God, What Are You Up To?
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle A
One of the better programs on television from 2003 to 2005 was a series on CBS called Joan of Arcadia. Like many thoughtful shows, this one did not score high enough to stay on the air for long, but it did last two seasons.
The title alludes to Joan of Arc, the fifteenth-century teenager who believed she heard the voice of God urging her to save France from England during the Hundred Years War. That Joan led an army into battle, successfully forcing the British to retreat from Orleans. Later, captured by the British, she was tried for heresy and burned at the stake.
The Joan of the television show is a modern girl, struggling not only with the usual issues of being a teenager, but also with the problems of being new in town and having a brother who recently became a paraplegic as the result of an auto accident. Then her life is suddenly further complicated when God starts speaking to her. God comes to her not as an inner voice, but disguised as other people and showing up in the midst of Joan's day. One time, God comes to her as a cute boy on the bus. Another time, it's as a woman with attitude working in the cafeteria of Joan's school. Other times, it's as a maintenance worker, a little girl, a fellow student, a lecturer at her school, a liquor-store clerk, and so on. Joan never knows when someone she encounters will turn out to be God, for he appears as individuals of various races, ages, and of either gender.
Initially Joan questions her sanity, but she eventually follows God's instructions, although they make no sense to her. Each time she does, however, something further down the line works out for the good, demonstrating the truth of the old adage that God works in mysterious ways. Still, Joan remains enough of a skeptic to not share this new relationship with anyone else. Joan feels that her family is already dealing with a lot of heavy stuff, including serious pressures with her father's job as a police chief and the complexities brought on by her brother's injuries. She realizes that she can't suddenly reveal that she's literally running into God and having conversations with him. Her family already has enough issues to deal with.
It was a pretty well written show, and one that didn't leave you wishing you hadn't watched it, but what I found most interesting about the series was the role God played. His instructions to Joan were almost always confusing and counterintuitive. Joan often questioned them, and over the course of several shows, she eventually asked the questions most of us wish God would resolve. But God is not in the business of providing answers, not about his instructions or about himself or about his methods. The show's executive producer, Barbara Hall, said, "[In] trying to write God, I obviously don't know what he's thinking. On the show, God says he won't answer any direct questions because he chooses not to explain what is going on -- because he's a mystery. The show is really a lot about posing theological and philosophical questions and not about answering them."1
Well, isn't that about how it usually is when we try to reconcile the complexities of our lives with the ways of God? Don't we usually find ourselves with more questions than answers? Isn't it true that when we get to places where there are no solutions forthcoming, we have to proceed on one of only two conclusions? Either 1) there are no answers and life actually has no meaning or 2) someone higher than us knows the answers and we can operate on the basis of faith in that someone.
The Old Testament reading this morning is a case in point. It concerns Abram, later to be known as Abraham. Without warning, Abram hears from God that he -- Abram -- will father a great nation. God tells Abram that through him, all the families of earth will be blessed. What's more, says God, Abram is to take his wife, servants, and herdsmen, and migrate to Canaan.
Abram obeys, but the whole circumstance must have struck him as strange. Nothing in his life had prepared him to receive direct instructions from God. We know from reading on in Genesis that as the years roll by, Abram puzzled over how God's promise would be fulfilled. Sarai, his wife, would become an old woman, and they had no offspring. Abram asks God how a new nation could arise by direct descent from the two of them. But God repeats the promise, and Abram trusts God.
Actually, the encounters between God and Joan on the television show almost seem modeled on this old story from Genesis. There are the elements of the scripture account that also occur in Joan's meetings with God: First God shows up unexpectedly with surprising news or instructions. Second, God's instructions puzzle and even trouble the person receiving them, leading the person to question God. Third, God doesn't seem to mind the questions, but refuses to answer them. Fourth, the person decides to obey, and that satisfies God.
There is one more point of congruence, but we have to go beyond this particular passage of scripture to see it, and that is when the results of what God instructed eventually become clear. In the Bible, even after his later visit from God, Abram still has to wait several more years before his son Isaac is born, and even then Abram is only seeing the beginning of the fulfillment of God's promise. In Joan of Arcadia, however, we see how God's instruction works out for the good by the end of each episode. In one episode, for example, God told Joan to go get a job, even though it made no sense with her schedule and responsibilities. When she finally did what God asked and took a job, her wheelchair-bound brother was inspired by her example to break out of his depression and anger and get a job himself, his first step back into resuming his life. As a viewer, I concluded each episode with a sense of "Oh, now I see why God wanted Joan to do that."
