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This past year a scholar named D. Brent Latham came out with a book with a long clumsy name. It was entitled God is Not... Religious, Nice, "One of Us", an American, a Capitalist.

Meet the Real God: Meeting God as Holy - Micah 6:6-8,; Hebrews 12:18-25 - June 10, 2007 - Cicero United Methodist Church - Everett J. Bassett

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This past year a scholar named D. Brent Latham came out with a book with a long clumsy name. It was entitled God is Not... Religious, Nice, "One of Us", an American, a Capitalist. That's not very catchy - you can't even remember it very well, but it makes a point. We have taken the God of the Bible and made Him into what we would like Him to be. We want Him to be religious - that is, we want him to pay attention to the religious symbols and traditions that are important to us - as one woman said once, "If the good old hymns like ‘Rock of Ages' were good enough for Jesus, they're good enough for me!" As wonderful as the hymn "Rock of Ages" is, there is no known evidence that Jesus ever hummed it. We have our favorite hymns and symbols and practices, and people will defend them to the hilt - churches divide over which hymns to sing, which colors to fly, which version of the Bible they will use. But that is a human battle. There is little evidence that God much cares one way or the other. God isn't religious. God is not tied in to one church or religion or another. God is God.

Another thing the book claims is that we have made God ‘nice.' What I gather they mean is that God is someone who will politely fit in with our nice standard of congeniality - will never ruffle the waters, never challenge our middle-class values, will be a perfect gentleman in the face of all kinds of outrageous behavior. That is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible rages against injustice. He is not nice and polite when human beings are unraveling creation.

In the same way, to rattle through the rest of Latham's title, God is not ‘One of Us', not am American, not a Capitalist. Yet, in every one of those cases, God has been used to justify our actions and attitudes. We have become very good at shaping the God we want, and ignoring the true God of the Bible.

Over the last few sermons, I have been preaching about meeting the true God, as opposed to Making God into what we want Him to be. Perhaps the word I am focusing on today is the greatest safeguard against distorting God into our own image. Today I focus on God as the Holy One. Throughout the Bible, this is the description of God that recurs, again and again. Something that is ‘holy' is something or Someone that is powerful, separate, unique, uncommonly special.

For example, there is nothing magical in this room. Everything here is made out of the same building materials you might find in your home, or any other place you might visit. But this place has been separated out from other space for special purposes - we have set this place aside for worship of God, and that makes it holy to us. Likewise, this particular time of the week is no different, in its make-up, than any other time. It is made up of seconds and minutes, just like every other time. But we have this time apart for worship, for Sabbath. And that makes this time holy to us.

In the same way, we talk of holy matrimony, holy Communion, the holy sacrament of baptism. These holy things are made up of common symbols - words, bread and juice, water. In themselves they are common. But because they are set aside for special purposes having to do with God, they become holy to us.

In the Bible, when God is called ‘holy', that is the way of saying that He is separate from everything else, and He is not going to simply be what we want Him to be. He is not something we bend and form to fit our own needs. He is not our religious, not a benign, nice, wimpy presence, He is not one of us, American, capitalist - He is God who reveals Himself as holy. And I think it's pretty clear that the people of the Bible had a much higher sense of what that means than we do. God was so holy, they imagined, that to see His face would be certain death. God was so holy that to use His name casually was unthinkable. The scripture lesson for today from the letter to the Hebrews begins with these words about the things of God: "you have not come today to something that can be touched." Then he talks about God's order in the book of Exodus that if even an animal touches God's holy mountain, it shall be stoned to death. And of Moses trembling for fear before the Lord's holiness. That's the sense of awe about God in the Bible.

We don't have that same sense of awe about God and the things of God anymore. And while I don't necessarily believe we want to go back to some of those superstitions of the Bible, I believe we lose something important when we lose a proper sense of the holy. And that presents us with two dangers. The first is that nothing will be held sacred. And I think that's close to what we are seeing today. In fact, in our society, there is not much that is held holy anymore about God or about anything else. We hear the phrase, ‘Oh my God,' as if the name means nothing - no one gets struck down by lightning for saying it. There is no Sabbath anymore - Sunday is just another day, just as likely to be set aside for shopping and sports as for worship of God. And the sacred symbols of our faith, if people even kno9w anymore what they are, are not held to be anything special.

The problem is that when nothing is sacred, everything is common; everything is expendable. If God is not holy, and God's world is not sacred, then what does it matter if we destroy the earth? What does it matter if we mistreat animals, or children, or minorities, or ourselves? We don't want to be superstitious like many of the people of the Bible were, but if that means that nothing, then, is held sacred, then we have lost everything worth living and dying for. That is a pretty dreadful prospect.

But that raises the second danger. When none of the traditional things are held sacred, people still long for meaning in life. People still long for things to hold special and dear. And that opens the door for powerful people to manipulate that desire for the sacred to their own ends. We emphasize the wrong things as holy, and miss what is important to God. Let me tell you what I mean: do you know what the most sacred thing is to God? This is one of those moments in a sermon where people might disagree with me, but I think I can make a strong case for what I am about to say. The most sacred thing to God is the dignity and the welfare of human beings. I believe this is evident in the Bible because the beginning of the Bible tells us that we were created in God's image, and the end of the Bible tells us that God is going to transform heaven and earth to restore us to His children - and between that beginning and that ending is the most amazing claim of all - that God sent His own Son to die for us. Here's my point - people lift up all kids of things as sacred - nations, churches, words, symbols, systems - and we say that because they are holy to us, it must be they are holy to God. But Jesus didn't come to save America; Jesus didn't come to save the United Methodist Church; Jesus didn't come to save our systems and our symbols. Jesus announced why he came in one of his very first statements - in Luke, chapter 4: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," he said, "because (God) has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. To proclaim the year of the Lord." What is sacred enough to God that He would sacrifice His own Son for it? The dignity and salvation of human beings - the poor, the oppressed, the blind. If we want to honor God, and hold holy what God holds holy, we will take care of people. We will honor each one.

Yet, truly honoring people is such an explosive issue - would demand such dramatic changes in how we live and give and govern - that religious and political leaders have consistently guilt smokescreens around that moral mandate from God. And they do that my manipulating our sense of what's holy. So we have political campaigns that focus on issues like burning the flag, or what language will be spoken, or who can marry who, or whether we'll teach religion in our classrooms. All of those are important things to talk about. All of those are important topics to talk about. They are hot-button issues. They stir our passions. So much so that powerful people can convince us that they are the things God cares about. But if they become more important than caring for the dignity and welfare of the poor, the oppressed, for al of God's people - then we have gone far a field of what is holy and primary to God. And that's what we have to ask ourselves when we get stirred up about these hot topics. Is this about us, or about God? The Bible tells us what is important to God.

Consider the prophet Micah. Micah wrote one of the powerful books of the Bible because he saw that things were goofed up. He saw that the powerful leaders were convincing people that what God cared about was how the worship of the Temple was conducted - if the rams were properly prepared for sacrifice; if the oil was of the right quality in the fire. Meanwhile, the poor and hurting were neglected. Here's what Micah wrote: "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

This is what it means to be holy. It's not about rules; it's not about symbols. It's about caring for one another. This time, this place of worship, these symbols around us - they reflect a piece of what we hold holy in this life. But not nearly as much as whether we uphold justice for all people, kindness to the poor and hurting, and humility - humility that says that we will bend our will to God - not the God we make up to preserve our way of life, but the Holy One of the bible, who calls us to a new way of life - who demonstrates again and again that he will give His very heart, His very Spirit, His very Son - for what He loves so dearly - His people. And asks us to do the same - with justice, kindness, and humility.