SREKING sop BETHANY PREOBYTERZAN CHURCH

TORE 19:1-10 LAFAYETTE, INDIANA

NOVEMBER 19, 1972 JOHN M. BUCHANAN
The most important reality in my life is my love for my wife and her love for me.
There's nothing unique about that: it's true for all of us: it has been true or it will be
true. And yet, if someone should insist that we prove that we love our wives or husbands:
or if suddenly we had to come up with some incontestable, tangible evidence that our spouse

loves us, we would be hard pressed.

For the truth is that everything people do to express their love and commitment to
each other can be explained away in a rather cynical, unromantic manner: as the expression
of biological need, for instance, or as self protection. If you are inclined to, it is
possible to describe marital love as the working out of human weakness and the desire for
security. In the final analysis there is no way to prove that you love someone else: there
is no proof that someone loves you. Rather, a love relationship depends on choice, risk,
trust and faith. And if that isn't adequate - if we force marriage to become a daily
proving ground for love: if we insist that the other keep documenting and demonstrating
love, the relationship will suffer: the reality of love will remain illusive. For it
cannot be proven.

The same is true of God. It is not possible to prove that he exists: or that he
doesn't exist. In fact, it's really a little preposterous even to talk about it. Ina

fine little volume, The Christian Agnostic, Leslie Weatherhead writes: "There is something

almost ludicrous in sitting down at a desk and writing the word 'God' at the top of a sheet
of paper and then being presumptuous enough to add anything... Having just written the word
‘God', I feel that the most appropriate thing to do would be to leave half a dozen blank
sheets of paper." (P.71)

Weatherhead goes on to quote a Buddhist scholar who wrote, "The idea of God is quite
acceptable to us, but we do not encourage the use of the word lest it should be tainted."

That's an appealing sentiment, and yet the Christian faith presumes to do just that:
to say some very precise things about a God who has done and continues to do some very
precise things. And although the Bible never addresses the issue, behind it all is the
unproveable assumption that there is a God about whom we can talk in the first place.

So let us think this morning about the proposition - "There is a God", and let us see

where it takes us.

Some men who have thought about it hold that man has created God: that man needs a
surrogate father and, therefore, Jong ago thought up a universal progenitor that could
fill that need. Some have proposed that the whole idea of God was a response to man's
primieval need to explain the mystery in the universe - or to have someone upon whom
to blame evil and misfortune. From the scientific point of view some men have surveyed the
vast catalog of information we now have about the natural world, the earth's beginnings
and the process of biological evolution and concluded that there is not only no need for a
God, there is noe room.

The other side of that coin, of course, is the large and impressive list of intellec-
tuals - scientists - philosophers ~ who have looked at the same evidence and come up with
the opposite conclusion, namely, that the more we know about the world and the development
of life, the more it becomes evident that there is a God behind it all. Among them would
have to be listed Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Immanuel Kant, William dames and
Alfred North Whitehead. The concept of evolution for instance, is for some people, proof
that there is no creator; whiie for others there is no more eloquent documentation of some
supreme intentionality built into the scheme of things - some universal mind ~ than the
orderly, ongoing process of evolution.

For me, at least - even though I know it cannot be called proof - creation romains
a very persuasive argument for God. Now, Tet us not presume that he needs our arguments -
but the creation seems to me to cry out in praise of its creator.

One expression of this argument js the watch maker theory. It goes like this. if a
man discovered a watch on the shore of a deserted island, he would deduce - after examin-
ing it, studying, learning how 4t works and what it does, that somewhere there is a watch
maker.

A similar expression is the theory of intentionality. In 1963, in a book entitied

Law, Order, Cosmos, God, sixteen scientises testified to the basic orderliness in the

universe and the incredible odds against that orderliness happening as a result of a
cosmic accident. Professor Edwin Conklin, a bielogist, said it best: "The probability

of life originatig from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dict-

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jonary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop". (P.87 Weatherhead)

I find that pretty persuasive. A doctor told me once that he never delivered a baby
that he was not filled with numility and awe before the creator. I have experienced that.
That one cell should become this - that one cell should become fingers and cornea and ear
membrane: heart and blood and hair: that one cell should become this exquisite machine with
a mind and a personality and the ability to love - that's quite an accident!

And yet there is no proof. Finally, it is a matter of experience. Even the scholars
acknowledge that. Tho philosopher Whithead said, "Only at rare intervals does the deeper
and vaster world come through inte conscious thought....1t is then, if ever, that the door
to the invisible world swings open..." And Paul Tillich, "We experience moments in which
we accept ourselves, because we feel that we have been accepted by that which is greater
than we. If only more such moments were yiven us!"

It's the same reality expressed by the person who has had a tremendous spiritual
upheaval in a revival meeting; who. suddenly and dramatically knows that there is a God, that

he is loved by God, that .he is saved by God.

The reality of God is, in the final analysis a matte of experience. The trouble is,

a lot of us haven't had one. There is a charming and good article in the November issue

of A.D. by a lady who asks, "How Can I Know That I've Bean Saved?" She tells a story

that is very familiar to most of us. A friend talks to her about God and salvation and

says: "You'll know without doubt when it happens... Your life will be changed: you wil]

find a great inner peace, and God will be very real to you." "Then" the writer admitted -
with candor that strikes close to home - "I guess it has not yet happened to me”. (AD ,P.28/29)

The temptation, of course, is to create those experiences: to coerce them psycholo-~
gically. And I confess that whenever I sense it happening I am revolted and angered. I
confess that I am most skeptical about a style of evangelism that promises to “turn you
on with Jesus".

