Not of This World

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about Me?” (John 18.33-34)

Empire, Supremacy, and Legitimate Rule

This weekend, churches worldwide mark the end of the liturgical year with the feast of Christ the King (also known as “The Reign of Christ”). The official line on its origin holds that Pope Pius XI instituted the feast in 1925 to offset growing secularism among the Faithful, to remind them that Christ is the Sovereign Ruler and Lord of all. But numerous historians have suggested the feast was also born of political expediency. World War One effectively unraveled the last of Europe’s dynastic empires, in one case contributing to the overthrow of a monarch (Russia) and in others (Great Britain, Austro-Hungary, and Germany) reducing royal figures to ceremonial heads of state. As “anointed” rulers of vast lands, they had governed at the behest of their spiritual overseers. This paradigm would be no more. In addition to splintering the Continent into smaller, autonomous nations, the War augured the ascendance of a new world leader, the United States. Although Americans were far less consumed by secularism than their French cousins, both countries passionately upheld the separation of Church and State. There was no mistaking they signaled a wave of the future that would strip Catholic and Protestant prelates of power they’d exercised for centuries.

Pius XI’s declaration of Christ’s sovereignty over all nations and peoples was an easy purchase for Protestant bishops who typically ignored Vatican edicts. Few questioned its theological urgency. Rapid shifts in thought had thrown the balance of religion and politics off-kilter. Christianity’s role as Western civilization’s voice of justice and compassion was failing; God’s kingdom was losing ground. As so often has happened in Church history, there was more to the Feast of Christ the King than met the eye: the assertion of Christ’s Lordship doubled as reassertion of ecclesiastical influence. And its tension between religious and political power is instructive, since the same issues—empire, supremacy, and legitimate rule—bubble up in Sunday’s Gospel. (John 18.33-17) This time, however, belief threatens politics. A new wave of thought is taking hold, one that insists a Higher Authority trumps the power structure cobbled together by an uneasy alliance between Rome and Judaism. A new kingdom—mysteriously described as “not of this world”—is on the rise. And its Herald, the renegade Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, is called to account for allegedly treasonous ideology that could (and ultimately does) overturn the status quo.

Pilate on Trial

Familiarity with the scene—Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus—offers no help with deciphering its riddles. The bluntness of their exchange is deceptive, as each man harbors doubts about about the other’s legitimacy. Jesus is charged with heresy, a matter of no concern to Rome beyond its potential to destabilize the fragile balance of power the Empire has struck with the Temple establishment. Yet the high priests are reluctant to rule against Jesus, fearing a populist backlash that would demonstrate they’ve lost control of their people and render them useless to Rome. With acute cunning, they shift the burden to Pilate, accusing Jesus of professing to be King of the Jews, which qualifies Him as an insurgent worthy of death at Roman hands.

When Jesus stands before him, Pilate doesn't mince words. “Are you the King of the Jews?” he asks, to which Jesus responds, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about Me?” (v33-34) With that, the tables turn. Jesus puts Pilate on trial. Has the Roman summoned Him because he wonders if Jesus is indeed the King of the Jews? (This possibility isn’t lost on either of them, since Pilate’s boss is also a self-avowed divine monarch.) Or is this merely a pro forma hearing to get to the bottom of baseless gossip? Neither option pleases Pilate. Genuine curiosity about Jesus’s identity would belie his faith in Caesar; investigating religious rumors would make him a puppet of the Temple elite. So Pilate deftly distances himself from the situation, admitting, “I’m not a Jew. I shouldn’t be expected to understand this stuff.”

The deflection opens the door for Jesus to assert divine authority. “My kingdom is not from this world,” He says. With daring sarcasm that brings a smile to the alert reader’s face, Jesus validates His otherworldly claim: “If my kingdom were from this world, My followers would be fighting to keep Me from being handed over to the Jews.” (v36) Since this obviously isn’t happening, the argument makes sense to Pilate. Still, its elusive nature doesn’t settle the matter. “So are you a king?” he asks again, dropping the Jewish reference. Jesus replies, “You say I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (v37; emphasis added)

Power to Seek the Truth

The Feast of Christ the King invites us to witness the truth of Christ’s Lordship—to embrace faith in a divine kingdom that supersedes human authority. Yet accepting this belief cannot happen by taking prelates and pastors’ word for it. We can only discover the truth by listening to Christ’s voice. And I’m persuaded this realization springs from the first question Jesus puts to Pilate: “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about Me?”

