Sermon - Sunday, November 20, 2016

The Rev. David M. Stoddart

  

So, can God make a stone that is too heavy for God to lift? This is a paradox that has been debated for centuries by people who apparently have a great deal of time on their hands: you would not believe how much ink has been spelled over this quandary. Heavy hitters from Thomas Aquinas on have weighed in on it. The question really comes down to this: is God capable of making himself incapable? I am aware of the many issues surrounding this, issues of language, logic, and theology, but the practical answer to the question seems so obvious that I will lay all those considerations aside for the moment and offer you a solution. Can God make a stone too heavy for God to lift? Of course God can: she made us. The Creator who formed 100,000,000,000 galaxies could not lift a single one of us out of bed today and make us come to church.

When we talk about God being “Almighty,” we quickly run into problems because for many, if not most, human beings, power normally means domination, the ability to control people and circumstances and bend them to our will. Power is a plane dropping bombs or a presidential motorcade stopping traffic. Power is something people amass, something they accrue to themselves so that others must defer to them and obey them. And if that is how we understand power, then God must be like that, just more so: a supersized version of us.

But what if God is not like that? What if ultimate power is not about domination? What if we defined power not as the force to control others but as the ability to produce a good result, to achieve a desired goal? If we defined it that way, then maybe we could understand what we are celebrating today. It is the last Sunday of the church year, the Feast of Christ the King. In our opening collect, we hail Jesus as “King of kings and Lord of lords.” In our reading from Colossians, we claim that He is the image of the invisible God . . . For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. He is the ultimate authority figure, a being of presumably unlimited power.

But listen to this Gospel! I know you’ve heard it before, but let it sink in. They hang him on a cross. He doesn’t control anyone — he can’t even control his own body: those being crucified invariably urinated and defecated on themselves as they slowly lost their ability to breathe. It was not just a death filled with physical agony, but a death shot through with public humiliation and utter powerlessness. In the midst of it all, Jesus forgives the very people doing it to him and offers Paradise to the man dying next to him. And this we are told, this, is the way God exercises power: not by dominating others, but by giving himself away in love.

The great physicist Niels Bohr often remarked that anyone who is not deeply shocked by quantum physics has simply not understood it. So let me invoke his wisdom now: anyone who is not shocked by the way Jesus reveals God’s power on the cross has simply not understood it. It overturns all conventional thinking. It overturns all religious thinking! The ancient Israelites wanted to believe that God was a mighty warrior who would destroy their enemies; they envisioned the Lord as a heavenly despot who would smash anyone that got in his way. But they got it wrong. Those biblical images of God seated on a throne, surrounded by clouds and lightning may convey grandeur and awe, but they do not and cannot convey God’s power. Only Jesus does that, and he does it most fully when he dies. There’s a reason why we have an execution device hanging on the wall of our church.

God’s power is love. Period. It is the persevering love that can take the hits — over and over again — until the final good is accomplished. It is the enduring love that, when one way is closed, always finds another way forward. God’s power is the love which can suffer the worst that death can dish out — and then bring life out of it. It is the relentless love which never, ever gives up on anyone. Jesus didn’t give up on that criminal: he gave him heaven. He didn’t give up on his executioners: he gave them forgiveness. That love ― unstoppable, undying, forever patient, forever determined ― will usher in the Kingdom and will include you in that Kingdom, and me, and everyone who wants it. And God will do that without ever forcing a single person to do anything. Just consider: one man, Jesus, embodies God’s love and fully surrenders to that love flowing through him, even to the point of death —  and thousands of years later, thousands of miles away, here we are: embraced, inspired, and transformed by that same love. Talk about power: I defy anyone to show me anything more powerful than that.

Obviously, that has profound implications for how we understand and exercise power in our own lives. But equally important it shapes the very nature of worship. It is precisely because Jesus Christ reveals the power of God as self-giving love that I worship him. He has no ego that needs to be stroked, no narcissistic needs that we must somehow satisfy. He doesn’t want us to cower before him in fear and say, “Oh, Lord, you are really great! You are the best ― please don’t smite me!” Jesus is King and Lord because he desires nothing for himself but to love us and inspire us to love in return. That is the only power he will ever exercise over us. And that is the very essence of God. To worship such a God is not to bow in grudging obedience to some big guy in the sky who can dominate us, but to delight in love which is unconditional and forever, which seeks nothing but goodness and joy. Worship is sharing in love, receiving it in ever greater abundance even as we give it away. That’s what gets me out of bed on Sunday morning; that’s what gets me out of bed every morning: I am a stone too heavy for God to lift, but I will gladly get myself up and worship such a God ― not because she makes me but because I want to.

But like God, I cannot make any of you desire that; I cannot force any of you to experience that. But I love you and I can encourage you to open your hearts and minds to the life-changing Truth ― and I can assure you that God’s love, more powerful than anything in this universe, will not give up on you until you do.