Scripture
I urge you therefore, sisters and brothers, because of the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your thoughtful worship. So do not be conformed to this world, rather be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may determine what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and mature.
Sermon
Today, as we begin in earnest this sermon series on “a deeper life,” we are talking about loving God with our minds. That idea gave me a flashback, to my second year at Union Theological Seminary.
That year I took a course that consisted entirely of reading John Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion,” a tome so long it is in two volumes. Calvin wrote it for secular and religious leaders as well as for regular people of faith, so that everybody could understand the Christian faith and the Biblical principles that undergirded it. Honestly, I read the “Institutes” with trepidation. I knew I should take this class, and I should read this book…it’s a classic, and I was sure there would be important learning and growth from the experience. But I was wary, because nearly 1,300 pages of theology is a lot. The sheer size of it worried me. As one of the oldest people in the class at age 40, I had some doubts as to whether my aging brain was up to it.
As it turns out, I was fine. I enjoyed reading it, a pleasant surprise. I didn’t agree with everything Calvin wrote. Still, the book is filled passages that capture the essence of our faith in beautiful language. I was persuaded. And, I marked these passages by placing a heart next to them, with a pink highlighter. I am truly glad I read it.
One of those pink heart passages comes early in the Institutes, chapter 5, of Book I, which is part of a section on Natural Revelation. Through Calvin I learned that God is revealed to us both through the world we live in AND through scripture. Here’s the passage.
Since the perfection of blessedness consists in the knowledge of God, he has been pleased, in order that none might be excluded… not only to deposit in our minds that seed of religion of which we have already spoken, but so to manifest his perfections in the whole structure of the universe, and daily place himself in our view, that we cannot open our eyes without being compelled to behold him.[i]
Long story short, God is always putting Godself right in our faces. A howling rainstorm. Seeds we plant, which then sprout and grow. A sunset. The mighty pounding of ocean waves. The gentle trickle of a flowing river. In her gorgeous novel, The Color Purple, Alice Walker has her character Shug describe it this way:
“I think it [ticks] God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”[ii] Shug trusts that God created the universe and made it gloriously beautiful, including the color purple in a field, for us.
We can love God with our minds by making that connection. When we see something in nature that is beautiful, whether it is a flower or a stone or a cliff or running water… we can remind ourselves: God did this. God, in this way, is visible to us in our lives, every day.
Many times, our relationship with God can feel complicated. We are taught certain things, for example, this statement from the Confession of 1967, “Human thought ascribes to God superlatives of power, wisdom, and goodness.” And we say, Yes! We believe God is all powerful, all wise, and all good. But then, we wonder. Why does a God who has all power allow violence or tragedy? Why does a God who is loving allow children to be born with painful disfigurement or disability or even cancer? Why does a God who is good allow the bad?
Steve Thomason, the creator of this sermon series writes,
Many quality relationships begin with the mind. When we meet an interesting person we become a student of that person. We ask questions like: “Where are you from?” “What are your hobbies?” “What makes you tick, what ticks you off?” Learning about someone requires conversation involving listening and speaking.[iii]
We can love God with our minds through conversation. I grew up with a more or less “one-way” understanding of communicating with God. I learned prayers, and I prayed them, and assumed that God was listening. I went to church, and there were more prayers, some the congregation said, and some that the priest said. I wasn’t expecting a response to any of this.
But eventually I learned that every relationship requires speaking and listening. How do we listen for God?
If we pray regularly, we usually have a routine around that. We may already be listening for God. We may pray at night in bed, or in the morning with our coffee. We may pray in the middle of the afternoon, with a candle lit. We can pray anywhere that we can be comfortable for a time.
If we’re just starting out, the acronym “ACTS” can be helpful to remind us of the different ways we can pray.
A is for Adoration (I love you, God),
C for Contrition (I’m sorry, God).
S for Supplication (I need, we need, this certain thing from God).
T for Thanksgiving (Thank you, God).
But what about listening?
There are a few ways we can do that. After we pour out hearts out to God, we may remain in a time of quiet afterward, when we are simply sitting in the presence of God. During that time, we may hear something specific. Encouragement. Direction. We may think of something that wasn’t on our mind, but that God may have led us to think about. Any of these may well be God’s whisper to us.
We may also choose to have a time of prayer which, except for what some of my friends call “dialing” and “hanging up,” it is a time for listening only. This is akin to what many call meditation, which means we may have to learn how to quiet our minds. We do that by noticing the intrusive thought (“Did I take that chicken out to thaw?”), and then simply letting it go, letting it float on by.
The key is, we need to hold some space so that we might be able to hear or feel the presence of God and God’s guidance in our time of prayer. We love God with our mind by ensuring that both speaking and listening are a part of our conversation.
Of course, another wonderful way of loving God with our mind is reading scripture. I started reading the Bible when I was a young teenager, at the recommendation of my Youth Group leader. Genesis was great and interesting, likewise Exodus. Then there was Leviticus, and I didn’t know what hit me. I was no longer reading stories or history, but, almost exclusively, law. I had a difficult time understanding it, and it simply wasn’t as engaging as what came before.
My recommendation: start gently. We regularly publish the passages for the coming week in our bulletin, and the passages for the next month in the Tower, our newsletter. Starting with those passages might be a good way to begin.
Another approach might be to begin with the Psalms, which were written as sung prayers for worship. In the preface to his commentary on the Psalms, John Calvin wrote:
The varied and resplendent riches which are contained in this treasury it is no easy matter to express in words… I well know that whatever I shall be able to say will be far from approaching the excellence of the subject… I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, “An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul;” for there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.[iv]
Reading the psalms is like reading the story of our own lives. Joy. Sorrow. Tough times. Anger. Gratitude. I’ve chosen some psalms you might want to start with. These are all available in a yellow bookmark, which you can find at the back of the church.
Another idea could be to pick a book of the Bible—Matthew, for example, since we are reading a lot of Matthew this year. Genesis and Exodus remain fantastic reads. The Books of Ruth or Job. Or a shorter letter of Paul—Galatians, Philippians, Ephesians.
If this is your plan, then I strongly encourage getting your hands on a commentary. Not everything in scripture is entirely clear. The Bible consists of translations of ancient texts in ancient languages, some of whose subtleties we don’t know these millennia later. Every so often you will come upon a footnote that reads, “Meaning of the Hebrew unclear.” This is why you may well need a commentary from a scripture scholar to help you along. We have several in our library, and there are certainly some in local public libraries. I have lots of them at home and in my office, and I’d be happy to lend them out. I can help you find what you need. And how about this? You can read the Bible, and then meditate on it, pray about it.
Prayer, scripture, and nature all offer us opportunities to deepen our relationship with God, to get to know God better, and to love God with the marvelous minds God gave us. They offer us opportunities to listen, as well as to pour out our hearts. And they offer us opportunities to wonder at the meaning of it all. Was there some reason I saw a hummingbird on my front porch this week? Was God speaking to my heart in a new language?
In search of a deeper connection with God, and thus a deeper life, I offer you a challenge for this week, which is also on the yellow bookmarks.
Commit to doing the following three days this week:
Read a passage from scripture.
Write about it or learn about it.
Have a conversation with God about it.
Blessings to us all in this season of seeking a deeper life. Blessings to us all as we learn to love God with our minds.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1845), (I, 5, i), 58. Tr. Henry Beveridge.
[ii] Alice Walker, The Color Purple (New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 58.
[iii] Steve Thomason, A Deeper Life: A 6-Week Preaching Series for Epiphany 2024 (St. Paul, MN: Luther Seminary, Working Preacher Website, 2023).
[iv] John Calvin, Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. I (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1557, 1847).