The Camouflage God

Second Sunday After Christmas

Jer. 31:7-14

John 1:(1-9) 10-18

I’ll begin today with John’s simple but powerful declaration: “No one has ever seen God.”

Of course there are many people - our family, friends, neighbors - who do not believe in God.  Plus many religious people differ on how to name God and describe God.  And maybe even you at some point have found it hard to believe in God.  I bet most of us have had some doubts at one time or another.  Certainly most of us have changed our minds over the years about what God is like.

 

But it is very important for us to confess with John’s gospel, “No one has ever seen God.”

If you have lived with faith in God for many years, it feels very natural, almost obvious or taken for granted or common sense.  But this obviousness disappears as soon as we begin having conversations with other people who believe in a different kind of god, or who do not believe in god at all.  We might respond to these others by simply thinking, “Well, I’m right and they’re wrong.  It’s obvious that God exists and that God is best named and described and prayed to in the way I grew up doing it.  These other people who don’t agree with me – they must be terribly stupid, or terribly evil.  Otherwise, they’d see things the way I do.”

Here’s one example of how difficult it can be for a person of faith to describe this faith to others.  Martin Gardner was a science writer who recently published his memoir.  And in it he talks about his faith in God in a way that he knew would disturb and confuse some of his scientist friends.  The book review put it this way:

The final part of Gardner’s book may make science buffs uneasy. Gardner explains that he believes in God, even though he is aware that “atheists have all the best arguments. There are no proofs of God or of an afterlife. Indeed, all experience suggests there is no God.” Carl Sagan once asked Gardner if he believed simply because it made him happier. Gardner said yes. “My faith rests entirely on desire. However, the happiness it brings is not like the momentary glow that follows a second martini. It’s a lasting escape from the despair that follows a stabbing realization that you and everyone else are soon to vanish utterly from the universe.”

Our reading today helps us deal with the fact that not everybody shares our faith in God.  One of the reasons not everyone agrees that God exists - and that God is kind, patient, loving, forgiving, etc. - is that God is invisible.  God cannot be seen. 

But what does that mean - that God is invisible?  It means that I will never have a direct encounter with God.  And neither will you, nor will anyone else.  It means that God can never “show up” in a definitive, clear, debate-ending way.  God can never become an object that you could point to and say, “There is God!” 

There are some things in the world that are rare, and not very likely to be seen: an albino horse, or a giant squid, or a person with three arms.  It’s rare but not impossible to see these things.  But it is impossible to see God, because God isn’t the kind of thing that can be seen.  God isn’t a thing at all.

On this second Sunday after Christmas, we are listening to the beginning of John’s gospel.  John’s gospel takes no time for Joseph and Mary, for shepherds or angels or wise men.  John begins by naming Jesus as the arrival of the eternal Word of God who was with God from the beginning. 

This is John’s good news for us: the God whom no one has ever seen has made himself known in Jesus Christ.  The invisible God has taken shape and form and allowed us to look on his glory in Jesus Christ.  This God who dwells in unapproachable light has taken on flesh and made his dwelling among us.

This was no half-way gesture on God’s part.  Jesus is not simply another messenger, or prophet, or teacher.  He is the “fullness” of God.  He is “filled” with God’s grace and truth (v. 14).  As Jesus will say later in John’s gospel, “If you know me, you know the Father.” 

And yet if it is this clear and this simple, why doesn’t everyone recognize and receive Jesus as the fullness of God among us?  Why did many people who encountered Jesus in first century Palestine not “see” God in him?  Why do many people who encounter the figure of Jesus in the gospel accounts not “see” God in him?  Why do many who meet him as light shining in the lives of their friends and neighbors not recognize him? 

Why is it so hard for so many people to find God when they look at Jesus?  Because God can be overlooked in him.  God is overlookable in him.  God has chosen to be tucked away in the ordinary, to be hidden in the everyday, to be stitched into what’s visible.  God is revealed and concealed at the same time. God blends in and is not easy to detect.  God is, we might say, camouflaged. 

The word camouflage refers to the use of materials or coloration for concealment or disguise.

When duck hunters or deer hunters get dressed, what do they wear?  Sequens?  No.  Camouflage.  It’s their way of blending in, taking on the color of their surroundings.  They do this to avoid detection.  They hope to be hidden in their surroundings. 

When military personnel are on a mission, they wear camouflage, hoping to match their surroundings – whether it’s desert sand or dense jungle – and avoid detection. 

Many animals have evolved a kind of camouflage to avoid detection.  The leopard has its spots.  The katydid can look like a leaf.  Many sea creatures can take on the colors of coral reefs or go transparent in the water.  This camouflaging feature functions to match the surroundings so as not to stand out.

So why does God come to us in camouflage, blending in by making his dwelling in the flesh, hiding himself in the ordinariness of a human life?  Because God wants to be near us without frightening us.  This is how God loves us.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (3:16).  God loves us enough to “dwell” with us.

So remember as we end the season of Christmas that God has come to us in Jesus Christ because God loves us and wants to be known.  You have been given an amazing gift.  Don’t squander it or waste it.

So how should this good news change us?  How can we live differently?

We can start by living with humility and gratitude.  If you can see God in Jesus Christ, then you have been, in John’s words, “born of God.”  You’re one of God’s beloved children, but not because of anything you’ve done.  You were “born from above,” “born again,” or “born by the Spirit” – as Jesus tells Nicodemus a couple of chapters later.

It is always tempting to compare ourselves to others.  “Well I believe in God.  I go to church.  So I must be better, smarter, more worthy, more loveable than others who don’t believe or don’t go to church.”   No, we’re none of those things.  We have simply been birthed by God our Mother into a new life of faith.  And God desires that same birth experience for everyone else.  You didn’t birth yourself.  And you can’t faith yourself.  It’s a gift from God that calls for a life of wonder, amazement, humility, and gratitude.

And so here’s another way we can respond to this good news: this invisible God wants to become visible for others in your flesh.  God wants to make his dwelling place in you.  This pattern of God dwelling in the ordinary and everyday didn’t end with Jesus.  It continues in you and me.  God inhabits our lives in order to make himself known to those around us.

It’s not that God is too far away for people to see.  It’s more like God is too close.  It’s kind of like that experience when I’m dashing around the house looking for my keys or my sunglasses, and then all of a sudden it dawns on me, like a gift, that my keys are in my hand or my sunglasses are on my head.  They were too close for me to see.  I was expecting them out there in front of me, on the table, not up close and already a part of me.

So we ought to be always asking ourselves: What would we as a congregation look like if we were fully aware of our role of making God visible for others?  How would we organize our community life?  How would we form our friendships?  What kinds of outreach and evangelism would we practice?  How would we worship if our goal were to make visible the invisible God?

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” – this is a great mystery.  But perhaps it can also serve as a guide for the way we are to live with others.  “Dwelling” names how you live in a way that makes God visible.

We are not called to manufacture experiences of God for people – as if we had that kind of power or control, as if we could summon God to appear any time we chose.  But we are called to open our lives to the presence of God such that we can be a transparent window, a sign pointing, a picture or poem suggesting something else, something greater than ourselves.  For God is camouflaged in you too.