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"Equally Everywhere"
The Rev. Dr. D. Scott Stoner
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In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’m going to be doing some teaching today so I have some newsprint, if you come down here you can understand better what I am trying to say here. Thank you. The Episcopal Church has always been known as the thinking person’s church and I am really going to stretch that today, just so you know. So I hope your brains are ready. I’m proud of that, our tradition, we value reason as a gift from God and we are always asking the hard questions. It’s why in the Episcopal Church we often have to agree to disagree about things because we value independent thinking and when you value independent thinking sometimes you ask different questions and sometimes you come to different conclusions. We’re not a doctrinal church where we say everyone has to believe the exact same thing because we believe that revelation and the understanding of God and who God is in the world is an ongoing process and God has given us a brain for a reason. They say in the Episcopal Church you don’t have to check your brain at the door. So I’m going to totally engage your brain today. You’ve been warned.
My favorite lines in all of scripture, it was in the first lesson today. It says in God we live and move and have our being. And no doubt when you heard that line it brought to mind a book that was published ten years ago called In Whom We Live and Move and have our Being. The subtitle was the “Panentheistic Reflection of God’s Presence in the Scientific World.” You’ve all read that I hope as a precursor to this lecture this morning. If not, my favorite chapter in the book was by a guy named David Griffin, who is a process panentheist theologian and I will just give you a quick summary of his chapter in the book, if you don’t want to read it yourself.
He says, “Like the sensationist, atheist, materialistic naturalism that has dominated the world view since the 19th century, the naturalism of process panentheim is non-supernaturalist.” Obviously. And then he goes on to say, “but because it is prehensive panentheistic pan- experiential naturalism it can nevertheless explain why moral mathematical and logical principles exist, and why the world supports creatures capable of instantiating values.” Isn’t that great? So, only someone like me could love this stuff. You see, I was a philosophy major at Madison. I graduated from Madison in 1977 and I was so full of myself because I was a philosophy major. I would walk around in my long hair and my beard and pipe. (You had to have a pipe if you were a philosophy major) and I was so incredibly wise. It was apparent to everybody and when people would ask me what I was going to do when I graduated I would say. “I’m going to be a philosopher.” But I never found a job so I decided instead to go to seminary, actually which is why I chose to major in philosophy because it is a great preparation for studying theology.
Now we’re going to do a quick history lesson here. One of the philosophers I studied in college was Heraclites. Little known philosopher, he lived 535 B.C. to about 475 B.C. Put that in context, Plato was roughly about 425 to about 370 B.C. So he was before Plato and Heraclites taught in Ethesis which is on the far western edge of modern day Turkey. Plato was in Athens. And part of why I am doing this little history lesson for you, is where is Paul today when he says this thing, we live in God, we move and have our being, it says in the lesson today that he is in Athens. And he addressing the Aereopogus is what it says. See we forget how historical all this stuff is. Paul stood in front of the Aereopogus and said, “Athenians, people of Athens,”(The Aereopogus was like the senate the ruling body of Athens and they were all philosophers.) He said, “I see how extremely religious you are in every way. “ And then he goes on to say, “I have been through your city, I’ve seen that you have these different understandings of God and I’m here to complete your understanding. So Paul who is so wise, he speaks their language, he starts out with the philosophical background and then shows how his understanding of God is really a fulfillment of what they thought.
Heraclites was the first person who ever said that everything that exists is in flux. Everything that exists is in flux. He was the person that said, “You cannot step in the same river twice.” Because the river changes, if you step in it and step back out and step back in it’s not the same river because the river is moving. He was so profound that he also said you cannot touch the same object twice. Because every object is in flux. Now you don’t seem quite as excited about this as I am but think about that. This was almost twenty-four hundred years before modern physics proved he was right. Right? Every object is in flux; this lectern at a sub atomic level is flying around at a million miles an hour. The atoms, and electrons and the neutrons and protons and it’s in flux, it’s changing all the time. If I touch this object now, and touch it now, it’s not the same object, it’s changing. And he knew all that twenty-four hundred years ago that everything is changing and is in a state of flux.
