God in the End

A Communion Meditation by Jack Cabaness,
based on the final chapter of Brian McLaren's book We Make the Road by Walking
Preached at Katonah Presbyterian Church
Sunday, September 4, 2016

How did you get your start?

This is not a question about your first job after college, or where you grew up. It's a deeper question about your origins. How did you get your start? How did you begin to be you?

You could answer that question by saying that you were formed by the union of a sperm cell and an egg cell, and that would be true. That's probably how Sheldon Cooper from the TV show the Big Bang Theory would answer that question. And it's an answer that speaks to the wonders of biology, but it's not the only answer.

To tell the full truth, we need more than one narrative. We need to hear the story about how your parents first met. We need to hear how your great-grandmother stood in line at Ellis Island when she first arrived to this country as a young girl.

To answer the question fully, we need to hear the whole story, not just the parts of the story that tell us how, but also those parts of the story that try to tell us why.

The same is true of the universe. When we ask how did the universe get its start, we can talk about the Big Bang, and how the evidence and observations all suggest that we know of as the universe began when a singularity exploded some 15 billion years ago, and that's an important and fascinating part of the story. But it's not the whole story.

There's also the story of how God imbued the universe with meaning from the very beginning, speaking into the void, proclaiming, "Let there be light," and then there was light.

In the final chapter of his book We Make the Road by Walking, Brian McLaren invites us to

imagine a moment before the Big Bang banged. Imagine a creativity, brilliance, fertility, delight, energy, power, glory, wisdom, wonder, greatness, and goodness sufficient to express itself in what we know as the universe. Try to imagine it, even though you cannot: A creative imagination and energy so great that it would produce light, gravity, time, and space ... galaxies, stars, planets, meadowlarks, gorillas, dolphins, golden retrievers, [corgis], and us.

And then dare to imagine that this is the great, big, beautiful, mysterious goodness, wholeness, and aliveness that surrounds us and upholds us even now.

Finally, try to imagine that this is also the great, big, beautiful, mysterious goodness, wholeness, and aliveness into which all of us and all creation will be taken up---in a marriage, homecoming, in a reunion, in a celebration.

The Wedding Feast at Cana, 1563, by Paolo Veronese

Because just as there is more than one way to tell the story of our beginnings, there is more than one way to tell the story of our endings.

How will it all end?, you might ask ... with life on earth ceasing to exist, the sun expanding into a red giant and swallowing up the earth? Well, yes, that's part of the story, as best we understand it, but it's not the whole story.

This is why Brian McLaren invites us to hear the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) as a parable about how the world ends. The world ends neither with a bang nor a whimper, but with the sounds of merriment and feasting!

As Brian McLaren explains it, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son,

Human history can be seen as the story of a family, a father and two sons. The family experiences conflict. The rebellious younger son runs away and for a while forgets his true identity. The younger son reaches a crisis and comes home. He is welcomed by the father, which then creates a crisis for the older son. 

Of course, the story isn't only about the identity crises of the two sons. It also reveals the true identity of the father, whose heart goes out to both brothers, who graciously loves them even when they don't know it, and even when they don't love each other.

The story ends with a celebration---a welcome-home party, a reunion party. Like many of our best stories, it doesn't have to be factual to tell the truth, and its ending is left unresolved. Will the older brother remain outside, nursing his petty resentments? Or will he come inside to join the Big Celebration and rediscover his true identity in the family?

As McLaren says,

We find ourselves cheering for him: Come inside, man! Come on! Don't hold back! Come in!

If we enter this story and let it do its work on us, we can look out from within it and see ourselves and all creation held in the parental love of God. We can empathize with God, who wants all to come, all to enjoy the feast, all to discover or rediscover their true identity in God's family, in God's love.

This parable shows us a gracious and spacious heart that welcomes all to the table, [which is why we gather around a table this morning to celebrate God's love.] 

At this table, we look back to Jesus, remembering all he said and did to help us see and enter God's great feast.

At this table, we look around at one another, seeing one another and being seen, with God's eyes of love, as sisters and brothers, part of one human family.

And no less important, at this table we look forward to a festive celebration that beckons us from the future.

The story began in God's creative love, and it ends in God's creative love, too, if such an ending can be called an ending. Perhaps it's most true to say that any story with God in it is a story that never, ever ends.

All glory and praise be to our God. Amen.