"God of the Universe ... or God of the Box?"

Sermon for Sixth Sunday of Easter, cycle C, May 16, 1998

Acts 15: 1-2, 22-29

Psalm 67: 2-8

Revelation 21: 10-14, 22-23

John 14: 23-29

When I was a young, impressionable teenager and a recent convert to the Roman Catholic Church, a priest giving some kind of mission or revival told a story that made quite an impact on me.

He said that a teenage couple were out on a date and made love in the back seat of the car. As they were driving toward their homes, the boy commented, "You know, that’s the first time in my life I ever committed a mortal sin." Just after saying this, the boy drove onto a dark, unguarded railroad crossing, and a train struck the car. The boy was killed instantly. The girl survived to tell the story.

The moral of the story, the priest concluded, was that God had sent the boy to hell for a single mortal sin. He was trying to make the point that sin is so bad, so horrible in God’s eyes, that even one can send you to hell for all eternity.

If he was trying to scare us, he succeeded with me. But as the years went by, I started looking at that story differently. First, of course, I began to suspect that it had been invented ... that it never really happened. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say it had. Who is to say that the boy had given full consent of his will to a deliberate mortal sin? Isn’t it possible, even likely, that he acted in a moment of passion, only realizing afterwards that what they had done was said by the church to be a "mortal sin." In that case, of course, no mortal sin was committed, even by the church’s standards.

But again for the sake of argument, let us say that the boy had indeed freely and willingly and deliberately committed what he knew at the time to be a mortal sin. Is it not possible that his seemingly boastful pronouncement of his guilt was really an attempt to hide inner remorse? Isn’t it possible he had repented?

In short, isn’t it presumptuous and judgmental for the priest to pretend to know the eternal fate of this young boy? How does he know that boy went to hell? Isn’t it possible that God, who (according to our teachings) is infinitely merciful, found a way to save that young man? (If, of course, he ever really existed.)

It is dangerous, I think, for anyone (clergy or not) to pretend to know that God has condemned any particular human soul. Because of God’s promises, we express confidence that the souls of our dear departed rest with God in heaven. God has given us the church and the sacraments, and has promised salvation to those whom we have entrusted to him.

But do we really expect the merciful and loving God to obey us when we consign someone to hell for breaking our rules? If God really paid attention to the anathemas hurled back and forth by the churches over the years, heaven would be a very empty place.

Fortunately, our God is bigger than that.

Evangelical Protestants often teach that no one can be saved unless they explicitly accept Jesus as their personal Lord and savior. According to this view, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and such are going to hell, to say nothing of agnostics and atheists. At various times, Roman Catholics and Orthodox have mutually condemned each other, as have Roman Catholics and Protestants. For hundreds of years, it was official Roman Catholic doctrine that there was no salvation for those outside the jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome.

Do we really believe that God is so limited, so weak, so ineffective that he can’t find a way to save Abraham Lincoln even though he was Protestant, or to save Mother Teresa even though she was Roman Catholic, or to save Mahatma Ghandi even though he wasn’t Christian at all?

No, our God is bigger than that.

This habit of trying to put God in a box and telling him what he can’t do isn’t new. It goes back a long time. It certainly existed long before the time of Christ, probably dating to the Garden of Eden.

In today’s reading from the Book of Acts, we see this phenomenon happening within the infant Christian church. Some Christian teachers were telling Gentile converts that they could not be saved just by becoming a Christian. They also had to be circumcised and follow all of the Mosaic Law prescribed by the Pharisees. (Of course, those teaching this were themselves Pharisees who had become Christian.)

"Unless you are circumcised according to Mosaic Law, you cannot be saved. Unless you do this, you cannot be saved. Unless you follow our rules, God cannot save you." The church was no more than ten or twenty years old, and already they were trying to put God in a box!

This matter was deemed to be so important that the church met in Jerusalem to discuss the issue, and the results of that meeting are recorded in the Bible. Arguments were presented on both sides. Peter, Paul, and Barnabas made powerful arguments against requiring Gentile converts to become Jews first and follow the Jewish Law. A consensus was reached, and the final decision was made by James. His words were adopted unanimously and put in writing. A letter was sent to the Gentile Christians in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, and the instructions were conveyed by word of mouth by Paul, Barnabas, Judas Barsabbas, and Silas. This is what it said: "It is the decision of the Holy Spirit, and ours too, not to lay on you any burden beyond that which is strictly necessary."