Our confidence that Christ reigns supreme begins with profoundly personal questions about Who Jesus really is—and how much real power we’re willing to cede to His Lordship. As it was in Pilate’s court, so it is in our lives. Faith in Christ’s kingdom demands humility born of understanding its mysteries can never be fully understood. It’s impossible to equate Christ’s sovereign rule with earthly powers, as the kingdom of God seeks no earthly power; it summons authority by granting us power to seek the truth of Who God and Jesus really are, who we really are, and the roles we play in a kingdom unlike any ever known. Pilate’s small-mindedness is exposed in his dismissal of Jesus’s challenge. He wants an admission of power that has nothing to do with the truth of Christ’s kingdom. Clearly, he’s not listening. And we benefit from his deafness, because it opens our minds to recognize the truth of Christ’s Lordship can never be told. To experience its majesty, it must be heard. Amid all the regal adjectives tossed around in this weekend’s liturgies, hymns, and sermons, I trust we’ll hear the voice of Jesus. Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about Me?

Seen through the prism of Pilate’s interrogation, the truth of Christ’s Lordship emerges as thing that cannot be told. It must be heard to be understood.

Too Much

“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell.” (Mark 9.43)

Centipede

I left college brimming with lofty ambitions and no earthly idea how to make them happen. I kept falling into low-paying positions—private high school English teacher, church music director, freelance movie critic, among others—that required taking odd jobs to stay afloat. After writing a Christmas pageant for my church, a gospel theater troupe engaged me to write a contemporary musical they could produce in Los Angeles and hopefully tour the country performing. They gave me the premise: three talented sisters get famous singing for their local congregation and must deal with tensions between faithfulness and worldly success. I thought it smacked a little too much of Dreamgirls. (The L.A. Times critic agreed in his unflattering review). But it was good money. So I threw myself into cranking out a script worth every cent I’d been paid. In my original version, every imaginable gospel stereotype turned up to, as the Bard put it, “strut his hour upon the stage.”

As we began assembling scenes we’d rehearsed separately, it was all too apparent I’d written too much by half. The first complete run-through timed out at nearly four hours. The producer and director sat down with me to discuss drastic cuts needed to trim the show’s length. They gently assured me they loved everything I’d written. Yet as good as it was, it wasn’t good enough to fasten an audience to its seats until midnight. “Folks will start walking out at 10:30 and by the time it’s over there won’t be a soul in the place,” the producer said, reminding me one or two nights of that would hasten the show’s untimely end. The problem was, I’d fallen in love with every character, every scene and song, every point I wanted the play to make. 

Once it became clear I would push back on the cuts they suggested, the director threw up his hands. “If you had a baby that with 10 arms and legs, would you force it live like a centipede? Or would you have its extra limbs removed so it could succeed?” he asked. Then he said, “These kids have worked really hard to get this play up on its feet. Are you ready to destroy that just so you can hang on to ideas you love so much?” I took out my red pen on the spot and hacked away, sadly—yet firmly—accepting losses that, not five minutes before, seemed too terrible to contemplate. Despite the Times’ reservations, The High Life was hit in L.A. and enjoyed a profitable East Coast tour that helped pay my rent for a couple of years.

Faith Suicide

Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 9.38-50) resounds with echoes of my backstage episode. The disciples come to Jesus in alarm. Someone outside Jesus’s tight-knit circle has been touched by the gospel flame and is now working wonders in His name. The disciples try to stop the impostor, no doubt believing Jesus will appreciate their efforts to control His message. But Jesus’s response surprises them. Rather than acknowledge their good intentions, He praises the outsider for reaching people He might never meet. “No one who does a deed of power in My name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me,” Jesus explains. “Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives a you cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.” (Mark 9.39-41) In other words, this person the disciples are so eager to shut down is a true friend—a partner whose efforts advance Christ’s mission. Instead of taking offense at him, they should be grateful and support him!

The warning that arises from this situation is issued not to the outsider, but to the insiders. In attempting to control Christ’s message and discredit the witness of another, they put the outsider’s faith at risk. “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in Me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea,” Jesus says. (v43) To ancient minds, the Sea is the most fearsome, deadly place there is. To die at sea is to be lost forever, completely erased from memory, unburied, leaving no proof you existed. Intentionally throwing oneself into the Sea is utter madness. Yet Jesus tells us it’s by far a saner alternative than what we do to ourselves when we contest another Christian's witness. Believers whose faith doesn’t fully square with our own are not against us. They’re for us. And when we try to censure and obstruct their belief, we end up committing a thing worse than faith suicide. Better we should vanish entirely than cause them to stumble, Jesus says. The question concealed in His statement asks us, Are we willing to destroy others just so we can hang on to ideas we love? It’s a big question we all have to answer.

