By Reverend Laurie DeMott

Theos, in Greek, means ‘God’ so to say I want to talk to you today about theology means that today I want to speak knowledgeably about God, as opposed to my typical sermon when I speak out of my ignorance! But before we begin this exploration together, let me make a small disclaimer in the form of a little story.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine they lay down for the night and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend. “Watson,” he said, “look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”

“I see millions and millions of stars,” Watson replied.

“What does that tell you?” asked Holmes.

Watson pondered for a minute. “Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I can see that God is all-powerful and that we are small and insignificant. What does it tell you?”

“Elementary, my dear Watson,” replied Holmes. “Someone has stolen our tent.”

Theology, the study of God, can be a little like Dr. Watson in that story. Theologians can spend a lot of time pursuing abstract lines of thought while overlooking the more practical realities we deal with in our lives. Just look at some of the historic creeds of the church – the Nicene Creed, for example, declares that Christ is “of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made.” This line in the creed is the result of a huge debate in the 4th century over whether God and Christ are of the same metaphysical substance or whether they are of similar metaphysical substance and the argument over that theological nuance became so heated that people died defending their position. Today, people repeat that line in the creed with little awareness of the debate that lay behind it because frankly, we fail to see how those kind of theological arguments help us to raise our children better or to be more compassionate people. There has been a fundamental shift in our approach to Christianity over the past few centuries; we have become less concerned about proper Christian doctrine and more concerned over genuine Christian behavior and I think this has been a change for the better. If people are going to come to blows over something, I think it is preferable that they get all riled up about how best to erase poverty than on whether God and Christ are metaphysically the same or only similar. Alfred Whitehead said, “[In a primitive religion] you study the will of God in order that God may preserve you,” but in a [more advanced] religion, you study [God’s] goodness in order to be [more] like God.” The best theology, I believe then, is a theology that results not in winning philosophical arguments but in our being better people because of it.

And so, if you look at my sermons over the past 25 years, you will see that in general I have emphasized right behavior over right doctrine, heart religion over head religion. I don’t really care whether you are a Calvinist dispensationalist or an Arminian supercessionalist , as long as whatever you believe leads you to be a more caring whole person whose life reflects the goodness of God. I’m pretty pragmatic that way and I think most of us look at theology a little like we look at the television repair person. We don’t hire a repair person to come to the house and spend an hour delivering a lecture about electron streams and pixels; we don’t want to know all of the theories behind the T.V.; we just want it to work.

On the other hand, even if you don’t want the theoretical lecture, neither would you want to discover that your T.V. repair person hasn’t a clue about how the thing works either and is just poking around in the back of the box rearranging wires in the hope that something good will happen. So every so often – every 25 years or so – I think it is helpful for me to remind you that I, in fact, do have some foundational theological beliefs about God upon which I base my preaching, and to share with you what they are. And, believe it or not, I think I can do that in one sermon because I agree very much with the pastor who observed, “As I get older, I find I believe less and less but what I do believe, I believe more and more strongly.”

So let me begin with my first and strongest belief. I believe that God is a God of beauty, goodness, and compassion, and that God’s love flows through everything around us drawing us ever closer to union with that beauty, compassion, and goodness. Let me say that again – I believe that God is a God of beauty, compassion, and goodness, and that God’s love flows through everything around us and draws us ever closer to union with that perfect beauty, goodness, and compassion.

Now, that may not seem very provocative at first but in fact, it is a belief that is often in contrast to some of the messages we may have grown up with. Too often the church has taught that the world is corrupt and a place of spiritual danger. “Resist pleasure,” the church has preached, “lest you endanger your soul. Be fearful of God because God is a God who judges and condemns unless you renounce all worldly impulses and set your mind on a higher spiritual plane.” The church has too often taught a faith based on the assumption that God is up there apart from the world and we are down here mired in the worldly and constantly fighting for our souls. This kind of faith leads a person to live in an attitude of fearful vigilance. Every enjoyable activity must be scrutinized with suspicion wary that it could be temptation in disguise. Churches produce lengthy rule books of proper behavior to help their congregations figure out what is acceptable and what to avoid if they are to achieve spirituality purity while living in the midst of a depraved world with the result that Christianity becomes the very judgmental, cliquish, pharisaic religion that Jesus preached against.