Plato picked up on this and he quoted Heraclites a lot. Now I’m going to jump ahead. Back in this time in the Greek time (now I’m painting in pretty broad strokes) there was a thing called pantheism which was a pretty common understanding of God. Now I’m moving from philosophy to theology. The way they thought of God was in this pantheism. Theism is about God, and “pan” means all. And so pantheism was the idea that everything that exists was actually a God and the material world and God were really all one in the same. So all of nature, everything exists in God. Then came along Paul and the biblical thinking, the way they thought of God is what we would call traditional theism. What I am going to recommend for us today, for us that live in 2008 as thinking Episcopalians, is that we move to a new perspective – I certainly didn’t come up with this idea - Panentheism, now we go back to my opening quote, that book is called “Panentheistic Reflections on God”
Let me tell you the difference between Pantheism and Panentheism. Theism was the belief that God is up in heaven, we are down here on earth, we are not God, we are not one in the same and God comes and goes. God intervenes, God is the floods and separates the Red Sea for Moses. God sends water down and floods the earth with Noah’s arc. God comes and God Goes. They had a three-story view of the world us up here; God up here, we’re here and Hell is down here. And God is coming and going. And Paul was certainly in that mindset. But, when he talks about God is in whom we live and move and have our being, that my friends is a panentheistic statement. Panentheism is what I want to promote. If I was going to be the rector here much longer maybe we would all get t-shirts “We believe in Panentheism” or “Panentheism is not just religion it is a way of life.” Now just let me explain the difference, this is really important, the end part means “in”, so “all” Pan, in God. “All is in God.” Which is another way of saying, in God we live and move and have our being. It’s different from panentheism because God is more than all. But we all are living in God. It’s like the fish in the ocean, it’s like I said before about the fish that asks its mother “Where’s the ocean?” The kids are thinking about the ocean they have never seen the ocean before. And she says, “What do you mean? We live in the ocean. You were born in the ocean, you will die in the ocean, you cannot be separated from the ocean.” That’s how it is with us and God we are in God all the time, we live and move and have our being in God. We cannot be separated from God.
Now to try to redeem the sermon a little bit so it has some direct application. Let me give you two reasons why this makes a difference. Two very practical reasons, one is in our wonderful Sunday school that we have downstairs, we are a panentheistic church school program and I know that’s why you parents are here, you wanted that for your kids. What this means is that in traditional theism we have to get God into our children. If we want to raise our children as spiritual beings we need to get God into them. Again, painting in broad strokes here, open up their minds and pour in God and then they will have God because that’s why God is somewhere else so we have to get God in here and so that is a traditional way of thinking. In panentheism the approach to raising children is God’s already in them. We need to form them to help God out and help them get in touch with that divine energy that is inside every one of us because we live and move and breathe in God. We will be most alive, most fulfilled, most happy when we are in touch with that divine energy that is already inside of us.
It also effects on another level. Actually I’m going to give you three applications. On worship - one of the problems from the panentheistic point of view is that so many of our prayers and our liturgy are based on the theism view of God so we’re always praying for God to come and be present to us. Listen to our prayers, you’ll here them today. It is that God is somewhere else, it’s like he’s circling the building and if we say the right prayers, he’ll come down and be here. I’m serious, what are ministers asked to do at public events? Say an invocation. What is an invocation? You invoke God’s presence, you bring it down. No! I don’t believe that, that’s not what worship is, worship is us becoming mindful and conscious together of the God who is always with us. That’s what worship is to me, that’s why I pray every day and pray here with you. Is to reconnect me with the God that is already here, I don’t need to do anything to make God present, I need to do a lot to make myself present. In my own mindfulness and my own consciousness of this God that I can never be separate from.
Then, the final application would be in terms of when any of us feel that we have lost our way, are depressed, are stuck, are feeling sad or hopeless about something and we are just in a funk and can’t see straight. From a theistic point of view if somebody comes to me and says that they are in this place, from a theistic point of view I’ve got to figure out how I get God back in this person. Right? In the panentheistic point of view I don’t have to work so hard because all they are telling me is that somehow they have lost touch with the God energy that is within them. They are stuck, something has happened; they are stuck in some way. It is like a bunch of logs falling across a river all we’ve got to do is move the logs and the river will flow again. The energy is already there we just have to get it flowing back out and help them to be back in touch.
That’s our lesson for today and you will have to let me know how you think it went. But if this is all too complicated I do want to share one other thing with you – and this is an honor of our wonderful formation program that is going on downstairs. And could you all help me pass these out to everyone. This is what the kids are doing downstairs right now. And I want to close with this because this I know we all can understand. And I also do this just to celebrate and support what they are doing down there. This is hysterical, I think. In our time-crunched world where we all don’t have as much time as we used to. This is the Bible in fifty words. You could sit down and take several years to read the whole Bible or if you wanted you could just look at this.
God made. Adam bit. Noah arked. Abraham split. Joseph ruled.
Jacob fooled. Bush talked. Moses balked. Pharaoh plagued.
People walked. Sea divided. Tablets guided. Promise landed. Saul freaked. David peaked.
Prophets warned. Jesus born. God walked. Love talked. Anger crucified.
Hope died. Love rose. Spirit flamed. Word spread. God remained.
The important thing is the last two words – God remained.
Amen.
