Seeking Because We Are Found

This is stage four of my engagement wtih Peter Rollins' How (Not) to Speak of God.  For parts one, two, and three click here, here, and here.  

"So I say to you, Ask and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened." Luke 11:9-10

I think this is our culture's favorite passages.  We love the idea that we can ask for anything and it will be given to us.  We want to find when we seek.  We want the door to be opened when we knock.  More importantly, we want it now.  We want to get the things we ask for immediately.  Sometimes, we want to have what we're asking for before we even ask it.

This is espeically true of our relationship to God, I think.  We want God to know what we want and we want God to give it to us right now.  We, at some level, really believe that only good things should come to us because we are Christians.  

We hear this message time and time again.  "Turn over your life to Jesus and then everything will be ok."  

So people "convert" in an attempt to make their life perfect.  They want to avoid pain and suffering.  They want to make sure they have enough money to get through to the end of the month - or they want to write a check that absolves them of all obligation to actually get to know and care for their neighbor.  

They go to church and expect everything to be wonderful forever.

And then bad things happen.

This is something we've all experienced.  People we care about die.  We get sick.  Sometimes there's not enough money at the end of the month.  Our lives are not as wonderful as we think they should be, especially because we've become "Christian."

So then we stop going to church.  We stop putting money in the offering plate.  We stop identifying ourselves as Christian.

We miss the point.

We don't go to church because the pastor has all the answers.  We go to church precisely because the pastor doesn't have the answers.

Let me explain this.

We've talked about how our worshipful attempts to understand God's identity and action in the world are, at their heart, a/theological.  They both affirm and question our traditional understandings of God and stir up in us a desire to listen and learn from other understandings of God - while continually affirming and questioning the differing perspectives we hear.

Rollins points out that this ongoing quest for God and trying to put God in to words becomes spiritually transformative.  In desiring change we become changed - we embody the change that we want to see within ourselves.

For example, people who want to become healthier.  

They must start to make conscious decisions that will help them as they strive for their goal.  They need to begin making healthier food choices, stop eating out, start excercising - learn self-restraint.  In doing so, when successful, the change happens because their mindset has changed.  They begin to live healthier because of their desire to be healthy. When it is said and done, they no longer have to make conscious healthy choices, because they have transformed their mindset from unhealthy to healthy.

Likewise our search for God is transformative.  Our desire to know God stirs up in us changes within our heart that make it possible to see the aftermath of God's work in the world.  That's one of the primary jobs of pastors - to search with those who seek God and help identify God's work in their lives.

We cannot and should not create a "one size fits all" model for how God works in the world.  How God has worked in one person's life is not how God will work in another's.  

And that's beautiful.  

This is good news because God knows so much about us and our lives that God is going to give each of us individualized care and attention.  

However, this means that the pastor (spritiual leader/friend/whomever who want to talk to about God) is not going to have answers immediately for you.  Sure she (or he) will be able to give you some traditional answers - for example what's in the Lutheran Confessions, but that's not necessarily helpful for identifying where God is in your life at this moment. 

So we go to church.  

We live in community.  

We talk to one another.  

We listen.  

We learn and we help point to God's work in our lives based on scripture, tradition, but we also cannot discount personal experience and intuition.  We must work to be pastors to one another by walking with each other as we all seek God.

And we seek God precisely because God has reached into our lives and given us an experience of God.  For many of us, that happened in baptism.  God acted in our lives and we spend the rest of our time together trying to stumble around and seek the One who has found us.