Musical Prelude and Service.

Acts 17:22-31 & John 14:15-21
Who is God? This is a big question. It is a question at the heart of so much of who we are and what
we struggle to be. Who is God and what is our relationship to that God?
Ultimately, it is a question that we cannot answer. To quote from the United Church of Canada’s
Song of Faith, “God is holy mystery, beyond complete knowledge and above perfect knowledge.”
But that does not mean we should stop asking the question and reaching for an answer. Because in
seeking to know God, we get a better understanding of who we are and how we relate to the world
around us – or who we can be and how we could relate to the world.
What are you looking for? It is a question Jesus asks Andrew very early in the Gospel of John and
leads Andrew to becoming a disciple. What are you looking for?
In Acts, Paul speaks to a group of people in Athens trying to explain the God he worships in a way
these people will understand. He notes they are all very spiritual; that’s clear from the great many
shrines to a host of God’s scattered throughout the city. People are seeking a connection to the holy,
or the sacred. They are yearning for that connection; for help or guidance getting through their lives
and an understanding about how they fit into the world and their community.
Paul suggests that the God he follows and worships has always been among them and is represented
by the shrine to an unknown God. Gold and silver and images of who that God is cannot capture the
nature or likeness of God. Paul even turns to Greek poetry to help explain our relationship to God.
“For in him we live and move and have our being.”
God is close at hand. Has always been close to us. And we can approach and yet never fully
understand or recognize. All we can do is trust; have faith, and strive to see God in the world all
around us.
Jesus has a different take on this of course. He is not about repentance and preparing for the end of
times. Jesus is about comforting his friends as their world are about to very soon fall apart when
their friend and teacher is arrested and put on trial. In many ways, Jesus is speaking about the end.
The end of their world as they have known it. But there is still a life to live going forward. Even as
Jesus dies, he will remain with them, guiding them and bringing them closer to God.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Earlier in this last supper, Jesus commanded his
disciples: Love one another as I have loved you.
That is Jesus’s commandment. Love one another. Show that love through your service.
Jesus is in God, and we are in Jesus. We are all connected, and we can recognize God through our
relationship with Jesus.
God is holy mystery. Beyond description and above understanding. But we continue to strive for that
understanding and that recognition. And Jesus offers us that recognition and that understanding.
We can recognize God’s presence in our world through the love and the teaching of Jesus. We can
understand what God desires for the world through his healing and his gifts of abundance.
And we can find our way to a greater relationship with God by following God’s commandment to love
one another as Jesus demonstrated over and over and over again.
Early in my studies at seminary, I was introduced to a particular way of articulating the relationship
between God and Jesus. Yes, Jesus is God’s son. Jesus is God as God’s word. But what does that
mean? Well to quote my theology professor, Jeus is the revelation of God’s love.
In Jesus, as we read about his life, his teaching, his healing, his uncompromising dedication to a life
free of fear and shame, and we are offered a vision of what God desires for us. Jesus shows us a life;
a message and a commitment to love and justice that led him to the cross and an agonizing death.
A revelation of God’s dedication to us; a revelation of God’s mercy. And that is simply reinforced in
the knowledge that Jesus rose from the dead. God’s love cannot be defeated by the forces of death.
God’s mercy cannot be destroyed, and it cannot be hidden by the tomb.
Through Jesus, God is alive. God is alive with us and alongside us. God is truly alive in Jesus. Alive to
fully experience what it means to be human. Jesus lived fully. He ate, he played, he worked.
He laughed and loved. He learned. And he wept. Jesus wept; got angry, grieved over the death of
friends and family. He experienced betrayal and abandonment. He endured cruelty and pain and
finally death. Jesus lived fully.
And because we love and we follow Jesus, we to are open to fully live. Jesus tells his followers that
they too will live. They are already alive. But I find myself asking; are they merely sleepwalking their
way through life? Doing what they are expected to do? Living cautiously, afraid of the judgment of
neighbours and those in power? Are they tiptoeing past the awkward events happening all around
them and avoiding difficult decisions? Are they shying away from the people who make them
uncomfortable; the people they have been told are inappropriate?
Because they love and obey Jesus, they too shall live. Not simply be alive. They will live. They will
experience life and this world in all its glorious colours. They will see things they never anticipated
and meet people that will open their eyes to new and wondrous things. Because they follow Jesus,
they will experience God in new and deeper ways.
When Jesus speaks of the advocate, or the paraclete, to use the Greek word found in scripture,
we often interpret it as the Spirit. That it is through the Spirit, or advocate that we are more closely
connected to God. We are fast approaching Pentecost where the spirit inspires or drives the apostles
to go forth preaching the Good News of Jesus.
Jesus tells us the spirit is already there moving amongst us, connecting us. Connecting us to one
another, to Jesus and to God. We are part of a delicate and deeply interconnected web of life and
love; it is a bond of love. One we can spend a lifetime reflecting on and still discover new things
about ourselves, our world and our connection to the God who created us, loves us and redeems us
when we fall and struggle to regain our feet. God is the root of all we are and all we experience.
God is that in which we live, move and have our being.
What are we looking for when we look for God? Where do we wish to live, move and have our being?
Because that ultimately is the God we are seeking.
Do we desire a world of justice, of mercy, of love? Then that is the God we are seeking, and that is
who we will find. We get to choose then. We will follow Jesus when he calls on us to love one
another; to serve one another.
For when we follow those commands, we will experience God in and amongst us, moving with us and
through us connecting us to one another, to God’s creation and to God themselves.
One other stanza from our Song of Faith speaks to me this week:
God is creative and self-giving, generously moving
in all the near and distant corners of the universe.
Nothing exists that does not find its source in God.
our first response to God’s providence is gratitude.
We sing thanksgiving.
So we can, as one, say thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Warner Bloomfield

Music provided with permission through licensing with CCLI License number
2701258 and One License # A-731789