How God Speaks to Us

Background: February 1-2 was a preaching weekend for me and the lectionary was “The Presentation of the Lord,” a feast day, which used Luke 2:22-40 with baby Jesus being presented at the Temple and Simeon knowing who Jesus was through a gift of the Holy Spirit. This resonated with discussions we’d been having in small groups during the previous week.

“How God Speaks to Us”

When we preach, we try to bear witness to Scripture, bringing our own witness to it—where we are, how we engage with the text, and where the Spirit takes us. The next time a reading comes back in the lectionary cycle, three years from now, what speaks to us in a passage will likely be different.

We’ve been having some great conversations this week about Scripture and faith. And what stands out to me in today’s readings are the Bible, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit: different ways of knowing God.

We start out with Malachai, our Old Testament reading. Malachai may or may not be a proper name here as the name Malachi translates as “my messenger.” And here the writer is facing toward the future, talking about “my messenger” who will prepare the way for “the Lord who will suddenly come to his Temple” (we can see why these readings are paired together). As Christians, we look back on a passage like this and we say, Malachai is pointing us to John the Baptizer and to Jesus.

And when we use Jesus as our lens, we can look back on different prophets and different passages in the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament, and say, look at the prophetic writings and how and where they point to Jesus. It’s an incredible exercise to do, and we start to make connections and draw threads throughout Scripture.

In our Gospel reading, Luke shows us Mary and Joseph presenting Jesus at the Temple, as was the custom: eight days after being born, a Jewish male child would be circumcised, and 33 days after giving birth, the mother was expected to participate in the rite of purification, a symbolic restoration of purity.

When they get there they encounter a man in Jerusalem named Simeon, who was righteous and devout. It had been revealed to Simeon that before he died, he would see the Lord’s Messiah. This is a revelation that came not from Scripture, but from God.

Simeon comes to the Temple, “guided by the Holy Spirit,” and he is able to recognize Jesus, to know who Jesus is by trusting God.

And look at his reaction, Simeon takes Jesus into his arms and says:

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;

for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”

Image from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.


He is overwhelmed with joy at this knowledge. He can die with peace. Another prophet, an old woman named Anna has a similar reaction, praising God and speaking about the child who would redeem Israel.

Their way of knowing who Jesus is, comes to them by God’s Spirit.

Let’s think back to our readings from a couple weeks ago: the Baptism of Jesus, which happens as he is about to begin his ministry, as an adult. After Jesus is baptized and he is praying, “the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.’”

That’s confirmation for Jesus as to who he is. The Spirit is testifying both in Jesus and in others as to Jesus’s identity as the Messiah.

But a funny thing begins to happen in Jesus’s ministry. We saw it last week, as Kelsey (Rev. Kelsey Spiker) read and preached: Jesus unrolled the Isaiah scroll, and read, and told his listeners about being sent to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free,” what great news! And then Jesus gives them the biggest news of all, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing!”

I picture Jesus in front of the crowd, “up here, gang—it’s me. I’m the Word made flesh. You’re not going to believe the things we are going to do.” But as he keeps talking, what started as excitement turns to anger and the gathered crowd chases Jesus out of the town, and they want to throw him off a cliff.

What’s going on here. Haven’t they read their New Testament, their Gospels? Oh wait, none of that has been written yet. It’s not in their Bible.

Jesus IS the Word made flesh. He is standing in front of them. He is writing the rest of Scripture. Wait, actually he is not. To our knowledge, from the stories we have in the Gospels, Jesus had a two or three-year ministry and he never wrote down anything he said or did or taught. He was too busy doing the work—loving and serving—to bother to write any of it down himself.

Isn’t it interesting: our Scripture, our Bible is written by regular people, inspired by God. But still regular people, who don’t always get everything right; who come at things from their own perspectives—that’s why we have two creation stories in Genesis and some differences in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John’s Gospel accounts—they give us our Scripture, from a human perspective, written in a particular time and place.

And when the one guy who can get everything right; who can and does speak for God; who heals, teaches, and forgives sins, with God’s authority; when the one person who can make everything crystal clear is here in the flesh—Jesus doesn’t write anything down. And when he teaches, he teaches in parables—in riddles, which we have to work on and work out, they don’t come to us ready-made.

Jesus’s life and ministry as it happened required people to use Scripture as the road map to get them to Jesus, and then they had to look up from Scripture to witness, follow, and continue what Jesus was doing in the moment. When we read Jesus’s parables and about his life, it also takes our involvement in the here and now. Scripture points to Jesus, points us to God, is inspired by God, but is not God.

