Encountering Jesus

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When shall I come and behold the face of God?

My tears have been my food day and night,while people say to me continually,“Where is your God?”

Psalm 42, Verses 1-3, NRSV

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity suggests we are created with needs for which the means exist in the creation for those needs to be met. Examples are food, water, rest. He suggests that God is just such a need: a need for which the divine encounter fulfills. He posits that we seek the divine, the transcendent, through time and space. Said another way, seeking the divine has been true across time and across cultures. It is a universal constant. That need is for Lewis, and he has persuaded me, a deep inner need for the spiritual.

David in Psalm 42 addresses that fundamental need for God through the image of longing. 

I have heard it suggested that we have a God-sized hole in our souls, and we are incomplete until we allow that hole to be filled. We long to have that hole filled, and the world is ready to provide suggestions on how fill it for us with work, commodities, and self-worship. That is an abbreviated list. The world is far better financed and replete with marketing savvy than faith communities to persuade us to buy their hole filling element du jour. 

Our theme for the month is Encountering Jesus. I pray that seeking this encounter is our daily, weekly, monthly, annual, and life theme. In December we did a lot of encountering Jesus at the Rescue Mission and we have more opportunities to encounter Jesus this month through Family Promise. 

We do need to be clear that in this encounter, we are expected to walk away from it different. Jacob wrestles with the angel in Genesis 32, and he walks away physically and spiritually changed. His very name is changed: Israel – one who wrestles with God. We are all at some point, Israel: one who wrestles with God. But at the same time, our “soul longs for you, O God.” 

Lewis does not remotely suggest that the hole in our soul is filled in exactly the same way for each of us. If that were true, then we would all find the same kind of music, preaching, service organization, readings, to be filling. I know you know that is not the case. For many, the hole in their soul is not filled with activities inside of Hilltop, but specifically interactions with those like Family Promise and the Rescue Mission:  many gifts, many elements, all together making up “the body of Christ.” 

I observed earlier about Jacob wrestling with God and then arising from that match with a new name: Israel. Immediately after that cosmic wrestling match, he encountered his brother. He was fearful that in that encounter, his brother’s righteous indignation over the way Jacob left years earlier would continue to be present. Instead, the reunion was a happy one, and the one who had wrestled with God said seeing his brother was like seeing “the face of God.” We see the Face of God when we encounter those around us. 

I have no idea what 2017 holds for us. 

But I believe that turning down the volume of the world message, and turning up the volume of the Jesus message comes about when we encounter the sacred. Are we travelers passing through this world or is this world our permanent address? Our biblical message is that we are traveling through, not staying. 

When we buy into the idea of encountering Jesus, we say that we are prepared to take up the values of Jesus, and tell the values of the world to move back a row or two in our pantheon of values. 

Peace be with you and I wish you way more than luck in 2017, I wish you an encounter with the sacred in the form of Jesus. 

Pastor Dennis