A God Nearby

A God Near By

A Reflection

Onyankopon and the Distant Sky

Woven into a story that reflects the twilight surrounding the village, a priest of the African Ashanti tribe relates the decision of the sky god Onyankopon to withdraw from his home on earth to the distant sky because of an old woman’s offensive behavior.  While mashing yams, it is told, she repeatedly struck the god with her pestle.  Annoyed, Onyankopon withdrew to the distant sky, no longer to be bothered by the exasperating behavior of the Ashanti.  The old woman was, understandably, dismayed, and she instructed her children to build a tower so that the sky god might be reached.  Brick by brick the tower rose until only one was needed to reach the top.  When no additional brick could be found, the old woman instructed her children to take the bottom brick and place it at the top. The tower promptly collapsed, killing many people and leaving the distant sky to Onyankopon.

This Ashanti story, amusing as it may seem, raises profound religious issues, and attempts to account for the loneliness and confusion, the loss of meaning and purpose that we often experience in life.  If these conditions persist, according to Ashanti wisdom, surely it can only be because God has withdrawn from us, and is no longer present to guide our steps, and to grant us a meaningful life.

Loss of meaning and purpose; this, it would seem, is the painful enigma that lies behind the Ashanti story.  But it is not a situation unique to the Ashanti.  It has been forcefully and convincingly argued that this painful enigma is central to our culture; that our lives have become devoid of meaning, stripped of purpose; and like the Ashanti we, too, ask, “how can this be?”  And we, too, have our weavers of stories who attempt to answer that question for us.  We call them by different names – philosophers, theologians, and prophets – yet they, like the Ashanti priest, delve into the mystery of the distant sky to fathom this enigma.

The Beyond in Our Midst

The prophet Jeremiah understood something of loneliness and confusion, for his ministry spanned those ill-fated years leading up to the defeat of Jerusalem and the exile of Abraham’s sons and daughters.  And he understood loss of meaning and purpose in life as well, for he watched helplessly as his beloved people withdrew from God; rejecting the divine covenant and God’s gracious presence in their midst.

And Jeremiah surely asked the question of the Ashanti: “how can this be? How is it that life has been stripped of all meaning, purpose, and joy?”  But his response was not that God has withdrawn to the distant sky to avoid the irritating behavior of humankind.  Such a response was not possible for Jeremiah, because he understood God as truly universal: the one, mysterious, wonderful reality that under girds the universe and all its teeming life.  God can no more withdraw to the distant sky than you or I, for God is everywhere present: “Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?” says the Lord.  And again, “Am I a God nearby and not a God far off?”  Is there any place, any time, any heart in which God is not present?  Jeremiah’s response was a clear, resounding: No!

And yet, as Jeremiah saw so clearly, we often live as if God has withdrawn to the distant sky, far from our lives and experience.  But it is we, Jeremiah insists, who withdraw from God, and insulate ourselves from God’s gracious and transforming presence in our lives.  It’s ironic, isn’t it, that while we love to share the stories of God’s presence and activity in the lives of that great cloud of witnesses that precedes us, we don’t want to relive those stories.  We don’t want to be Moses standing awe struck and powerless before a bush that burns yet is not consumed.

We want, more often than not, to be insulated from such life transforming experiences.   We want to control God and thereby limit the disruption God can cause in our ordered, self-satisfied lives.  Just how do we insulate ourselves from the divine presence?  How do we attempt to control God?  We do so in two very important ways.

Firstly, we attempt to wrest control by remaking God in our own image.  That is to say, we reduce God to concepts that we can understand, and make of God something less than the universal, mysterious reality to which our faith gives witness.  We insist, for example, that God must be understood as exclusively male, or exclusively female.  Yet we cannot, or will not, bring ourselves to recognize that God in some mysterious way includes both male and female, fatherhood and motherhood; and yet is more.  With our recreation complete, such a God, reduced to the confines of our prejudices, the limits of our understanding, becomes merely an object of belief, clearly defined, easily understood, controlled.

Will we ever summon the courage, like Jeremiah, to let God be truly universal, to soar above and beyond our most poignant images?  Will we ever summon the courage to acknowledge that our understanding is woefully inadequate, that when we speak of God – the eternal source of all that is – we must use the language of symbol and poetic image.  We weave our tales, we paint portraits using broad, colorful strokes; and we trust that our efforts express something of God.  But when day is done, we know that our tales can never express the full truth that is God.  This truth is far too grand for our minds and spirits.

If, however, we can summon such courage, we will discover a profound security in our faith.  For it is this eternal, uncreated, all-powerful God who has come near to us in Jesus of Nazareth.  It is this universal God that holds each of us in a loving embrace that can never be shaken. And if we can summon such courage, we will find it unnecessary to bind others to a rigidly defined creed.  We will discover that God is more important than our beliefs about God; and that there is room, my friends, ample room to discuss the nuances of our individual portraits painted with broad strokes from our experience and insight.  Dare we hope that the day will come when we claim unity not only with those who share our beliefs about God, but equally with those who share our thirst for God?

