Second Sermon in The Shack Series

Exodus 34:5-8
A Piece of Pi

I feel a bit like the the announcer from the old Saturday morning Western the Lone Ranger: When we last saw our hero . . . In this case, “our hero” is Mac the main character in William Young's novel The Shack. For the next few weeks, we are using The Shack as a helpful illustration of some biblical truths. When we last saw our hero, Mac, he had been invited back to the shack—the place of the worst event in his life, the abduction and murder of his youngest child three years prior to the start of the story. He's been invited back by “Papa,” his wife's name for God. And reluctantly he returns and discovers the Trinity waiting for him there. Over the course of the weekend, he has a remarkable encounter with Papa—God the father disguised as an African American woman, Saryu—the Holy Spirit in the appearance of an Indian woman, and Jesus Christ. Much of the story revolves around cooking and eating.

The chapter entitled “A Piece of Pi” begins that way. Mac was convinced to stay and begins his weekend with the Trinity by finding Papa cooking the Shack's kitchen which has been converted and decorated by the presence of the divine. “God,” Mac called rather timidly and feeling more than a little foolish,” “I'm in the kitchen, Mackenzie, just follow my voice.” He discovers Papa listening to interesting music which she describes, “West Coast Juice. Group called Diatribe and an album that isn't even out yet called Heart Trip. Actually, these kids haven't been born yet.” She describes the music as “Eurasian funk and blues with a message and a great beat.” Mac responds by saying that the music doesn't sound very religious and that he would have imagined God listening to George Beverly Shea or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir—churchy music. Papa responds, “You don't have to be lookin' out for me. I listen to everying—and not just the music itself, but the hearts behind it.” Then Papa responds with one of the singature lines from the book, “I'm especially fond of those boys.” As the story unfolds, the reader discovers that Papa is especially fond of a number of people.

It's a beautiful way to describe the love of God. We talk so much about “the love of God” that I think sometimes the phrase looses it's meaning. People can speak of the Love of God and still retain images of God that are harsh, unforgiving, bitter, and sadistic. To think of a God who is “especially fond” of you and me and indeed all those whom God has created expresses something more elegant about the tenderness, affection and desire God has toward us.

Our scripture reading from Exodus this morning may also need a “When we last saw our hero.” While Moses was on Sinai, the Israelites whom God had delivered from slavery in Egypt made a Golden Calf and worshiped it. In Anger, Moses broke the tablets of law that the Lord had given him. But in compassion for his people Moses returned to God and pleaded for forgiveness. God led them away from Sinai but continued to communicate with Moses in the tent of meeting, the Tabernacle. Chapter 33 says that God used to speak with Moses as one speaks to a friend (vs. 10). In this time of communion with God, Moses asked to see the Lord's face. God gently refused for no one can see God, he said, and live. But he allowed Moses to see his back. And as the Lord passed before him, God proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.” Some regard that closing statement as evidence of God's essential judgmentalism. But notice the comparison that God's graciousness and forgiveness extends to a thousand generations and judgment lasts three or four generations. The emphasis is that God prefers love to judgment a thousand to four.

The point of this brief statement is that the basic nature of God is love. Old Testament scholar refers to the declaration in Exodus 34:6-7 as perhaps the closest thing the Old Testament has to a creed—a statement about the nature of God that is repeated throughout the faith life of the Old Testament people. By my count, reference is made back to these words at least thirteen times throughout the Old Testament [Numbers 14:17-19; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalm 85:10-13; Psalm 86:5, 19; Psalm 103:8; Psalm 145:8, Isaiah 54:9-10; Jeremiah 32:18; Lamentations 3:18-24; Hosea 2:19-20; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; Nahum 1;3]. Sometimes, the emphasis is indeed on God's capacity for judgment however, most often it is a reference to God's graciousness and love. For those of you who find The Shack a little too touchy feely, or artsy fartsy, or undefined. I would recommend a book edited by Evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock entitled The Openness of God. The Open View of God espoused by this group of writers is deeply committed to biblical authority but offers a challenge to traditional understandings of God. The “traditional” image of God that they challenge is the image of God as one who controls everything and that already knows the outcome of every decision and that is unfeeling and unchanged by the actions of God's people. This image of God, they painstakingly explain, emerges not so much from the biblical witness about God but more so from Greek philosophical influence on God. It is a Greek cosmology that assumes that for God to be “all-powerful” God must also be unemotional and unchanging and unchangeable.

