Saturday 9 April 2016

Easter 3 Finding God 10th April 2016


How do you find God?

Someone I met in the gym found God when he prayed to get free of addiction to cannabis.  He prayed. Something happened and, so the lad told me, he now sees the world in rosier colours with goodness, truth and beauty shining all over the place.  God is only a prayer away.

The scripture passage from the book of Revelation in which John the seer sees the risen Christ and gets messages. He got his vision in Patmos on the Lord’s Day. I was once on Patmos Island at an open air Greek Orthodox eucharist and it  gave me a clue to his vision. There were elders round the altar that morning, the priests. The bread and wine on it stood for the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, slain for us. The hundreds present singing beautiful chant gave a sense of surrounding angels. I think, and several Bible scholars agree, that John the seer had his vision right there at Sunday eucharist in Patmos.

How do you find God?

You can find him in prayer, through the Bible and at the eucharist. Here’s the sting, if you like. You find God through the Church. Without the Church, God, to use David Cameron’s image, is like receiving Classic FM in the Cotswolds. The Church helps you tune in to God. John the seer was Church. He said his prayers, knew his bible and came to the eucharist. I’m sure he served others and confessed his sins, two other ways God comes close to us.

How do we find God?

In the last scripture reading from John’s Gospel illustrated on the eucharist booklet cover we’re told Jesus showed himself again to his disciples after his resurrection. Not only did he show them himself as God’s Son, he showed them the best place to fish. Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some. So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.

Finding God is costly – we have to turn away from self – but it’s always profitable.  I think of the lad I met in the gym who prayed when he was in a bad state and saw his prayer answered. God answers prayer, of that I’m utterly convinced, even if some of his answers perplex me.

As the American writer Tim Keller says in answer to Richard Dawkins: If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world, … you have… a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know... you can’t have it both ways. I like Keller  we had a book club on his classic ‘The reason for God’ a couple of years back. In it he asks, incisively, whether the civil rights movement across the world could have emerged from secular belief in the goodness of human nature, rather than the Christian conviction about the sinfulness of human hearts we've already voiced at the start of the eucharist.

How do we find God?

Through the Church, for nowhere else can you engage with preaching and sacraments which bring Christ alive in our hearts. Oh yes there’s sin in the Church, in you and I – but there’s Christ as well and Jesus Christ gives us access to God as the way, the truth and the life.

Through prayer, scripture, eucharist, repentance, service and reflection God in Christ comes close. The children of our school - now regularly reflect. Christian meditation started in January. At the start of every afternoon session the children take time to be still and meditate. We will have opportunity to do the same next weekend which will have a contemplative feel to it with the Quiet Day in the Martindale and the 10am Contemplative eucharist with Dan Wolpert.

How do we find God?  
You can’t beat being still. So let’s do just that, for we read his invitation in Psalm 46v10 Be still and know that I am God.   Let’s do that.

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