It is in this final point that the television show is probably the furthest from the actual experience of most of us who try to obey God. Generally, God's purposes do not become clear for a long time, and sometimes not in this lifetime. In that regard, the Genesis story is a more realistic model than the television show. In fact, it's not difficult to understand why, as the series developed, Joan came to obey God somewhat more readily; it's because she saw how his previous instructions worked out.
In our lives, God's purposes often remain a mystery. During the opening credits for Joan of Arcadia each week, we heard the song "What If God Was One of Us?" being sung by another Joan -- Joan Osborne. Actually that song was written back in 1996, and was a hit for Osborne then. Although the credits sequence didn't give time for us to hear the entire song, another part of the full lyrics asked a question similar to this: "If you were facing God, and all his glory, what one question would you want to ask?" Well, the question we might pose is the one that I've used to title this sermon today: God, what are you up to?
While often we cannot answer that, the New Testament gives us an important affirmation about God's purposes. Writing to the Roman Christians, the apostle Paul said, "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). We need to look at that verse carefully, for it is often misunderstood. It is not saying that everything works out for the best no matter what. In fact, the verse is not about our circumstances; it is about God's sovereignty, his total independence of humankind. His purposes, the verse says, will be accomplished through any means God chooses.
Let me give you an example: the old hymn, "God Moves In A Mysterious Way." The words to that hymn were written in 1774 by the poet, William Cowper, who -- though a sincere Christian -- suffered periods of depression and on more than one occasion attempted to end his life. Now there is a story behind the writing of the hymn that's been told many times.
One evening, an impenetrable fog had settled over the city of London. In a dismal flat in the heart of the crowded East End, William Cowper stood gazing into the fireplace. Then suddenly, overcome by emotions of discouragement, gripped by fears that he could not name, he threw on his cloak and walked out into the night.
In the dense fog, Cowper groped his way across the pavement, guiding himself by the curbstone until he reached the corner where he knew a horse and cab always waited. He opened its door and ordered the driver to take him to the Thames River, for in his deep depression, he had decided to jump from the bridge and end it all.
The trip should have taken fifteen minutes, but after an hour and a half of negotiating the dark and foggy streets, Cowper realized they were hopelessly lost. In frustration, Cowper got out, paid the driver and started out on foot. Almost at once, however, his arm struck a familiar object. It was the iron horse's head of the hitching post in front of his own home. After an hour and a half of wandering around, he had ended up right back where he had started.
As the story goes, Cowper was so impressed by this turn of events that he climbed the stairs to his flat, lit the lamp, and knelt to ask God to forgive him for what he had planned to do. Then he wrote the words to the hymn, which begins, "God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform."
It is possible that the story is true as told, but it's equally possible, as one of Cowper's biographers has suggested,2 that the cab driver was not lost at all and that he had purposely driven Cowper all over the city, pretending not to be able to find his way so as to charge a bigger fare (as some cabbies today have been known to do). Then, after an hour and a half, he deposited Cowper back at his front door.
Although Cowper apparently thought arriving back at home was an act of God's providence and wrote this great hymn to express that, we could just as easily conclude that the hymn came about because of the deceitfulness and greed of a London cab driver. But even if that's the case, it changes nothing about the testimony of the hymn, for whatever the cause of the event, God enabled Cowper to see some meaning in it that helped him face life again.
You see, God's purposes cannot be overridden by anything we can do. That's what the verse really means: "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose." God's intentions will be fulfilled, regardless of actions or inactions on our part, because God is in ultimate control.
In the second verse of Cowper's hymn he says:
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
[God] treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.
In the television show, God chooses to use actions in Joan's life to accomplish his purposes, but only if she is willing to trust him enough to cooperate. In the Genesis story, God chooses to use Abram's descendants, but only if Abram is willing to trust him enough to hang in there. But here's the point: Even if Joan or Abram had refused, God would have worked his purpose out some other way. He is not stymied by our unwillingness to trust him.
We, however, can miss great riches and blessing by refusing to cooperate with his purposes. Cowper puts this positively:
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds you so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
With blessings on your head.
We may have questions for God, but he has one for us, too. It is "Will you trust me?"
As we've said, we don't always know what God's purposes are, but we have a clear enough view from the Bible and the teachings of Jesus to understand some of them. Aligning ourselves with those things about him that we do understand and trusting him for the ones we don't is a big part of what the Christian life is all about. Amen.
____________
1. www.joanofarcadia.com/theshow.
