The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by the Reverend Durrell Watkins at
the Sunshine Cathedral on
Sunday, July 20, 2008.
My great-aunt Gladys and great-uncle Arthur were driving from Louisiana to
Arkansas to visit my grandparents one weekend. Uncle Arthur was doing the
driving, and apparently was speeding. Sure enough, he was pulled over by a
police officer. The police officer approached the car and she said to Uncle
Arthur, “Sir, did you know you were speeding?” Uncle Arthur didn’t have his
hearing aids in, so he said to Aunt Gladys, “what did she say?” Aunt Gladys
yelled, “She said you were speeding!”
Next the police officer said, “Sir, I need to see your license?”
Uncle Arthur turned to Aunt Gladys and said, “What did she say?”
Aunt Gladys yelled, “She needs to see your license!”
The officer looks at Uncle Arthur’s license, and says, “You’re from
Louisiana; I once dated a guy from Louisiana who was the most annoying man I
ever met.”
Uncle Arthur looked at Aunt Gladys who just yelled, “She thinks she knows
you!”
Let’s look at our readings.
In our first reading today, we hear a prayer. It comes from the book of
Wisdom which was penned about 100 years before the birth of Jesus. It was
written in Greek by an anonymous Jewish person living in Egypt. It is
considered sacred scripture by Roman Catholics, but most Protestants regard it
as optional reading.
The point I want to lift up this morning from the book of Wisdom comes from
its first chapter. In the 7th verse of that chapter the writer
tells us, “The spirit of the LORD fills the entire world, is ALL-embracing,
and knows what every person is saying.”
The spirit of the Lord fills the entire world and is all-embracing. It is
with this confidence that the author then prays in chapter 12, saying, “You
are just… but you judge with clemency, you govern us with lenience.”
The writer is using different language than I might, but what he is
affirming is that God is good, and that the goodness of God is accessible to
us. After all, the spirit of the Lord fills the entire world and is
all-embracing.
The second reading this morning comes from the Apostle Paul’s letter to a
faith community in Rome . Paul, who would have certainly known the book of
Wisdom, agrees with the idea that God is an omnipresent Reality and that God’s
nature is infinite compassion and ultimate goodness.
Paul drives this point home throughout the 8th chapter of Romans. Paul
says,
For those who are led by the spirit of God are children of God… The
spirit Herself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God!
(Rom. 8.14, 16)
We know that all things work for good for those who love God… (Rom.
8. 28)
What shall we say about all this? If God is for us, who can be against
us?
(Rom. 8.31)
What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish or distress
or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or the sword?… No! In all these
things we conquer overwhelmingly though the one who loved us; for I am
convinced that… nothing can separate us from the love of God…
(Rom. 8. 35,
37-39).
Now, Paul says a lot of other things in chapter 8 that we could spend a
two-hour bible class unpacking, but in his social context, he is consistently
making the case that God is present to us and is present as the Source of
unlimited goodness. So accessible and so good is the “ground of being” that we
call God, that Paul says even if we don’t know how to pray, the energy of the
presence of God, the spirit prays for us, in us, in the language of
unconditional love.
God’s will is for our good, and the spirit of perfect goodness is flowing
through us, enfolding us, gently nudging us toward our highest good at all
times. The “Spirit pleads for us… in harmony with God’s own will.”
I was at a conference this last week in Phoenix, AZ. It’s the International
New Thought Alliance’s annual Congress, and it’s the most energizing
conference I go to all year. If I could only go to one, that would be the one
I would choose. Last week at the conference, the pastor of Hillside Truth
Center in Atlanta, the Reverend Dr. Barbara King, told a story about the
founder of Religious Science, Ernest Holmes.
One day at the Religious Science headquarters the air-conditioning unit
broke. The staff tinkered with it but couldn’t fix it, so they called in
professionals to repair it, but they couldn’t do much with it either. Finally,
someone had to break the news to Dr. Holmes that the A/C unit was too broken
to fix. Dr. Holmes decided to pray about it.
His prayer went something like, “God, you have called me to do this
important work and you know what we need to do it effectively.” And then he
added the most profound line of any prayer I’ve ever heard. He said, “God,
this is Ernest. Need I say more?”
Oh for the faith of the writer of the book of Wisdom, who knew that God is
present, and God’s presence is Good.
Oh for the faith of St. Paul who knew that God is present, and God’s
presence is actually praying in us, through us, for us, as us, calling for our
Good even when we have no idea what that might be, even when outer conditions
seem to be falling apart!
Oh for the faith of Ernest Holmes who so believed that God was so present
to him as unconditional love and unlimited grace that his prayer for a miracle
could simply be, “God, this is Ernest, need I say more?” Do you believe that
God loves you, just as you are, so profoundly, that all you would ever need to
pray is, “God, it’s me, need I say more?”
The psalmist wrote, “Where could I hide from your spirit, God? How could I
flee from your presence?” (Psalm 139.7)
Paul, quoting the poet Epimenides said, “It is in God that we live and move
and have our being.” (Acts 17.28)
One contributor to the New Testament wrote, “God is Love and WHOEVER lives
in love lives in God and God lives in them.” (1 John 4.16)
Jesus said that God wasn’t limited to locations or certain groups of
people, but rather, “God is spirit and those who worship God must do so in
spirit and in truth.” (John 4.24)
They each used their own vocabularies and metaphors and symbols, but the
ancient teachers, I believe, are in one accord in trying to get us to accept
the unconditional love of God. God will not reject us, for any reason. Can we
finally trust that and live in the joy that such a belief offers? God with us,
in us, expressing as us is love, and in the moments that we trust that, the
fears just fade away.
We open our service each week by saying, “Here at the Sunshine Cathedral,
we are seekers and students of Truth, empowered by Spirit, sharing the light
with the world.” Why are we seekers instead of knowers? Because we’ve been
taught to doubt God’s goodness and our own, so we continue to seek ways of
embracing a bit more of the truth that God is truly Good. We are always
seeking to embrace and internalize a bit more of that truth than we could
yesterday, so that we can live in the power of joy a bit better than we did
yesterday.
The truth that we seek isn’t a secret, or a dogmatic assertion, it’s simply
that God is love and that God’s spirit of love is with us today and forever.
And that truth, in whatever measure we can embrace it, is the light we are
sharing with the world. I promise you, the world needs it.
Once we really believe that the Omnipresence that we call God is in truth
the power of unconditional love, and that divine love excludes no one for any
reason, that it fills us and flows through us and expresses as us and wants
only Good for us, then we can say, “blessed are the poor, blessed are those
who mourn, blessed are those who long for justice, and those who are troubled
in any way…,” because their problem isn’t the end of their story. God is with
them, with us, dwelling within us, loving us, and no difficulty can ever take
that truth away. This is the Good News. Amen.