Where Is Your God?

Proper 12, Year A — Matthew 13:31-33, 44-46

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Up There

Heaven. Where is it? What is it like? Are you going there?

What comes to mind when you think of “heaven”?

As a child, I was taught that heaven is “up there.” And “up there,” God — flowing robes, big bushy white beard — sits on a golden throne, with Jesus at his right hand, and angels flying and singing all around, playing their harps. From that great throne room, God watches all of life and rules over the affairs of the universe.

What comes to mind when you think of heaven?

It shouldn’t surprise us that we picture heaven “up there.” Ancient people believed the gods resided in the heavens, and that heaven and earth intersected at the mountaintops. Remember where Moses met God and received the Ten Commandments?

Mt. Sinai.

Mountaintops were the haunts of the gods — which is why the Bible calls our God “God Most High,” and why the angels sang on Christmas morning, “Glory to God in the highest.”

So when we hear the word “heaven,” most of us naturally look up.

Which is why it’s so interesting that when Jesus spoke about heaven, he made us look down here.

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Down Here

Did you hear our Gospel lesson?

Heaven is like a mustard seed a man plants in his field — and it grows into a tree big enough for birds to build homes in.

Nothing there about clouds or harps.

Heaven is like yeast that a woman mixes into the flour until it works all the way through the dough.

Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.

Heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls.

Have you ever noticed where the kingdom of heaven is located in Jesus’s parables? Not “up there” — but down here. And who are the agents of heaven? Farmers, bread bakers, treasure hunters, merchants. Human beings. Like you and me.

Why does Jesus work so hard to bring heaven down to earth?

I suspect it has something to do with cancer, poverty, war, child abuse, Alzheimer’s, tsunamis.

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Where Was God?

A friend of mine had a crisis of faith after the 2004 tsunamis that killed more than 225,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Like many of us, he found himself asking: Where was God in this? If God could part the Red Sea, why didn’t God part the waters of the tsunami?

You’ve asked those kinds of questions. So have I.

And the answers we come up with are usually so inadequate. Some call disasters like this God’s judgment. Others say God has reasons we can’t understand yet, but will “in the sweet by and by.” Still others simply defend God’s right to end life: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

All of these answers presume something Jesus challenges — that God is “up there,” beyond the fray, occasionally poking a finger into the world to bless some and afflict others. The 80-year-old woman who misses the flight that crashes believes God intervened to save her. Meanwhile, the pregnant wife of the man who made that flight is left wondering why God didn’t intervene for her husband.

I think Jesus wants us to be careful about this. Careful about where we locate God.

Is God above us, outside the universe, pulling the strings like a puppeteer — blessing a wedding party’s weather while ignoring a drought-stricken nation, helping a basketball free throw but not a critically ill child, backing one nation’s war while ignoring another’s prayer for daily bread?

Is God somewhere “up there,” beyond us?

Or is Jesus pointing us somewhere else?

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Within Us

The parables reveal a secret: heaven is interwoven with life, and God is not beyond us but among us and within us. Mustard seeds and farmers. Yeast and dough. Treasure in a field. Merchants after pearls. All of these are the dwelling places of God.

When my children were small, they used to crawl up onto me in my recliner as we watched the nightly news — one on each side. One Saturday evening there was a report on famine in Africa: children with swollen bellies and shrunken limbs, eyes glazed with hopelessness, flies circling their heads. My children began to cry. Bethany, our daughter, sobbed and said, “Daddy, can’t we do something to help those children?”

If you have ever looked at human tragedy and felt something tug at your heart to do something about it, you have felt the presence of God within. It is not something tugging at your heart. It is someone.

I don’t know why bad things happen in this world. No one does. All I know is that bad things do happen, and life is hard. And I know one other thing from what Jesus taught: God is not “up there” watching from a distance. God is right here — in me, in you — stirring up compassion, mercy, and the desire to heal the wounds of the world.

So God tugs us to plant mustard seeds of grace that grow into safe homes for God’s creatures. God tugs us to work yeast into the flour so bread can reach the hungry. God calls us to see the treasure hidden in the fields of every nation, race, and religion — to find the pearl of great price inside the unlovely oyster shell of every human being we meet.

Have you ever felt that God-tug in your heart?

But faith isn’t just about feeling. Faith, ultimately, is about doing.

“Daddy, can’t we do something to help those children?”

Yes, we can. Yes, we must.

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Where Are Your Wounds?

Jesus made clear that God has no interest in worship that doesn’t result in mercy, love, and compassion. So he tells us that to follow him, we must take up our cross daily. That’s not easy, not cheap, not without risk or sacrifice.

In Alan Paton’s novel Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful, a white man named Robert Mansfield resigns as a school headmaster because he can no longer support apartheid. He loses his work, his income, his friends. A Black man named Emmanuel Nene comes to see him, to offer respect and support. As they talk about the wounds Mansfield is suffering for the stand he’s taken, Nene tells him there are always wounds that come with fighting for justice: “When I go up there, which is my intention, the Big Judge will say to me, ‘Where are your wounds?’ and if I say I haven’t any, he will say, ‘Was there nothing to fight for?’ I couldn’t face that question.”

Neither can I. Can you?

Is there nothing worth fighting for, suffering for, sacrificing for? The question God asks isn’t “What do you believe?” It’s “Where are your wounds?”

In the life of Jesus we see things worth fighting for, worth being wounded for: saving children, lifting the poor, welcoming the excluded, caring for the long-term sick, making friends of enemies, breaking down walls between religions and races, building true peace. That’s the cross. That’s the following.

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Where is your God?

Heaven is “up there,” and “down here,” and to the left of us, and to the right of us. God is in all of it. God is in you. And God is in me.

And every day, the spirit of God within tugs at us to plant seeds, make bread, seek treasure, and shuck open the oysters of the world as we share God’s grace.

Like my little girl asked, “Daddy, can’t we do something to help?”

Yes. Yes we can.

But it all depends on where your God is.

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