2. Albert Edward Bailey, The Gospel in Hymns (New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, 1952), pp. 133-134.
The title alludes to Joan of Arc, the fifteenth-century teenager who believed she heard the voice of God urging her to save France from England during the Hundred Years War. That Joan led an army into battle, successfully forcing the British to retreat from Orleans. Later, captured by the British, she was tried for heresy and burned at the stake.
The Joan of the television show is a modern girl, struggling not only with the usual issues of being a teenager, but also with the problems of being new in town and having a brother who recently became a paraplegic as the result of an auto accident. Then her life is suddenly further complicated when God starts speaking to her. God comes to her not as an inner voice, but disguised as other people and showing up in the midst of Joan's day. One time, God comes to her as a cute boy on the bus. Another time, it's as a woman with attitude working in the cafeteria of Joan's school. Other times, it's as a maintenance worker, a little girl, a fellow student, a lecturer at her school, a liquor-store clerk, and so on. Joan never knows when someone she encounters will turn out to be God, for he appears as individuals of various races, ages, and of either gender.
Initially Joan questions her sanity, but she eventually follows God's instructions, although they make no sense to her. Each time she does, however, something further down the line works out for the good, demonstrating the truth of the old adage that God works in mysterious ways. Still, Joan remains enough of a skeptic to not share this new relationship with anyone else. Joan feels that her family is already dealing with a lot of heavy stuff, including serious pressures with her father's job as a police chief and the complexities brought on by her brother's injuries. She realizes that she can't suddenly reveal that she's literally running into God and having conversations with him. Her family already has enough issues to deal with.
It was a pretty well written show, and one that didn't leave you wishing you hadn't watched it, but what I found most interesting about the series was the role God played. His instructions to Joan were almost always confusing and counterintuitive. Joan often questioned them, and over the course of several shows, she eventually asked the questions most of us wish God would resolve. But God is not in the business of providing answers, not about his instructions or about himself or about his methods. The show's executive producer, Barbara Hall, said, "[In] trying to write God, I obviously don't know what he's thinking. On the show, God says he won't answer any direct questions because he chooses not to explain what is going on -- because he's a mystery. The show is really a lot about posing theological and philosophical questions and not about answering them."1
Well, isn't that about how it usually is when we try to reconcile the complexities of our lives with the ways of God? Don't we usually find ourselves with more questions than answers? Isn't it true that when we get to places where there are no solutions forthcoming, we have to proceed on one of only two conclusions? Either 1) there are no answers and life actually has no meaning or 2) someone higher than us knows the answers and we can operate on the basis of faith in that someone.
The Old Testament reading this morning is a case in point. It concerns Abram, later to be known as Abraham. Without warning, Abram hears from God that he -- Abram -- will father a great nation. God tells Abram that through him, all the families of earth will be blessed. What's more, says God, Abram is to take his wife, servants, and herdsmen, and migrate to Canaan.
Abram obeys, but the whole circumstance must have struck him as strange. Nothing in his life had prepared him to receive direct instructions from God. We know from reading on in Genesis that as the years roll by, Abram puzzled over how God's promise would be fulfilled. Sarai, his wife, would become an old woman, and they had no offspring. Abram asks God how a new nation could arise by direct descent from the two of them. But God repeats the promise, and Abram trusts God.
Actually, the encounters between God and Joan on the television show almost seem modeled on this old story from Genesis. There are the elements of the scripture account that also occur in Joan's meetings with God: First God shows up unexpectedly with surprising news or instructions. Second, God's instructions puzzle and even trouble the person receiving them, leading the person to question God. Third, God doesn't seem to mind the questions, but refuses to answer them. Fourth, the person decides to obey, and that satisfies God.
There is one more point of congruence, but we have to go beyond this particular passage of scripture to see it, and that is when the results of what God instructed eventually become clear. In the Bible, even after his later visit from God, Abram still has to wait several more years before his son Isaac is born, and even then Abram is only seeing the beginning of the fulfillment of God's promise. In Joan of Arcadia, however, we see how God's instruction works out for the good by the end of each episode. In one episode, for example, God told Joan to go get a job, even though it made no sense with her schedule and responsibilities. When she finally did what God asked and took a job, her wheelchair-bound brother was inspired by her example to break out of his depression and anger and get a job himself, his first step back into resuming his life. As a viewer, I concluded each episode with a sense of "Oh, now I see why God wanted Joan to do that."
