Is GOD in a Box?

(For your convenience here is the transcript below)

Hello Tokyo Union Church! Today I want to share a brief story of a time where my son made an honest mistake. I received a call from my wife saying, “I need you to come home… IV locked himself in his room!” I said, “Wait what? Are you serious?! Ok, I’ll get some help.” Keep in mind, we recently moved to Tokyo, living in temporary housing, and our two-year toddler was filled with a ton of energy and curiosity. I enlisted a person who knows a way around a lock or two––Pastor Steve––to help my son out of the room. Once we arrived we realized that the lock was not going to be easily picked. We tried explaining to him how to unlock the lock, we showed him a video, we tried to pick the lock, we tried to remove the door, and nothing work.

He didn’t know what he was doing. He was just twisting a nob. But his actions caused him to lock himself inside a room for 30 min with a dirty diaper and no way out––until his pregnant mom climbed up the back window! But we do this all time. Pastor and public intellectual Rob Bell says, “the moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.”

How many times do we think we have God figured out. How many times do we think we know God. Or feel like we understand what God is doing. When we do those things, we have, by our own devices, tried to put God in a box. But what we have really done is lock ourselves in a box, just like little IV. Because God cannot be contained in our constructs. God is beyond our words, our stories, our imagination. So this week I challenge us to live into the mystery of God and who God is. Let us not put God in a box––but let us allow ourselves to be surprised and allow God to show up in unexpected ways.

Amen.