Like Oysters Explaining Ballerinas

"Like Oysters Explaining Ballerinas"

Isaiah 55:8-9

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

nor are your ways my ways.

This is the word of the Lord.

But as the heavens are high above the earth,

so are my ways high above your ways

and my thoughts above your thoughts.  (Revised English Bible)

In her essay, "Waltzing with the God of Chaos", the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor wrote:

I am so reluctant to talk about God and what God thinks and how God acts.  I have such a red flag there.  I go there, but when I do, I'm very reminded of Robert Capon saying, (in talking about God) we're like oysters trying to explain ballerinas.

I talked with my son, Ryan, about his faith this weekend and found this is one of the things that bugs him the most—people speaking for God, people who say they know God's mind, what God thinks, how God feels about specific issues and situations in the world.  To Ryan it is the height of arrogance to say you know what God thinks.  And I totally agree.

So, how can I talk about God without falling into that same arrogance?  How can I tell you who God is and who God is not?  I'm in this sermon series about what it is that gives life meaning, and I firmly believe our belief in God infuses life with meaning.  But how do I say that without totally misleading you about God?  It's a fearful thing to stand before you and speak with assurance and confidence about the person of God, and hope I'm not totally messing up.  I feel that way more and more as I have progressed into my 37 years of ministry.  I think when I was younger, I was much more arrogant and willing to tell people exactly what God was like and what God thought.

So this is going to be a tough message, and as I sat writing it at the end of this week, I wasn't sure where I was going with it.  It's a weird mindset to be writing a sermon in which I wanted to tell you God is the best one to give your life meaning, but, at the same time, according to this scripture, realizing how fundamentally different God is from us in terms of thinking and acting.

I was talking with a woman from another church one time.  She was trying to get to California before her grandmother died.  A bunch of crazy events happened that conspired against her and she didn't get to make the trip.  She even ended up missing her grandmother's funeral.  She said, "Well, God had a plan and getting out to California just wasn't his plan.  God must have something else in mind for me."

I replied, "And maybe not getting to California had nothing to do with God at all.  It was just a bunch of sorry events and circumstances that got in your way."

Now before you chastise me for being very unpastoral, and having a terrible bedside manor with this woman, or selling God short and not defending God like I should, let's look at the mindset that informed our responses to her situation.  Because it is the same mindset:  Neither of us know what God is thinking, what God is up to, and so we must try and surmise what it is we think God is thinking.

The woman did not know what God was intending when she was unable to get to California.  Maybe God was intending something.  Maybe not.  But in order for the woman to make sense of her situation, she had to give God the benefit of the doubt—God had some intention for her, she just did not know what that was.  God was up to something.  She was unable to figure out what that something was.  But it was something.  It was not just nothing.  All she had to do was figure out what God was thinking.  Then she would be at peace with what happened.

My response to the woman was different, but from the same mindset.  I am unwilling to blame God for everything that happens.  Whether she realized it or not, this woman was blaming God for not getting her to California.  She wanted God to defend himself, and make his reasons clear.  I was not willing to go that far.  I imagined God "up there" looking down, thinking, "Look, lady, it is not my fault you did not have enough money for the plane fare.  Maybe you should not have bought that new laptop that left you short of money.  Do not ask me what I was thinking; what were you thinking?  Where are your priorities?"

I thought that in my head.  But I did not say it to the woman.  Maybe I should have.  Maybe I should have said something like, "Look, the problem is not with God or what you think God is thinking or not thinking in terms of your situation.  The problem is your screwed up thinking—your screwed up theology—of who you think God is, and how you think God should act.  You have all kinds of messed up expectations about that."  But I didn't say that out loud.  Are you feeling better about my pastoral abilities, now?

A lot of people think they know what God should be thinking.  A lot of people think they know how God should be acting in certain situations.  A lot of people think they know the ways of God, or at least what they should be.

But not according to God's statement here in Isaiah:  "For my thoughts are not your thoughts…"  The word "your" there is plural, which means all of you.  If God was a southerner, it would read something like: "For my thoughts are not like any of all you-all's thoughts."  Get that in your heads.  God does not think like you.  At all.  In any way.  The converse is also true:  You do not think like God.  At all.  In any way.

God's ways are not like any of our ways.  Our ways are not like any of God's ways.  When you look up at the night sky, and see the stars, the distance between you and those stars is representative of how different God's thinking and ways are from ours.  Some of those stars you are looking at are already dead, and their light has gone out.  It's just taken their light that long to travel the huge distance so you could see it.  That great distance is descriptive of how large of a gap there is between how God's ways are from ours, and ours from God's.  Does that blow your mind, or what!?

