Your God is too small

 

In 1952, there was a little book written by J B Phillips called “your God is too small” and in that book Philips challenged the church a bit.   “The trouble with many of us today” he wrote “ is that we have not found a God big enough for our modern needs. In varying degrees we suffer from a limited idea of God. One chapter is about the "God-in-a-box" where he attacks the idea that many Christians have that God is only working in their own denomination, heritage or community. They might deny it, but many conceive of God as approving their style and disapproving others. God is so much bigger than that.

 

We sing of the problem sometimes: “But we make God’s love too narrow by false limits of our own, and we magnify its strictness with a zeal he will not own.” 

 

Today’s readings talk of us taking this big God into the world and finding this big God in others perhaps we cannot cope with finding God in. Jesus calls us to radical discipleship and reckless hospitality and to see that God’s Kingdom might well be breaking in in ways we need time to think about. The way of God can be mind blowing. To hear the challenge of the Gospel might be dangerous! 

I had a Chair of District once who used to keep reminding us we need to catch up as a church to where God is ahead of us. Jesus’ last earthly instruction to his church is to “go” “go into all the world…” but the world can be a horrible place to go into, we are safer in the womb of the churchbuilding… we may have tasted the world’s flavours and never want to taste them again. I was in Harrogate for a meeting on Thursday and stopped on the way back at a Cook, you know, that shop that does posh frozen food. They’ve got a new vegan range. So I bought a shepherd less pie. It said it had a bit of rosemary in it. The chef had put as much rosemary he or she could find in it and then some more so we were still tasting rosemary hours later and we’ll never buy a shepherd less pie ever again. We are like that when we have a bad experience engaging with the world – never again we say, because our encounter left a nasty taste in our mouth.

 

But Jesus still says “go” and God calls people still like his prophet Ezekiel to go to a “rebellious nation.” God’s message of gracious love and acceptance and of radical inclusivity in Jesus is our task and our call. However hard it is. In the words of an Iona liturgy, we are to help “those who need to forget the God they do not believe in, and meet the God who believes in them.”

This Sunday’s Gospel reading really is in two parts. First Jesus reminds us going out, flying our colours to the mast, might bring rejection. He shares with his home town of Nazareth. The people remember him as the carpenter’s son. The lovely boy growing up amongst them. And now? Well, Jesus concludes "A prophet is not without honour, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household." 

 

So hostile is Nazareth's opposition that Jesus "marvelled because of their unbelief.” It’s hard to witness in your home village. Perhaps everyone knows you go to chapel. Perhaps we’re scared what our neighbours think of us. 

 

I remember being a local preacher in my home Circuit dreading the plan sending me to the chapel I grew up in. Preaching to your mother and your aunties was a hard gig! “Why on earth did you pick that hymn, and why did you say that?” Mother would say over lunch! 

Jesus contrasts the unbelief of the religious at home who should get it with the missionary potential of going out of the comfort zone to reach other people.His rejection at Nazareth sets the stage for the first missionary endeavours of Jesus' disciples. Jesus hadcalled them to be fishers of men, and now they will go fishing. We are told: "And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits" With rejection fresh on their minds, they will be under no illusions that warm receptions will meet them as they travel. Their work will always be arduous, and many lonely and painful days are before them. Just as Israel rejected the Old Covenant prophets, and even Jesus, so they too meet frequent rebuffs. But go they will, and they will go with authority over the powers of darkness because they go in the name of Jesus. 

Jesus called and sent them. His authority – not their personal strengths or gifts – assure them that they will fulfil their mission. They see the kingdom of God take shape in powerful ways – demons are cast out and the sick are cured, and people are brought to repentance.  That takes place wherever the disciples are welcomed.  

The kingdom of God becomes real where there is hospitality and openness rather than fear and a desire to protect oneself. Jesus was rejected at Nazareth because his vision of an inclusive God was just too scary.

This past week the Methodist Conference has met in Birmingham and perhaps has challenged us with the most radical agenda for the Church to consider than we have had in my lifetime. 

 

For years we’ve concentrated on how we keep the inner church going, and that’s still important – but we seem now to be saying in the Kingdom of God there is a place for all, injustice won’t be tolerated and we will show the world through how we act and what we stand for that the big God can be met and the radical Kingdom can come. So you will know about the permission if we want to have same sex marriages on our premises, or not, if we aren’t comfortable with that, you will know about us pledging to walk together even where we profoundly disagree, you will hear about a challenge to live justly, to work for a kinder politics, to challenge the amount of foreign aid we give, to look at governance where small churches are burdened with the weight of administration and trying to free them for mission, and a desire to liberate the oppressed wherever they are, to align ourselves with the God who always, always has more to show us, and just when we think we’ve got him sussed, he goes and surprises us. 

The theologian Annie Dillard once asked, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  Or (as I suspect) does no one believe a word of it?  The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.  It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.  For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offence; or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.”

 

And I read this from a sermon from Canon Jonathan Baker. Jonathan is the vicar at Beverley Minster but before that he was at  Peterborough Cathedral. He married us, he’s a deeply spiritual man:

 

“So do you see why the task of the preacher is hazardous?  I cannot presume to know the mind of God.  I cannot fake a familiarity which, if it exists, is illusory.  All I can do is point to the cross and say:  There he is. Not a victim, but a victorious Lord.  

Not a carpenter, but the Christ.  Not a symbol, but the Saviour.  There he is, in all those who are like him; the vulnerable and poor, the rejected and misunderstood, the victims of injustice and prejudice.  That’s where you find Jesus.  And as you receive them so you receive him, and the kingdom of God takes shape, as the poor hear good news and the captives are set free and the sick are healed.

I wonder.  Who will you meet this week? If you could see past the label, it might be Christ himself.”

Jesus says “go” – share the gracious invitation of God, get a bit bruised, get involved, you never know what you being with people where they are might lead to. 

I began with “Your God is too small.” I end with another book. The late Rachel Held Evans, an American theologian, was working on a children’s book called “What is God like?” before she died tragically young in 2019. The book has just been published. “What is God like? That’s a very big question, one that people from places all around the world, throughout all time, have answered in many different ways. Keep searching, keep wondering, keep learning about God. But whenever you aren’t sure what God is like, think about what makes you feel safe, what makes you feel brave, and what makes you feel loved. That’s what God is like.

May we as a church be bold enough to go.

May we as a people show the inexhaustible love of God.

May we work for the Kingdom, look for the signs of divine activity and be prepared that how it is is not necessarily how God intends it to be.