Dear Friends,

     In the suggestion list for summer sermons was one that invites a multitude of paradoxical projections in theology.  One suggested sermon was the question:  “Is there anything God cannot do?”  Any easy answer far transcends the limits of human knowledge.  Some theologians would reason that God, being God, can do anything.  Others argue God can do anything, unless it’s unlike God, such as an immoral action.  Process theologians would posit that God is limited by the very freedom that is part of creation and evolution.  A popular apologetic argues that God gives us free will and that is the freedom to be compassionate, indifferent or destructive without God controlling our actions.  A 20th Century Jewish theologian noted that God cannot ask us to break the commandments but that the will of God could super- cede those very commandments.  Is there anything God cannot do?  My answer would make for a very brief sermon.  My response is how can any finite, limited, culturally conditioned mind know such things?

     I find wonderful truth in the ancient story from India about the blind men and the elephant.

You know the story...

            A blind person grabs the tail and says, “Oh, this elephant is just like a rope.”

            Another blind person walks into the side of the elephant and holds out his arms and says, “No,  

            an elephant is like a great big wall with rough texture.”

            An third blind man takes hold of a leg and proclaims, “This elephant is just like a tree trunk-  

            strong and round.”

            The fourth blind man touches the trunk of the elephant and proclaims, “This elephant is like a

           giant flexible arm that can move in every direction.”

      In this profound Hindu story you find two theological claims - First, there is something rather than nothing.  Second, that something which you may call God, energy, or Presence is beyond all our descriptions.  Did any of the blind men really understand or “grasp” the reality of the elephant?  No, they each reflected their own limited perspective and experience.  All of their views stitched together do not create an elephant.  This is a story that is honored by the Hindu tradition because their entire vision of God is that God is the one Ultimate, but that Ultimate on a limited human level, will never but fully understood.

      I look at in a similar metaphor - God is like the ultimate jigsaw puzzle with a billion pieces, of which humans have a handful of pieces we attempt to put together to form some type of pattern.  Even then pieces are added and the pattern changes as we grow up or evolve through spiritual growth or personal struggle.  Consider how God grows up as you grow up.  Children may think of God as a big, big human being in the sky.  Yes, our view of God evolves as we spiritually evolve.  But those who claim to have God all figured out - don’t know God.

Next Sunday (June 13th) A Sermon By Request:  “Job and the Question of Why We Suffer.”

With faith, hope, and love,

Rev. Dr. Paul Ashby