A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on April 20, 2008, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            I remember the story of the little girl who was drawing a picture in school one day.  The teacher leans over her and asks, “What are you drawing?” “God,” she replied.

“Oh, honey,” the teacher smiled patronizingly, “Nobody knows what God looks like.” To which the little girl replied, “They will when I get finished with this picture.”

            I thought of this story this week while I was a prisoner in the dentist’s chair watching the Pope’s visit on TV. The day-time newscasters were having a fine time describing the pope’s special airplane, his modified Mercedes and every detail of his robes.  The dental hygienist was agog, so I listened to it all while she worked on my teeth and stole peeks at the spectacle. Is this, I wondered, what we want God’s representatives on earth to look like?  What do we think God looks like translated into human terms? This is not really an intellectual question because we will strive to become like whatever we believe is the brightest and best in this world.  Who are we at our best?

            Our readings this morning come back to that question.  They are all about seeing God and being God’s reflections.  In our first reading, Stephen for whom this congregation is named, sees God’s glory and the risen Christ and goes to his death forgiving and praying for his persecutors.  In the Epistle, Peter calls the young church to live up to God’s expectations by being “a holy priesthood.” And the Gospel Jesus assures his disciples that they have seen all that human beings can see of God because they have seen Jesus—and reminds them that they can go out into the world to be like him. It is a confusing idea for the disciples at first.  Philip begs Jesus to let them see God, but Jesus’ answer is this: you’ve seen all you’re going to see.

            We who seem to enjoy getting caught up in glory and beauty and power may find this idea a little confusing, too.  What if God is not to be found in human life flying specially equipped planes to speak to the UN?  What if, in the words of the Alanis Morissette song, “God was one of us?” “Just a slob like one of us, Just a stranger on the bus?” That does seem to be the bedrock of our faith: that God in human form is a Palestinian peasant from a backwater town at the end of the world, a person with no temporal power who died forgiving and praying for his persecutors.

            The evidence for God in our world is less spectacular than Philip and the glory-loving part of ourselves would like.  God seems to proclaim that God is present in creation and in the day-to-day miracles of love and compassion.  God seems to proclaim that God is present in Jesus’ humble, loving service , and in his inclusive and all-embracing love.

            Like Philip and the other disciples, we may have to accept that we have already seen God.  We have seen God in an itinerant preacher who had time to honor little children and call them the stuff of the kingdom of heaven.  We have seen God in a teacher who had his best dialogue with an outcast woman.  We have seen God in a faithful person who broke the known rules in order to embrace those his society thought were unclean.

            If we are honest with ourselves and can get our eyes off of the spectacular for a little while, we might also be able to admit that we have already seen God in our own lives.  To be sure, we’ve seen God in notable figures like Gandhi and Martin-Luther King.  But we’ve also seen God in a suburban housewife who defied the rules of her segregated neighborhood by making her front yard a kind of water park of inflatable pools where all her children’s friends—black and white—could play.  We’ve also seen God in the neighbor who is always over with a casserole in times of crisis—no matter how busy she is.  We’ve seen God in the faithful husband who patiently reads to his sick wife--even though she can no longer speak—because, he says, “she knows my voice.”

            God shows up in a lot of strangers on the bus: humble, compassionate, serving, embracing everyone.  The tricky thing about faith, I think, is remembering where we have seen God in our lives, and then to live our lives in imitation of the love we have seen around us.  There’s an old story about a minister who bought a new car.  On the way home from the inner-city dealership that gave him the best price, he was driving with great care down a street lined with cars, afraid to scrape his shiny ride. All of a sudden, a brick bounced off his fender.  Seeing a child about to hurl another brick, he stopped and got out in a rage. The minister gave the little kid a tongue lashing about the dent he’d put in his new car and the kid started to cry. “I’m sorry, mister,” he said, “I didn’t know how else to get you to stop.” Seems the child’s brother had fallen out of his wheelchair into the street and the kid couldn’t lift him.  The minister got the older kid back into his wheelchair. “God bless!” the younger brother said in parting, just the way his mother had taught him. The minister never fixed the dent in his fender, but kept it to remind him that you can get so caught up in the shiny things in life that you forget to look out for the important things.

            So what does God look like? God looks like Jesus.  God looks like non-violent champions of justice.  God looks like your all-embracing neighbor, your generous friend, and your patient loved one. May we not get so caught up in the shiny things in life that we forget the things that matter.  And may we have the grace to live our lives so that God shines through us, too.

AMEN