Knowing God
I want to share with you a look at God. Is God a thing or a person? He is a person we come to know. And knowing God is a lot like knowing other people. We often approach God with the wrong ideas, simply for lack of experience.
When I went to Ecuador, I went to buy some water and said, “Hello ma'am, may I have some sparkling water?” And she says, “Water, your dollar.” I say, “Pardon?” “Your dollar.” “Ma'am, I'm speaking to you in Spanish.” But my face said that I didn't know how to speak Spanish, so she answered me that way. We can approach others with the wrong ideas. And how do we finally come to know someone? By drawing near. Even as Christians, even after many years in the church, we can hold the wrong ideas about God.
God's deepest desire
The desire I want to point to today, one of God's deepest desires, is simply to be with us. Sometimes we find it hard to believe. Do we really believe it?
Let's think for a moment. He is a God who is wholly other. He is not like me: he is God and I am his creation. No one created God; God has existed forever, he is who he is, independent of his creation, and he needs no one. There was a certain myth in the Greco-Roman world —the kind that shows up in movies— that if people did not pray to the gods, the gods grew weak and could not intervene for humanity. Well, God is not like that: he does not need us at all.
And in that being who is wholly other, independent, who needs no one —what is his deepest desire? To be with us. It does not seem very logical that a God who lacks nothing would want to be with us. And as we come to understand this, it may change our lives.
Israel's confusions
God chose Israel because he wanted to make himself known to the whole world. He chose them to be a kind of laboratory, an exemplary people who would later help God communicate with all the nations. But Israel got confused a couple of times about that desire.
Political confusion
They would say: “We also want to be with God, but we want to do well politically. So we'll make alliances with other peoples for political matters, but with God we're fine in the temple: we sing to him, we offer sacrifices, and the political side we'll handle on our own.” And God grew angry: “Am I not the commander of Israel's army? Am I not also the one in charge of your security?”
Economic confusion
Then they would say: “We're with God in the temple, but economically we're not doing well, while this people that worships false gods is prospering. So we'll do a little of what they do and a little of what we do.” They thought God did not care about their economic well-being. And God tells them: “Am I not the father of all of you, to care for you and provide for your needs?”
Confusion of pride
And finally, the people got confused thinking: “God, out of all the peoples, chose us because we deserve it, because we are the most spectacular on the face of the earth.” And what did God say? “You're not that lovely. I chose you, just as I could have chosen any people, but I chose you with a mission and a calling. And when you forget that mission, all this that we have together doesn't mean much.”
They had a very sad, very reductionist view of God. It's like a dad who says, “I paid for your school and your job is to go,” without any desire that the child learn, do well, and get ahead in life. To think of God that way is a tragedy: first, because God is not like that; but also because, believing themselves pressured politically, economically, or spiritually and at the same time God's favorites, they lost the blessing of relating to him as would have been good for them.
When I think about the best thing my parents gave me, it wasn't money or clothes —I don't even remember the clothes. The most important thing to me at this age is the time they gave me, being with me, caring about me, working themselves to the bone so I could be okay. That's what I now value as an adult.
Rend your heart and not your garments
To be with God we need something important, and it isn't being good or beautiful, because according to the Bible no one is good or beautiful enough to be with God by their own means. What do we need? It's fairly simple and at the same time complex: to recognize that we need to be with him.
In the prophet Joel we saw that the people wanted to be with God, but they also wanted to be with everyone else and to do this and that. And Joel tells them on God's behalf:
“Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.” — Joel 2:13 (NIV)
In the ancient world it was very common to show grief or frustration by tearing one's clothes, and sometimes throwing ashes on oneself to show how tormented one was. And what does God tell them? Enough of the spectacle. Stop tearing your shirts: tear your heart. “I'm not interested in your services or your sacrifices, or in all you've put together to show that you're with me. What do I want? That you be with me with all your heart.”
My parents didn't tell me, “Being a good son is washing the dishes, taking out the trash, and studying.” They said, “If you want to be part of the family, you have to be with the family in everything. You have to be with us, as we want to be with you.” What was God asking of Israel? Not that they be perfect, never make mistakes, never feel fear or doubt. He wanted them to walk through daily life with him. That's not too much to ask.
The incarnation: the clearest proof
What is the clearest proof that exists that God wants to be with us? It starts with “in” and ends with “carnation”: the incarnation of Jesus. Because God, being so great, so other, so independent and invisible —at times we struggle to think how we relate to him— what did he do? He made himself small, he emptied himself, he left the glories of heaven. For what? To be born in Palestine, in territory occupied by the Romans, in deeply troubled times.