The scribes and pharisees who focused too closely on Scripture, missed Jesus in their midst.

And then as Jesus goes about his ministry an even stranger thing happens. The folks who know their Hebrew Bible, their Old Testament, the Law, the Torah the best, they are Jesus’s biggest detractors, his biggest critics. And Jesus will get in trouble with them for actually doing things their Scripture says not to do: healing on the Sabbath, working on the Sabbath, hanging out with people who the law says are unclean.

Jesus is going to show them at every turn, that where love and the law are at odds with each other, go with love. Every. Time.

Look up from your Bibles. I am the Word made flesh. I am right in front of you. Follow me. Watch me. Learn from me. We will do this together. Together, we will write the next part of the story.

The disciples are going to walk through Scripture in real-time, face-to-face with Jesus. To do that, they’ve got to believe in him. They’ve got to trust him.

So we’ve got Scripture, leading to Jesus. Then Jesus holds the baton saying, “Word made flesh here, watch me, follow me, love one another as I love you.” And then, after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, we’ve got more Scripture written (the New Testament), so that we don’t miss out on who Jesus was and what he did. Scripture is the main way we learn about Jesus. But he also gives us something else to help.

Sticking to Luke’s Gospel, after Jesus’s resurrection and explaining everything to the disciples, he says wait for the Holy Spirit, which will give you power. The gift of the Holy Spirit is another way for us to know, understand, and participate in God and Jesus.

This is the same Spirit that revealed to Simeon who Jesus was. It’s the same Spirit that spoke to the prophets of the Old Testament, and it’s the same Spirit that convicts us in the work of God’s love.

Simeon was a devout Scripture reader, who also made space for God to speak to him through the Spirit.

There is not one singular way for us to understand God, and God’s will and ways. We need to stay on our toes and be open to how God might speak to us.

We need Scripture to point the way, to be our road map.

We need Jesus to show us, to be for us the way and truth and the life.

We need the Holy Spirit to fill us, convict us, and guide us.

We need each other to love and serve and to be God’s love, to build the community that Jesus began, and to be his hands and feet in the world.

God’s Word came alive, became flesh, in Jesus.

Through the Holy Spirit, God’s Word is alive and alive in us.

What should a king know?

If you had a chance to educate a future king (or queen), what would you want him/her to know? Let’s say that key things we would want them to have include kindness, justice, empathy, humility, compassion, courage, love. I mean, if we have a chance to help form someone to rule the right way, wouldn’t we want to go all in?

In T.H. White’s novel, “The Once and Future King,” we meet the character who is to become King Arthur, first as a boy, who knows nothing about his parents, who has been taken in by a kind nobleman, Sir Ector, and raised side-by-side with Ector’s son Kay. It is expected that Kay will grow up to be a knight, and Arthur, who everyone knows as “Wart,” will be his squire/servant.

The Wart believes himself to be of lowly, common descent. He feels like a second-rate citizen without much control over his own destiny. Out on an adventure, Wart meets the wizard Merlyn, who becomes his tutor. Merlyn lives forwards and backwards in time and knows who Arthur is and that he will be the King of England. Merlyn does not tell the boy this and as he directs his education, one of the bits of learning Wart likes best is when Merlyn turns him into different creatures–a fish, a hawk, an ant, a goose, a badger–and the boy has to talk to others of the species and experience life from their perspective.

This is empathy in action and not just with humanity. With all of Creation.

In broader form, Arthur experiences moments. And not just moments, but moments as other creatures.

Here he takes flight with other geese in the reverie of flying at first light:

“The dawn, the sea-dawn and the mastery of ordered flight, were of such intense beauty that the boy was moved to sing. He wanted to cry a chorus to life, and since a thousand geese were on the wing about him, he had not long to wait. The lines of these creatures, wavering like smoke upon the sky as they breasted the sunrise, were all at once in music and in laughter. Each squadron of them was in different voice, some larking, some triumphant, some in sentiment or glee. The vault of daybreak filled itself with heralds…”

T. H. White, “The Once and Future King”

Imagine experiencing (and thus acknowledging) epiphanies, transcendent moments from other, non-human viewpoints. Of course Wart/Arthur and any of us would have to relate it from our own vocabulary and ways of thinking. But imagine people in power making decisions who consider the wider world, not just our human interests. Because if we don’t consider the wider world, we won’t have anywhere left for our human interests.

There are other things that are critical to Arthur’s ongoing education, had by different adventures, experiences, and learning, but I want to stick to these moments as that is the thread that started my mind moving.

Moments give our own lives meaning.

