What’s
up, God?
In
the past, when people tried to imagine what God is doing, they looked at the
only thing that was visible to them: nature. The most dramatic displays of
nature’s power caught their attention, including thunderstorms.
“God
thunders across the waters,” said the writer of Psalm 29. Nothing could grab the
attention of pre-scientific-minded people more than the roar of nature’s thunder.
So it must be God up to something.
But
on a typical day, when the sun is shining and all is calm, where is God to be
found? What is God doing? What is God up to?
“We
don’t hear anything,” they would say as they looked up to the sky, which is
where they assumed God lived. And when one looks up to the sky for something
that is alive what does one often observe?
Birds.
Birds flying solo, birds flying in formation, birds chirping, birds nesting on
branches. And yes, the ancient observers of the sky, folks who spent most of
their time outdoors, were all too often the recipients of an occasional bird
dropping. That’s just life.
Because
the birds were the only observable living things in the sky, it was not too
difficult to connect the hovering activity of birds to the question, “What is
God up to?” We can see this question answered at the very beginning of the
biblical story:
“First
this: God created the Heavens (that is, the sky) and Earth—all you see, all you
don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky
blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a
bird above the watery abyss.”
As
the writer says, everything is dark, so God creates light: “God spoke: ‘Light!’
And light appeared. God saw that light was good and separated light from darkness. God named the light Day, he named
the dark Night. It was evening, it was morning—Day One.”
Did
it really happen this way? No, and yet it’s not hard to imagine how the writer
of Genesis 1 came to this conclusion. This is poetry. Beautiful, inspired,
heart-felt poetry. It’s the mind of ancient writers at work, trying to make
sense of the world, trying to answer the question, “What’s up, God?”
When
people ask me what I think God is up to, I usually respond, “Read Genesis 1.”
That’s a good place to start. If God has a job description, it probably begins
like this: 1) create order out of chaos; 2)
Bring good out of evil; and 3) separate light from darkness.
That’s
what God is up to, whether the sun is shining or the storms are brewing. God is
hovering over us, and if we are spiritually sensitive we might “feel” an
occasional “drop” of God’s order, goodness, and light.
You
never know when and where God might hover about like a bird. In Mark’s Gospel
we are given the first recorded account of Jesus’ baptism. Because it’s Mark’s
Gospel we don’t get a lot of details. Mark doesn’t add a lot of color
commentary to the story; he just gives the bare essentials. Even here, at a
relatively small river in an obscure outpost of the Roman Empire, God is up to
something.
Mark
writes, “At this time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by
John in the Jordan. The moment he came out of the water, he saw the sky split
open and God’s Spirit, looking like a
dove, come down on him. Along with the Spirit, a voice: ‘You are my Son,
chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.’”
Once
again, it’s not hard to see the writer’s imagination at work here. If the
Messiah of God is being baptized, then God must be up to something, and when
God is up to something, look up. And when we look up, what do we see? Hovering
birds. In this case, a dove.
What
happens immediately after Jesus’ baptism, according to the Gospel accounts, is
just as interesting. Jesus was led out into the wilderness by the same Spirit
that was there at his baptism. Was the Spirit still “looking like a dove”? Why
not? If so, what a great image! Jesus is following the flight of a dove out
into the wilderness.
When
Jesus arrives in the wilderness for a lengthy period of fasting and soul
searching he encounters temptation, personified in the story as Satan. Satan is
an ancient mythological being who seems to spend his time trying to get good
people, like Job and now Jesus, to fail (or fall) in their humanity.
Like
Job, Jesus successfully overcomes all the temptations thrown his way. The
temptations apparently targeted his weak spot, his “dark side,” if that phrase
can be applied to Jesus without sounding blasphemous. Jesus was tempted to use
his power as the Messiah for personal gain, but he overcame them.
Just
as at the beginning of creation, Jesus’ chaos was ordered and his light was
separated from darkness. That’s God’s job description, and that’s what God is
doing with us.
So
here we are, comfortably nesting in this beautiful worship space. A place of order
in the midst of the world’s chaos, goodness in the midst of the world’s evil, light
in the midst of the world’s darkness. And we don’t even have to worry about
bird droppings in here!
Still,
don’t you think God is up to something, hovering over us like a bird, even if
we can’t see what it is?
Because
God is always up to something, and we can’t always see what it is, certainty is not a virtue. There is very
little room for certainty in our spiritual journeys. Confidence, maybe, but not
certainty. Certainty is not an exact science, much less an exact religion.
Certainty needs to be replaced with curiosity and compassion--
--Curiosity,
because we should always be looking up, metaphorically speaking, to see what
God is up to. Compassion, because although we don’t always know what God is up
to, we know what we should be up to.
So,
what’s up, God? That’s a good question, but maybe the better question is,
“What’s up, us?