It gives me great comfort that, when God became man, it was not in humanity's best moment, nor in his people's best moment. When God chooses to take our form so that we can know him, see him, touch him, and better understand who he is, he is not born in any palace; he is not born in Recoleta. He is born into a humble family and raised in a small town, with a father who teaches him his trade.
Jesus at the table with sinners
In Matthew 9 it says: as Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth and said to him, “Come, follow me.” And he got up and followed him. Who was Matthew? A tax collector, a traitor to his homeland, a sellout: he worked for the enemy, for the people that ruled, exploited, and killed the local people. He found himself a job that let him live off the exploitation of his own people. He wasn't well liked. And whom does Jesus call? The sellout.
Right after that, while Jesus was sitting at the table in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. Imagine being there: the rabbi from Galilee, somewhat questionable, who doesn't come from a school of rabbis, who is a carpenter's son and has a rather rough country accent, calls important and not-so-important people —folks who betray their homeland, fishermen— and sits at the table with them.
When the Pharisees, the theologians, the religious ones saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said:
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” — Matthew 9:12-13 (NIV)
With whom does Jesus sit at the table? Not with those who have read the Bible the most, nor with those chosen from childhood to study the sacred languages. He sits with the people who knew they were lacking something, who knew they needed God, who needed the kingdom of God. And when those who supposedly aren't sinners are scandalized, what does he tell them? “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners; I have not come for the healthy, but for the sick.”
Let me give you some big news: this church is full of sinners. If you didn't know, I'm sorry to be the first to tell you. We're here because we want to be at the table with Jesus, because we're not scandalized that our teacher sits at the table with sinners, because we too are sinners and we too need Jesus. How much does God want to be with us? So much that Jesus, being God, risked his reputation and his authority as a teacher in order to sit at the table and share life with us.
It is a great illusion, a lie, to think that someday we could be fine without God, or that there comes a moment in the spiritual life when we no longer need him so much. “I'll scrape by on my own here and then I'll square things with God; I'll do everything I have to do for my family and then I'll give God what's due to him.” What does God want? He wants to be in everything. And what is good for us? That God be in everything. He wants what is good for us, what does us good.
A great cloud of witnesses
Hebrews 11 speaks of great people, men and women who lived by faith, who obeyed and who suffered. Some women received back their dead, raised to life again; others were tortured, refusing to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Others faced insults, floggings, chains, and imprisonment; they were stoned, sawed in two, tempted, put to death by the sword; they went about clothed in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated —the world was not worthy of them.
And all of them, having been commended for their faith, did not receive what had been promised, since God had provided something better for us, so that they would not be made perfect apart from us. In other words, all these people who suffered so much have not received their reward yet, because they are waiting for us, for the final day, so that we may all be together.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” — Hebrews 12:1-2 (NIV)
Consider Jesus, who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you will not grow weary or lose heart. For in your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. What does that mean? That we are still alive, and we still have the chance to live to honor Jesus. We have not suffered what Jesus suffered, and even so he was faithful to the end.
Let us be loved by God
I want to encourage you to let God fill your life, to let him have the space he wants, so that he can be present in the way he wants. It would be an enormous sadness for God to be standing there with open arms while we are entertained by other things —things, what's more, that bring neither well-being nor fullness— while we think they do. God wants to bless us with his presence, and with his presence he brings well-being, joy, and all those things we long for from him.
We often think God works like an ATM. Sometimes we see it with kids: my seven-year-old nephew told me, “Uncle, buy me this Pokémon,” and I say, “No, I don't have money.” “Uncle, I saw the credit card in your wallet.” “You love me, you're going to buy me everything I want.” And there I had to break that illusion: precisely because I love him, I'm not going to give him everything he wants. The best thing is for his uncle to love him, and to love him in the way the uncle knows is best. Let us be loved by God the way he wants, and let us go on discovering that love that does us so much good. If we haven't experienced it yet, it's a matter of getting to know him, of letting ourselves be loved and cared for by God.
How did Jesus fare in this life? A gentle stroll, right? He never had any trouble, never went hungry, was never beaten, never insulted… All of that he endured. Why? For us, because he wants to be with us. God loves us deeply, a whole lot, and we, sometimes distracted, look for love somewhere else. The saddest thing for a Christian is to go around begging for love out there, when we have it in Jesus.
So this week let us fix our eyes on Jesus —the most tangible sign that God wants to be with us— and seek him. But let us also let go of a certain insistence on solving everything on our own, so that God can embrace us and love us the way he wants.