Red-Breasted Nuthatch in Worchester County, 2016. Photo by Bill Hubick at Maryland Biodiversity Project.

The magnolia tree in my front yard has become a home and stomping grounds for nuthatches. Lately when I fill my birdfeeders, they come visit and chat. Saturday afternoon, Holly and I stood and watched a few feet from four Red-Breasted Nuthatches circling from branches to cylinder feeder, in chirp-and-song conversation, sounding precisely like a group of Woodstocks from Peanuts/Charlie Brown. They didn’t mind that we were there and they let us into a frenzy that I can still glimpse in my mind, something bigger than me or us, something we were able to be a part of.

It’s not like Wart’s experience of being among geese flying at dawn, but at the same time, it lights up that these experiences are out there to be had, to be a part of, in a way that connects us to Creation.

Later, as Saturday moved into evening, I was walking from the parking lot behind Christ Church Easton to go to our Saturday worship service. The sun was beginning to set and was casting an incredible light on the steeple of the church and as I watched a “V” of Canadian Geese flying in formation flew over, like the light was shining specifically on them, and the low point of the V came directly overtop the point of the steeple. It was another transcendent moment, there for only a few seconds, but showing something so much more.

All it took to experience these two separate moments, in one afternoon, was to pay attention.

I was looking through photos on my phone, in search of moments. It seems natural to try to capture and share the moments we have. I couldn’t catch either of them from Saturday with a picture, so I try to communicate them in words, in a similar way to White in his novel.

Bubbles and sunsets.

A few years back we were at The Claggett Center on an Alpha Retreat. A handful of us were coming back from a walk through the woods and there was a woman blowing huge bubbles that had the youth group mesmerized. Our friend Dave, who might be the most youthful person you will ever meet, jumped in with the kids chasing bubbles around the yard. It was a happened-upon moment, easy enough just to walk right by, but seizing it, embracing it, enjoying it, colored everything in a way that could have been missed.

Going back further, an evening we were at the yacht club in Oxford for dinner and my daughter Ava, my father and I walked out onto the dock as the sun was setting. I remember it being a beautiful scene, but I can’t tell you anything about that particular sunset. What I remember, what the moment was for me, was looking over and seeing my Dad trying to catch it, trying to capture something of what he saw. In addition to being an accountant, my Dad has always taken pictures–from getting slides developed when my sister and I were little, of ice storms and sailboats, to grandkids’ sports games in the digital camera era, to now having our cameras on our phones; looking over to see my father pulled into a moment was my moment.

These moments, by themselves, don’t make for a complete education. But without moments that make life, that give life depth and feeling, what good is an education?

There is a scene in “The Once and Future King” where the young Arthur first encounters the sword that he will pull out of the stone, which will show him to be the king. Upon touching the sword, he sees more deeply into life:

“I feel strange when I have hold of this sword, and I notice everything much more clearly. Look at the beautiful gargoyles of the church, and of the monastery which it belongs to. See how splendidly all the famous banners in the aisle are waving. How nobly that yew holds up the red flakes on its timbers to worship God. How clean the snow is. I can smell something like fetherfew and sweet briar–and is it music that I hear?”

Arthur’s adventures and experiences, his being changed and living in different perspectives, has given him a deeper soul to experience this moment of his destiny.

He is not able to pull the sword out of the stone immediately. But because he is intimately connected with so much of Creation, something happens:

“All round the churchyard there were hundreds of old friends. They rose over the church wall all together… there were badgers and nightingales and vulgar crows and hares and wild geese and falcons and fishes and dogs and dainty unicorns and solitary wasps and corkindrills and hedgehogs and griffins and the thousand other animals he had met. They loomed round the church wall, the lovers and helpers of the Wart, and they all spoke solemnly in turn. Some of them had come from the banners in the church, where they were painted in heraldry, some from the waters and the sky and the fields about–but all, down to the smallest shrew mouse, had come to help on account of love. Wart felt his power grow.”

There it is. Part of Arthur’s education was to gain insight and understanding and appreciation for creatures and history and all of Creation. And what happened in turn is that Creation embraced and had a love for Arthur.

That isn’t all we might want a king to know in order to rule justly and compassionately. But it’s certainly something we would want on the list.

When we can experience and appreciate moments; when we can see that life and the world is bigger than we are; when we can acknowledge and understand that other people are open to experience these transcendent moments just like we are; when we can learn that every living thing can be part of the moments that we have; when we can look into the eyes of someone or something and see something reflected back to us that causes love to grow in us, for others and for all Creation… those are things that would make a king, and a kingdom, worthwhile.