You might remember during a previous financial crisis (there’s always a financial crisis), the Ford Motor Company was in serious trouble and in danger of going bankrupt. It took a tax-payer bailout to save the company. They asked an executive what happened and he answered, “We become obsessed with making money. We forgot we were about making cars.” Obviously the company needed to make money to stay in existence but the only way that was going to happen was if they made good cars. Keeping focus on what they were really all about was the only way they could stay in business. We need to make sure we are clear about our focus, about what we are all about, as we gather here on a Sunday. What is most important is not instruction of right living. The story Jesus tells in the gospel about “taking the lower place” is just good advice without the proper focus. What is most important is not about improving society. Care for the “poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” might be a good thing but it is not fundamental. What is most important is not having the proper values. Being committed to peace and justice, to a respect for life, to a society free of racism and hatred certainly is a necessity but not our starting point. What is most important is certainly not how we worship, how the church is structured, being good stewards. All of these things that we ordinarily talk about and work toward matter because they flow out of, are consequences of, what is most important. The reason we are here, what is most important, is God. The beating heart of faith is not right behavior or even right belief but right relationship. The great African Bishop, St. Augustine put it: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.” It’s all about God.
The reality is, however, that we blithely sail through life seldom noticing the presence of God. We go to work, go to school, watch TV, work out, share with friends, send e-mails, write checks, talk on the phone, take out the garbage without once thinking about God. Even for us who are church goers God serves as almost background noise, like a movie sound track we know is there but don’t really notice. If it’s all about God why does there seems to be something of a divine absence? Is God ghosting us? Or maybe we are ghosting God? Since the whole point of being alive is to connect with God we need to wake up to what really matters.
The problem comes, and maybe that is why we usually focus on other stuff , in that God is too big to wrap our minds around. All powerful – that’s not us. All knowing – nope. All good – hah! Since God is beyond our ken we tend to think about something else – football scores, pasta recipes, traffic problems — stuff we understand. But the epistle for today tells us God is not beyond us. God is not, according to the author: “that which could not be touched, blazing fire and gloomy darkness and storm and a trumpet blast.” On the contrary, God is approachable, accessible. According to the epistle we have a window to see into God, a key to unlock the mystery of God, an avenue to come to meet God: namely, Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant. God is what it’s all about and Jesus is the way to log in using God’s password: et cum spiritu tuo.
Since Jesus is truly a human being, like us in all things but sin, we look to him as guide to help us develop that relationship, that intimacy with God that he had. The first thing we learn when we look at Jesus: to be with God we need silence. When you pick up the Gospels and read them straight through you are struck by how often Jesus went off by himself to pray. He needed silence to hear the voice of God. We live in an age of surround-sound: radios playing, blogs broadcasting, ear-buds plugged in, Alexa, Spotify, Sirius, Pandora. The minute we step in the house the TV goes on. Even the two minute ride in the elevator has music. In order to connect with God we have to carve out a quiet time when we can stop the noise and listen to the silence. In the still, small voice God speaks to our hearts.
Jesus also shows us we meet God in beauty. Look at the lilies of the field, he said. Look at the birds in the air. As the Good Shepherd he would lead us to green pastures. We get so obsessed with doing things, with accomplishing tasks, with getting the job done that we don’t stop and smell the roses. We can encounter God in this beautiful world fashioned by the divine fingers. At the moment of creation God looked at all that is and said, “That’s good.” Relishing that goodness will connect us with the maker.
Jesus told us that we meet God when we reach out to those who are in need. Whatsoever you do for the least, that you do for me, he said. Extending a hand to help someone gives us a direct connection with God. As Mother Teresa once said, “I know I am touching the living body of Christ in the broken bodies of the hungry and the suffering.”
Finally, and most centrally, Jesus tells us we meet God in love. God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God in them. In our homes, our families, our friends we are given an opportunity through love to look beyond the screen of time and peer into eternity. Love does not merely make the world go round but also rockets us out of this world into the eternal now. As a song in Les Miz put it, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” All we need do is take a step back and with the eyes of faith we see in those we love the very presence of God. Since it’s all about love, it’s all about God.
