Someone once said to me ‘Omnipresence is not all it is cracked up to be. Imagine Sunday morning worldwide… you have a choice, but God has to be present week after week… That’s the downside of omnipresence.’
Probably not the joke that is about to win the Edinburgh Festival best joke award, and pretty irrelevant to this post anyway, so moving on quickly. God’s presence and the evidence of it is a strange phenomenon, and by that I mean the places where he shows up. Not looking to offend anyone, but assuming most of the readers of this blog are not full out and out Catholics who regularly pray for the pope, we have this strange aspect where (I guess) most of us do not have a firm theological conviction that he is indeed the spiritual descendent of Peter and that unique representative of Christ on the earth. Yet most of us see him as so representing God, and appointed by him. I think we have a way of handling that without too much difficulty. God is present with him, present in the system, yet the system is not ordained by and therefore ‘of God’.
Maybe though we do not do the same thing with ourselves. Someone is healed, thus God is with us and approving of us, what we do and how we do it. God’s presence and his activity does not endorse who he is active with or the context in which his activity manifests. A very clear example of this is with the appointment of the king. The context and choice made by Israel is a rejection of God, yet God shows up to anoint the king. It does not go well, but rather than command Israel to abandon the cray (Pharaonic) idea he promptly sends Samuel out to find another king.
I write this post while in Prague. Been great today to walk in the city and see such a beautiful city, but also to think of its history. Walk past churches that perhaps have at times not represented God too well, which normally happens whenever we become complicit with power, but maybe at times they have been the means of grace and people finding a future and hope.
We are ever so grateful for everyone who seeks to serve God in whatever capacity and in whatever context. God is a real compromiser, entering into situations that we are ready to be critical of (‘wouldn’t touch that with a barge pole’ kind of response!). That is grace.
I don’t think God is looking for the perfect, the NT based community in order to work. He is more likely going to call people into situations that are not perfect, to wrestle with what is compromised within those situations, but in that to imperfectly align with God so that God’s presence might manifest.
Walking around Prague today we asked each other, what would one do if one were living here to facilitate people finding faith. (An interesting thought given that the Czech Republic seems to come bottom of the statistical pile in Europe for a lack of interest in faith among younger people.) I am sure there are models of church that could come in here and see some quite impressive growth. The temptation would be to assume if that were to happen that indicates God’s approval. Maybe and maybe not. (The real issue of change of course is not to simply look within four walls, but in the context of the wider city and location.)
We do not have easy answers, but remain convinced that the way ahead is through a multiplicity of small actions, within imperfect situations, by imperfect people. None of us have the approval of God in the sense of what we are involved in being a total reflection of heaven’s activities. That should not condemn us, but encourage us to give it our best shot, and to be very uncritical of others who are doing it so differently and in a different context to us.
Glad God is omnipresence, not in the theological sense but in the grace sense of him showing up in all situations. I think omnipresence is everything it is cracked up to be – and a whole load more.