“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us, and love is made complete in us.”
—1 John 4:12
A couple of months ago Diane and I had an apartment so close to the Atlantic that we could hear the waves through the night.
We were on the seventh floor,
and I remember one Sunday morning looking out the window and telling Diane,
I can see how some cultures worship the ocean.
After that, for six weeks, we lived where we could clearly see both of Cape Town’s most prominent mountains,
Table Mountain and Lion’s Head,
which, by the way, seem to be visible everywhere in the city,
and Cape Town is huge.
The only city in the U.S. with a larger population is New York.
Still, it’s safe to say that every person who lives in this city of 5 million people has visited or seen these two mountains.
And I looked to the mountains during my morning walks.
There’s this verse: “No one has ever seen God.”
No one has ever seen God.
Not the way we might see an ocean. Or a mountain.
We can’t share a picture of God in a phone message.
For some, that mystery leads to faith.
For others of us, it leads to doubt.
For many it leads to both.
But the writer doesn’t scold us. He simply explains:
the Divine is not a thing we visualize.
You may have heard me suggest three kinds of experiences that make life divine:
Stillness, which includes quietness of being, mindfulness, prayer
Engagement with nature
Face-to-face encounter with like-minded people
The computer that is you—
and when I say you it can mean your mind, body, and soul, all that is you —
the computer that is you needs to optimize.
By this I mean you can only be your best you when you’re not always in the noise.
When you’re not breathlessly taking in data.
Sometimes you need to stop and process all the input.
I used to do that in Santa Barbara, in Goleta,
and when we were preparing to move, I often wondered how much I would miss the nature that surrounded us —
the greenness of it all.
We lived in a very tree-full neighborhood where I found I could process the input.
The input, in recent years, was everything from COVID-19 to the shameless targeting of immigrant families.
The input is the dual tragedy of caregivers forced out of their jobs in senior living facilities —
and the elders who lose their caregivers.
The input was constant.
Rude awakenings about a system I had already rejected.
You know.
But you know what else?
Life still had traces of the divine.
Love. Laughter. Friendship.
Gratitude.
My conscience intact.
The world can’t take it away.
Now the input is Cyclospora and Ebola. The input was the LA fires, but now it’s heat waves and fires in the Northern hemisphere.
Now the input is the death of Nolan Wells.
But even still.
Because (somebody say because)
I sought ways…
to process the data… that was the world,
not just for my personal wellbeing,
but because I understood that my wellbeing was integrated with the planet,
and with my neighbor.
So, like many of you, I devoted my time to the displaced and dispossessed.
Because no one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us,
and love is made complete in us.
The God nobody has ever seen becomes visible in love.
The question is not,
“Have I felt the anointing?”
The question is, “Is love happening?”
Still, I want us to consider something I find bewildering. We all have our practices.
Like how Kenichi, here, constructs model airplanes —
his hands steady, his attention focused.
Mindfulness gives us real gifts.
More calm. Better energy. Groundedness. Tenderness.
And yet. And yet.
Before we moved to South Africa, some people I know back home who spoke so warmly about their meditation practice were apologists for Israel —
many of them faith leaders.
Some rabbis. It puzzled me…
Still puzzles me.
How do you wake up each day, sit in the quiet, breathe —
and then pray for Israel’s success?
And no room in the heart for Palestinians.
If stillness opens my heart, why doesn’t it open theirs?
And what is my stillness failing to open?
The same thing happens with music.
The music that raised me was Black Gospel,
rooted in the spirituals —
what some Black academics call the Third Testament.
Liberation theology songs.
That music energized me.
I remember being so excited as a little boy,
after asking our church choir director, Sister Hutchinson,
if they would sing “Climbing up the Mountain” during the upcoming service,
and they did!
Then came contemporary Christian music.
Some of those melodies still move me—
songs reflecting an ideology I have spent years questioning.
Here’s what’s strange.
The music never betrayed me.
The music is beautiful.
It was the people.
The preachers. The congregants.
The people betrayed me. The melodies are still sweet.
So what do we do with that? Beautiful music.
Spiritual practice. And the heart remains unresponsive.
Having an experience is not the standard.
Love is.
Meditation calms us. A song opens our heart. Hey, it’s all good.