The Trash Heap

As dramatic as this suicidal image is, Jesus isn’t content to stop there. He goes on to summon a series of shocking visuals that remind me of the director’s centipede analogy. When we answer Christ’s call and our faith begins to grow it assumes a life of its own. We easily become fond of certain characteristics, behaviors, and rituals that support the points we want to make with our lives. If we’re not keenly aware of the shape our faith takes, it can become grotesquely deformed and inept. Too much of a good thing is never good. “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell,” Jesus advises in verse 43. He says the same of clumsy feet and shortsighted eyes that result in tripping over our good intentions. Better to be lame or blind than land in hell, Jesus says.

The mere mention of “hell” makes a lot of people uncomfortable—which is exactly what Jesus means to do. If we’re to fully appreciate what He’s saying, we have to account for His terminology. Jesus uses Jewish slang here, a metaphorical reference to Gehenna, a valley southwest of Jerusalem where residents burn their rubbish. It’s a foul, suffocating, constantly smoldering trash heap—the most oppressive of all places to live, and hence a common term first-century Jews used to imagine eternal punishment for evildoing. Like drowning, it is a fate worse than death. And we can’t escape Jesus’s implications of what comes of our determination to hang onto ideas and behaviors that cause harm to others and us. It’s not our deficits that send us to the trash heap. It’s our insistence on placing too much value on debilitating ideas and practices that turn us into centipedes stumbling over our faith and tripping up other sincere believers. We mean well, but it’s too much.

Sunday’s Gospel expects us to examine how we live out our faith, to recognize detriments we create by refusing to let go of notions that create divisions and undermine the “little ones” Jesus loves so dearly. It’s not our show. God, our Producer, and Jesus, our Director, warn us that assuming everything we hold dear is vital to their story is a deadly proposition. Our brothers and sisters will suffer. We will suffer. Perhaps it’s time for all of us to reach for our red pens, prayerfully evaluate how much is too much, and start hacking away—not for our sake, but to protect those who stand with us on the Lord’s side, whether we agree with them or not.

Stubbornly hanging on to personal beliefs and philosophies can turn us into faith centipedes. We easily wind up tripping over ourselves and, worse still, risk causing other believers to stumble.

Be Opened

Then looking up to heaven, Jesus sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. (Mark 7.34-35)

Fragmented

One of the worst sicknesses I’ve ever endured occurred a few years ago, when I contracted a sinus infection that spread to my left inner ear. Pressure built up behind my eardrum, creating unbearable pain that left me in yowling in agony. I was stranded in a Dallas hotel, in the care of a local physician who called on me once a day for nearly a week and room service staff who brought me juice to wash down an arsenal of high-power antibiotics and painkillers. Before the doctor would release me to fly back to Chicago, he wanted to be certain the infection hadn’t spread to my right ear and hinted it might also affect brain tissue. Although my partner, Walt, called constantly, I was totally alone, in a strange place, facing the possibility of being hospitalized far from home. Inability to hear in my left ear compounded my sense of isolation. I lay there, in insufferable pain, helpless, contemplating terrible outcomes. Deafness. Brain damage. Very possibly waiting for Walt to get to me while strangers herded me through the ER and hospital admissions.

My condition’s most awful aspect, however, was how I sounded to myself when I spoke. The voice that came out of my mouth no longer matched the one in my head. It seemed to belong to someone else and, after a while I became unsure I could trust it. (This was partly due to the haze of medication, I’m sure.) But as my condition dragged on, I began to feel less and less in control of my situation. There was the Tim in dire pain and the Tim trying to put words around his pain, and they weren’t the same Tim. I was fragmented.