Secondly, we insulate ourselves by making God a God ‘out there’ somewhere; the God of the past and of the future, certainly, but not a present reality in our lives.  We choose to emphasize God as beyond the universe – as more than the creation of which God is the source – but in so doing we ignore the presence of God within that creation, within you and me.  God is not only a God far off; God is a God nearby; the beyond in our midst.  And God longs to be present to us, transforming our lives, inspiring joy and courage.  We are each of us, like Moses.  And throughout every day of our lives, even in their most mundane activities, we stand before bushes aflame with God’s presence.  The poem that graces our bulletin this morning expresses this truth with passion and beauty:

Earth’s crammed with heaven and every common bush alive with God. Only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest sit around and pluck blackberries.

It remains for us – in our own time and in our own manner – to discover Jeremiah’s universal God, and to recognize God’s gracious presence in our lives, making each day holy, each activity sacred, each and every individual we meet uniquely valued.  And recognizing that we stand on holy ground perhaps we, too, will take off our shoes.  After our vocal duet, I will share with you the story of one young woman who was transformed by God’s presence; one young woman who discovered “a God nearby.”

Andrea’s Story

“It all began the year I first heard ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ by Simon and Garfunkel.” With this reference Andrea had begun the first entry in her faith journal, a journal she uncovered while rummaging through her attic on a cold and rainy Saturday.  She remembers the journal well and, even though she is embarrassed by the naiveté of certain entries, the sight of it brings a smile to her face. She began this journal during a significant summer in which she had decided to enter graduate school and prepare for a life of ministry in social work.

In the stillness of her attic, with the rain tapping a soothing rhythm on the roof, she ponders her journal, her mind slowly recapturing the thoughts, feelings, and events of that summer so long ago.  Now a minister and mother, she had been a part-time youth director for a small church in her college town, and most of this particular summer was spent preparing for the many youth activities that would conclude with a spiritual retreat.  But she often found herself preoccupied that summer before her senior year, struggling to bring into focus the direction her life would take after college.

“And it was,” she recalls, “quite a struggle.”  She had always taken religion seriously yet had difficulty understanding how it could be woven into her daily life and into her career plans.  On one hand her culture taught her that faith was a private matter, best left to the individual and to be practiced in solitude.  And on the other hand, the God of which she heard in church – a God ‘out there’ somewhere who from time to time reaches into our world – this God seemed too distant, too removed from her life to make any impact there.  The net result of these lessons was the impression, felt more than thought, that God was an object of belief that touched her mind, but not her life.

And her pastor at the time was not much help.  He cared, to be sure, yet if truth be known, he was not comfortable dealing with searching questions of faith, and when forced to respond would take a step back, assume an authoritative air, and instruct the inquirer to pray for the grace to believe more fervently.  Andrea thought it peculiar that, although her pastor had not been there for her, she had loved him and had fond memories of their time together.  He always, for example, saw a religious significance in everything.  Consider the name of the camp to which they made their annual pilgrimage – camp Nacome – which her pastor insisted was an acronym for “Now come unto me,” while in fact she had discovered it to be an Indian word for “frog.”  The same frogs, in fact, that kept her awake at night when the kids had finally fallen asleep.  Out of love, with perhaps a twinge of vengeful spite mixed in, she had never informed him of his mistake.

But during this year, Andrea’s faith began to develop an intimacy, a depth, and a pervasiveness that changed her life.  For one day during retreat, while wandering through the forests of camp Nacome, struggling with her questions of faith, of career, of life, she found herself in the presence of God.  How strange.  She was not meditating; she was not even aware of praying.  She simply recalls reaching a point at which she gave up her struggle and placed herself in God’s care.  “Do with me as you will,” she remembers saying, “I am yours.”

And in that moment, while she had no vision, she will swear to you that she saw the face of God. And in that moment, while she remained in the forests of camp Nacome, she will swear that she was in the presence of eternity.  And in that moment; but there was no moment, for Andrea will swear that time no longer mattered, that she was aware only of wholeness, peace, and joy.  And from that day she began to experience the world differently.  She heard God in the thunder of a rainstorm, she saw God in the graceful lope of the deer, she felt God’s

presence in the touch of her loved ones, and she saw God shining through the eyes of each and every individual she met.  “God,” Andrea recalls, bringing herself back to the present, “God became for me that day more than an object of belief; God became a part of my daily experience.  And it all began the year I first heard “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

“It’s funny,” Andrea muses, “Funny that I should begin my journal with such a mundane thought. ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.’ Just when did I first hear it?  Late ‘69, early ‘70?” Yet even as she began to reconstruct the events of those years to determine the precise date, her spirit penetrated to the heart of the matter, and she interrupted herself in mid-thought. “It doesn’t matter,” she said aloud as if to confirm her insight, “it doesn’t matter because God wasn’t present to me only on that day, God is present to me every day, closer to me than I am to myself.  And I can still experience the world differently, hearing God in the thunder of a rainstorm, feeling God’s presence in the touch of my family, seeing God in the graceful lope… ‘Earth’s crammed with heaven’” she began, remembering her poem, a poem that had moved her deeply when she first read it so many years earlier, and which had become for a time a mantra that she repeated almost daily.  “Yes, she said, it’s so true, ‘Earth’s crammed with heaven and every common bush alive with God. Only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest sit around and pluck blackberries.’”

So, in the stillness of her attic on this cold and rainy Saturday, with tears welling in her eyes, Andrea closed her old and fading journal and placed it gingerly aside. And while God tapped a soothing rhythm on the roof, she wiped her eyes, reverently removed her shoes, and walked quietly downstairs to embrace her family.