This sermon was given on
Sunday, 20 October 2013, at the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard, by Emily Garcia, the Kellogg Fellow. The readings
for the day on which the sermon is based can be found here.
As many of you already
know, I teach Sunday school at an Episcopal church in Charlestown. My little kids always ask a lot
of good questions. A few weeks ago I was fielding questions on the story of
Creation. We had just dealt with the problem of frogs, who are both swimming
and walking creatures and were therefore possibly created over the course of
two days—when a spunky three-year-old raised her hand. “Miss Emily, I have a
question toooo!” Fidgeting in her seat she said, “Well—why—why are we here?” Fearing
I might have a big existential question on my hands, I clarified: “. . . In
church?” “Yes!” she said. “Why do we do
this?”
That’s a good question!
Why are we in church? Why do we come
to church?
Why do YOU come to
church? I come to church because I
work here, but I’m sure there are other reasons too.
Sitting there on my
kindergarten carpet square, I fumbled through my options, calculating how long
it would take to explain the word “sanctification” to a three-year-old. In the
end, as usual, I returned to my Evangelical childhood for the best answer. I
told my student: “I think we come to church because we need to know who God is,
and we need to know what to say about it.”
We need to know who God
is. And we need to know what to say.
There are many good
reasons why we come to church; they change week to week or season to season in
our lives. But I do think these are two of the simplest and most constant
reasons, repeated in the Scriptures and in almost every liturgy in the Book of
Common Prayer. We need to know who God is, and we need to know what to say.
Maybe I shouldn’t say
“knowing God”—that makes it seem like a discrete piece of information. Better
to say, “coming to know God,” or “seeing what God reveals of God’s self to us,”
or “re-learning and re-learning and re-learning who God is.” In the same way
that we grow out of our five-year-old understanding of the world into a more
complex twenty-year-old and sixty-year-old understanding of the world, so our
understanding of God changes as we grow.
And maybe I shouldn’t say
that WE have to learn who God is, as if God were simply an object of our
attention, like the meter in a sonnet or a type of amoeba. We know who God is
not by studying him, but by wrestling with him—and God wrestles back. God is
constantly at work in us, providing us with many, often difficult—often
awkward, often uncomfortable—opportunities to know him. Some of these leave us
wounded. But these are places where we can learn who God is.
Scholar and commentator
Gerhard von Rad [in his Biblical Interpretation in Preaching] says that although this story of Jacob has “narrative elements
of great antiquity,” probably part of a local cultic tradition, in its place in
the book of Genesis and the story of Jacob, it is actually a story about Israel’s and
our relationship to God. He says, “She [Israel] has set forth her
relationship to God in the picture of that nocturnal struggle with the God who
feigns a frightful mien yet promises an ultimate bestowal of blessing. In the
vessel of that [more ancient] story, Israel is letting us see something of her
experience with God, an actual experience of her being guided by him.” Genesis
explains the name “Israel”
as a name for a person who has striven with God and prevailed, but actually the
etymology of “Israel”
breaks into the phrase “GOD strives.” We strive, God strive with us. This is
how we know him.
We wrestle with God in
prayer, too, like the widow in Luke’s parable. The unjust judge couldn’t stand
being bothered by this persistent widow, full of moxie, but I think God
rejoices in persistence. Luke says the parable is about praying always, and not
losing heart. Surely this is another way that we come to know God, from
constant conversation with him.
We need to know who God
is, and we learn from wrestling, we learn from prayer, and we learn from the
holy mystery of Communion at the altar, and from the mystery of communion with
each other, God revealing himself in our discussions, disagreements, differing
experiences. Being a Christian alone isn’t FULLY being a Christian, as we need
to whole body of Christ to help us learn who God is.
So we come to Church
because we need to know who God is.
And we need to know what
to say. Knowing God and being silent is not an option, as we hear in this
letter to Timothy, as well as throughout our own Book of Common Prayer.
In today’s Collect, we
prayed, “God, please preserve the works of your mercy, SO THAT we can persevere
with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name.” The letter to Timothy
says that all Scripture is inspired and is therefore useful—for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training
in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” In case Timothy didn’t
get it, Paul made it simple: Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the
time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the
utmost patience in teaching.” In our confession of sin
we ask God to forgive us “so that we may delight in your will, and walk in your
ways—to the glory of your name.” In the collect for
Purity, which we hear every Sunday, we ask God to cleanse the thoughts of our
hearts, so that we “may worthily
magnify your holy Name.” The older definition of
“magnify” means to extol, to lift up, to bring respect or esteem to something.
But I also like the more modern literal meaning—“magnify” like a magnifying
glass. To magnify God’s holy Name makes me think that I should look at it very
closely, that I should make it so big as to be comprehensible to me and others.
So:
Confession of God’s name, training in righteousness, proclaim the message in
favorable and unfavorable times, be patient in teaching, glorify God’s name,
magnify God’s holy name. It
sounds like we’re supposed to DO something with this knowledge of God that
we’ve got! We need to know who God is, and then,
we need to know what to say.
Don’t worry, I’m not
gonna preach about converting all the heathen, or starting our own angry talk
show about what God wants for America. I don’t find either of those options to
be at all necessary or at all compelling.
But
I do think we are supposed to magnify God’s holy name. I do believe that
through Scripture and the community of the church, “every person who belongs to
God can be proficient, and equipped for every good work.”
This
is necessary for the world because there are people who are in despair and need
to know that there can be hope and meaning in life; there are people who are
hurt and need to know that God loves them, that we love them; there are people
who are vulnerable and need to be taken care of; there are people who need to
be rebuked, for their cruel or harmful behavior; there are those who simply
need to be encouraged in the hard work they do in the world. People need to
know God’s Holy Name, because God’s Holy Name is Love.
And praise God, there are
many ways to show the world who God is. I happen to be one of those people who
likes to talk about God all the time, but this is just one way. We can speak God’s name
over and over again throughout the day without ever saying it aloud.
When we
gently, tactfully defend someone who’s being gossiped about.
When we play devil’s
advocate to a potentially harmful philosophy or viewpoint.
When we give to the
homeless, the hungry, or to anyone in need.
When we mention that we
go to Church—and that we like it.
When we bow in our heads
in a short silent prayer before we eat in a public place.
When we show ourselves to
be competent intelligent academics and then casually mention that we’re also
Christians.
When we tell a friend
that we’ll be praying for them.
When we have a
respectful, curious, attentive conversation about religion with anyone,
regardless of what they do or do not believe.
When we are loving,
joyful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, or self-controlled—when we show
these fruits of the Spirit, we are magnifying God’s Holy Name.
Because the “glory of
God’s name” is not the institution of the church (although that’s pretty cool)—the
glory of God’s name is love. All kinds of love and compassion manifested in all
different kinds of ways, inside and outside the Church.
This is why we come to
Church. We need to know who God is, and we need to know what to say.