Astounded Beyond Measure

The deaf man in Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 7.24-37) is in a similar situation. Inability to hear has impeded his ability to speak clearly. The voice behind his clogged ears bears little resemblance to the one he utters. My brief experience with his type of affliction drives home how fragmented his daily existence must be. Obviously his neighbors feel for him. When Jesus passes through their region, they bring their deaf friend to Him, begging Him to touch the man. What happens next is most irregular. Rather than curing the deaf man on the spot, Jesus pulls him to the side, out of the crowd’s sight. As though diagnosing his illness, Jesus puts His fingers in the man’s ears, spits—an odd gesture Mark doesn’t explain—and touches the man’s tongue. He looks up to heaven, lets go a deep sigh (we’re not sure what to make of that, either), and, in the man’s native Aramaic, Jesus says, “Ephphatha,” or, “Be opened.” Immediately, the obstructions in the man’s ears dissolve, his tongue is released, and he’s able to speak plainly. All of the disjointed pieces inside his head come together. Suddenly being able to hear again is a miracle all its own. But being able to hear himself—having his speech reunited with his inner voice—is what makes him whole.

Even more than that, the deaf man’s restored speech brings healing to his entire community. Family, friends, and neighbors who couldn’t understand him now hear him clearly. They no longer have to compensate for his disability. They’re free from the guesswork and stress of parsing his inarticulate self-expression. Freeing the man’s ability to hear and speak is how Jesus makes the community whole. One whom they’d lost has been returned. And that miracle loosens their tongues. Jesus orders them not to tell anyone about the miracle, but they can’t keep quiet. Verses 36 and 37 read, “The more He ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.'” Astounded beyond measure—I so love that! It is exactly what happens when we approach Christ on others’ behalf. What Jesus does for them somehow spills over into us. We can’t possibly contain ourselves, because the wholeness Christ imparts to others inevitably makes us whole as well. We can’t help ourselves from proclaiming, “He has done everything well!”

Voluntary Deaf-Mutes

In the wake of the US political conventions, I’ve also been astounded beyond measure—though not in the good way witnessed in Mark. I’ve been thoroughly astonished, in some cases disgusted, by the prevalence of clogged ears and twisted tongues in our community. From the highest podiums of power to running commentaries flooding social networks, we are encompassed with people whose hearing and speech are severely hampered. Their ears are clogged with inflammatory rhetoric that impedes their ability to express themselves clearly and effectively. Hearing and reading what they say, I think, “Surely that’s not what they believe.” Surely their inner voices cry out for an end to poverty, violence, and injustice. Surely they hear a booming call for righteousness in the depths of their being—a resounding declaration that callous indifference for the least among us must cease. Surely something within them wants to convey concern for others beyond themselves. But the deafening roar of tyrants and charlatans has robbed their freedom to express their faith and humanity in understandable ways. And, all contrary evidence aside, I must believe this is true, lest my ears also become infected and clogged, lest my own speech also becomes harsh and nonsensical, lest I too become a burden to my community, a liability that makes those I live with less than whole.

At the same time, I’m convinced the political deafness and jabber polluting current discourse are merely magnified symptoms—an outbreak, if you will—of a more invidious contagion. We no longer care to listen to one another, let alone the voice of God that calls to us from deep within. We’re no longer concerned about what we say, let alone how we say it. We have become a culture of voluntary deaf-mutes, purposefully closing our ears to anything we don’t want to hear and disregarding the confusion and harm our words create.

We’re becoming increasingly fragmented as people, with the holy person inside us bearing little resemblance to the vain, self-serving one portrayed in our words. We need to find Jesus and beg Him to touch us. We need Him to diagnose our sickness, penetrating the garbage cluttering our ears with His pristine fingers, loosening our twisted tongues with His mighty hand. We need Him to speak to us in language we understand, commanding us to be opened. When our ability to hear and speak clearly is restored, we will be made whole. Our communities will be made whole. Peace, justice, and compassion will be restored. We will be astounded beyond measure and say, “He has done everything well!”

Lord Jesus, if ever we needed healing it’s now. We beg You, come to us, pull us aside, lay Your hand on us, and command us to be opened. Amen.

We have become a culture plagued by clogged ears and slurred speech. We need Christ's healing to be made whole.

Use Protection

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. (Ephesians 6.10-11)

Different Dynamics

Early in the rollerblading craze, Walt and I rushed out to our local Sport Mart and spent a small fortune on gear: skates, helmets, elbow and kneepads. We got home and suited up, laughing at how we looked like gladiators. Then we stored our fancy equipment on a closet shelf, where it sat for several months, waiting for us to get the nerve to take to the streets. One spring afternoon, I came home to find Walt in a terrible state. His arms and legs were bruised and scraped up and covered in Band-Aids. I spotted his rollerblades and said, “You didn’t wear protection, did you?” “Only the helmet,” he replied. “I didn’t like how that other stuff looked on me.” My response: “And just look at you now!”

