God’s Already Here
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
It can be fairly easy to believe that the church’s job is to “introduce” God and Jesus to people. Our history is full of accounts of Christianity seeking to convert “pagans” and introduce the faith to “uncivilized” people. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, once wrote in his private journal reflecting on his decision to go to the colony of Georgia in the New World, “I will hear the gospel afresh by preaching it to the innocent savages because they have no defense against the text.”
He wasn’t very successful, later writing, “They are liars, thieves, and murderers. They murder their own babies and they murder their own parents! They do not wish to learn and are not willing to be taught.”
Being a Christian and assuming that it is our job to introduce God to places and people as if God wasn’t already there and present with them and at work in their lives is a bold and foolish assumption to make.
And the violence the Christian Church has committed throughout history to Indigenous communities under this foolhardy belief is a sin for which we still have so much repenting work left to do.
In Colossians, Paul wrote “And God is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Christians believe in the omnipresence of God. We believe that God is always present with us and throughout creation.
So why would we believe that somehow we are the gatekeepers that “bring God” into “savage” places? Our church is in a challenging neighborhood of Lakewood, Colorado. And I think many churches like ours in the area might feel like beacons on a hill proclaiming God’s love in a Godless place.
But we are not allowed to believe that any place is Godless without being hypocrites who are willfully ignorant of our own teachings and the words of scripture!
The author of Hebrews doesn’t say “make Love happen” in chapter 13 vs. 1. Instead, the author exhorts us to “let love continue.” I think we would be best served as people of faith, no matter where we are, to not assume that we are bringing God to a place God has never been before.
Instead, I think God is calling us to notice where God is already at work. God is calling us to “let Love continue” wherever we are. God is calling us to notice it and share the good news we have experienced to people who have so many things that might interefere with their own noticing of God’s work in their midst.
Let’s be Christians who are humble enough to acknowledge that we aren’t bringing God with us wherever we go. Instead, let’s embrace the truth that what we are carrying with us is good news that God is already here, already loving us, and already at work in the world.
