God is Not Elsewhere
The sermon preached by Fr. Ernie on May 21, 2023.
God is Not Elsewhere
by Ernest Boyer
In today’s reading from Acts the disciples meet once more with the risen Lord. This time they ask him if the fact that he’s here means that the final reckoning is about to happen, the time that he predicted when the world will finally be made a place of justice, harmony and equality for all. “It is not for you to know this,” Jesus replies. Instead, he wants them to wait because, as he tells them, soon “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This will, as we know, happen at Pentecost, which we’ll celebrate next week. In the meantime, these turn out to be Jesus’ last words on earth because, as the text says, “When [Jesus] had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.”
So, he’s gone.…Or is he? The truth is, he’s never really left us. Of course, we already know that the Holy Spirit will soon appear and there is no difference between that Spirit and Jesus or even between it and God the Father, but that’s not actually what I mean. There is in fact a greater truth here, and it’s this: We always make a terrible mistake whenever we begin to think of God as separate from us.
We do this all the time, of course. We all do. Everyone. No one escapes. Each and every one of us occasionally falls into the trap of thinking of God as “up there” or “somewhere else,” or in “some far off place” — some place that we need to try to get to. We are here; God is there. Who of us doesn’t think that way at times?
There’s only one problem with this. It’s wrong.…It’s wrong.
I recently heard the truth summarized in a wonderful little four-word phrase. That phrase is this: God is not elsewhere. That’s it: God…is…not…elsewhere.… Now, just to be clear, it’s also true that God is somewhere else too. God is everywhere, fully present for each and every person alive. So, when I say that God is not elsewhere, that applies to all of us. God is never somewhere else. God is alwayshere for everyone. On one level we all know this, but on another level we forget.
Let me give you an example of how that can happen. Imagine that one Sunday morning you’re sitting here in church waiting for the service to begin and as you look around you notice how many empty pews there are, and you remember a time when those pews were nearly full. That makes you think back on how many Children there used to be with a Sunday School to meet their needs. You recall how many more people there were who were able to help out back then, and how during the singing of the hymns the voices of all those present were loud enough to be heard in heaven. You think of all this, and you feel sad. Without actually putting it into words you can’t help feeling that God was with us more back then — that God is further from us now because there are so few of us. We all know that feeling, but is it true? Is God ever less than fully present?
No. No. God is never absent and God is never less than fully present. Never. Not when things change. Not even when it feels to us that God is far away. God is not. God is never elsewhere.
I remember when I first discovered this. It was long ago. I was a high school student at the time, probably in 9th or 10th grade. I lived in those days in rural upstate New York. The school was far from my home, which meant that I had a long bus ride every day, an hour to school and an hour back. Most of the journey was through farmland — hills and trees but mostly mile after mile of fields. Some of the fields still had crops —corn and wheat, mostly — but the majority had gone to weeds. The farms had long since been abandoned. The homes were deserted, their window’s smashed. The barns had fallen into decay. All were weathered and leaned precariously to one side, near collapse. Day after day I made this trip, always impatient to get it over with. In the morning I just wanted to get to school so that I could get that over with too. Then in the evening I couldn’t wait to get home. There was homework to do, for one thing, but mostly I just wanted to be off this bus. The time dragged by. I stared out the window but never saw a thing. All I could think of was getting where I was going. The hills, the trees, the derelict barns, the broken fences — they all slipped past my gaze without ever registering. God could have been there in God’s full glory and I would have never known.
Then one day, for no reason I could discover, something shifted in my brain during the ride home. As I stared out of the bus’s dirty window, the world all at once came alive for me. What I noticed first was the sky. It was late afternoon by then, and suddenly my eyes were caught by the play of light and dark as great billowy clouds raced across the vast blue expanse of heaven, sending long shadows rushing across the fields as, for the first time, I noticed just how hauntingly beautiful this landscape was. There was the rise and fall of the rolling hills for one thing and the eerie empty houses with their gaping windows and tattered curtains. There were also the weathered barns all standing at an angle. Then too there was the moody light. Mostly it seemed it was that light. The light had such depth to it, such richness. It made everything stand out. It made the colors more vivid than I ever remember seeing them. It gave to each hill and valley a slightly different shade from the one around it. And as I watched in growing fascination as each thing passed I realized something astonishing: suddenly it became to me that I wanted to be no place else than exactly where I was. Normally I spent the entire bus ride longing to get home. Today I didn’t. At the moment I didn’t care if I ever got home. I was enjoying this too much. And why was that? I paused for a moment and tried to come up with an answer. Then I had it: I was happy!
That was it: I was happy! Right in this moment I was happy! I was actually happy! The thought floored me. How often had I actually said that to myself? I wondered. How often had I actually thought: right now I am happy? I literally could not remember a single time in my life when I had said to myself: “I am happy now.” Happiness was always something I was chasing after. I had often thought, “I’ll be happy when I get this done … or when I pass this test… or when this class is over… or when I can get to bed,” but by the time each of these happened I had forgotten all about happiness. There’s always the next thing, then the next, then the next. I had always chased afterhappiness but somehow had never managed to seize it when it was right in front of me, so I never got it. It might have been staring me in the face, but I was always looking for it elsewhere. And yet I did seize then, that day on that school bus. I always thought happiness was elsewhere, something to go after. The truth is, you only find it right in front of you. God and happiness are tied together. Like happiness, God is not elsewhere either. We don’t have to chase after God. We just have to see that God is here, with us right now. God is not elsewhere. God is in each and every moment.
So here we are right now on this Sunday morning. We have just the people that we have here. Many of us have grown old. A few are younger and we have a couple of precious children. All that is perfectly wonderful. The only thing we need to add to this is the realization that God is just as fully with us now as God has ever been and will ever be. Right now. Even if our numbers suddenly quadrupled God could not be with us more fully then God is right now. Not even if they multiplied a hundred-fold. That, my friends, is something we need to celebrate. Do you feel the joy of that — the joy of being right here, right now with all these wonderful people while being watched by a smiling, loving God? We need to allow ourselves to experience the joy of that, so that we can truly live in the happiness of this moment.
God is not elsewhere. All we have to ask ourselves now is one thing. What are going to do with that? As for me, I’ll just say, Alleluia!
If you like this Sermon, feel free to leave a comment below or follow us on vimeo.