You’ve surely heard the story by now of the little girl who was coloring one day during Sunday School.  Her teacher asked her what she was doing.  “I’m drawing a picture of God,” she said.  Her teacher, responding with more left-brain than right said, “No one knows what God looks like,” to which the little girl replied, “They will when I get through.” 

When you get through, when I get through, when we get through with this day, this week, this year, this life, will people know what God looks like because of the picture we drew?  God’s given us all a whole fistful of crayons.  I can still smell first grade, can’t you?  Still feel the rough course of the yellow-brown drawing paper.  What are you drawing?  Is it helping people see, as John writes, the “God whom they have not seen”?

It’s not, if you will, the most visible part of this text.  But, what a tragedy to miss it.  The mystery of God is like bookends holding up the rest of the text, like the first and last chapter of a great novel, like the first and last chapters of the Bible itself.  In the beginning God is “uncreated light,” Bach wrote, moving to create creation itself (Johann Sabastian Bach, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring).  Sixty-five books and centuries upon centuries later, in the end, in the Revelation, he’s the “truth unknown” toward which we’re drawn and we are “striving still (Bach, Jesu).”  This mystery of God, from Genesis to Revelation and even in this particular text, is like the background melody of a symphony against which the beauty of the all the other notes is measured.  Do you see it, do you hear it?  The mystery of God.

In the beginning of this text, “No one has ever seen God . . ..”  No one.  Not ever.  We don’t know what he looks like so we conjure up images and draw them out, like children with fistfuls of crayons.  Or, like oiled paintbrushes in the hands of great masters.  Like Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son that hangs in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.  The son is kneeling at his father's feet, and the father embraces him with both arms.  Rembrandt painted the father's hands in an odd way: one hand is more masculine and the other more feminine.  We don’t know for sure what God’s hands look like.  But, that’s not a bad guess, wouldn’t you agree? 

In the beginning. this text is about the God “No one has ever seen . . ..”  In the end, this text is about a “God whom they have not seen.”  We won’t buy a can of soup without reading the label or buy a car without reading the warranty’s fine print.  So, putting the stock of all eternity in the God whom we “have not seen” is nothing short of phenomenal.  On the other hand, could we trust a God whose entire image would fit inside our retinas?  First, and last, this text is about the mystery of the unseen God, a God we cannot know through any of the five senses through which we test the reality of the world we live in. 

We Baptists have a hard time lingering with the mystery.  We have to work at it.  By and large we’re a pragmatic people.  Though our Temple is a beautiful exception and though there are others, by and large, the mystery of God has been eliminated as an element in church architecture because of the passion for pragmatism.  We want answers to questions, solutions to problems, something that works in tangible, identifiable, measurable ways.  We want outlines, structures, even boxes that everything, even the mystery of God, can fit into.  Have you ever seen the unseen mystery here, the melody against which the love score in the rest of this text is written, its beauty measured?  Can we linger just a while and listen?

“Jesu, joy of man’s desiring, Holy wisdom, love most bright.  Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring, soar to uncreated light.  Word of God, our flesh that fashioned, with the fire of life impassioned.  Striving still to truth unknown.  Soaring, dying ‘round Thy throne (Bach, Jesu).”  Bach wrote those words in the 18^th century.  Against the Renaissance emphasis on science and rationality that was threatening to undermine religious faith, Bach and his Baroque brothers were writing music meant to help people celebrate the mystery of this God we have not seen.  Almost 300 years later, it still works to help us do just that. 

We don’t know what the Mystery looks like, John writes.  But, we know what it looks like when it finally reveals itself.  It looks like, well, it looks like something I saw on an elevator at Methodist hospital just a few weeks ago.  You know how elevators are.  The quietest places in town.  No one talks.  Some unwritten social taboo about speaking to the person two feet away.  The other day, I couldn’t resist and broke the taboo against breaking the silence.  There was this old couple on the elevator with me.  Must have been in their 80’s, I suppose.  I tried not to stare but something kept my eyes glued to them until I finally said, “You two have been married a long time, haven’t you?”  The man wouldn’t let his eyes meet mine.  But, she let hers.  With the smile of a sixteen year old going to her first prom she looked at me and with a gentle voice that sounded like deep gratitude she said, “Yes, a long time.”  It was obvious.  After all those years, I’m guessing well over sixty, they were still in love.  It showed.  Love’s mystery eventually reveals itself.

