Today I have a couple things of note, a hopefully brief glimpse of some of my most recent deep thinking (yea, cause that ever happens), and may hap an update or two, and then I have to get some serious reading done for a paper that may or may not be due in two days.
Firstly, and in my opinion most excitingly, mark your calendars for the 27th of November. Why you ask? History shall be made that day, because I, Nicki Dyer, part grad school student, intern, and writer extraordinaire am giving the sermon at both the 9 and 10:30 services at Kennewick First United Methodist Church. I got the email today. Now, to some of you this may not seem like a big thing, but keep in mind that this is the first time in my whole life that the word "sermon" will be credited to my name. I can't think of a better way to sort of officially start off my journey to seminary and beyond than to share what I'm learning and where I'm headed with the people who know best where I've been.
Secondly, I found out that that same awesome home church is willing to send me to a conference in November that's for Methodist youth and young adults looking to go into the ministry, which I'm stoked about because I think it will be a great opportunity to further discern the path I think I'm being called down and to be totally honest, I miss Methodist events. A lot. So come November I'll be flying out to St. Louis to hang out with a whole bunch of other potential pastors and church leaders who are actually my age and working with all of them to figure out where we're all at on God's giant flow chart. (If you've never heard me talk about the flow chart, ask, unless you don't want a lengthy albeit entertaining explanation, in which case you can just wonder on your own.) The only down side being that that's two Sundays away from work in a month (not a great idea for those of us that work Sundays) so I'll be coming home early from a youth retreat and never going home ever again (lie) but I think the opportunity is worth it.
Now on to my deep thought for the week. And seriously, get ready for this one cause it's been several years in culminating and I think I'm only just scratching the surface or how deep this one is.
When I was in high school (told you it was years) I tried to read the Bible straight through cover to cover. I got to Genesis 4 before I got too confused/bored to carry on. So I decided to rethink my strategy a little and carry on. Since my whole reason for picking up the Bible in the first place was to learn more about the man I professed my life to on a semi-regular basis (my original thinking being that narrative told in order would give me a clearer picture and cultural context for the gospel, which it did not)
I started with Matthew. I made my way through all four gospels, read acts, and then decided that rather than start on the letters, some of which I had already studied with groups multiple times, I'd go back and start again. So I struggled through the Pentateuch (first five books potentially written by Moses himself), tried to remember the narrative or Kings, which luckily is partly retold in the Samuels, read all those tricky books in between, decided that Job would make a really good comedic one act which I will someday write, discovered how not cool Esther started out for all the praise she gets, read about a lot of conquering on the parts of God's people and everyone else, read stories of destruction, rebuilding, a people becoming a people and then falling apart over and over again, and finally got to take a breather with the psalms some of which have spawned some of my favorite worship songs.
You can take a breath now.
Then I got to Proverbs, which for me is an interesting and frustrating book. Because in it I see a huge hodgepodge of wisdom that I know to be true, and wisdom that, if I believe what I profess about God's word being in-spired by the Almighty God and true in some capacity, I have to accept. Wisdom about avoiding fools and beating servants and how it would be better for people that don't seek wisdom to be dead or at the very least far from society. And more than any other book or story, more than God hardening Pharaoh's heart and keeping His people trapped longer in Egypt, or calling David or Joshua to destroy whole tribes of people, or striking his own people down himself for not listening to him, that disconnect between the being that became one of us, and suffered and died so we all might live and the being that thinks fools should be forgotten is a step too far for me.
Or maybe it's the culmination of my readings that's lead me to this place. Either way, I was a step from the edge and I wasn't really sure what to do about it. Not that this was a faith edge. I have far too much childlike trust in the Lord to ever assume that something that happened thousands of years ago changes who God is to me now. I know a God who is kind and good and above all else, love, even while holding in tension his omnipotent self. Both a lion and a lamb. So even if I have trouble figuring out how that God is the same as the smiting one, I'm not going to love or profess my faith about him any less.
However in pondering how these two seemingly separate beings could possibly be one person, I have come up with a few different theories, which I'm starting to narrow down and settle in on.
1. God changes. Not intrinsically, not in the way that he is love, that he created everything, or that his plan for his people (which now includes every person who ever lived), but in how he deals with us. Like a parent with a new born, he just kind of used the hit and miss approach and figured it out as he went. The guy may be omnipotent and all knowing, but humanity was brand new at the time. So he went through a couple hundred years of watching us constantly need reprimanding and just got fed up and changed his plan. He came down in a way we could understand, told us how things were, and has spent the last 2000 years helping us figure out what exactly all of that means. You have to wonder why he waited so long.
To which my friend and mentor Dani asked a very poignant question. What if the plan didn't change?
Which leads me to my new theory:
2. God, being an all knowing omnipotent being who has always been three people in one (still a confusing concept by the way, but that's for another post) and so has always known how humanity was going to turn out. (How's that for a baby manual?) So he created, knowing exactly how the garden he had prepared for the children he had always wanted was going to end up. And then he waited. And he waited. And he reprimanded. And he watched. And he spoke in a voice that cause earthquakes and fire and thunder and lightning and silence. And he revealed bits of himself. And finally he came. And was sent. And lived in and among his creation. And was sacrificed for it. Which changes the question from why he waited so long, to how.
If God is a father as well as creator and we assume he holds all those loving fatherly traits we all long for, then he cares so much for his creation that he is willing to help us learn even if it means hurting us and himself. I sat with Dani after she asked her question and I thought about what it really means that God knew exactly when he was going to join us in his world.
And I wonder even now if God is three people so that he has someone to lean on when he looks down and sees how hard it is to reach us. So that when the Israelites were too afraid to come to mount Sinai and hear his voice he had someone to confide in. So that he could tag out and let another part of himself take on the role of speaking to us, because he was too hoarse from shouting and shouting and never feeling heard.
I think it speaks to his complete nature of his love more than anything else that he's never given up on us, even knowing how broken and out of whack with his voice we'd become. And it makes me a little sad to think that God just has to deal with all that disappointment. Obviously it doesn't affect his love for us, and maybe knowing you're going to be let down makes it easier to deal with.
Thoughts?
Also, look forward to a post sometime next week while I ponder what the Trinity actually is. It should be pretty cool since I just figured some stuff out during this post.
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