How God is Good for Nothing….and the Church’s Job is to Tell This Like it Is.

 

God is good for nothing, not only in the sense that God provides precisely the salvation we don’t want or think we need (e.g. when we are drowning we don’t want a lifeguard who will simply swim out to join us in the going down) but also in the sense that whatever good is brought or given is done so on the basis of God’s decision and not our merit or demerit.

 The truth of the matter is that we spend inordinate time and energy looking for and claiming signs of divine presence that would and will empower us to great progress and purpose. “Where is God that I might believe in Him?” we might say. “Wise Men Still Seek Him,” so goes the seasonal slogan. Church is seen as the revelation of the Hidden God – a signpost to help us figure out and find God. We want God to be good for something – to help us get the safety and security we want and name and to do that on the basis of what inputs we provide – be that belief or behavior. But God, it turns out, is good for nothing. God not only disregards our definition of safety, security and success but also disenfranchises our ability to merit attention or eternity.

 God: how utterly worthless! But how too so utterly wonderful!

 We know precisely what we are doing when we crucify God. We are getting rid of the one who doesn’t help us gain our game and we are getting rid of the one who says our game is worthless.

“I’m worthless? No, dear God, you are worthless!” And the nail is pierced into God’s hands and feet!

 So how does this worthlessness become wonderful? God’s grit. Call it resurrection from the dead. God would and does not take no for an answer.

 Is it possible for us to know this? Is it possible for us to live in the “wonderful” instead of the “worthlessness? Only if God does all and we do nothing. And we know it.  Only if there is a death and resurrection that is our death and resurrection daily because of God. And because it is in Christ Jesus where God is revealed as most supremely and utterly worthless (Good for Nothing), only in Christ Jesus.

And how would we come to know this? How does God do all and we do nothing and that is most wonderful? The Church.

 The Church’s job is to deliver who God is and what God does and not to direct us or set us on some path to figure out or realize or find our salvation. The Church does not reveal the hidden God, have special powers to show us where God hides and gives us special mechanisms, spiritual practices, to get to that hidden God. Rather, the Church hides the revealed God – not “hides” in the sense that it tries to sequester or remove from access, but in the sense of “sub contrario,” (under the form of the opposite), in the sense that you just can’t expect it there because its just so plain and simple and, frankly, literally, elemental. In the elements of larynx/voice and water and bread/wine God is revealed, accessible to all, not hiding for us to find, available without us earning a thing.  God hides sub contrario (again, under the form of the opposite) not in order to not be found but in order to be displayed and delivered in the only place where humanity actually is, so to be then also the only place where humanity can actually access, connect, know the divine (human beings like to think they can get out of their own skin, be something else. We cannot. God knows, literally, and so brings us gospel in the only place possible – in our own skin, in the flesh and blood (call it incarnation) and in the elements (call it, then, word and sacrament).

 To say church “hides the revealed God” means then that the church “holds” or “delivers” or “is the vehicle for the transmission of” God who is on display for all to know and see and live with now.

 You just can’t get this kind of good news anywhere else! Where else can you find somebody telling you that your lousy attempts at making good, call it pride, and your empty space of feeling bad, call it despair, are actually not changed by circumstances or effort (from the inside out) but rather transformed by love from the outside in (in other words – God is good for  nothing in the sense that what you thought was salvation – you surviving by God – is not salvation at all. Salvation is God surviving by you). And where else can you find that all of this happens without your merit or effort but simply because you exist (in other words God is good for nothing in the sense that you need not bring a thing to the table, nothing, to be a part of it all).

 You just can’t find this kind of good news anyplace else but Church.

 You can find people talking about this, and speculating about God and the meaning of life, anywhere. From pool hall to poolside, hill and dale.

 But its only Church who does the actual deed of delivering God in direct form and in person.

Church is not here to help you figure out God. Church is here to turn God out on you who figures you out. And gives you life, no questions asked. Church is here to bring God who is good for nothing. And that is everything.