From that time on, you didn’t have to be circumcised to be a Christian. As a matter of fact, Paul took it even further. You didn’t have to even be circumcisable. Even women could be Christians. The first bishops, meeting in synod in Jerusalem, let God out of the box.

And for the next 2000 years, other bishops have been trying to put him back in.

A week from today, I will be at a synod of bishops in Clearwater. The following week I will be preaching at churches of two different denominations in Oklahoma City and meeting with the founding bishop of the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches. Two weeks later, we’ll attend another synod of bishops in California, and preach at a Byzantine Catholic Church in the inner city of Los Angeles. For nearly three months, we’ll be on the road, covering about twelve thousand miles through 37 states and three Canadian provinces. I will be addressing many issues, and preaching on many texts to Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Unitarians, Baptists, Anglicans, ... you name it. But if there will be one common theme I address to the various bishops, it will be "Don’t try to put God into your box. He’s bigger than you are." And I guess what I’ll try to get across to the people is, "Don’t let the churches take God away from you and stick him in their box. God is bigger than they are, and he belongs to you."

I feel bad at having to leave you for so long. But I have a mission, and it isn’t limited to Melbourne and Palm Bay. It is a mission I’ve been serving since long before we started this parish. I had hoped to have a parish priest for you by now, but it hasn’t happened yet. Perhaps God wants you, his people, to take the responsibility to carry on until we return.

In the meantime, remember, God has come to you. You have touched God. You have consumed God. You have fused with God and become one with him and with each other. God has blessed you in every aspect of your lives. Don’t let anyone tell you God can’t come to you because you haven’t followed their rules. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that they have God trapped in their box and he can’t bless you without their permission. It isn’t so.

When you run up against these legalisms, these man-made rules that have grown up over the centuries, just remember the words of that synod of bishops over 1900 years ago:

"It is the decision of the Holy Spirit, and ours as well, not to lay on you any burden beyond that which is strictly necessary."

Of the many hundreds of Jewish laws, the apostles asked their people to follow just four: (1) Do not eat meat sacrificed to idols, (2) Do not drink blood apart from meat, (3) Do not eat strangled animals with their blood trapped inside, and (4) Do not engage in promiscuous sex. (By the way, we now know that blood and sexual fluids are the primary means of transmission of many deadly diseases, so there was good reason for these prohibitions.)

Now, nineteen centuries later, those four common-sense requirements have become thousands of volumes of rules, canon laws, and procedures. It’s at least as bad as the Jewish Law of the first century. As Paul said to that synod of bishops, "Why should we bind Gentile Christians with laws which none of us have been able to successfully follow?"

Or as St. James said to the same group, "If we follow those four rules, we’re doing well."

How big is your God? I guess it’s a matter of faith. There’s a little story that I think says a lot about faith and about the size of our God.

The fields were parched and brown from lack of rain, and the crops lay wilting from thirst. People were anxious and irritable as they searched the sky for any sign of relief. Days turned into arid weeks. No rain came.

The ministers of the local churches called for an hour of prayer on the town square the following Saturday. They requested that everyone bring an object of faith for inspiration.

At high noon on the appointed Saturday, the townspeople turned out en masse, filling the square with anxious faces and hopeful hearts. The ministers were touched to see the variety of objects clutched in prayerful hands — holy books, crosses, rosaries.

When the hour ended, as if on magical command, a soft rain began to fall. Cheers swept the crowd as they held their treasured objects high in gratitude and praise. From the middle of the crowd one faith symbol seemed to overshadow all the others: A small nine-year-old child had brought an umbrella.

How big is your God? Is he a little god, unable to forgive you, unable to love you the way you are, unable to help you change into the person you should be? Or is he the real God, the infinite all-merciful, all-loving, all-powerful God who can make you a saint if you let him?

Who is it that you worship? The God of the universe ... or the god of the box?

Let us pray. Lord, we praise you for your majesty and glory. We thank you that you are a really big God, one that cannot be contained in our wildest imaginations. We thank you for continuing to climb out of the boxes people are always trying to put you in. We thank you for loving us just the way we are, with all our faults. We thank you for reaching out to us and embracing us, unworthy as we are, even when church leaders tell you not to. We are grateful that your mercy and forgiveness and understanding and power exceed those of the Pharisees of every age who would condemn us for not following their rules. As fast as they burden us with their laws and condemnations, you unburden us and sustain us with your love. Thank you, Lord, for not being the god of the box. Amen.

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