“The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from God.”
Thomas Keating (1923-2018)
“Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases…The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to human beings.” Psalm 115:1-3, 16
How do we reconcile the ancient concept that God is in heaven and inhabits the sky with the idea that God is also in the dirt, water, the sky and perhaps in all living matter? We are introduced by Bass to the concept of “vertical faith” illustrated most literally in the tall church steeples that dominated much church architecture and archetype for centuries, reflecting Old and New Testament thought that the universe had 3 tiers: an underworld, this world, and the heavens, and placing the church as the intermediary between earth and heaven. Vertical theology was good at maintaining the separation between God and us, keeping God inaccessible to us. What impact do you think this has made in people’s views of God, heaven, salvation, and the need for the institutional church? What are the mechanics/theology of an “elevator church” as compared with Jesus’ own prayer “They kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” which attempts to align earthly ethics with the divine order of God’s dwelling. Matthew 4/17 says the kingdom of heaven has come near. Bass writes, if heaven is near, so is God. For years heaven has been placed beyond reach, making it impossible to experience. However, Bass reminds us heaven is not far away at all, we walk upon the ground but our bodies move through the sky all the time; the sky begins at our feet, therefore we actually occupy the heavens now in the space where earth and sky meet.
God’s heavenly presence is the air we breathe, so why is air seen as so commonplace when it is essential to our existence? Is there a theme here with dirt and water, ordinary elements that are so very essential and extraordinary? Is there also a theme related to how fragile these essential and powerful elements can be if not treated with care and stewardship? Bass equates the ground with the earth’s body, water as its lifeblood, and the atmosphere as its lungs. Do others see it as ironic all of these elements including God’s presence were given to us in the Garden of Eden, the relationship with which was also fragile and lost through humans’ willfulness according to the story of Genesis?
We are also reminded that wind of God swept over the waters during the creation story and at each stage of creation, God breathes life into the world, the “great oxygenation event!” Interesting too that many of the world’s great religious traditions refer to God as “spirit, the holy wind animating life.” Judaism and Islam understand God’s breath as an extension of God’s being in the world; Christianity refers to the spirit as the 3rd person of the trinity and in the Gospel of John Jesus breathes on his followers and imparts the gift of the Spirit. For Buddhists, to breath is to achieve mindfulness – the awareness of one’s breath within the breath of all. Hinduism emphasizes the divine nature of breath, placing it at the center of creation, and Native Americans believed wind spirits from the 4 directions of the world united and connected all things forming a universal spirit community of humanity through which all things exist. In the book of Acts, a rush of wind gives birth to the church, a spiritual body intended to carry on Jesus’ work in the world, and the metaphor of “wind” or the “four winds” is used at various times in the Bible.
Has anyone ever felt as if they couldn’t breath before, or had a near drowining experience (or felt like they were!). We cannot live without air (or dirt or water). Bass writes that our experience of God, our very life cannot be separated from our need for air. How can we begin to understand and live out the reality that all life is connected?
How do you understand the meaning of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life” “World” is the translated Greek term, “kosmos” which means universe. How would the meaning change by saying “God so loved the universe that God entered the cosmos in the form of a gift, the gift of Jesus, that we might trust in his divine presence and experience abundance.” Bass suggests it’s not so much a story of getting saved from hell – unless that hell is the one we’re making through destruction of our atmosphere. Rather, it is the Christian way of saying that God dwells in the universe we also inhabit, that we might experience the life of heaven here and now.
How might this viewpoint of the kingdom of heaven here and now alter our understanding of death, the afterlife, Jesus’ resurrection/Easter message, our relationship and approach to aging and dying?
Bass suggests that to say that God is in the sky is not to imply that God lives at a certain address above the earth. Instead it is an invitation to consider God’s non-exclusive presence there that both reaches to the stars and wafts through our lives as spiritual breeze.
Grace Episcopal Church 