What is it that keeps people riding love’s elevator through life’s ups and downs, in sickness and health, for richer and poorer, until death does the parting?  What is it that keeps people from getting off when the doors suddenly open onto the basement of despair or when someone pushes the wrong buttons of jealousy or anger or unforgiveness for a while?  Like Wayne and Janice Dean.  Married the better part of sixty-six years until last Monday morning.  Wayne was doing the one thing he loved more than anything else, just spending time talking to Janice when, suddenly, death, did the parting.  It’s kind of a mystery, isn’t it?  Married at nineteen in 1937.  Separated by his service in the South Pacific for three years.  When he came home, across all those miles and all that time, he found his bride and finished what he started.  We’re not always sure how to tell others what love is, like when a sixteen year old asks her mom how she’ll know she’s in love.  But, we know what it looks like, don’t we, when love’s mystery reveals itself?  It looks like those two people on the elevator.  It looks like Wayne and Janice Dean.  And, so does God. 

No one’s ever seen him.  But, we know what he looks like after all, don’t we?  This God we have not seen, he looks like – love.

We know we have God within us, “because he has given us of his Spirit.”  And, the greatest evidence of his Spirit’s presence in us is not, as we’re reminded in 1 Corinthians 13, that we can speak in spiritual languages no one else can understand or sing like the angels or decipher all the mysteries of the ages or snap our fingers and move mountains with our faith or even express ourselves in seemingly profound acts of religious devotion.  The greatest evidence of the Holy Spirit’s in us is not that we are moved to volcanic eruptions of emotion every time we worship.  The greatest evidence of the Spirit’s presence in us is that we – love one another.  Indeed, the corollary to this truth is that, “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brother or sister whom they have seen are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” 

The greatest evidence that we have encountered this God we have not seen will be seen in the way we love those we can see.  Elevator love.  Six-decade-old love that just won’t quit.  And, in Wayne Dean’s hospital room, though there was sadness as death’s shadows fell, there was no fear.  No fear of God.  No fear of death.  

“Perfect love casts out fear,” we’re told.  “Confidence on the day of judgment,” we’re told.  When we know the love of God, we’re not afraid of him anymore.  When we know the love of God, we’re more concerned about how we treat our neighbors and our wives and our husbands and our children and our in-laws now than we are about what God is going to do to us on judgment day.  When we know the love of God, we have confidence that, whatever the

judgment of God is or will be, it will not, cannot, happen outside the loving arms of our heavenly father racing to embrace us, to love us, for all eternity.  We’re simply not afraid anymore.  That has to be, must be, something of what Jesus meant when he said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32).” 

As I wrote this past week in my pastor’s column, marriages where the primary question is about who is in control are not healthy, free marriages.  We are free indeed when we change the question from “Who has the power?” to “How can I help you?” and on the way to building marriages, families and even churches where the presence of God is most evident in acts of caring, giving, sharing, even dying, if that’s what love demands (“Changing the Question,” May 12, 2003).  The mystery of God is not a cosmic puzzle to be solved.  It’s an I-don’t-have-to-be-afraid-of-anything-anymore-so-I-can-give-myself-away reality to be celebrated.  Celebrated in acts of love, big and small, in acts of respect, forgiveness, tenderness, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control in our marriages, our families and our church.

Last Sunday, one of our students was listening very closely when the story was told about the enormous burden being placed on Mission: Oak Cliff as more and more social service agencies close all around us and as discounted food for purchase and distribution to the hungry becomes even more scarce.  Last Sunday also happened to be her birthday.  She left the services that day, went home, got out all of her babysitting money and put it together with her birthday money.  Then, she and her mom went shopping for new clothes, clothes she would have purchased for herself, on her birthday, with her hard-earned money and gifts.  Then, she wrapped those clothes up in a sack and earlier this week delivered them to the church, to be given to Mission: Oak Cliff. 

When they were put in my hands I stood there lost for words.  It was truly an awesome moment!  I wish you could have been there and seen it for yourself.  And, just because you weren’t, I brought the clothes here this morning to give to Dr. Jim Boyd personally, so he can see that they get to whoever needs them most.  I asked her permission to tell this story.  She gave it with one exception.  She didn’t want her name revealed.  She said she only wants God to get the credit because it was his idea in the first place.  She’s got it right, right?  “We love because he first loved us.” 

Love was God’s idea, in the beginning.  Love is not God’s afterthought in response to our sin.  Like uncreated light, God is uncreated love.  Love is the bookend of all creation on one end and the bookend of judgment on the other.  Love was God’s idea in the beginning and love will be God’s idea in the end, and even his presence, through us, in acts of self-giving love in all the moments in between creation and judgment.  It was his idea, this young lady said, as she gave the clothes.  She got it very, very right.

Sometimes, when I wonder what God looks like I stare into the night sky hoping for a clue, or at a mountain taller than the sky, or into the eyes of a baby or even my dog, hoping for a clue.  I wonder what this God we have not seen looks like, don’t you?

The other day, when I was holding that sack of God’s new love in my hands, lost for words, just for a moment I’m certain that I saw him, this God we have not seen, pass by right in front of my eyes and, even for the briefest moment, touch my hand.  Did love’s mystery reveal itself, right before my very eyes that can’t see God?  Did I see God?

What do you think?