Beyond Answers – First Sunday After Pentecost (Isaiah 55: 8-9)
This morning I offer another sermon on the theme of Beyond. Again, this is the theme for the Disciples of Christ General Assembly. The denominational gathering being held this year in Memphis, TN. It comes from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where, in chapter 3: 20-21, he offers a pray to a God who is able to be at work in the world beyond what we can ask or even imagine. So, even though this verse says God can do more than we can imagine, this theme still invites us into a process of imagining. It asks us to imagine and to pray. To imagine and to pray as much as we can about the world God is calling us to live in, and the role the church has to play in making that vision a reality. We are invited to this kind of imagination work, even though we may reach a point where it becomes difficult for our imaginations to keep up with God, and what God is doing in the world. To do this work, it means having to deal with one of the more uncomfortable -for some of us- parts of our faith. That is the mystery and the tension between what is known and knowable and what is unknown and unknowable or mysterious.
To deal with this mystery and this tension, it means getting beyond our certainties. It means we will be confronted with answers, some answers we like and some answers we don’t. To follow God in this way, sometimes we will have to get beyond the answers we come up with. To bring us into this place we are offered these words from the Prophet Isaiah, calling to us in the voice of God, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” This is key to why God can do more than we can ask or imagine. Because we do not think like God. As much as we might like to think we can. But we can’t manage it. The best we can do is talk to each other. Listen to each other and hear what each one is thinking and feeling and experiencing. Out of that we can make our best guess.
The trouble is that as a culture -as humans, we love answers. Answers make us feel good. Answers give us comfort. The search for answers drives us. In fact, throughout human history the search for answers has driven us to go beyond in many ways. To go beyond what we knew, what we were able to do, beyond what we were able to be. The search for answers led to big discoveries. Those discoveries have led to big advancements in technology and society. It has taken us beyond the boundaries of the planet Earth, into the stars above us. Still, perhaps the biggest advancement our search for answers has led us to is the invention of the game show. Specifically of the quiz show variety. Over time people came to love watching other people try to answer questions, especially when there was a charismatic host asking questions and when there was a lot of money on the line.
For a time, one of the most popular game shows going was called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Very popular for a long time, and it might even still be going I’m not sure what goes on with daytime television these days. I’m sure it was popular for many reasons, for instance, the tension built as each question was asked. Each correct answer earned the contestant money, and each new question offered them a chance to get even more, and a wrong answer risked losing it. One of the fun quirks of the show was that if a contestant found that they didn’t know an answer, or even if they just weren’t 100% sure, they had a chance to get some help with certain lifelines. One of them was a simple 50/50. The questions were multiple choice, so two wrong answers would be taken away, leaving the player with two choices to pick between. However, the other two lifelines were a bit more communal. One was polling the audience. The studio audience would try to answer the question. The contestant would see those results and decide if they wanted to trust the groups knowledge. The final lifeline was “phone a friend,” where they would get to call up a friend or relative who was on standby and ask for their answer. Sometimes these lifelines worked, sometimes they didn’t. After all, no one has all the answers all the time. Still, this gives us a clue as to how to deal with tension of uncertainty and not knowing. We can ask for help, admit we don’t know, and put our trust in those around us. We can also, of course, but our trust in God.
In the reading this morning, we heard God say, “my ways are not your ways.” This phrase also translates from the Hebrew as “my plans are not your plans.” Of course, there are differing beliefs about to what extent God has a plan. Which is to say how much of a plan does God have? God has desires and thoughts about how God wants the world to be and how God makes the world to work. The debate would be about how detailed those thoughts are, and how much control God would exert on our lives to bring about those desires. This sermon is not about those debates, all this is to acknowledge that God’s plans are not our plans. If God has a plan, it is one we do not, and cannot fully understand. Still, in the end, God’s word will produce what God wants it to produce.
There is a focus in this scripture on Gods promises, made through the prophets, and how they will come to pass. Isaiah accepts that people may have doubts about this, because by man’s logic it can be difficult to see the fulfillment of these promises happening. It is that pesky need for answers, which of course require evidence and proof. So, the prophet does his best to help us understand. In Isaiah 55, the opening metaphor compares God’s word to water. Water that comes down and through a process that the people could not always see or understand, it would eventually become bread. Isaiah’s bread metaphor implies that human input does have a role to play in God’s ways and God’s thoughts. We can take what is given, even if we don’t understand it, we can make something out of it. Like humans figured out how to from the rains that came and helped the earth produce grains. We can learn to turn God’s word into sustenance.