In Walt’s defense, he’s an amazing four-wheeled skater—a real hotshot on a rink floor. It seemed logical that he’d adapt to inline skating with such ease that the likelihood of falling would be practically nil. But, as he learned, that wasn’t the case. The dynamics of rollerblading aren’t the same as those of old-fashioned skates. In many ways, they’re the opposite, as they require a different sense of balance to maneuver stops and turns. What’s more, the uneven surfaces of city streets require a heightened awareness of the ground one travels. Dodging and darting through traffic and other bikers and skaters complicates things. Until you develop a proper sense of equilibrium to react quickly, rollerblading can be a treacherous endeavor. And—as Walt learned on his maiden voyage—once you figure out you’re improperly equipped, you still have to make your way back. The worst of his spills happened during his retreat, he told me. Finally, he gave up, removed his skates, and walked home in sock feet. “I felt like a fool,” he said. It took some time for him to give rollerblading another try and eventually he got the hang of it. But after that first debacle, I’ve never seen him head out for a leisurely cruise along the lakefront without his full armor. When I read Ephesians’ admonition to use all the protection available to us, I think of Walt.

Danger in the Air

“Be strong in the Lord and the strength of His power,” the Ephesians writer says, urging us to “put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” (Ephesians 6.10-11) It’s an inside-outside strategy. Our strength and power come from within, in our confidence that God is at work in us, daily renewing our faith in new mercies and understanding. Meanwhile, we live in a world of uncertainty, where ground we travel is uneven and navigating our way through life requires a great deal of agility. This hard for us to learn, particularly when we leave ready-made Christianity—where faith is expressed in the polished confines of church sanctuaries—for the mean streets of real life. Following Christ in true discipleship is to calling oneself a “Christian” what inline skating in urban environments is to easily gliding in circles on a roller rink. The dynamics and demands are totally different. The risks are not the same. And if we’re to pursue the freedoms and joys that accompany discipleship, we must use protection—no matter how silly we may look when we’re geared up in the whole armor of God. Trying to skate along without it ultimately results in injuries that cause real pain and make us look worse than we would if we’d taken proper precautions. Undertaking this endeavor without protection is why so many of us falter and end up walking home in sock feet, feeling foolish and smarting wounds we could have avoided.

We need protection not because of any deficiency within ourselves, but because of the atmosphere we live in. The writer reminds us, “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Danger is in the air. And one must wonder at the prophetic import of this observation for our day and time, when poisonous hatred and lies literally fill the air, borne on the wings of digital hysteria and fear. More than ever, we must protect ourselves against free-flying evil, taking Ephesians’ prescriptive armor to heart. If we’re to stand—if we’re to maintain our balance and make progress against the onslaught of deceit and negativity whirling about us—we must be properly equipped. In verses 14-17 we read, “Fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

As genuine disciples, we never travel without first doing an equipment check: truth to defend against lies, righteousness against injustice, peace against violence and confusion, faith against cynicism, salvation against surrender, and the Spirit revealed in God’s promises against human reasoning and hopelessness. Danger is in the air. We must guard against its treachery. And as we travel, we’re vividly aware that God’s armor is meant for our protection. It is not weaponry designed to wound or intimidate those around us. When we misuse spiritual protection to inflict pain we join ranks with powers that pollute the atmosphere. We make ourselves vulnerable to the very evils Ephesians teaches us to guard against.

Stand

In Galatians 5.7-8, Paul chides believers actively engaged in conflicts with combative forces attempting to denigrate their faith. “You were running well,” he writes. “Who prevented you from obeying the truth? Such persuasion does not come from the One Who calls you.” Discipleship is an arduous quest to bring truth to light—or light to truth. The strength within us is evidenced in our ability to withstand the dangers and evil in the air, to keep our balance at all times, and journey ahead, undaunted by uneven ground and conflicts we encounter. When those around us succumb to airborne forces attempting to defeat our faith, we remember the Gospel needs no defense. It is we who must be protected. We are equipped with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Spirit made alive and known to us in God’s Word. Be strong in the Lord and the strength of God’s power. Stand. We’ve been given all the protection we need. Use it.

