I recently became a smart phone user. I’m one of those late adoptors. Lillian, our middle child, showed me how to put music on it, so now whenever I get in my truck the music on my phone starts to automatically play on the stereo, whether I want it to or not. Not sure how to stop it.
So I’ve been listening to music more.
I love songs that tell stories, ballads.
They are condensed life, the rendering of living things, like a port wine reduction, case studies on people and life.
They make sense of things that make no sense.
My phone and my truck now collude to make sure I can’t escape the poetry and stories of other people that make life make sense.
God is like that.
God’s presence is found in the stuff and confusion of life, bringing meaning and direction where there was none.
The religious leaders were looking for that presence of God in Jesus, and they just couldn’t see it, they were expecting something else, something different. It was contrary to scripture, or at least to how they read scripture.
Jesus simply says to look at his life, at his works out in the world and they will see God’s presence at work.
How do we find God’s presence? God’s will? God’s direction?
Some people say it is found in the Bible, a long list of does and don’t does. If we pick and choose the right ones to follow then God will bless us in some way.
Reading scripture this way has the advantage of being clear and direct, but it is a false security and a manufactured clarity, it ultimately lacks integrity, because ultimately everything is contrary to scripture including scripture.
But there is an older way to read scripture, it is ancient really. Probably the best way to explain it is that Scripture is understood as a sacred collection of case studies in the Holy Spirit at work in the world.
God’s presence is then not so much found in scripture as it is that scripture trains us to recognize the Holy Spirit at work in the world, to find and to follow God’s presence.
To be contrary to scripture in this way of reading it, is not to disagree with any particular part of it, but to live as if God’s presence and God’s will are not at work in the world and cannot be found or known in the life of creation and humanity.
Some people call this the way of cults or spinning things for convenience, but what it actually is-is faithful. It actually requires faith that God can be trusted to be at work in the world.
Legends, family stories, teachings on life and cooking and farming and clothing, love poems, songs of praise and lament, wisdom writings that find God in foreign cultures, war stories, the nightmares of abuse and genocide, skinny little prophets standing against the powerful, letters to struggling communities, visions, multiple portraits of Jesus’ life, scripture even disagrees and criticizes itself it’s all there.
It is much easier to read scripture as a list of requirements and restrictions.
But as case studies on the Holy Spirit, how other people found God in the stuff of life,
it takes a lot more work to read scripture that way, it takes more faith and it is risky.
God’s presence is there to be found in life, the Bible bears witness to this, and God can be trusted. That is the risk, the decision of faith.
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, the fourth Sunday of the Easter season, where the Spirit-filled experience of God as The Good Shepherd is lifted up and celebrated.
The Shepherd is out there in the middle of things, guarding, protecting, suffering, nurturing, judging, redeeming, leading, the work of the Father and the Son who are one, despite all that says otherwise, scripture tells us that God’s presence is there.
That is the faith and trust in which scripture challenges and invites us to live.
And Jesus shows up in the most amazing, unusual places, in the unexpected and the ironic, and that presence is there for us to find and follow.
I met this singer song writer the other night named Rick Tiger. He sang about life, telling stories, making sense of things that make no sense. One of his songs was a reminder that in the storm of life there is a life guard who walks on water. Good song.
Swim in the Spirit without fear, even in the darkest deep, the lifeguard is there. Goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our life in all suffering, in all betrayals and failures in all hope and confusion, the cup is running over.
The sacred writings of the Spirit that have been passed down to us bid us to swim, out in the middle of things God’s presence is there.
Each of our lives and the life of this parish are another chapter in how God’s Spirit is at work in the world, making sense of things that make no sense.
Like I said, Jesus shows up in the most unexpected places, and people.