Unfortunately, we often look to sources of sustenance that are less nourishing. Instead of trusting in God’s promises we look to man’s answers. The answers we humans try to give each other tend to seek for certainty. When we seek for certainty, we tend to find answers that will offer us power and control over situations. I think if we look around, we will see that going for those kinds of answers will, perhaps more often than not, lead to trouble. Even if there is mystery and tension surrounding the promises that God makes, and maybe we are not sure how they will be fulfilled, they still offer us more fulfillment, and bring us closer to God, than any supposed certainty offered by human answers.
We must get beyond these types of answers. The kind that are offered too freely and so easily. After all, these answers are all around us. Every advertisement that pops up on your phone, or television, computer or highway billboard is offering you a human answer, and usually to a human problem. We all have things in our lives that leave us looking for answers, things that leave us feeling unhappy or unsatisfied or unfulfilled. So, of course, there are no shortage of people looking to offer us an answer to our problems. Advertisers, politicians, sometimes even preachers, all offering answers, but often that answer only serves to benefit that person. Isaiah encourages us to look instead to God’s answers, even if we don’t always understand them because they are not our ways or our thoughts. So, what we may have to do instead is focus on the question. Don’t look for God’s answers, look for God’s questions.
First, though, we need to get an understanding of what our question is. What is the question we are trying to answer? What is the need we are trying to fulfill? Because that makes all the difference. After all, what is sin but a human attempt at trying to answer a question, to fulfill a need using our own means? We see this play out in our society in things like addiction and interpersonal violence. It is the only way some people can find deal with the doubts and questions they wrestle with deep in their soul. And our consumerist, capitalist culture only offers limited ways to deal with these wounds. But that is what we have, so we try to do it ourselves without first putting their trust in God. Isaiah points to repentance and pardon as being key to becoming open to the mystery of God’s ways. Sometimes we need repentance and pardon for the answers we insist upon for ourselves. For those ways of coping or seeking control that have led us to sin – a human attempt to answer a spiritual question. Which is to say we harm God’s world because we do not understand God’s thoughts and God’s plans.
How, then, do we find the balance between knowing and not knowing while avoiding the need to speak in absolutes and with certainty? How do we make the lack of certainty and the presence of mystery meaningful to people? We must recognize that mystery is not an answer but is a creative way of navigating the day. There is mystery in our relationship with God, but not the kind we solve it’s the kind we create in. Mystery, not knowing, offers the opportunity to explore, play, experiment, and create new ways of being and doing. If there is an answer to be had we can find our way to it, not have it offered up to us by people who would use certainty to control things. There is mystery in art. How we interpret it effects how we use it and grow from it. Which is the thing about mystery and the unknown. It can be used to frighten people and motivate them to find an answer out of fear or helplessness. It can also be used in more hopeful ways. To create and change and reveal something closer to God’s ways. So, what is beyond the answer? Perhaps going beyond the answer means being willing to live with the question. Live in that holy, creative space of not knowing.
This is not to say that there are no answers. As our game shows tell us, there are correct answers to many questions. Answers that it can benefit you to know. Some things are facts, and in our relationships with other people there are times when we will owe them an answer that is as close to certain as we can get. However, when you are trying to live a life of faith and follow in God’s ways, there will come a time when answers do not easily come. Where certainty is elusive. When you can’t offer people an objectively correct answer. Because God’s ways are higher than our ways, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. To follow God will mean living in the questions. Trying to follow God’s ways means being really careful and mindful about what questions we are asking. Because as we seek for answers that we can’t seem to find, maybe what we really should be looking for is the right question. Which brings us to another popular game show, Jeopardy, where contestants are asked to present their answers in the form of a question.
It is not simply answering, what makes me feel better? That’s easy. A lot of ice cream at the end of the day. Of course, that’s only going to create more problems. As with Jeopardy, the true answer is in the question; “What is something that makes me feel better?” This leads to more questions, such as, why don’t I feel good? What need am I trying to meet? It becomes like a reverse Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? We move up a level with each new question, rather than each correct answer. Until we reach the big million-dollar question: how to live in the ways of God, even though we don’t understand God’s thoughts. There may not be an answer to that, which is scary because there is control in answers. But we can be comforted because there is freedom and possibility in questions. Because in the question, we are forced to live out the only answer that matters when it comes to those big, mysterious questions. We put our trust in God, and when we move through life with trust in God, we become open to possibilities that are beyond any question we could ask or answer we could imagine.
Amen.