I read about a woman named Annie
who backpacked around Greece a few summers ago. When she arrived in Athens, she
was ready for a break. She started sizing up the hostels near the ancient
market. She was looking for someplace to lay her head for the night, not too
expensive, with a clean bathroom.
Ahh, heaven, she thought. One
particularly dingy-looking option had an old Greek merchant standing outside, hawking
his place. “Come and see!” he pleaded
with her. “I, George, will show you the view!”
Annie looked up at the vintage
1950s sign, flashing the hostel’s name: “Parthenon
Paradise.” “Suuure,” she thought to herself. But George was quite
persistent: “Come, come and see! I show
you the view!”
So Annie followed George up the
rickety, winding staircase of the place. George burst open the doors of an
attic room at the top of the staircase.
He proudly displayed a room that
looked as if it hadn’t been dusted in years.
Annie shifted on her heels to
turn and get out of there. She was on her way to more sanitary conditions.
Then, George peeled back the dust-laden curtains of the room and triumphantly
proclaimed, “The view! The view!”
Annie stepped over to see what
could possibly redeem this dump. And then, she saw it: The view.
Just out the window was the
Parthenon. Laid out before her eyes were the ancient ruins of Greek worship. A
perfect blue sky was the canvas for this wonder of the world. Annie could have
reached out and touched the statues. It took her breath away.
Annie figured she could sleep on
top of the sheets. “I’ll take the room,”
she whispered.
What if we could actually see
God? What if, in the dust and dimness of this world, we could glimpse God? Moses
did. He was out sweating, taking care of somebody else’s sheep one day when it
happened. Moses was looking around, counting sheep’s noses – is that 98 or 99?
– when something caught the corner of his eye.
Was something on fire? Moses
looked more closely and there it was. Right there in the middle of the field. A
bush was on fire. But more than that, the bush wasn’t burning. It was just
blazing.
Now Moses didn’t just move on,
thinking, “Wow, that was weird. Must be
getting dehydrated out here. Better go get some Gatorade.” Instead, Moses
thought, “I need to check this out!”
And the Bible says that when God
saw that Moses stopped to look, God started talking to Moses! God called Moses
by his name. Then God told Moses to take off his sandals. Apparently you’re not
supposed to wear shoes when you’re standing on holy ground. You need to be able
to actually feel the holiness with your toes.
Then God started telling Moses
God’s name. God started letting Moses see something of who God is … giving
Moses more. All the while, Moses is standing there, in his bare feet.
Moses is standing there, toes a-wrigglin,’ looking at this amazing flaming
foliage. And seeing God.
In his book, Unseen Footprints,
Sheridan Voysey writes that in one vast and lonely desert lies a secret. As
winds sweep along the parched soil of the land – kicking particles of dust into
the air, ruffling the fur of the few animals scavenging for moisture, an unseen
reality lies beneath its surface: Water. Trillions of litres of water.
Some years ago, an underground
basin was found in Western Australia’s Great Victoria Desert. Beneath the red
sand, sticks and scrub of that desolate land lay a reservoir holding a
potential 2 trillion kiloliters of slightly saline water.
In Perth, the state’s capital
city, the media compared the find to one of its well-known dams, the Mundaring
Weir. The basin’s capacity was equivalent to 31,000 Mundaring Weirs. That arid
desert may have looked like death from above, but underneath flowed a river of
life.
A giant lake in the desert – what
an unexpected surprise. Stories like that remind me that unseen does not equal
unreal. I wonder how many trekked across that dusty land oblivious of the life
beneath them. I wonder how many still do.
The poet Emily Dickinson wrote, “"All the earth is crammed with heaven
and every bush aflame with God, but only those who see take off their
shoes."
As Christians we believe we did,
and do, see God. Especially through this human being named Jesus. We believe
that God showed up in Jesus. And God could be seen clearly by anyone willing to
notice.
Anyone who stopped to look at a
baby in a manger,
or a carpenter teaching children
or a man touching another man’s
blind eyes
or a person dying on the
outskirts of town.
Anyone willing to look could see
God in Jesus.
This is, actually, what Jesus
invited people to do. The very first words Jesus says in the Gospel of John
are: “What are you looking for?”
Jesus said it to two potential followers. They said, of all things, that they
wanted to see the room where he was staying in town.
So Jesus simply invites them. He
says, “Come and see.” Come and see, Jesus said.
Sometimes I’m afraid people who
don’t go to church think we Christians just want to get them to believe a
certain thing. Or, make them act a certain way. I wonder if they think we are
going to try to cram a bunch of doctrine in their heads. Or try to get them to
quit watching Mad Men and change the channel to religious television.
I hope that’s not true about us.
Jesus didn’t say “come and believe.”
He didn’t say “come and get your act together.”
He said, “Come and see.”
What if you started looking out
of the corner of your eye for burning bushes in the yard? What if you lived
life on the lookout for views of the Parthenon out dusty windows? What if you
looked for God in your house? At work? What if you looked for God in the
homeless guy you always pass by? Or in the faces of those who say ‘hi’ to you
at church?
What if church were a place where
we opened ourselves to “come and see,” where we actually looked?
Let’s conduct the “God
Experiment” this week. Let’s allow ourselves and others the space and time to
experiment, to test out, to taste, to see God.
A member of one of our adult
Sunday School classes called me a couple of weeks ago. He told me that his
Sunday School class felt led by God to give out little crosses to the people
who receive lunches at our church during the week. He said, “It’s a simple thing. We just want others to
know that Jesus loves them and that our church is reaching out to them.”
And then he said, “We heard about our new welcome stations
where worship guests can receive a gift bag from our church to let them know
that we are glad they came. And we thought that it would be good to include a
cross in each of these gift bags just as a little reminder that God loves
them.”
He said, “And then we got to thinking that these crosses would be nice for
patients in the hospital to let them know that they’re not alone and that God
is with them.”
Can you sense the presence of the
Holy Spirit at work in our church during this Season of Lent? People are
noticing the burning bushes. They are pulling back the drapes and seeing the
beautiful view of God’s presence. And they want others to see the view too.
Laura Hall is best known as the
pianist on the comedy show, “Whose Line is It, Anyway?” She didn’t grow up in
church. But she married a guy who did. He didn’t push her about coming with
him. He just invited her occasionally and that was it.
So, one day, to put a smile on
her husband’s face, Laura came to church with him. She was impressed that
people spoke to her warmly. And she liked the music. So she came back.
She liked it more, so she came
back again. Pretty soon, Laura was going to church. But she still wouldn’t
receive communion. And she certainly wasn’t going to be baptized or join or anything
like that. The church people told her that was completely fine. They said they
were just glad to see her.
And they meant it.
She could hang around as much as
she wanted. Check out anything she liked. They were just happy she was there.
Seven years later, seven, Laura
saw the communion tray coming for her. Something shone extra brightly about it
that day. It was kind of, well, blazing. She was compelled to hold it for a
while longer than was normal. But no one yanked it away from her or looked at
her funny. The usher just stood there, quietly, gently waiting.
Laura touched the bread. She
deeply breathed in the scent of it.
And she could see God.
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