God is not Married to Form - Can We Keep up with His Adaptive Spirit?

It’s easy to feel like God moves slowly. Right now we want him to move in the form of a particular election result, a COVID-19 vaccine, a release from shutdowns, some simple answers for how to do church in this crisis. He doesn’t seem too concerned about all that.

But what if he’s moving and we’re the ones resistant to change? The way he’s moving just may not be the movement we’re waiting for. And he may be disrupting some things we’d prefer to keep.

Throughout his engagement with humanity, God has always been the same God. But he’s always adapted how he engages with humans. As soon as one form stops working, he shapes something new. But we’re so married to the form he’s been using, we’re slow to see the new forms. And even slower to jump on board.

God first engaged with humans through relationship with a couple in a garden. And then with Abraham, what God first began with a couple became a family. With Abraham’s great grandson, Jacob, God’s engagement with his people grew from a family into a tribe. And after 400 years in Egypt, the tribe was ready for their own land where God shaped a whole way of life through the law and temple. His engagement with humans now looked like a nation. And even though their disobedience saw them taken into captivity in Babylon, the people scattered and the temple destroyed, God even used that fallow ground to shape something entirely new.

And finally, what God had expressed through a couple, a family, a tribe, a nation, God now expressed in the form of one ordinary human. Jesus is perceived as a radical trouble-maker because he has little regard for the forms that humans have come to love more than God. Humans love the comfort that comes with familiar forms. God’s comfort, on the other hand, doesn’t always mean things never change.

In a fascinating scene in John 2, Jesus drives out the money changers and cattle from the temple, a dramatic move which is attributed to his zeal for his Father’s house. And yet, while he’s still catching his breath, when the Jewish leaders ask, “What gives you authority to do this!?” he answers, “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it up.” This building, this ritual, this familiar system was designed in detail by God himself. And now, when God comes to live among humans, God himself says, “Time for something new!” This structure will be torn down and in its place, a resurrected human life will bear living witness to the presence of God.

And from there, God’s expression of himself moves from His spirit in one human body to His Spirit in a whole community of many different people—Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. And from that original community it becomes a movement across the Roman Empire. And from there, it gains momentum across the planet, across the centuries, in the form of missionaries and monks, revivals and cathedrals, church camps and radio stations, hospitals and homeless shelters, publishing houses, seminaries and church plants. It’s this movement’s changing form, its creative adaptability that allows it to grow from two people in a garden to millions of people across the world.

And now, as some of our familiar forms are in upheaval, are we so married to the forms that we’re missing the work of the Spirit of God? It’s especially tricky because those of us responsible for shaping the forms God’s work takes are often also the ones most shaped by (entrenched in?) the forms and most reliant on them for our livelihood. It’s okay to grieve the forms we love. In many ways they are good things, things given by God for a particular time and place. At the same time, does our grief blind us to the joy of the Lord and the adventure he is on? Like Jesus, can we have zeal for “his house,” even as we watch “his house” fall? Can we open our hearts to how “his house” might take surprising, remarkable new forms? If we only look to God for stability in times of crisis, we will lose touch with Him. To keep up with his presence in these times, and to steward this moment well, we might need to find his comfort in new ways. As old forms pass away and he new forms emerge, his comfort will look less like familiarity and stability. Instead, his comfort will be his unfailing companionship on this adventure, and the unfading twinkle in his eye as he sees what’s in store.

(The image is an early draft of the artwork the UCC community made to depict God’s work throughout scripture, always changing and growing.)