Open to Divine Surprise--May 23, 2022

Open to Surprise--May 23, 2022

"But, as it is written, 'What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him'--these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God." [1 Corinthians 2:9-10]

Here's a bit of free, if unsolicited, advice for your soul: don't let your faith get so rigid with certainty that you are no longer able to let God surprise you.  A faith that can no longer be stretched by the unexpected ways of a God beyond our grasp isn't alive, but has fossilized; that kind of stiffness isn't a sign of strong, healthy faith--it's rigor mortis.

I say this because sometimes we confuse stubbornness with devotion and assume that "real" faith has to have all the answers figured out and put together in a tidy system, with no room for the unknown or mystery.  It is terribly easy in this day and age to reduce Christianity to a fixed set of positions you are "supposed" to have on various political, cultural, and economic hot topics.  There's little room for nuance sometimes--or it is seen as being wishy-washy.  And there is even less room for critical thinking that sees in shades of gray, or just doesn't have definitive answers.  

A faith like that--where everything is pared down to a set of fixed talking points or flashpoints in someone's culture war--is not open to being surprised by God, because it assumes it already has all the answers it needs.  And once you've convinced yourself that you know all the answers, you are not going to be interested in listening to someone suggest that there are more questions, more wonders, or more mysteries.  If you're satisfied with shallow piety, you'll always be threatened by the voices that say, "Let's dig deeper... let's have a closer look... let's dare to ask the questions we were afraid to say out loud."

What a gift, then, to hear the apostle Paul point out how essential the notion of divine surprise is for real, living faith.  Instead of insisting he's got all the answers, or that the pinnacle of faith is when you know with certainty all that God has up the divine sleeve, Paul relishes the idea that God's goodness is beyond our grasp, and God's designs are beyond our easy answers and shallow talking points.  Paul insists that if we've got it figured out completely, you can be sure that "it" ain't God, because God's graciousness is always more than we can sense or think or feel.  God's power for generosity, as the letter to the Ephesians will tell us, is always "more than we can ask or imagine."  So to be in right relationship with this God, then, is always going to mean that we need to be open to being surprised by God.

An honest reading of the story of Scripture certainly shows us how often God insists on moving in surprising directions and acting in ways that leave even the most pious scratching their heads and saying, "I wasn't expecting that."  From the unlikely choice of a couple of wobbly-faithed octagenarians named Abram and Sarai to build a nation out of, to the liberation of their descendants from slavery centuries later, to the arrival of the Messiah as a suffering servant rather than a conquering king, to the radical inclusion of outsiders and anybodies in the new community called "church," God has always been stretching our capacity for what is possible.  God has a way of doing what we think can't be done and crossing the lines we think are fixed and impenetrable.  Honestly, it almost seems that in the Scriptures, as soon as someone says, "Ok, but surely God is not allowed to include THEM, or forgive THIS, or work through THOSE people, or accept THAT," God takes it as a personal dare to do the very thing we thought impossible, unacceptable, or inconceivable.  And just when we tell ourselves, "Fine, God has surprised people before, but finally NOW we have the last and final word and no changes are coming--God cannot surprise us anymore!" God shows up again with another ace up the divine sleeve, and we find our old theological certainties yanked out from under us.

So one of two things can happen in this day: we can either keep repeating the cycle of decreeing limits on what we think God is allowed to do, or to whom God is allowed to bestow goodness and grace, only to have ourselves proven wrong again when God up and does the thing we thought was out of bounds... or we can let ourselves be intentionally open to divine surprise.  That means a certain humility before we start worshiping our own sense of "rightness."  And it also means a shift in the way we see our faith, so that the goal is no longer perfect certainty in all things--as if you have really only reached mature faith when you stop having questions or wonder.  Instead, the goal of faith is an openness to that Mystery, a willingness to let God stretch our minds and hearts wider and deeper than we thought possible.  The goal isn't to reach a fixed point, but to let God continue to move us, in C.S. Lewis' imagery of heaven, "further up and further in."  

Now, if we dare to choose that kind of openness to letting God surprising us, it will mean we have to let go of some sacred cows.  We will have to surrender control (or the illusion that we ever had it) over what God's plan or designs are, and we will have to allow God to reserve the right to be generous to folks we don't think are deserving.  We will have to resist shallow, uncritical, and pat answers when deep wrestling and mystery are required.  We will have to say, "I think it may be more complex than that," when other religious voices try to shoehorn our faith into a political party's talking points.  And it will mean learning to be OK with saying, "Here's what I think about this part of my faith... but I'm open to being surprised."

Let's see what happens when we dare to keep our faith flexible enough to let God stretch it where God sees the need.  Let's allow God to surprise us.

Lord Jesus, do your amazing work among us and in us--beyond our asking or our imagining.