What Do I Love When I Love My God? (Feb 4)

Readings, Isaiah 40: 21-31 and Mark 1: 29-39
Image, Henriette Browne, La Lecture de la Bible (1857)
 
 “What do I love when I love my God?” Saint Augustine asked this most wonderful question that spurs us into thought today. What do I love when I love my God?
 
Instinctually we might want to propose a simple answer: well, I love God (but we all have different views on what God is/does). We might try and specify by saying, I love Jesus Christ – God made flesh (but there are many competing accounts of who Jesus is and what he has accomplished). This, of course, isn’t a fault in the question, nor in our faith, for our God is no idol but a living God, and Christ is no idea but the crucified and risen one. We cannot fully comprehend or exhaust what there is to know of the holy and divine mystery. Like Moses, we cannot look directly upon the face of God, but see God’s back through a cleft in the rock as the glory passes by.
 
What do I love when I love my God? We’re not going to do written reflections like in Advent, but I’ve no doubt we would get a fascinating and inspiring range of responses. The ways in which we have encountered God differ, the stories from scripture that sustain us differ, the hymns that form us differ, the needs we have for God in our lives differ. And all of these differences shift and shape how we picture and speak of God, what aspects of God’s nature and activity we are most drawn, or how we understand the good news of great joy.
 
This does not imply that all these different images of God, appreciations of Christ, and proclamations of good news float about disconnected and untethered. Rather they are interrelated, overlapping, intermingling. Like points on an astronomical chart these differing conceptions and accounts relate to each other because they orbit the one centre: the effusive reality of God’s love as revealed in Christ Jesus. The gravitational pull of this reality holds all our responses together in their differences and delights.
 
The love of God made known in Christ Jesus is a mysterious infinity (it cannot be controlled or comprehended in totality by any mortal being) and yet – out of God’s generous grace – we are able to approach this mystery, glance at its passing glory, through the event of God taking on flesh and living among us. That God condescends to human likeness means that we can approach the question, what do I love when I love my God and have these personal responses be part of something as concrete and intimate as a church community. We are not all asteroids floating untethered through the darkness. In all our diversity we are held together in the orbit of a singular inexhaustible reality. Indeed, it is this reality that not only makes possible our community, but the confession that there could be (despite all divergence and disagreement) such a thing as the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.
 
This is not to say that all accounts of who God is, or what Jesus is like, or what makes up the good news are now relativised and equal. There are beliefs about God and humanity that have and continue to do great harm. Theologies that disregard God’s creation, that dismiss mental health struggles, which see women as lesser, cultivate racial hierarchies, and denigrate trans bodies. It is good to challenge these theologies and offer alternatives that we have seen bear good fruit. We have come to be part of a particular community with faithful commitments through prayer, discernment, and witness, and this is a source of joy.
 
Holy Scripture, of course, read with community, prayer, and rigour, remains the well-spring through which we consider and construct our response to the question: what do I love when I love my God. From Isaiah’s poetic joy, we are drawn to the wonder of God’s majesty and creative force. God is the one who stretches the heavens out like a curtain. The one so awesome as to make the rulers of the earth seem like nothing. And yet, God is also the one from whom no one is missing. The one who, as Mark will tell it, abhors neither the sick or possessed but comes at once to the bedside of the one laid low to take them by the hand and give power to the faint. God is the one who wills that we shall be renewed, who acts that we might be mount up with wings like eagles, who desires that we who have been fearfully and wonderfully made will run and not be weary, walk and not be faint.
 
And it is for this reason that the table is set. Because the God we love, first loved us. The God we love searched us out when we were far from home and said follow me. The God we love has a house with many rooms and a banquet with many places. We might not be able to gaze upon the face of the God we love, but the God we love has freely given body and blood so that we might be sustained on our way to the promised end. The God we love says come, all who are weary and I will give you rest. The God we love has given us this meal so that we might orbit nearer the heart of creation. What do I love when I love my God? It is, at least in part, the one who says come as you are to the table of grace.