To believe, on the other hand, that God’s love and beauty flows through every part of the world is to believe that every person, every animal, every leaf and stone and drop of water, is deserving of our attention and care and is imbued with the goodness of God. It is to believe that God revels in our enjoyment of creation and will not condemn us for our happiness. It is to believe that God doesn’t have a rule book but rather encourages every person to seek their path to union with God and will call us again and again, no matter how many times we stray.

The poet Maya Angelou says that for a time when she was young, she considered herself an agnostic. It wasn't that she stopped believing in God, but that God just didn't seem to be part of her neighborhood. She was, at the time, taking voice lessons to improve her speaking voice and one day, her teacher asked her to read from a religious pamphlet which ended with the words, “God loves me.” Angelou read it and started to put it down but the teacher said, “Don’t put it down yet. I want you to read that last sentence again.” She did, but this time she read it with sarcasm. The teacher said, “Read it again.” She did, but the teacher still was not satisfied. “Read it again,” the teacher said. Once again she read it and once again the teacher shook her head. Angelou writes:

“After about the seventh repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in this statement, that there was a possibility that God really loves me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things. I could try great things. I could learn anything. I could achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person, and God constitute the majority.”

This is the God I see in the scriptures that declare God looked upon the world and called it good. This is the God I see in the proclamation delivered time and time again that declares, “Fear not for God is with you.” This is the God I see in the gospel as Jesus embraces those that the religious authorities with their rule books have declared unacceptable. This is the God I see when Jesus tells his listeners that all of his teaching have one purpose: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” This isn’t to say that life doesn’t sometimes turn lousy; it is to say however, that there is no darkness so great that it can quench the light of God’s goodness and grace. God’s love is everywhere and in all things, even in the shadows where, if you can just catch hold of a strand of that love and hold on to it for to dear life, you will eventually pull yourself closer and closer to God in whom you will find the healing and peace you seek. God calls us not to be fearful but to take heart, not to despair but to hope, not to self-flagellation but to joy, not to condemnation but to love.

And the second and strongest thing I believe is that every time a person insists on love and not condemnation, on hope and not fear, that person moves the entire world a little closer toward perfect unity with God.

I have found that the biggest danger for faithful people lies not in their doubt about God’s love but in their despair over whether God’s love can actually make a difference. It is, after all quite discouraging for us when for all of our offerings and all of our work over the years, there are still hungry impoverished people and suffering continues. I believe, however, that the job of each single Christian is not to save the world – it is instead to inch the world just a little closer to God. Sometimes change comes in the form of an astonishing revolution but more often change is the accumulation of inches; it comes from the persistent movement of persistent people toward greater the goodness and compassion we see in God.

Think about this for a second. There was a moment this morning that you were tucked away in your warm bed and the alarm rang, and you had to decide whether or not to get out of your bed and come to church. It was a tough decision but you decided to get up and come. But your presence in this pew isn’t because you made that one decision – it is actually the result of a thousand decisions you made to come to church over and over again this morning because at any time between the time you got up and the time you walked through those doors, you could have changed your mind and said, “No, I guess I’ll stay home after all.” You could have turned around before you got into the shower. You could have chosen to linger over your coffee. You could have decided that watching “Meet the Press” was better than getting dressed. You could have even turned your car around half way here and gone back home again. At each moment, however, you made choices that inched your way closer to church, and most importantly because you made those choices, each decision became easier and easier. We can all imagine staying in bed – how tempting that has been. And we can imagine sitting at the kitchen table suddenly deciding that spending the morning reading the paper sounds more relaxing than going to church. But it becomes a little harder to imagine a person getting up, showering, getting all dressed and then deciding not to go to church. And it becomes almost ludicrous to imagine someone getting up, showering, getting dressed, eating breakfast, starting the car, driving all the way to Alfred, and then turning around to go back home! Each decision makes the next one a little easier, a little more thinkable, a little more inevitable.

So too each time we inch the world toward compassion and away from narrow-mindedness because of our actions and choices, we make the next decision for compassion just a little more thinkable, a little more inevitable, and we make that choice more thinkable not only for ourselves but also for everyone else who is watching us. Yes, there will be roadblocks and detours along the way but every step we put in front of the last to move us closer to God’s perfect goodness and peace will lay down a footprint on a path that will eventually carve its way into society’s consciousness and make goodness and peace that much more thinkable, that much more inevitable.

“These things I have spoken to you,” Jesus said, “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” I believe that God is a God of beauty and love who calls all of us to draw ever nearer to that perfect goodness and compassion that is found in God. And each choice we make for goodness and compassion in our own lives, is a choice that can and will change the entire world.