In contrast, they say that “power” is not the biblical witness as the foremost attribute of God. They write, “The view of God and his relation to the world presented in this book . . . expresses two basic convictions: love is the most important quality we attribute to God and love is more than care and commitment; it involves being sensitive and responsive as well. These convictions lead the contributors to this book to think of god's relation to the world in dynamic rather than static terms.” (The Openness of God, p. 15). The love of God leaves God open to influence God's creatures but also to be influenced by us. In contrast to seeing history and the future as the unfolding of a divinely predetermined script, “History” they declare, “is the combined result of what God and his creatures decide to do.” The open view of God appeals to me for a number of reasons. It is not “liberal theology” which doesn't bother me as much as it bothers other people. Liberal theologians have much to teach all of us if we will set aside the biases that labels generate for us. But, I am personally too bound to biblical authority to place myself within that camp of theologians. The open view of God is written by others who regard scripture as the ultimate authority for faith and practice. But staying with that framework, they also regard much of what we have inherited as not a truly biblical image of God but rather the influence of surrounding culture. The world only thinks in terms of power over—the Supreme Being must be one with Superior power. Within the Kingdom of God, we think in terms of ultimate love where the Supreme being Superior power. This reassessment of our image for God has profound implications for how we practice our faith and understand faith.

Pi or π is a symbol for the number 3.14159. and is a ration of a circles circumference to is radius—hence Circumference = pi times radius square. OR πr2. But the “A Piece of Pi” is a play on words. Pi is one of the most important mathematical concepts. But Pie is one of the most important culinary concepts. Without PIE there'd by no Pecan Pie, Apple Pie, Coconut Cream Pie, and no quiche. The play on words is a reference to attempts to explain the doctrine of the Trinity in terms of mathematics or geometry or chemistry. The doctrine of the Trinity is Christian theology's attempt to understand God as both one and three—there is one God that is the central belief of Christian faith as a faith that belongs to the streams of monotheistic religion. Yet, we speak of God as manifested in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. We have tried over the years to explain this in terms of chemistry—Water can be solid ice, gaseous steam, and liquid—one substance in three forms. St. Patrick was famous for using a clover to explain the doctrine of the trinity. But ultimately all the analogies drawn from chemistry or geometry begin to break down. They may explain the “how” of a Trinitarian conception but they do not explain the why.

The why is understood best in terms of Love. Before God created us to be loved, God had a love within God's self. As Mac asks God, “What difference does it make that there are three of you, and you are all one God. Did I say that right?”
“Right enough.” She grinned, “Mackenzie, it makes all the difference in the world. We are not three gods, and we are not talking about one god with three attitudes, like a man who is a husband, father, and worker. I am one God and I am three persons, and each of three is fully and entirely one. If I were simply One God and only One Person, then you would find yourself in this Creation without something wonderful, without something essential even. And I would be utterly other than I am” Mack asks, “And we would be without . . . .?”
“Love” Papa responds.
“Unless I had an object to love—or more accurately, a someone to love—if I did not have such a relationship within myslef, then I would not be capable of love at all. You would have a god who could not love. Or maybe worse, you would have a god who, when he chose, could only love as a limitation of his nature. That kind of god could not possibly act without love, and that would be a disaster. And that, is surely not me” (p. 102).

Young narrates here an Augustinian understanding of the Trinity. Augustine spoke of God the Father as the Lover, God the Son as the Loved, and God the Spirit as the Love that Spirit as the Love that is shared between them. By creating the world through the Son, God creates the world in love. And by sending the Son to the World, God enfolds us in God's love. The Doctrine of the Trinity is not Christian divine chemistry or geometry. It is Christianity's way of singing the old, old song, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and faithfulness.”