Based on Hosea 1:2-7, Colossians 2:8-17, Luke 11:5-10
We are going to spend our reflection time today exploring the idea of becoming closer to each other and closer to God. Afterall, this is how we fulfill the commandments of Jesus. To begin with, I want you to consider the people with whom you share a close relationship. Think back to the time when that person was new to you – a stranger who had yet to become a friend. Was your attraction to that person immediate, or did it take some number of encounters to draw you closer? I suspect that, if you’re like me, you have close relationships that fall into both poles and everywhere in between.
How about your relationship with God? Would you say that you have a close relationship, a relationship where you are working on coming closer, or are you at the point where you and God are just getting to know one another? The truth is, like any human relationship, there are going to be times that we feel closer to God, and times where God seems to be absent without leave. What I have discovered about those times where God seems absent is that it is not God who has drawn away from our relationship.
Still, probably the number one question that I get as a pastor is “how do I get a closer relationship with God?” My answer to everyone who asks is, “the same way that you developed the relationship to your closest friend”. In response to my answer, I usually get some variant of the quizzical look that I get from my labrador when I try to say something helpful to her. If you are in a hurry or are like my young adult children, you might ask Siri, Alexa or ChatGPT for guidance on this issue. If you are more “old school” you might type “closer relationship with God” into a search engine where you will receive approximately 7.5 million “helpful” responses in a fraction of a second. Here is a small selection of those search engine answers: “How to get closer to God: 18 life-changing tips” or “50 powerful ways to get closer to God” or “How to get closer to God in 10 daily steps” or perhaps “12 steps to a deeper faith”. These answers are predictably packaged as we are a society that likes to think that there are quick fixes to every problem or issue!
Thankfully, we have a source for timeless wisdom and truly helpful instruction on how to come closer to God and to each other in the Bible. Our scripture readings for this week offer a variety of approaches that our spiritual ancestors found useful in relationship building. At first glance, the prophet Hosea doesn’t seem to be a place where we would go for useful advice on building a close relationship. Hosea is prophesying to the northern kingdom of Israel following the death of king Jeroboam and before the Assyrian conquest. God is fed up with Israel and her apostasy and uses Hosea as a mouthpiece and living model for how God feels betrayed by God’s chosen people. The final verse of our reading today shows how God will continue to come closer to the southern kingdom of Judah after the destruction of Israel promising, “…I will show love to Judah; and I will save them – not by bow, sword or battle, or by horse or horsemen, but I, the LORD their God, will save them….”
Paul’s letter to the believers in Colossae reminds them that they are to live their lives in Jesus. Coming closer to Jesus will protect them from becoming captives “through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ….” Paul’s reminder is that we come closer to God when we are rooted in the teachings of and faith in the Christ and continue to grow in our faith. We are allowed to do this due to the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross which forgave our sins and pardoned our crimes against God.
Jesus has just taught his disciples to pray using Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. Right on the heels of that teaching he expands upon how that prayer allows us all to come closer to God. Jesus teaches that just like we wouldn’t hesitate to ask a close friend to borrow some bread, or milk, or butter or something to show hospitality to our guests, we shouldn’t hesitate to ask God for what we need. Jesus teaches, “…So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened….” Jesus wants us all to understand that in order to come closer to God we should communicate intimately and trustingly, believing that God will answer us.
The truth about developing a close relationship with other humans and with God is that relationships take time and effort. Our relationship to God is helped or hindered by the same behaviors that help or hinder our human relationships. Many people have that rush of excitement when they first come to believe that there is a God and that God loves them. They can’t stop talking about their new relationship and how much they are in love. Yet, over time and with the demands of our busy lives, the relationship with God takes a back seat – we lose that intense feeling and deep bond we once enjoyed. Maybe we experience a crisis, and we feel that God didn’t hold up God’s end of the relationship. More often, we simply drift away and find other things to worship.
Human relationship gurus speak of some of the things that get in the way of coming closer to each other. Some of them are defense mechanisms that seek to protect us from being hurt. We don’t want God to leave us like others have done in the past, so we don’t try to get close in the first place – we keep God at arm’s length and call on God only when we are in crisis mode. Another way we keep ourselves from coming closer to God is our over-scheduled lives. Afterall, we can fill our days with busyness – the daily grind of work and family or even living into our discipleship by doing good things for others but leaving no time for our relationship with God. It is telling how quickly we can make time for certain activities while remaining “too busy” for worship, bible study, church leadership or committee work, prayer, all of which are ways to come closer to God.
We also keep ourselves from growing closer to God through our overly independent attitudes. The self-reliant “pick myself up by my bootstraps” or “stand on my own two feet” cowboy mentality that is so popular right now. This has been a fault in the U.S. psyche for a while, where asking for help appears to be a weakness or a character flaw. In this mindset independence itself isn’t problematic, it’s the rigid adherence to self-reliance at all costs that pushes people and God away. The answer for this overly independent attitude is to ask, seek and knock – to become just a little vulnerable and to let God and others in.
The way to come closer to God is to understand that all of our relationships grow at the speed of trust. We don’t build trust in God or other people unless we open ourselves up and seek the relationship. Trust happens slowly and incrementally, not in 10 daily steps or 30 bible passages. Trust develops when we realize that we’re living our lives behind protective barriers, which keep others at a safe distance – but imprison us. These unconscious untrusting avoidance strategies can feel like self-protection, but they create the disconnected loneliness that is rampant in our lives and country right now.
Jesus said that he came to set all prisoners free – he’s talking to us. Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. He tells us to be truly free to develop trusting relationships with God and with other humans, we need to learn to trust God and each other. We need to learn how to ask for what we need, to seek after the healing relationships that are available to all of us, and to keep knocking on relationship doors until they are opened to us. We come closer to God and to each other by setting aside the worries and busyness of today and creating quality time with God and each other. We come closer to God when we choose to work on that relationship as much as we work on any human relationship. May we all seek, ask and knock in order to come closer to God and each other every day, amen!