The Only God I Know

Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 21, 2010
Luke 20:9-20

The only God I know is surrounded by the smell and noise and droppings of animals in a dank cave. Held in the arms of a loving mother and father in a humble setting just outside a little town known as Bethlehem. The only God I know is surrounded by wealthy men who bow before Him. Even though He’s a baby and makes only cooing and gurgling sounds, not knowing who is giving Him gifts and honor.

The only God I know is the one hanging out with the religious leaders in the temple asking them questions. The only God I know is the one who went to school and went down to the creek with His friends and ate dinner with His family.

The only God I know is the one who should have been Baptizing sinners left and right but instead commanded that He Himself should be Baptized. The only God I know is the God who is one and yet revealed in three Persons. Standing in the Jordan with water flowing down His face and God the Holy Spirit alighting on Him as a dove. Eyes lifted to heaven where His Heavenly Father speaks the words that He is the One.

The only God. He’s the only God I know. I know because God the Father has told me so. Because the Holy Spirit descended upon Him and no one else. The one who healed many and also took the time to heal just one. The only God I know is the one who didn’t gather an army but some fishermen and a few other guys, including one who didn’t turn out the way you’d expect him to when God is calling the shots.

But this is the only God I know. The one who is willing even to call Judas. The one who took time out, who needed time, to pray to His Heavenly Father. This is the God I know. The one who was, who needed to be, ministered to by angels. God. Needing angels. Needing help, needing strength.

This is the God I know. He’s the only God I know because He’s the only God who hasn’t remained ‘up there’, or wherever else a god might be, but has come down to me.

No, I haven’t seen Him. I didn’t see Him as the apostles and many others did while He walked the earth. But He’s the God I know. He’s the only one I know. And I know just as they did. I know Him as the God who is a man and became a man in order to come to us, human beings who need a God, who need a Savior.

The only God I know is the God who is that God, is that Savior. Because though He didn’t come to me the other day where I was working, He has come to me in my life and still does. The only God I know is the God who came to me in my Baptism. He knows all about Baptism, He Himself was Baptized. He knows all about what we need because He needed it too.

The only God I know is the God who needed what we do because He chose not just to come to us but to take our place. That’s how I know He’s the only God. What other God can you point to and say, I know He’s God because He actually saved me? He actually did what was needed in order to save me?

There is no other God. Ask anyone who has any other god what their god does to save them. They will show you in their response that their god cannot be truly God because he doesn’t do everything needed to save sinners.

The only God I know does. The only God I know is the one hanging on the cross. Bloodied and beaten. Stricken and smitten. Flesh ripped open, head dug into by piercing thorns. The only God I know was bleeding from torture, from punishment designed for criminals. But the only God I know suffered not as a gesture of enduring harsh pain and agony. The only God I know was stricken by God Himself. Forsaken by the Father. His righteous wrath poured out on Him.

The only God I know is the one who has done it all. Other gods will show you the way. They will teach and affirm and exhort and help and encourage and many many good worthwhile things. But none of those things are what the only God there is would really do. The true God would never just show the way. The only God there is must be the way.

The only God I know is the Way. He is the Truth and the Life. The only God I know points the way and then shows that He is indeed, Himself, the Way. The only God is compassion and help and guidance and all those wonderful things we need. But the only God I know doesn’t just point or help. He does. He is. He is the only God. He Himself saves us.

The only God I know doesn’t play games. He doesn’t tell us He loves us just so we’ll feel better. He slams us into the wall of the Ten Commandments. Think you need help? No, you need salvation. Think you need to improve? You need perfection.

These are things you can’t do. He can. He’s the only God. He’s the only one who does them. He’s the only God I know and the only God I need.

He’s not the only God I know because I was raised in a Christian home and have been in His House for worship most every Sunday of my life. He’s the only God I know because He’s the only one who has called me into eternal life, actually bringing me into it. Not just inviting me or showing me the way. Saving me. Doing what is needed to save me.

Some of you here are like me, you’ve always known Him because you were raised knowing Him. Some of you came to know Him later on in life. But no matter who you are or how long you’ve known Him, you can know Him as the only God you know. He’s the only God and when He is your God He’s the only God you know.

Because He’s the only God He’s a stumbling block. When I’m at my wit’s end, how does the God lying in a manger in a stable help me out? When I’m caught in the cross fire of my warring relatives, how does a little boy shooting the theological breeze help me restore the peace with my loved ones?

How, really, does an All-Powerful, eternal, omniscient God help me when He’s hanging helplessly on a cross? How is it comforting and strengthening that the only God is weak and dying and finally ends up dying on the cross?

When you want tangible evidence that He’s with you, that He’s your God, that He is powerful and loving to save you, to help you, to comfort and strengthen you, what kind of God is it who says that He’s the one who was a baby, who called a bunch of guys that even He had a hard time getting through to, who meekly stood before His oppressors, who even now stands in glory with scars on His hands, His feet, and His side?

Read the Gospel reading again. His people will keep questioning Him. They’ll keep throwing everything they have at Him. They’ll abuse Him, use Him, and throw Him under the bus. But He’s the only God we know. He’s the only God and is therefore true to Himself. He will never give up on us. He’ll keep coming back at us with love and compassion and mercy. He’ll keep coming to us in His only-begotten Son in the flesh—in our Baptism, in the pronouncement of His Holy Absolution, in His Holy Supper.

The only God we know is the one who is found in a piece of bread and a sip of wine. The only God we need is the one who happily is speaking when His servant pronounces to us that in His stead and by His command all our sins are forgiven in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The only God who can help us and save us is the one who has when He came to us, forgave us, joined us to Himself in our Baptism.

The only God we know is the one we won’t simply know when we are face to face with Him in His glory in heaven. The only God we know is the one we know now. Out of the humble context of a stable and long journeys on dusty roads and sticking with dense apostles and walking the path to the cross the only God we know comes into the humble circumstances of our lives, using ordinary water and words and bread and wine to give us the only thing we truly need: Himself. The only God we know. The God who is not simply the only true God but the only God we know. Amen.

SDG