Coney Hill Baptist Church
Demonstrating God’s Love Together
14th September 2008
Searching For Something Bigger...
Still haven't Found What I'm Looking For ...
On Wednesday morning I sat for about an hour watching television. To be honest it was pretty dull, basically a group of people, mostly middle-aged men, stood around with hands in pockets watching computer screens. Every 10 minutes or so, for a brief moment a bright light would appear in the centre of the otherwise black screen, before quickly disappearing again. All the people would take their hands out of their pockets and give a brief, spontaneous, round of applause.
With the sound off it would have been indecipherable, as well as dull. But when you listened to the commentary they were talking excitedly about it being a defining moment of history, the launch of a new era, a day to inspire new generations. The experiments that were taking place in the Large Hadron Collider on the French-Swiss border were not only mind-blowing in scale, expense and complexity but imagination stretching in approaching some of the biggest questions we can ask.
One of the things said was that these very clever men and their machines were simply doing what all of us have always done since the beginning of time, look up and the skies and wondered. For all the talk, he said, of technological spin-offs, it was fundamentally point-less, as pointless as composing a symphony or otherwise creating a great work of art … it was just doing, to the upmost degree, what human beings did. The thing that has identified us in every time and place, one of the things that has marked us out as unique in the world, having that sense of fascination, of questioning and discovery.
Being here, coming to church, might seem like a million miles from all of that, but I don’t think it is. Whatever the surface reason for our coming here, habit, tradition, friendship or whatever, underneath there is also a searching, a seeking going on. And not just in here, but outside too, each person might call the object of their search something different; finding ‘themselves’, enlightenment, contentment, meaning, purpose, peace … God, but they search still.
Church is a place where we can make those discoveries and be guided in our searching – pointing out the places to look, helping us describe what we see. The Bible then is like a discovery guide. Yes it’s full of instruction about what to look for and how best to seek, but it’s full also of wonder, of personal testimony of seekers gone by.
Psalm 19:1-2
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
Video - God of Wonders
Attitudes of Seeking…
Humility …
Ecclesiastes 5:1-7
The thing about seeking something bigger, greater than you, is that it means acknowledging that you’re not the biggest and most important thing there is. Now that’s pretty obvious, but also quite hard. The barrier for many about coming to church or fully engaging when you’re here is precisely that. It means letting go of a world-view where I am number 1.
The writer of Ecclesiastes is a good example of such a seeker. Aware of how the world around him is charged with glory, but reluctant to give of all himself to that, the whole book is an account of his struggle.
In that section, at the beginning of chapter 5, he hits on something profound. That this searching and seeking is not an intellectual thing, or a religious thing, but an encounter … a relationship experienced, but only fully experienced when we come to the end of ourselves. When we let go and know that God is Lord.
Video … Let my Words be Few …
Responsibility…
Ecclesiastes 3:10-17
The other thing about this attitude of seeking it realising that’s it presents us with a challenge. If we acknowledge something, bigger, grander, greater then not only to do have to deal with our own relative smallness, but we have to accept that we might be placed under some sort of obligation, we might be expected to do things, we will have to take responsibility for living under authority.
Again the writer saw it clearly; ‘He has set eternity in the hearts of men’ our awareness of God, has given you and I a whole new perspective, an eternal perspective on everything else. That can feel like a burden, being God’s representative on earth, but it also provides us with a basis for action. If we see wickedness in the place of justice then we know, that the whole of the universe cries out in objection … but we might have to be the ones to raise our voice.
Video - God of the Moon and Stars
Office Address:
Coney Hill Road
West Wickham
Kent
BR4 9BU