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A few minutes with Ed ~
God Happens
The first human problem named in Genesis is being alone. Before the fall and before sin, there was loneliness. Before the fall, there was a friend; God says friendship is what we need first.
Throughout the recent centuries of church history and most of my own history, it was assumed that the way to grow closer to God was to get more information, better information. Faith was organized around belief. Study the Bible, parse every word, sentence, and verse, know your doctrine, hold the line on what’s true. Information in, good life out. We keep trying to learn more to build faith and fix problems, but that doesn’t seem to work very well. Again and again, churches fracture, people fracture, and our culture fractures. I wish it did work. Surely, I could have come away from seminary and 20 years in pastoral ministry with all my problems solved?
The Ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes purportedly walked through Athens in broad daylight carrying a lit lantern. When asked what he was doing, he would reply, “I am looking for a human being.” (Later accounts changed that to “looking for an honest man”). Of course there were people all around in the city of Athens, and why carry a lit lantern in broad daylight? He was looking for something more than ordinary people seen in the ordinary way. I think he meant he was looking for an authentic human being, not an empty person living by social convention and unable or unwilling to express their humanity. Like us, Diogenes needed authentic human relationships.
I have spoken of and preached about the Trinity as God above us, God in us, and God beside us. The God beside me is also beside you and in the space between us. In that space between us, God happens.
Rowan Williams served for 10 years as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the senior bishop of the Anglican Church and spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Born in 1950, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant Anglican theologians of his generation. He studied theology at Cambridge and earned his Doctorate at Oxford. He wrote Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another. Williams writes that God is encountered not merely in private religious experience, but in the space between people. He says that the space between people is where God happens; God becomes present and active through our relationships. Becoming Holy means learning how to love, listen to, forgive, and truly attend to other people.
I believe that relationships are an important part of personal transformation. A significant part of what the church does is to bring people into relationships where God is experienced. I love the passing of the peace when we take the hand of another person, look them in the face, and speak peace to each other to say, “I see you, you matter, we are in this together.” In our small group on Sunday, we read books together – and good books - but there is always more conversation than reading. That is a blessing, not a problem. The content of the book is a starting point for sharing our stories: our hurts, our blessings, our challenges, what we have experienced, and what we have learned. Sometimes we are moved to tears by the stories, sometimes we are blessed by hearing stories, and sometimes we are blessed by telling our stories. So, thank you, Holy friends, in this sharing of our humanity – God happens.
~~Ed
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