It is in this final point that the television show is probably the furthest from the actual experience of most of us who try to obey God. Generally, God's purposes do not become clear for a long time, and sometimes not in this lifetime. In that regard, the Genesis story is a more realistic model than the television show. In fact, it's not difficult to understand why, as the series developed, Joan came to obey God somewhat more readily; it's because she saw how his previous instructions worked out.
In our lives, God's purposes often remain a mystery. During the opening credits for Joan of Arcadia each week, we heard the song "What If God Was One of Us?" being sung by another Joan -- Joan Osborne. Actually that song was written back in 1996, and was a hit for Osborne then. Although the credits sequence didn't give time for us to hear the entire song, another part of the full lyrics asked a question similar to this: "If you were facing God, and all his glory, what one question would you want to ask?" Well, the question we might pose is the one that I've used to title this sermon today: God, what are you up to?
While often we cannot answer that, the New Testament gives us an important affirmation about God's purposes. Writing to the Roman Christians, the apostle Paul said, "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). We need to look at that verse carefully, for it is often misunderstood. It is not saying that everything works out for the best no matter what. In fact, the verse is not about our circumstances; it is about God's sovereignty, his total independence of humankind. His purposes, the verse says, will be accomplished through any means God chooses.
Let me give you an example: the old hymn, "God Moves In A Mysterious Way." The words to that hymn were written in 1774 by the poet, William Cowper, who -- though a sincere Christian -- suffered periods of depression and on more than one occasion attempted to end his life. Now there is a story behind the writing of the hymn that's been told many times.
One evening, an impenetrable fog had settled over the city of London. In a dismal flat in the heart of the crowded East End, William Cowper stood gazing into the fireplace. Then suddenly, overcome by emotions of discouragement, gripped by fears that he could not name, he threw on his cloak and walked out into the night.
In the dense fog, Cowper groped his way across the pavement, guiding himself by the curbstone until he reached the corner where he knew a horse and cab always waited. He opened its door and ordered the driver to take him to the Thames River, for in his deep depression, he had decided to jump from the bridge and end it all.
The trip should have taken fifteen minutes, but after an hour and a half of negotiating the dark and foggy streets, Cowper realized they were hopelessly lost. In frustration, Cowper got out, paid the driver and started out on foot. Almost at once, however, his arm struck a familiar object. It was the iron horse's head of the hitching post in front of his own home. After an hour and a half of wandering around, he had ended up right back where he had started.
As the story goes, Cowper was so impressed by this turn of events that he climbed the stairs to his flat, lit the lamp, and knelt to ask God to forgive him for what he had planned to do. Then he wrote the words to the hymn, which begins, "God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform."
It is possible that the story is true as told, but it's equally possible, as one of Cowper's biographers has suggested,2 that the cab driver was not lost at all and that he had purposely driven Cowper all over the city, pretending not to be able to find his way so as to charge a bigger fare (as some cabbies today have been known to do). Then, after an hour and a half, he deposited Cowper back at his front door.
Although Cowper apparently thought arriving back at home was an act of God's providence and wrote this great hymn to express that, we could just as easily conclude that the hymn came about because of the deceitfulness and greed of a London cab driver. But even if that's the case, it changes nothing about the testimony of the hymn, for whatever the cause of the event, God enabled Cowper to see some meaning in it that helped him face life again.
You see, God's purposes cannot be overridden by anything we can do. That's what the verse really means: "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose." God's intentions will be fulfilled, regardless of actions or inactions on our part, because God is in ultimate control.
In the second verse of Cowper's hymn he says:
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
[God] treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.
In the television show, God chooses to use actions in Joan's life to accomplish his purposes, but only if she is willing to trust him enough to cooperate. In the Genesis story, God chooses to use Abram's descendants, but only if Abram is willing to trust him enough to hang in there. But here's the point: Even if Joan or Abram had refused, God would have worked his purpose out some other way. He is not stymied by our unwillingness to trust him.
We, however, can miss great riches and blessing by refusing to cooperate with his purposes. Cowper puts this positively:
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds you so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
With blessings on your head.
We may have questions for God, but he has one for us, too. It is "Will you trust me?"
As we've said, we don't always know what God's purposes are, but we have a clear enough view from the Bible and the teachings of Jesus to understand some of them. Aligning ourselves with those things about him that we do understand and trusting him for the ones we don't is a big part of what the Christian life is all about. Amen.
____________
1. www.joanofarcadia.com/theshow.
2. Albert Edward Bailey, The Gospel in Hymns (New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, 1952), pp. 133-134.