We travel in an atmosphere of airborne dangers; Ephesians teaches us how to protect ourselves against lies, insults, and injuries.

In Flux

The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1.2)

Stagecraft

No other Bible story matches Genesis’s first creation narrative for sheer theatricality. The curtains part on what appears to be a barren stage cloaked in impenetrable, silent night. As our eyes adjust, we detect something is there, yet we’re not quite sure what it is. We sit in the darkness for what seems like an eternity—actually, for what is an eternity—staring into the blackness, feeling the gravitational pull of a shapeless void at center stage.

Going in, we know that this is a one-Person performance piece. We’ve read the reviews, seen pictures based on the drama, and many of us can quote much of the script from memory. So suspense is high as we await God’s spectacular entrance on the scene. The theater buffs among us are pitched with excitement, speculating what sort of stagecraft will accompany God’s arrival. Will there be a blinding bolt of light at God’s command, after which the Creator comes into full view? Will a tremulous rumble swell beneath our feet, followed by the Maker’s revealed presence? Will God’s voice roar out of the night, setting off a rapid chain of events that summons everything that is into being?

In what will become God’s chief characteristic, this drama opens by subverting every expectation. Before the Creator arrives, a wind sweeps over the stage. We hear the ripple and slap of water rising and curling into waves. Still unable to see, we perceive the stage is engulfed in an endless sea. It’s the pregnant medium out of which the entirety of Creation will rise in obedience to God’s voice. Then we hear the Creator call for light. The inky vacuum splits in two and once our eyes adjust to the bright blaze of day, we surmise that we’re watching the dawn of time. Thereafter, the drama unfolds, as God aptly and adroitly assumes an off-stage role via the narrative device ancient dramatists called deus ex machina: the introduction of divine, supernatural power to shape and propel our story.

Movement

Regardless how we view Genesis’s creation accounts—as myth, metaphor, miracle, or all of the above—we should own them as the first act in our dramas, not only on the impersonal, epic scale of time and space, but also as the origin of our highly personal, individualized, and intimate relationships with God. As such, we’re compelled to note how God initiates the sacred communion we share. Before God speaks, appears, or commences creation, God moves. God exhales divine breath across the empty waters, brushing their surface with movement. From there on, God is constantly in flux—walking with us in mutual fellowship, seeking us out of our shame and disarray, going before us to light our way, meeting us at our point of need, and rising above us to lead us to higher summits of existence. Movement is how God maintains our equilibrium and that of the world we inhabit. As individuals and communities, we are in constant flux. The human condition is in flux. All of Nature is in flux. And God is in flux.

We often ask God to move on our behalf, as though God were a sedentary monarch who must be pried from his/her throne. Yet that image has no reality in Scripture. Psalm 46.1-3 tells us, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.” While we move through lives of perpetual change and upheaval, God is very present, moving with us. It is in God’s nature to keep moving; that’s the first thing we discover about God and, alas, it’s often the first thing we forget. Thus, when we’re tossed about, when the ground beneath us gives way, when life’s seas threaten to swallow us alive, we have no cause to fear. God is moving in the midst of our uncertainty and terror, because God moves with us. We remain in flux together.

An Altar in the World

Barbara Brown Taylor, one of America’s most highly esteemed preachers, speaks of making “an altar in the world,” i.e., heightening our sensitivity to God’s movement around us. Where do we see God move? The big answer, of course, is “everywhere.” But I don’t think that gets us very close to appreciating the extent of God’s movement. Sure, God moves in Nature—in seasonal transitions, in thunderheads gathering on the horizon, in the majestic eagle soaring overhead and the annoying housefly that lights on our table. Yet human ego and self-sufficiency habitually weaken our ability to see and feel God’s movement in others and ourselves.

God moves in the friendly smiles of strangers, in the surprising embraces of people we presume to hold us in low regard, in the sorrow that washes over us when witnessing another's suffering, in mundane touches and voices and exchanged glances that fill our days. God arrives on the scene in flux. God shapes Nature, our world, and us to be in flux. “God is not far from each one of us,” Paul declares to the Athenians, quoting one of their own poets to remind them, “For ‘In God we live and move and have our being.’” (Acts 17.27-28) We live and move in God because God lives and moves in, around, and through us. Next time, just before asking God to move for us, perhaps we should pause long enough to see God is already, constantly moving wherever we look.

God arrives on the scene in flux and remains in constant movement wherever we look.