But it only reveals the divine when it helps us to love.
If our practices make us snobbish, superior, okay with somebody else’s suffering —
something is missing.
I don’t care how glorious it feels.
Stillness. 2. Nature. 3. One another, face to face.
And one question makes it all matter:
Is the invisible becoming visible?
We live in a loud world.
Social media shouts at us.
We’re on edge.
Our fears and resentments… tryin’ to take over.
We need the quiet.
Call it centering prayer.
Call it sitting and paying attention.
Stillness lowers the volume.
We start noticing what’s been there all the time.
Old hurts.
Self-justified prejudices.
Covered-up griefs.
That… is grace.
But stillness is an opportunity, not a destination.
The question after the quiet is not,
“Do I feel peaceful?”
It’s,
“Why do I have this peace?”
If my stillness gives me the courage to become a better global citizen—
love is becoming visible.
If my stillness shows me how small-minded I’ve been —
love is becoming visible.
If my stillness just makes me better at defending opinions…
That ain’t love.
The Psalmist sang,
“The heavens are telling the glory of God.”
And even when you’re agnostic, you have felt it.
A sunrise. Wildflowers. Thunder.
For a moment the world is bigger than your worries and older than the headlines.
Like you, I live on stolen land.
Communities uprooted.
These mountains witnessed all of it.
Nature is supposed to humble us.
Nature reminds us that we are creatures,
not the center of the universe.
Guests, not owners.
So we ask again. If walking in beauty makes us more grateful,
more gentle,
more committed to this earth and her peoples —
love is becoming visible.
If nature is only my privatized escape while my neighbor goes hungry —
the experience is real,
but love hasn’t ripened.
What encourages us more than our solidarity, whether it’s local or global?
In this same chapter, we read that anyone who claims to love God while hating someone in the community is lying.
Because the way we treat the people we can see tells the truth about our love for the One we cannot see.
That is why gathering matters.
Our church gathers on Zoom,
from many rooms, many neighborhoods, many continents.
Even on a screen. Especially on a screen.
And let me assure you:
turning your camera off is not disengagement.
I see you.
And when we look into one another’s faces,
hear one another’s stories, share our bread,
share our worries, share our joy —
something happens…
It gets harder to be “us” and “them” when we know the names.
It gets harder to nurse a prejudice when the person in front of you stubbornly remains human.
When we stay at the table with people who test our temper —
love becomes visible. When we forgive —
love becomes visible. When we tell the truth with tenderness — love becomes visible.
When we set out more seats, or more Zoom frames —
love becomes visible. That is where the unseen God lives in us.
That is where love is made complete.
Now.
Some of us are wary of religion.
Some of us are allergic to the word “Christian.”
This verse makes room for you. So do we. Because it starts where you are:
“No one has ever seen God.”
If that is as far as you can go today, you are in good company.
What about you? Where have you seen love that was patient, costly, real?
Where have you seen somebody show up when there was nothing in it for them?
Where have you been received just as you are —
and still you’ve become something more?
Those of us formed by Jesus’ story might say:
that is what Divinity looks like in human form.
You may call it something else. Maybe you’ll say,
“That is what love looks like.” Dear One, let’s meet there.
Some of you remember when I preached a lot about Hagar.
The enslaved woman sent out into the desert. The woman the powerful didn’t want to see.
And at a spring in that desert, she did what nobody else in Scripture had done.
She gave God a name. “You are the God who sees me.”
Consider both of these verses: “No one has ever seen God.”
“You are the God who sees me.”
We can’t see God.
Ah, but God sees us.
Have you ever felt seen by somebody? I have.
When we see one another —
the sorrow behind the face on the screen,
the story behind the stranger,
the human being behind the category —
the God nobody has seen becomes visible among us.
So here’s what we want to ask:
Is stillness leading me to love?
Are moments spent at the beach making me kinder?
Does my community help me change my thinking about those whom society despises?
That’s when the God no one has seen steps out of the shadows.
Love is made complete.
So we pray:
Teach us, Divine Source, to let our stillness,
our walks,
our friendships,
our songs
become places where love becomes human —
where what is unseen becomes visible,
so that we may all live the divine life.
God is good all the time. All the time, God is good.
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