LENT 2 C

INTRODUCTION OF THEME

There is a line I love in the book The Colour Purple, Alice Walker has one of her characters say, “I think it makes God mad when you walk by the colour purple in a field somewhere.”

Lent is a time for purple. It is a time for looking around. It is a time to engage God, to look for God, to be open to finding God… Even if you have to look at a flower in a field, or the leaves on a tree, or the pinks and purples of a sun set.

We might even find God in the hymns we sing, or the readings we listen to – peering through the stained glass on a Sunday morning…

But I want to talk about some of the less well known ways we encounter God. We all know about the big ones, Seeing God in a Rainbow ever since the flood, or the voice of God speaking to you, even an angel at the foot of the bed… but if we are always focusing on these traditional ways – we might miss some of the smaller ones; or some of the less familiar ways.

Have you seen the commercials for Buicks lately? They play on the idea of “This isn’t your father’s Buick” but essentially it shows different people saying, I’ll be driving the Buick or some such line, and then not being able to find them because they are driving a cool looking car…. And we all know Buicks are not cool.

So this is the same sort of thing – we all have an understanding of God. We all look for God in certain ways – whether it is the answer to a prayer, a message from a sermon, or a feeling from a sunset. But what if God is out there, right there, like the colour purple… and we are walking by.

ENGAGING THE THEME

Jesus talks about God in a way we do not expect. In the story I read earlier he talks about wanting to be like a mother hen who gathers her chicks under her wing to keep them safe. God is both a mother and a chicken. Not what we are expecting.

Also the sentiment is not quite what we usually hear – God is not the warrior, God is not the teacher, God is not the creator… God is a loving parent who wishes to protect us from harm. Knowing that this is one of the ways Jesus understood God does it change your perception at all?

Or how about our story from Abraham, Where God appears in a vision as the one who will fulfill the promise of children. Do we think of God that way very often… I need kids, so God will provide? What about at a more basic level – God is the one who fulfills promises… who is faithful in all things…God is the “quality” of faithfulness… God is the “quality” of caring.

I am not the first person to say this – it comes from the Jewish practice of Kabbalah, an ancient mysticism… who first asked the question, what if God is not a noun… what if God is a verb?

Jesus said it first, God is love. But what if this is really, really true at a deeper level than we thought. What if God is not a person on a cloud, but is the actual act of loving? What if God is not an angel in the sky but is the actual verb, the action, of taking care of people? What if God is faithfulness?

So what if the reason we miss seeing God is that we miss experiencing God. When a stranger smiles at us, or a store owner says to forget about the fact you are a dime short for your coffee. What if waking up with a day that has no plans, or lying on the beach in the sunshine is experiencing God?

Does that change anything? This is our Lenten question for today… How do WE experience God, and when we do, are we letting it seep into our souls and empower us to be the people who help others to see God too?

CONCLUSION OF THEME

A few years ago my car broke down on the side of the road. I was stranded right on the edge of the city of Moncton. I managed to coast down onto the exit ramp for the major road into town… As I sat there, a lot of cars drove by. And I was thinking to myself how people in Moncton spend too much money on cars – there were BMW’s and Mercedes, Cadillacs and Audis. I kid you not, it seemed like everyone was driving a luxury car. And there I sat in an old Toyota with the four ways on while they drove right on by.

I started to have another thought about these people. One I cannot share. And I sat and sat and sat…

Finally a car pulled up behind me, a beat up old Honda civic – you know the type, a wannabe street racer. And out of it hopped two guys who looked like drug dealers. I was a little worried – but they came up and asked if I needed help, they got me to open the hood and found the problem, and fixed it… I offered them money but they would not take it…

It sure was a good lesson in humility and in judging people. And in where we might find God in our world.

And I guess this is what I am saying – during these 40 days while we are preparing ourselves, while we are looking at how we live, and how we interact with God. Let’s not just look in the places we have already searched, but let’s be open to the mysterious, the unexplained, the unexpected… after all, isn’t that where God usually shows up?