Signs of God’s Presence

The Rev. Jeffrey A. Geary

Psalm 14 Ephesians 3: 14 - 21

July 30, 2006

We all search for signs of God’s presence.

Well, August came in July. Noelle and I had a little baby boy at 1:46 in the morning on Wednesday, July 12 at St. Charles Hospital, three and a half weeks early. He was seven pounds, six and three-quarters ounces, 20 inches long, awake and alert in the delivery room, and cute as can be. Jim showed you all a picture of him the following Sunday, and a white rose was placed on the pulpit for him. We named him August Xavier Damico Geary: no hyphens, just four names. August Xavier Damico Geary. It’s a big name for such a little guy. It’s Latin in origin, as in Caesar Augustus and the two Saint’s Augustine. It is also a good German name, which sound great both in Spanish and in French. Augusto, August. He will not be called Auggie, as in “Auggie Doggie and Doggie Daddy”, nor will he be called Gus. Simply August. Or August Xavier. In the fictional round of stories told by and about his cousins, he has already been dubbed Prince Zavvy, after Xavier.

And he has come home to so much love. Not only the love of his parents, which grows day by day, and of his grandparents who have all come to visit, but he has been, we have been, overwhelmed by the love of this congregation. We have modeled his new wardrobe for him, reading to him all of your names and cards as we wash his clothes and put them away. He has swung in the swing you gave him, peered into the mirror you bought him, curled up in the blankets you made for him. He came home from the hospital, safely, and visited his pediatrician, safely, in the car seat you provided for him. Noelle and I received a meal a day, including dessert, from members of the church for the entire first two weeks he was home. Which was great, because all we have wanted to do is play with him, hold him, feed him, read poetry to him, sing to him, kiss him, change his diapers, and then sleep, sleep, and sleep.

We all search for signs of God’s presence.

Sometimes they are easy to see. A newborn’s cry, parent’s pride, a congregation’s love, hopes and prayers for the future renewed and given shape. Our congregation is fortunate to share this experience with the baptism of every child.

Over and over I have been told that a child is God’s blessing. I could read that in every card you sent to Noelle and I, because for us it is true. But I could not write it, or repeat it, in a sermon without recognizing that not every woman who finds herself pregnant wanted to be pregnant. And not every pregnancy is carried to term, or ends well, or as expected. Blessings are complicated things. We seek them, pray for them, try to be open to them, wish them on others, but in the end a blessing is not something we can bring about, make happen, or cause to be. Things or people are not blessings in themselves, but can bear blessings. Blessings are assurances of God’s presence. Blessings open us to the world in new ways, they remind us how we are to live with one another and as part of the world. I can say “My child, August Xavier, is a gift from God,” that bears a blessing to Noelle and I. And he bears new blessings each day, and I am grateful I have been able to spend so much time with him these last two weeks.

We all search for signs of God’s presence.

August shares his birthday with Julius Caesar. July 12 was also the birthday of the author of Walden and On Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau. Charles Kingsley, the English Christian Socialist, Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, Bill Cosby and Kristi Yamaguchi were all born on July 12.

On this date in 1191, the combined forces of France, England, and Spain recaptured Jerusalem, thus concluding the third crusade. On July 12, in 1933, Congress passed the first federal minimum wage, set at 33cents and hour. It was the day Etch-a-sketch went on sale in 1960, and in 2006, the day on which Hezbollah launched Operation True Promise.

There are many ways we look for signs of God’s presence. We read meaning into all sorts of coincidences and events. Seek to find purpose behind the connections. Some we have to really work to see. Others are hard to ignore. Not all of them are signs.

On Thursday Noelle and I opened August’s first official piece of mail - his social security card. We took pictures, and hugged our little 324-69-1234 (not his actual SSN). And it occurred to me that with that number, August has already been registered on a list that military recruiters will use sixteen years from now to contact him. In seventeen years and eleven months he will have to register for selective service in order to qualify for federal financial aid or loans for college. He could be drafted. During times of war, a son in an ambiguous blessing.

Yet, we search for signs of God’s presence.

