined to become? Or is God an angry deity with control issues? Smashing works in progress when they don’t measure up to expectations, carefully controlling each and every piece so it turns out just so...with no regard for what the clay might want?

I have to say...as much as I find the idea of God carefully molding my life comforting in some ways, I also find it puzzling. Because there have certainly been times where, to be honest, God just didn’t seem to be that tightly in control of what’s going on here, you know?

Once Jesus arrives on the scene, our images of what God might be expand further. There’s a story I heard once from another UCC pastor. He talked about how his daughter was sometimes scared at night before bed and he tried to comfort her by reminding her that God is always with us, even if we can’t see God. The little girl replied, “But I need God with a skin-face on, daddy!” [1]

God with a skin-face on. For many Christians, this is part of what Jesus represents. An image of God that walks among us, breathing the same air we do, showing us how to meld humanity and divinity together, teaching us how to live, reminding us that we, too, are made in God’s image. Jesus, the Incarnate One...came to remind us that God dwells among us. 

“Are you up there, God?” 

“No, silly. I’m right here next to you. I’m your co-worker, your neighbor, the woman giving you change at the drive through window, the child peeking up over the pew in front of you during worship and waving to say hello.” 

Father Richard Rohr recently wrote a book about the Universal Christ and the subtitle is “another name for every thing.” The idea is that Jesus was simply one incarnation of the Cosmic Christ...that force of love that resides in everything. Rohr says that when we talk about Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem we are actually talking about at least the Second Coming of Christ...because the first arrival of Christ was when God breathed life into creation. Rohr says we are living in a “Christ soaked world”...every bit of creation, seen and unseen, infused with the Divine. 

“Are you out there, God?” 

“No, silly. I’m in here….soaked into you so deeply you don’t even see me sometimes. I’m here in this smooth river stone. Here in the next breath you take. And the next. Here in the beauty of the pounding of ocean waves. But also here in the terror and pain of a hurricane. Here when the relief workers come, and here when they leave again. I’m here in all of this beautiful, broken, Christ-soaked world.”

A few weeks after I had my “Are you there, God? It’s me, Caela,” moment with the Friends, I went back to worship with them again. My heart was heavy because it was the weekend when there were two major mass shootings in our country. I was feeling scared, angry, and just incredibly, incredibly sad. 

I wanted a God that might be a potter, like the one Jeremiah spoke of. Someone with kind, loving hands who might be able to take us all into those strong hands and remold us into our better selves. I wanted a God that could actually reach out into our hurting world and literally smite swords into plowshares...weapons of mass destruction into instruments of healing and hope.

I sat down in the chair and opened my heart to God. Potter at the wheel. God-with-a-skin-face-on. Mother-God. Father-God. Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ. Just anything I could get close to. 

For a good long while, I just cried. Tears ran down my face and I tried not to be too sobby...I didn’t want to take up too much space in the room. So I sniffled and dabbed and some of the words from the Psalm we read earlier today started to bang around inside my heart. “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” 

It felt good and healing just to sit there in my grief and anger and fear and know that I was known. That God sees us for who we are and does not turn away. That God hems us in...bringing us back into bounds when we flail all over the place. Coming alongside and behind and before...making our paths straight and the rough places smooth. The God that lays a warm hand upon our spirits and soothes us, brings us back to our breaths, helps us find the strength for another day. 

About the time my tears were subsiding, I looked up and noticed two of the women sitting across the circle from me. The adult daughter brought her knitting each week to work on and her skein of yarn had gotten all tangled up. Her mother reached out -  gently but firmly - and took the skein from her daughter. Slowly, steadily, she began to untangle the knots. She worked from one end, then the other. She took breaks. And as I watched her work, silent and faithful, I thought, “What if God isn’t just the weaver who knits us together in our mother’s wombs, as the psalmist says, but is also the Great Untangler, working alongside us and within and through us and beyond us to fix all the messes that exist in this world?” 

She worked and worked. For over 15 minutes, this mother carefully worked on those knots. And I became desperate for her to fix it all. “Mend the whole world while you’re at it!” I thought, furiously. (Spoiler: she did not ...even though I desperately wished it could be so.)

But once the silence ended, we all sat together and looked at the yarn. It was almost untangled. Almost. The mother said she was going to take it home and lay it out on her floor where she had more room. I felt certain that it would get untangled. I knew she would stick with it. 

“Are you out there, God?” 

“No, silly, I’m right here. Tirelessly working to mend the world. I am the Great Untangler. The weaver of new life in old wombs. I am the Potter that molds and re-molds. I am here with a skin-face on and I my presence soaks through every bit of this world. I am...I am...I am…” 

Notes:

[1] This delightful story can be found in Words for the Journey by Martin Copenhaver and Anthony Robinson