Wondrous and Scared, a Stupendous and Glorious More
“Wondrous and Scared, a Stupendous and Glorious More” *
a sermon based on Isaiah 40:21-31
given at Palm Bay, FL on February 5, 2012
by Rev. Scott Elliott
A middle-aged woman had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital.
While on the operating table, she had a near death experience.
Seeing God, she asked “Is my time up?”
God said, “No, you have another 43 years, 2 months, and 8 days to live.”
Upon recovery, the woman decided to stay in the hospital and have a facelift, liposuction, and a tummy tuck. She even had someone come in and change her hair color. Since she had so much more time to live, she figured she might as well make the most of it.
After her last operation, she was released from the hospital. While crossing the street on her way home, she was killed by an ambulance.
Arriving in front of God again so soon, the woman was quite upset: “I thought you said I had another 40 years? Why didn’t you pull me from out of the path of the ambulance?” God replied, “I didn’t recognize you!”
God, of course, always recognizes us – and loves us – regardless of the changes we make good or bad, physical or mental.
Last week I briefly talked about the general nature of God and this week I am going to talk a little bit more about that, before focusing a little on what we experience as specific characteristics of God.
Every once in a while I preach in a sort of educational way about how humankind tends to understand the nature of God. We actually talk about this regularly in Bible Study because getting a grip on ideas about humankind’s views of the nature of God can help us get a better grip on in-depth studies of the Bible which of course is always about experiences that humankind has of God.
I got kind of excited preparing for this sermon when it dawned on me that human ideas about the general nature of God can be generally explained in Venn diagrams, you know those circles we use in things like math and science to show the relationships between things.
Where the circles overlap there is a connection, a relationship – where they don’t overlap there is a disconnect. If you don’t know what a Venn diagram is don’t worry, they are simple to comprehend and you’ll see what I mean in a moment.
I am excited because I am very visual in my thinking and so Amy and I have put together five visual aids for explaining human concepts of God in Venn diagrams. (And I can guarantee you that no math or science teacher I ever had would have predicated I’d remember what a Venn diagram is, let alone one day be excited about them!)
For those of you who are worried there are only two circles in the diagrams so it’s not going to make your math or science jitters return. The circles simply represent God and creation. The purpose is to show the five different general ways humans imagine God and creation relate to one another.
Atheism (click here to view diagram)
The first Venn diagram of God is showing Atheism, the concept that there is no God. So there is just a circle showing creation. This concept imagines no relationship between creation and God. God is not even in the picture except to deny, and so God’s circle is invisible (which is shown with dotted line so we know where God’s at in this concept).
Deism (click here to view diagram)
The next diagram represents Deism. This is a concept that many of our nation’s founders held. It was very popular as the age of reason got underway. It holds that creation was made by a Deity and then left to run on its own. So God is understood to now be so distant as to have no relationship anymore with the universe. And as you can see there’s no connection between the circles.
Supernatural-theism (click here to view diagram)
Next up is Supernatural-theism. This is the concept of God that most of us grew up with and that many in our culture and in this room still have. God is super-natural, beyond nature. This way of understanding God tends to visualizes God as out there somewhere, relating by intervening to punish or reward or answer prayer. Love is offered from afar, kinda like a rich uncle we rarely see but get birthday and Christmas gifts from.
Pantheism (click here to view diagram)
The next diagram is Pantheism, this word means “all is God.” It’s mostly a concept found in eastern theological thought and understands creation itself as the whole of God. It’s all overlap, all that is, is God and that is it.
Panentheism (click here to view diagram)
Finally, we have the first concept that got me drawing these Venn diagrams. This fifth concept of God is called Panentheism, a word that means “all in God.”
I mentioned last week this idea that we are like living sponges in an ocean of God. And it is in that ocean of God – to borrow from the Apostle Paul – that we live and move and have our being.
Panentheism envisions us soaked to the core as creation and as humans. There is nowhere we can go, there is nothing we can be, there is nothing we can do that isn’t in God.
So the circle of life, the circle of creation, is in God, as the diagram shows. But it also shows Godness as something more than is-ness, God’s creation plus.
Clearly each of these diagrams that we just saw evidences that humans differ on how, or even if, they consider God in their lives. And like everyone else we, you and me, have to decide what concept makes sense to us.
And as I’ve mentioned before, if we believe in love and loving and act on those beliefs to bring love into the world, that is ultimately what matters. This is true whether we subscribe to Atheism, Deism, Supernatural-theism, Pantheism or Panentheism. Believing in love and loving is what matters.
Most of you know by now that I personally hold a Panentheistic view of God and creation. You do not have to (and I mean that respectfully) but I believe with all my heart and all my soul that Paul’s description is right, we live and we move and we have our being in God.
I understand this to mean we are swimming in Divinity, all of us, all of creation soaked all the way through by Sacredness. Our reality, our is-ness, is in God-ness.
One of the beauties of this theology is that it makes the current debates we hear going by Atheists and Supernatural-theists about the existence of a supreme being, basically immaterial. Because if we live and move and have our being in God, then it’s not about another being, it’s about THE being, creation’s being, itself that is at issue. What’s the nature of this amazing “being?”
Marcus Borg puts it like this:
[Panentheism] radically changes the question of God’s existence. It is no longer about whether there is another being separate from the universe, Rather the question is about the nature of reality, of “what is,” of “is-ness.” “What is,” “reality,” or “is-ness” is– does anybody really want to debate that?” The question is not whether “is -ness” is, but what “is-ness” is. Is “what is” simply the space time world of matter and energy? Or is reality– is-ness– “more” than that? 2
Based on Dr. Borg’s observation I hear that Atheistic and Super-natural theistic debates about the existence of a supernatural god miss the point at least from a Panentheistic perspective, or even from Paul’s claim that in each moment we live and move and be in God.
