God Is One

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The Proclaimed Word

As you heard earlier The Light of the Master Teacher John 4:23-24 said, “But a New Age is dawning — in fact, it’s here! People everywhere are being drawn to a sincere worship of God in Spirit and Truth, and this is exactly what God desires. Let me say it again: True worshippers will worship God in Spirit and Truth.”

At the Sunshine Cathedral we believe in the eight principles of Progressive Christianity,

“We believe that the Holy Spirit is God making known God’s love and interest to all people. The Holy Spirit is God, available to and working through all who are willing to place their welfare in God’s keeping.”

Seeing God as spirit may be unfamiliar to those of us who were brought up in churches that made us think God was like Santa Claus a great big guy with a white beard and a list — checking it twice to see who was naughty and nice.

Someone once said that believing in a god that was like a human being was like believing that a tornado could go through a junk yard, stir it up, and we’d have a 747 jet liner come out the other end!

How did we come up with this idea that God was like us? Could it be that we’ve misread the scripture that says we are made in the image and likeness of God and thought that meant God must be like us in physical form? Could it be the pictures we saw in our Sunday school material or the murals we’ve seen painted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel?

Or maybe it’s that believing in something we can’t see, touch, or feel just isn’t that easy?

We are not the only religion on earth that thinks God is spirit. Take for example our friends from the Buddhist movement known as Shinnyo-En. The members of Shinnyo-En are people who aspire to attain the Buddha’s spirit of enlightenment.

The doctrine followed by them is based on the last teachings of Buddha given towards the very end of his great religious career. There teachings are contained in the Nirvana Sutra, which clarify the true meaning of Nirvana and the way in which one can attain the spirit of Nirvana.

What ever language you understand or religious belief you aspire to God is Spirit and God is attainable to each and every one of us.

The Native American’s believe that God is spirit Red Jack is quoted in Joyce Hifler’s book of Daily Meditations, A Cherokee Feast of Days, as saying “Our eyes are opened so that we see clearly. Our ears are unstopped…for all these favors we thank the Great Spirit and Him only.”

And Pontiac in 1792 was quoted as saying, “But you ought to know that He, the Great Spirit and Master of Life has provided…for us in these spacious lakes…and woody mountains.” And Chief Joseph in 1873 said, “We were contented to let things remain as the Great Spirit made them.”

What Great Spirit is in your life today? Have you made contact with the Great Spirit that lives within you recently?

Or is your god a tiny one that lives somewhere outside of you like Santa Claus?

H. Emilie Cady in her book Lessons in Truth writes, “Were it not at times so utterly ridiculous, it would always be pitiful to see the human mind of man trying to limit God to personal comprehension. However, much any one of us may know of God, there will always be unexplored fields in the realms of expression, and it is an evidence of our narrow vision to say: ‘This is all there is of God.”

“Suppose that a dozen persons are standing on the dark side of a wall in which are various sized openings. Viewing the scene outside through the opening assigned to him, one sees all there is within a certain radius. He says, “I see the whole world; in it are trees and fields.’ Another, through a larger opening has a more extended view; he says; ‘I see trees and fields and houses; I see the whole world.’ The next one, looking through a still larger opening exclaims: “Oh! You are all wrong! I alone see the whole world; I see trees and fields and houses and rivers and animals.”

“The fact is, each one looking at the same world sees according to the size of the aperture through which he is looking, and he limits the world to just his own circumscribed view of it. You would say at once that such limitation was only a mark of each man’s ignorance and narrowness. Everyone would pity the man who thus displayed—aye, fairly vaunted—his ignorance.”

She goes on to write, “I want to help you to see that there is no real wall of difference between all the various sects of the new theology, except such as appear to you because of your circumscribed view. I want you to see, if you do not already, that every time you try to limit God’s manifestation of Himself in any person or through any person, in order to make that manifestation conform to what you see as Truth, you are only crying loudly: ‘Ho! Everyone, come and view my narrowness and my ignorance!”

Remember what our scripture said “worship God in Spirit and Truth.” The Truth is as Paul said, “God in you, the hope of glory!”

The mind of God is available to you since God is the spirit that gave you life and breath and consciousness. Jesus said, “the Father and are One.” He did not say, “the Father and I are two” or there is the Father over there and here am I over here.” He said, “the Kingdom of heaven is within you.”

Are you serving two masters or is your eye single seeing only one power in life, God the good: not God and Devil, or good and evil. A woman in Emilie Cady’s book said, “Lookin’ at God with one eye and this evil with the other is bein’ double-eyed, and God told me to keep my eye single.”

The very best description of God as Spirit and Truth is encompassed in this great poem by James Dillet Freeman, the poet laureate of Unity Church entitled I Am There.

Today is God is One Sunday; go forth and be God to everyone you meet!

And this is the Truth as I know it…