Let's just stop and think of the ramifications for that biblical truth that God doesn't think like us, act like us, nor are God's ways anything like our ways.  What does that mean for all the issues, large and small that we squabble about in the church?  Think of all the ways people on either side of some issue that is effecting the church try to angle God on their side.

What this statement of God means is that, just probably, both sides are wrong and have nothing to do with God.  What this means is that there just may be a third side to every issue, and that's where God resides, and it has nothing to do with any of the sides we human beings are on.  What if, in all our arguing, and side-taking, and issue bashing, we are ALL wrong?

But beyond all of our arguing and side-taking, how can we know that what we have interpreted as God acting in our life is really God acting in our life?  Maybe God has acted in our lives in ways we have totally missed—because they don't measure up with our mindset about the ways of God.  Maybe things that have happened in our lives have been totally misinterpreted, as to God's activity.  How can you be sure, if God's "ways are not your ways" and God's "thinking is nothing like your thinking"?

Am I or my questions getting bothersome?  I, at least, hope I'm getting you thinking.  Because this is really important in our approach to God and God's approach to us.  How can we know we are making a connection to God if God's ways are so different from our ways, and God's way of thinking is way off from how we think?

I'll share one answer to those questions that was reaffirmed to me in an article I got this week, forwarded from our presbytery office.  I shared a copy of it with Alan Luttrell, because it has to do with our vivid vision and our work in growing the church.  The title to the article is, "Can We Wait for God's Spark?"

One of the main points of the article is that our relationship to God (notice I said "to God" not "with God")—our relationship to God is one of responding, not initiating.  Most of the problems we get into with God come from the times we initiate what we think God is up to, rather than responding to what God is up to.  We like to tell God what God is doing, then get on board with that.  What that means is that it's all about us.  Whatever we think we're doing for God, was really started by us, so we're only doing what we want to do.

But the article made the point that God issues a spark—an idea, a ministry, a work, an inspiration.  God is the initiator.  Then if we respond to that spark, a fire starts, and God's work becomes inflamed in us.  Like the burning bush Moses saw.  The burning bush was a spark from God—a God initiated self-revelation, if you will.  Moses took notice of that bush, and became immediately inflamed with the work of God of freeing the Hebrew slaves, of starting a new people, and taking them to a new place.  The point is, God started it in God's way.

That's how it has to work with God.  God has to be the initiator.  We are only the responders.  That way we know what we're doing, the direction we are moving, the ways we are thinking, the meaning we are finding in life, are God's ways and not our own.  That takes a lot of patience and listening and watching on our part.

The article made the further point that usually God's way, and God's thinking is disruptive.  Certainly God's way of handling the Hebrew slave problem in Egypt became very disruptive not only for Pharaoh, but also for Moses who ended up being the people's leader, as well as for the people who Moses marched out into the wilderness, ending up wandering around for 40 years.

Think of all the ways of Jesus with people he encountered.  If Jesus really is God in the flesh, then Jesus' ways are certainly not going to be our ways, and Jesus' thoughts are not going to be our thoughts.  Jesus' ways and thoughts are going to be disruptive to people's lives.  And that's what happened.  Jesus healed a lame man by the pool of Bethesda.  The man had been lame for 38 years.  Jesus made him stand up and walk, which the man did.  But by doing so, Jesus disrupted his life, making the man now take responsibility for his own life, which he hadn't done for 38 years.

Jesus had several encounters with different Pharisees, and each one was a disruption of their theology and beliefs and religiosity.  Jesus tried to free God from their boxes of theological constriction.  But they couldn't do it.  Only one, Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, was willing to almost give God God's freedom, as Jesus described God:  Like the wind that blows where it wants.  Or Paul, who was a Pharisee, who the Risen Christ disrupted right off his donkey one day, and who truly understood the disruption of the gospel message of the grace of Jesus Christ, a forgiveness of sins that is not earned by anything you can do, but is freely given to Jew and Gentile alike.  How disruptive is that!?

God can change your life.  God can infuse your life with more meaning than you could find anywhere else.  I believe that is true.  But you have to do two things first.  You have to let go of everything you think you know about God, and what you think God thinks, and the ways you are assuming are God's ways.  In other words, you have to let God be God in the way God wants to be God, not in the way you want God to be God.  That is a hard and scary thing to do—to let God be free, to be God as God wants to be.

And secondly, you have to let God disrupt your life with the thinking and ways of God.  God can fill your life with meaning, but you have to let God disrupt the meaning you think you already have, the meaning you probably built yourself, the meaning that has nothing to do with God.  You have to stop and listen and pay attention for the God who is totally other from what you are, so that God can initiate meaning like a spark into your life.  And then so you can respond to that spark, and meaning can burst forth like a flame in your life.