Looking for God in All the Wrong Places

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Mer Rouge

So.. what do a Baptist church in Pollock, La., and the Washington Monument have in common?

The Baptist church in Pollock sits on the west side of Highway 165. You pass it every time you go to Alexandria. Like most Baptist churches, it has a steeple. But unlike most churches with steeples, it does NOT have a cross on top.

Anyone happen to know what is on top of the steeple? It’s a hand with one finger pointing heavenward.                                              

Now the Washington Monument does not have a hand on the top! It has a 4-sided aluminum cap, each side containing an inscription. Three of the inscriptions have to do entirely with the building of the monument: names, dates, etc.

The fourth inscription says what? It says, “LAUS DEO,” which is Latin for “Praise be to God.”

Now, a quick side story. The inscriptions on the cap of the Washington Monument are not visible from inside the monument. They are visible only to those who might be hovering in mid-air over the peak of the monument, in other words, people in helicopters and, presumably, God.

So the National Park Service created a replica of the cap that is on display inside the museum at the base of the monument. A few years ago, in the mid-2000s, the replica cap was moved to a tent on the grounds while the museum was renovated. When it was moved back indoors, instead of being placed catty-corner to the wall so that all four sides could be read, as it had been before, it was placed with the LAUS DEO side against the wall, which prevented visitors from seeing it.

An uproar ensued. The Park Service was accused of being ashamed of the Christian foundations of our nation. On snopes.com you can find a letter from the head of the Park Service stating that it was an accident, they had meant no offense and that it would be fixed. Since the letter is dated 2007, I assume the problem has long been corrected.

One interesting thing to me about that story, however, is that no one seems to notice or mention that “Praise be to God” is much more common as an expression of Muslim piety than it is as an expression of Christian piety.

Of course, Muslims typically say “Praise be to Allah,” and they routinely say it often: in times of gratitude and in times of distress, before beginning an important task and at the end, and on and on.

But if you accept that the God of all three of the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Islam and Christianity—is one and the same God, then “Praise be to God” sounds much more Islamic than Christian. Christians are more likely to be heard saying, “Praise the Lord,” or “Thank you, Jesus!”

But whatever the builders of the Washington Monument had in mind when they inscribed “LAUS DEO” on the top of the monument, they, like the builders of a Baptist church in Pollock, La., were looking for God in all the wrong places.

What these two structures have in common is that they propose a god who is up there, way up there in heaven.., hovering above us.., looking down on us. The Baptist church points to this remote god and the Washington Monument launches praise into the heavens in hope that this god is not too far away to read it.

And that is not what Jesus taught. Somewhere off up in the sky is not the imagery Jesus uses.

Dirt, he says in today’s Gospel. Down in the dirt is where Jesus directs us to look for God. Down in the dirt where we put a seed to die and then be born again. Down in the dirt where we human’s might hide our treasure.

Or in the belly of the homely oyster, attached to the bottom of the sea. That’s where we’ll find God, Jesus says.

And some remote, uninvolved god is not what Jesus himself represents. Indeed, Jesus himself was and is first and last proof that it ain’t so.

Indeed, of the three Abrahamic faiths, Christianity is the only one that professes God Incarnate. At least we SAY we believe in Incarnation. The evidence of our lives and behavior is not always so clear.

My favorite of the images Jesus uses in today’s lesson is the yeast in the bread. I have made bread. I have taken yeast, dissolved it in warm water, stirred it into the dough and then kneaded that dough until the yeast is evenly and thoroughly distributed throughout the bread.

And then you put the dough in a lightly greased bowl, set it in slightly warm place—like a sunny window—that’s what my mother and I always did. And you cover it with a cloth so the surface doesn’t dry out and then you wait.

And when you return a couple hours later? Miracle! The dough has magically expanded to double its original size!

My friends. Can you wrap your mind around the possibility that we are the dough and God is the yeast? That we participate in Incarnation? That the indwelling Holy Spirit can no more be separated from our being than you can remove the yeast after kneading the dough!

Or, if you prefer, consider that we are God’s mud pies, and that God’s DNA got mixed with dirt in the act of creation.

Dough or dirt, God’s DNA is in us. It’s the yeast or the tiny seed we call love. God’s love for us, which we yearningly return. Our love for each other, a fragile moment of God’s love for us.

Does your heart expand at the thought? Mine does. I become bigger. I become bigger than my pill of a dog, who drives me nuts with her pestering. I become bigger than the jerk who kept me waiting at the intersection because he didn’t use his turn signal.

My heart expands so much I think it is going to burst out of my chest. And the only possible response is an outpouring of love for all of humankind and creation.

At least until ego and fear and self-doubt rear their ugly heads and tell me that such a total and gratuitous gift is not possible.

Do you not know, Jesus says in Luke 17:21, the kingdom of God is within you. 

If that is so, brothers and sisters, we are bigger than the worst this world has to offer. We are bigger than national borders. We are bigger than political parties. We are bigger than race, and social class, and even religion. We are big enough for all people to find rest in the shade of our branches.

Can we… dare we… live with that kind of dignity, responsibility, and freedom?

AMEN