Well, If you are a somteime skeptic: if you warry about the fact that much of the
time the word "God" doesn't have much content for you: 1f you want to believe and some-
times can't: if you are waiting for "it" to happen - whatever it is, welcome to the club -

the first member of which was a funny Tittle man named Zacheus a jong time ago in the city

of Jericho.

Zacheus was the chief tax collector in Jericho, and rich, Luke tells us. As the
chief of the tax collectors he would also have been hated. Rome depended on men who were
opportunists to collect taxes. Their only responsibility was to turn over to the government
an assigned amount of money. Whatever they collected over that amount they could keep,

Thus Zackeus wes an important man, and as the one who presided over this entire questionable
Structure in Jericho, quite wealthy. He was alsa short. One gets the image of a bellicase,
belligerent little fellow compensating for physical smalIness by assuming an air of self
importance. It was this man who wanted to see Jesus when he came to town, and wanted to

sce him badly enough to climb a tree.

It was not, I sense, a typical kind of thing for Zacheus to do. It was not the sort
of thing that the citizens of Jericho were accustomed to sceing their pompous little
financial czar do every day.

It's very tempting to speculate that Zackeus had a bad conscience: that he was quilty,
lonely and afraid. Perhaps he was all of these. But the only thing we can be positive

that he wanted to see Jesus badly enough to
about is/make somewhat of a specticle of himself in the process,

And in the process he was found. Jesus saw nim, called him down from his perch,
invited himself to dinner, and said, "Today, salvation has come to this house", Zacheus,
I want to assume, was a questioner, a skeptic, a man who wanted to believe but couldn't:

a seeker of God. Whatever he believed it wasn't satisfying enough: he had never known for
sure the reality of God. He took a great risk: he went, literally, out on a limb - and in
the process of seeking was found.

In terms of theology, you and I aust do the same. We have to struggle it through. I
don't think it's honest or rasponsible to believe that there is a God - or to believe
certain things about that God without reflecting on it, doubting it, wrestling with it.

f think we have to look at the evidence, and go with the evidence as far as it will take us.
But then we must Teap - not blindly, but frem the point to which the evidence has brought
us. Qr, if we are Zacheus, one day we must climb a tree.

In terms of life, I believe we are called to follow first and believe second. That's

what I see happening in the New Testament. fen laid down their fisning nets and followed.

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they did not stop for a quick seminar on dogma. Men followed Jesus of Nazareth into an
unknown future - and only later came to grips with the intellectual implications of what
they had done.

Again, Leslie Weatherhead, has said it well: "I helteve passionately that Christianity
is a way of life, not a theological system with which one must be in intellectual agreement.
i feel that Christ would admit into discipleship anyone who sincerely desired to follow
him, and allow that disciple to make his creed out of his exnerience; to listen, to consider,
to pray, to follow and ultimately to believe only those convictions about which the exper-
ience of fellowship made him sure". (Ibid. P.16)

I wish, somehow, that we could understand that and recapture it here. I wish we could
See that Christian faith doesn’t begin with the creeds - but with Christ: that personal
faith is more a matter f following Christ than understanding the doctrine of the incarnation:
that the church is a community of people who have climbed a tree in their search for God -
rather than a congregation of souls who already know all there is to know.

I'd like to share with you a portion of a meditation written by a mother in the
devotional guide, “Alive Now":

It had long been my belief that God loved all of mankind, but I
found it much more difficult to comprehend that he loved me personally.
Tt finatly became a reality through my own son when he was very small.

One night as I stood Tooking down on my sleeping child, my Tove

for him seemed to reach out and fill the whole room; I experienced an

overwhelming sense of joy. Instinctively my spirit rose in thanksgiving

to God for the gift of our son and our joy in him.

At this moment there dawned upon my consciousness the certainty

that God loved me like that - only much, much more. The assurance of

his love ceased to be just an intellectual assent and became a living

reality. It was then that I began to understand something of my own

worth in the eyes of Ged, and through this recagnition I found a new

and growing capacity to love. ”

_ I've been there - and I would guess you have been toe. I haven't had a mystical ,

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Cataclysmic, saving experience, but I've been out on the limb a couples of times - enough
times to know that it's out there that God comes to us: out there where we love deeply
and give it all: and doubt and struggle and commit ourselves to something we don't quite
understand.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a system of theology: not a series of statements
about the existence or nature of God. Rather, it's Good News about a God who comes to us:
i\ God who spoke thrcugh his prophet Jeremiah and said: "Can a man hide himself in secret
places so that I cannot sce him?" A God who so filled the Psalmist that he could cry out,
“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I
ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I maka my bed in hell, thou art there!"

An honest man will doubt. For an honest man there will be days and perhaps years
when God does not scem very real. That is not unchristian. For the Good News is about
an honest man who, himself, had moments of doubt: a good and honest man who climbed his
tree - and as hedied said: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." And for me, that's

always been enough. AMEN

Father ,we would believe: help our unbelief. Give us the courage of Zacheus to climb a
tree: to extend self and stretch our minds: then, Father, find us: through Jesus Christ

our Lerd. AEN