God has indeed reordered our world. The way we
were before seems so long ago, and we find ourselves living in a new reality.
We have discontinued practices that we thought were unchangeable. It turns out
that “the God who made the world and everything in it does not live in temples
made by human hands.”
I can remember a Sunday practice from my
childhood. Many Sundays after church, my mom and dad would load us kids up in
the family car and we would go for a Sunday ride. No destination in mind, Daddy
would just drive. Invariably he would get lost somewhere on Long Island. In my
younger years, I would cry because I was afraid that we were lost. But my dad
would say, “You aren’t lost. As long as you are with Mommy and me, you can’t
get lost.” As I grew, I came to understand that; and to find comfort that, no
matter where I was, if I was with my parents, I could never get lost.
In these long weeks, when we’ve been cloistered
in our houses, even though we’ve been right at home, many of us have been feeling
lost. We went into this time of “Stay Safe, Stay Home” fearing deep in our
hearts that being physically separated from our faith communities would cause
us to be separated from God; fearing that if we were not in our familiar pews, we
would not be able to find God. We thought we needed our church buildings, our
beautiful sanctuaries to feel God’s warmth enveloping us in love. But it turns
out that “the God who made the world and everything in it does not live in
temples made by human hands.”
Friends, it’s not only the separation from our
buildings that has us feeling off kilter. We’ve all been living through a
nightmare, an international nightmare. Some of us have lost loved ones. Some of
us live in fear of losing loved ones. Some of us are suffering from the virus.
Some of us are suffering from lost income because of the virus. Some of us are
bored from too many days looking at the same walls. Some of us are forced to
work at home. Some of us wish that we could stay home and not work, endangering
ourselves and our loved ones to keep essential businesses open for the rest of
us. Some of us, the heroes among us, are working in hospitals and nursing
homes, working as EMTs and police officers and fireman and orderlies, many of
whom are overwhelmed and over-worked trying hard to keep people alive. Some of
us don’t know if we can continue to watch as more and more people get sick and
die. This is indeed a long, national nightmare.
Those people whom Paul encountered in Athens
had some inkling that there was a God whom they did not know. Paul had observed
as he walked around the city that they had objects of worship in their temples,
and that among them was an altar to an “unknown god.” He understood that these
were people hungering for an experience of the holy. And so he told them about
the one true God. He let them in on the secret that the one true God could not
be confined to their temples. He shared with them that the one true God was not
far from each of them, not far from each one of us. He let them know that “in
God, we live and move and have our being.” And Paul told them about Jesus – how
he’d lived and how he’d died. But most of all, he told them about how he’d been
resurrected. He shared with them the saving balm of the Good News that we are a
resurrection people. He told them, and he is telling us still, that death does
not have the final word.
We are living in a time when we need to
remember every day that we are a resurrection people. These are indeed hard
times that we are going through. These are times when it seems as if we have
been abandoned by God. But Paul is right here, speaking to us from 2,000 years
ago, reminding us that no matter how bleak the time, God is still Emmanuel, God
with us. He is reminding us that we are God’s people, and that no amount of
sheltering-in-place can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. No
tiny microbe can take away from us the truth that we are a resurrection people.
When I grew up and had children of my own, we
would sometimes take those Sunday rides after church. And we would purposely
turn down streets that we’d never been on. We would jump off of the interstate
at an exit that we’d never taken before. This was before GPS, and we would
always lose our way. We grown-ups had to look to the sun for direction and keep
turning until we found a familiar street or a business that let us know what
town we were in. But in the back seat, out children just looked out the
windows, not worried about a thing because they knew that they could never get
lost while they were with their parents.
We are in a difficult time right now. We feel
lost and afraid that nothing will ever be the same. Nothing will ever be like
it was before. But we’ve also learned so many things in this time. The most
important thing we’ve learned is that “the God who made the world and everything
in it does not live in temples made by human hands.” We’ve learned that no
matter what, “in God, we live and move and have our being.” Things change, God
doesn’t. We can never get lost. We have Jesus as our Guide and God as the
foundation of our lives. We have the Holy Spirit filling us with such love that
it just has to spill over onto others.
Things change. God doesn’t.
Things change. God doesn’t.
Thanks be to God!
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