The Psalmist in our reading for today declares that “the fool says in his heart there is no God.” Sometimes I feel like fool. Where is God’s presence in the Middle East right now? In Israel, the occupied territories of Palestine, Gaza, Southern Lebanon? Is God ever anywhere in violence except as a victim? I think God always suffers in violence. I find it hard to see God’s presence in these conflicts, despite the assurance by so many that God is on their side. I pray to see it, but the figure of over 800,000 children, mothers and men made refugees in the past two weeks, displaced from destroyed homes; the picture, seen around the world but not in the U.S. press, of a rescue worker holding a Lebanese child who had been blown to shreds from the waist down, the disproportionate and civilian death toll has made it hard to see much through the tears I have cried this week. Perhaps God is in the tears. Perhaps we should all be listening more to our tears.

When we seek signs of God’s presence, in good times as well as challenging times, horrible times, we can perhaps do no better than looking where Jesus looked. We look to those who mourn, at the poor and the humble, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, we look to the peacemakers - these are the blest and source of blessing. But most importantly, following Jesus, we seek God’s presence in those who have enough confidence and assurance in what the letter to the Ephesians calls the height, and depth, and breadth of God’s love, to offer that love and blessing to their enemies and to those who persecute them.

Sometimes we find it far to easy to see God’s presence with us, believing that God blesses all that we bless, or wish blessed. We hear the words of our anthem, “God is on our side” and assume they are sung by someone like us. Or that we believe them more than those on the other side of our conflicts. God is for us: These are words of assurance, spoken to God’s people, in the context of worship: a community seeking God through prayer, confessing its sin, listening to scripture, interpreting their lives, offering humbly themselves in service to the world. (That is important, too many of us in church offer ourselves to the world in service of the church). It is another thing entirely when spoken by individuals, groups, and nations to legitimize their actions. It is perhaps better spoken as a blessing: God be with you - to friend and enemy alike.

And still, we search for signs of God’s presence.

This past week, Christian leaders spoke with one voice in a way that I have not seen in a long time. It was a powerful witness. Pope Benedict XVI, The Middle East Council of Churches, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowen Williams, The United Methodist Council of Bishops, John Thomas, the President of the United Churches of Christ, Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Bob Edgar and Michael Livingston of the National Council of Churches and Church World Service. And more. All calling for an immediate cease-fire. These are folks who know better than to believe that the current conflict began with a rocket on July 12. They represent ecumenical partnerships and a religious presence in the most conflicted areas of our world. Their statements can all be found at www.councilofchurches.org, standing for National Council of Churches.

In a letter to the President of the United States, Presbyterian Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick said,

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has long been committed to working for a just peace in the region. Over the last fifty-six years we have consistently expressed our concern for peace between Israel, the Palestinian people, and the Arab states. The people of the Middle East, the birthplace of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, are groaning under the burden of war and desperately desire peace. We implore you to not allow the extremists of the region to dictate the reality and final outcome of this situation. What is needed now is a sane and diplomatic voice, which the United States can provide. Please use all diplomatic means available to you to restrain the violence and calm the situation . . .

The real targets of Psalm 14 are those who act as if there is no God. Those who believe in their heart that there is no God are the very same people who can proclaim belief in God yet whose actions deny it. Folks, we have praying to do. The National Council of Churches and our own denominational leaders have called upon us to enter into a season of prayer for peace. And there will be letters to write, calls to make, actions to participate in. We have relationships to nurture and repair, particularly with our Jewish and Muslim neighbors. We are called again to offer ourselves as a witness for peace, in conversation, as neighbors, as readers of the daily news, with our friends. The NCC website calls us to

Pray like everything depends on God.

Work like everything depends on you [us].

It is not enough simply to search for signs of God’s presence. We are called to be signs of God’s presence.

Though August Xavier arrived unexpectedly, Noelle and I have already planned for his baptism on World Communion Sunday, in October. When I first came to this church, the senior pastor at the time, Tony Wolfe, used to say before every baptism that the birth of a child is a sure sign that God wants the world to go on. That is both a call and responsibility for every community that would welcome and baptize a child, to transform the world into a place where all people can thrive. It is a reminder of God’s need to us, for us, to be signs of God’s presence.

We are called to be signs of God’s presence. May we be signs of God’s presence!

“Now to the one who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly more than all we can ask or imagine, to that one be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”