4th Sunday Lent Who is God?

St Theophilus of Antioch “God is seen by those who have the capacity to see him, provided that they keep the eyes of the mind open... ...before all faith and the fear (awe) of God must take the first place in your heart.”

Notice what the religious leaders said of Jesus: He can’t be of God.  

Who is God? How do I experience God? How do I grow in my relationship with God?

These are Ancient and new questions and these are important questions. Because the God we know or think we know; the God we experience and see forms the person that we are, that we become... and ultimately we are either free or slaves.  For millennia, we humans struggled with who is God! We have argued and at times we have fought using words and weapons. 

We have gotten it wrong at times. When we were wrong people were killed and enslaved in Africa and South Americans. And this legacy continues to this day, not only among Christians, but Muslims, Jews, Hindu, and with this come the abuse of persons, legacies of division, violence, racism and many other racisms.

When we have gotten it correct or at least come closer to the truth there has been transformation. Peace forms, community forms, there is growth; there is life. The poor are cared for. People treat others better. All persons are treated as persons, life is given dignity. Healing w/in persons begins.

We as Christians believe that Jesus is the fullness of the revelation of God. there can be no more. God reveals all of God’s self to us in Jesus.  With faith and with awe we see God through Jesus: in the mercy, kindness, compassion, in the healing and reaching out. We can begin to understand that God is not a thing; God is being, and being beyond any way we can imagine, yet that Being of God lives in relationship with us, and between us.

One of the great commands of God was to NOT build idols for God. God understands the trap of this; we would limit God. And God was not merely speaking of images from wood or gold or stone, but an idol created in our hearts and minds.

Jesus physically heals a man born blind. Not only that, Jesus spiritually heals him as well. This man, thought a sinner, a man who probably was looked down upon as a beggar, through Jesus sees himself differently.  It begins in the simplest phrase “He responded, “I am.” Only one other person in John’s Gospel says “I am”; that is Jesus, as the son of God. 

The Blind man has begun his journey of understanding that he too is a child of God.  This man has begun to grasp the reality of God in a different way, and exciting way, a scary way. And we see how the people react.

All of this expresses the reality of God; God desires healing. God desires union. God wants us to experience God in God’s terms. God is this!

People are confused by all of this and rightly so. They have never seen anything like this before. People are also scared, scared of the religious leaders and their seeming ability to exclude people from the community. They are scared to see something that challenges their ideas of who God is and how God works in the world. So these frightened people will not see; not can’t see, but will not see.  

Some People will not see because of their arrogance; what happened does not conform to their understanding of God. So in typical fashion, rather than discern within themselves and consider new possibilities they attack the other. Jesus is the problem, not them. The Man Born blind is the Problem... Lets get rid of them; but not be changed. 

What a sad little world they must have lived in, 

Once a young man came to talk with me. He was upset and trying to grasp his life; things were not making sense anymore. He was raised by strict parents and had a strict sense who God was; A God who punishes us for our sins, God who demands obedience. A conflict had developed within him. Listening to him, I said go and take a walk; look at the trees, the flowers, the beauty. And realize God did all of this for you to see. He looked dubious, but did it. Later he came back in tears, tears of joy.

Once, an elderly gentleman got angry because someone dared to say the Bible had contradictions. He made elaborate mental justifications to try to explain away these contradictions, to justify what he believed he knew, but he would not see the deeper Truth that was before him. His anger remained.

We humans can try to mold God into our own Image; squeeze God to confirm; but God has a way of slipping through our fingers.  When we seek to make God in our own image; death is the result.

When we let ourselves be transformed, strive to see beyond the "me" to God, to something that Transcends "my" way of thinking... therein is our freedom, life; to grasp that the "I" does not know it all."

It can be frightening to grow. We kind of go out into the dark, hard to navigate. It’s disconcerting and doubts arise. St. John of the Cross writes of this travel into the dark, yet when we go forth with faith, just a mustard seed of faith in God’s love for us...

Amazing things happen around us, all the time. God works even now, amidst us. God lives among us. Look and see.