GOD
The title of my homily for this Holy Trinity Sunday is, “God
for Dummies.”
THERE IS A GOD!
We have a family statement. It's “There is a God!”
We said it when my mom made Lemon Meringue Pie - and when
my father brought home from work a big white box - 2 layers inside - of
cookies. He worked for Nabisco - and every once and a while there was this big
white box with Oreos, Raisin Cookies, Lorna Doone, and chocolate chip cookies -
inside - in long rows.
“There is a God!”
But we made that statement the most when we played Rummy - and then when Shanghai Rummy became the game of
choice. We’re sitting there getting closer and closer to victory - when someone
discards our card and someone else picks it up - because we were not next. Inwardly came the scream, “Hey
that’s my card!” That was our last chance to win. We’re dead meat. Then someone
picked a joker - and out came our creed and our great act of faith, “There is a
God.”
I always loved a story about Carl Jung - the Swiss psychotherapist
and psychiatrist. Someone once asked him if he believed in God. His answer:
“No.” Then he paused and said, “I don’t believe in God. I know there is a God.”
When I heard that, I said, “That sums up my basic
understanding of God.”
I know there is a God.
It has always been obvious to me with every object in the
universe.
It there is wood and stone and sky and stars - there is a
star and planet maker.
If there is a chair, there is a chair maker.
If I’m sitting or standing here in this church this
morning, there is a chair maker and a mom and dad who brought me into this
world.
So I never argue with anyone who says, “I don’t believe
in God.”
I smile.
So my first statement in this homily on, “God for
Dummies” is simply, “There is a God!”
God is the Creator, the Maker, the Putter Togetherer, the
Beginner.
Just listen to people. They announce to the world at
least 3 times a day: “There is a God.”
Just listen.
I was on one of 3 buses with our high school kids -
Juniors - going to and coming back from a retreat house in Malvern,
Pennsylvania last week. They were making a 3 day retreat.
I didn’t count the number of, but I heard at least 10
times, the cry, “Oh my God!”
I’ve heard many times in confession, people confessing
that they took the name of God in vain. If they are referring to an angry
scream at another that God damn them. Okay, that’s in vain - because I don’t
think our screams at another can damn another. I don’t think that’s what God is
about.
But if they are confessing saying, “Oh my God!” they are not
sinning. They are giving God a shout out: for a beautiful sunset - or for a
whole flock of birds making better than Blue Angel twists and turns. Or they
are mesmerized by a whole crowd of autumn trees in full autumn colors - or they
see a near car accident. I sense those are all God moments - screams of joy and
cries for God’s protection.
There is a God.
Every dummy should get that.
Just stand there and look into the night sky and look as
far as your eyes can see. Or if there is
a TV program that shows the results of a sky probe from a supersized electronic telescope, watch
it. It tells us how far out that sky
goes as of now - and who knows how far out this universe or universes go.
There is a God.
When I saw my mom’s lemon meringue pie and my dad’s
cookies, I knew there was a pie maker and a cookie bringer.
So too God the universe maker and creative force.
WHAT IS THAT
MAKER LIKE - PERSONALITY LIKE?
The next reality in these comments about God for us Dummies
is this: If we have chairs in our house and there are benches in this church,
we know that chairs exist, but we don’t know what the chair or bench maker is
like.
Here is where reason and revelation come in.
Reason tells us there is such a thing as gravity and fat
people. We better build sturdy chairs.
Revelation - when it
comes to Religious Thought and Talk often is announced in manuscripts - books -
that tell us what God is like.
This is where we move from reason to faith.
This is where we have traditions that are passed down
from people with God experiences.
In our time and space - and in our hotel rooms we have
not only the Bible - but also the Koran.
In the Jewish and Christian Scriptures we have statements
- descriptions - about the meaning of life and of what God is like.
A rabbi at a wedding asked me if I had read the Koran
yet. I said, “Nope!”
He said, “You better.”
So I bought a Koran - in English - and I began noticing
the words “fire” and “burn”.
Is this God?
I got an orange magic marker and highlighted every time I
saw burnings and firings on the pages of my Koran. It now has lots of orange
highlighting in it.
After doing this I began to notice similar destructive
comments about the Jewish-Christian God in our Bible.
Uh oh!
Is that us - our projections on God - that we want God to
wipe out those we don’t like?
I asked, “What is our God like?”
Which description is God.
THE TRINITY
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday.
Last night in doing some homework on the Trinity for a sermon for today, I kept reading that Christians are not that
hot in explaining what their belief in the Holy Trinity consists in. I read
that if someone who isn’t a Christian - asks Christian or a Catholic what they
believe in - when it comes to the Trinity - they mangle their thoughts.
Hence the title of my homily was going to be “The Holy
Trinity for Dummies.” I decided to start
with: “God for Dummies.”
The first statement about the Trinity would be to state
that we Christians believe that God is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit - three persons yet one God.
Or when questioned we can simply make the Sign of the
Cross: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
So we Christians know that first truth: “
We believe that this God is One - but is 3 Persons.
I noticed that those who are monotheists - one God people
- that we give praise and glory to this God of ours each day.
In Islam we can find out that they are asked to pray 5
times a day: dawn, midday, afternoon, sunset and then sunset.”
For example, here’s a typical morning prayer: “Allah is
the Greatest!”
Allah is their name for God. It’s close to the Jewish
word, “El” or “Elohim” for God.
Then chant in Arabic, “Praise and glory be to You, O
Allah. Blessed be Your Name,
exalted be Your Majesty and Glory. There is no God but You.”
A Jewish person might as a morning prayer recite the Shema. “Hear, O
Israel the Lord- is our God.” Then in an overtone the individual or the
congregation will pray, “Hear, O Israel, the L-rd is our G-d,
the L-rd is One.”
Then the community will
recite the following verse in an undertone:
“Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever
and ever.”
Notice that we Christians can say and pray every morning:
“Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the
beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen.” And we could say
it every night before going to sleep and every morning after waking up.
When we’re looking at all this and speaking about all
this, know that we’re in the area of revelation and faith.
In mentioning this to others, we can say, we all are
monotheists, but notice that we Christians see the One God as a Trinity of Persons.
We can add that when we state our beliefs we often use
our creeds. We can use words from our creeds. “I believe in God the Father…. I
believe in Jesus Christ his Son…. I believe in the Holy Spirit.”
We can add that we know what God is like - especially
from Christ - what he tells us about his Father and his Spirit.
In Christ becoming flesh, we Christians are blessed to discover stuff about
the Carpenter and the Baker - the chair maker and the bread baker.
It’s Christ.
It’s Jesus of Nazareth.
We hear about him every Sunday at Mass in the gospels and
from Paul.
CONCLUSION
Hopefully two things happen when we meet/ discover Jesus
Christ.
We say, “Oh my God.”
And we say, “There is a God.”
For starters, that’s enough for us dummies.