If we believe our being is in God then the debate is about the nature of “creation’s being” – our being. Is it in God or not? But there is no rational argument that we have no being, because, well, look around, the evidence everywhere is that we are, WE HAVE BEING.
What that being is becomes the heart of the question. It’s not is there another being, as the modern Atheists and Supernatural-Theists debates are focused on in the media.
Atheists claim to not believe in a god, but you won’t hear an Atheist claiming there is no reality, no being, only that there is no being apart from nature.
Supernatural theists claim to believe in a god that is a super natural being beyond nature, but they also do not deny there is no reality, no being, they argue there are two separate beings: creation and a god.
But, see, if God is understood to be where we have our being there is no question of multiple beings, it is just a matter of discussing one being, our reality.
This reality stuff sounds more complicated than it is. Being – the question of do we exist – is a given. Yes, the answer is, we do exist.
The question becomes more complicated when we then turn to trying to name the nature of the existence, of our reality as we experience it. And if we experience God as what we exist in, God does not intervene, but rather interacts. Relates with that which lives and breathes and has its being in God.
So the question about God becomes “Is ‘what is’ simply the space time world of matter and energy? Or is reality — ‘is-ness’ — more than that?” as Dr. Borg asks. 3
Albert Einstein put it a little more poetically. He wrote “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
What a wonderful statement. If we choose to live as if everything is a miracle, then isn’t where we live and move and have our being by definition, Sacred? Doesn’t it by definition, fill us with awe?
And in this Sacredness-and awe-filled-all-is-miracle-ness can we fairly claim that we feel called within it to strive, individually and communally, for betterment, as well as toward love? I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to be better or for the world to be better. It also seems fair to say that something in this reality calls us to that.
There is something we experience, in existence, that beckons us toward love and betterment, toward compassion and morality. It’s beyond a space time worldness in my experience, and so I cannot personally choose to understand living as if nothing is a miracle.
I choose to understand every-thing as miracle.
I experience, I see and hear and witness in daily life, more than space time science that calls me and others toward tending to one another and to creation.
I see and hear and witness the vast majority of humans now and in the past calling upon what transcends, as well as what is immanent within creation – and giving thanks to both.
If nothing is a miracle then these experiences can only be chalked up to biology and chemistry and physics and happenstance.
But nothing in science adequately explains these longings to be our best, the need to believe in love and the drive to love in the world, to care when molecularly speaking we don’t have to, but we do. And so far nothing I am aware of in science explains life, the animation of matter, or how it is that humans have consciousness. They are a part of the awesome Mystery.
Creation’s evolution from nothingness to a big bang of somethingness appears driven by a wondrous force within creation, just as more than DNA appears to not only give us human consciousness, but makes us want to be better and moral and compassionate and loving and thankful,and in awe. I understand that wondrous force as more than you and me and all of creation, that more is God at work.
Years ago when I first came back to the church, I had a dream that consisted of this mantra being repeated all night long. “The ordinary is extraordinary, The ordinary is extraordinary.” That’s just another way of understanding Einstein’s choice of living, “you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
Miracles are the extraordinary.
Creation, life, is extraordinary.
And the character of God, that which we live and move and have our being in, is the mysterious source of that extraordinariness, the miracles of love and call to betterment of all creation. God need not be thought of as some other being separate from us. Dr. Borg writes of Panentheism that:
This [type of] referent of the word God affirms that reality “what is” is ultimately a scared reality, a “more” all around us, wondrous and glorious. The word does not point to a being who may or may not exist, but names “what is” as wondrous and scared, a stupendous and glorious more.” 4
And this wondrous God that we are in, that is more than creation does not intervene in our lives with bolts from above, but rather interacts with us and creation as we swim about in the ocean-ness that God is.
And that interaction is not indifferent or punitive in the Panentheistic understanding, it is loving, compassionate and care for the well being of all that is in God. “Loving and compassionate means that God wills our well-being and the well-being of creation.” 5.
The Bible claims that God has called all of creation good … that God loves the world … and that God’s love is steadfast and endures forever. 6. That’s the God I that understand to exist, it’s the one that most of you tell me in one form or another you experience and know and understand to exist..
The best way I can describe this God we know is as I have said before an un-fathom-able creating, present and hopeful power that soaks the universe and endlessly persuades creation to the best it can be in each given moment.
God is an un-fathom-able creating, present and hopeful power that soaks the universe and endlessly persuades creation to the best it can be in each given moment.
For human consciousness this awesome persuasive power is love.
God is the miracle that makes all of life a miracle. It’s what we exist in – and our call is to love, to have compassion and care for the betterment of ourselves and for creation.
We can ignore our existence’s majesty and even call it indifferent, or not call it God, but it will not change the fact that this reality we occupy is “wondrous and scared, [and] a stupendous and glorious more.” 7
And we can hear at the end of the text that was read that when we are feeling down or weary if we take the time to remember God soaks us, God will lift us up in what we might otherwise experience as as pedestrian and ordinary, and when we notice God, God makes the pedestrian and ordinary winged and extraordinary, which is what it has been all along (we just don’t always notice).
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth … those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isa 40:28-31)
AMEN
ENDNOTES
* The title is a quote from Marcus Borg’s book Speaking Christian. Many of the ideas in this sermon were inspired by chapters 5 & 6 of this wonderful book.
1. I got this story at this fun website:
2. Borg, Marcus, Speaking Christian, p 70-71.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. at 71
5. Ibid. at 80.
6. Ibid; e.g., Genesis 1, John 3:16, Psalm 136
7. Borg, 71
COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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