There are no atheist cultures. I don’t say that as a slam against atheists. I say it because our species, and even our evolutionary cousins like the Neanderthals, appear to have possessed some sense of the divine, the spiritual, the beyond.

In pagan cultures, there was a god for everything: war, peace, wisdom, learning, storms; land, air, and sea. What a god ruled over can tell us a great deal about the philosophy and fears of a people.

Take Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. His domain was the sea and all it contained: tides, waves, sea creatures, and sailors. Yet he was also the god of navigation, which makes sense. Sailors needed to reach their destination long before GPS or modern maps. Greek sailors prayed to Poseidon before voyages because he could grant calm waters or turn your ship into driftwood.

Poseidon was also called “The Earth-Shaker.” He ruled earthquakes. The Greeks believed earthquakes happened when he struck the ground with his trident. He wasn’t merely lord of the sea. He had tectonic mood swings.

Poseidon was also associated with horses and, in some myths, credited with creating them. Perhaps the Greeks thought of horses as poetry in motion: wild, untamed energy. Galloping surf. Thundering tides. Raw, unbridled power.

And this is where mythology becomes revelation. Poseidon is not merely a man who lives in the sea. Poseidon is the sea, or at least the Greek understanding of it. Strong. Beautiful. Life-giving. Dangerous. Quick to anger. Unpredictable.

The personality of the god reveals the personality the people believed existed within the world itself. One minute the sea carried trade, food, and adventure. The next minute it swallowed fleets whole. When the Greeks spoke of Poseidon, they were not just describing a deity. They were describing reality as they experienced it.

Which is why Moses is so utterly bewildered when he encounters the God of his ancestors in a burning bush. Because Moses grew up in a world where gods had job descriptions and titles.

The Nile had gods. The sun had gods. Fertility had gods. Storms had gods. Empires had gods. Every deity had a lane, a jurisdiction. And Moses knew that world intimately.

Well, let’s back up.

Moses was born during a wave of fear and paranoia in Ancient Egypt, when the Egyptians believed the Israelites were becoming too numerous, too powerful, too threatening. Hebrew baby boys were being slaughtered under Pharaoh’s orders, victims of an empire convinced immigrants were replacing them, taking Egyptians jobs, and destabilizing society. So Moses’ mother hid him in a basket among the reeds of the Nile. He was discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised in the royal household. Moses was suspended between two identities: Hebrew by birth, Egyptian by culture. His own mother became his nursemaid.

Moses grows up with palace education, Egyptian language, Egyptian religion, Egyptian assumptions about how the gods work. Then one day he sees an Egyptian beating an Israelite slave. And something snaps. Moses kills the Egyptian, buries the body, and flees into the wilderness, where he hides; tending sheep in the desert. And that is where he sees the burning bush. He meets the God of his people. Not in a temple. Not in a palace. Not in a city. In the wilderness.

A bush burns yet it is not consumed. He is instructed to take off his shoes, for this is holy ground. And there the God of his ancestors speaks.  Moses asks the obvious question. The practical question. The question anyone in the ancient world would ask, “What is your name?”

This is more than a “to whom am I speaking?” This means: What are you the god of? What territory do you rule? What power do you control? What box do I put you in? What is your lane?

And the answer he receives detonates every category he has. YHWH. “I Am That I Am.” “I Will Be What I Will Be.” “I Am Becoming.” “I Am Being Itself.”

Not the god of the sea. Not the god of storms. Not the god of war or anything else. This answer gives no specialization. No cosmic department assignment. Being itself. Presence. The One who cannot be reduced, categorized, or managed. The God who doesn’t merely control reality. The God who is reality’s deepest ground.

This is frustrating for Moses and the Israelite people. They see how everyone else has gods for everything. How can there just be one god? They struggle, they stray, they are called back again and again. This is what prompted the Reform prayer: “As you taught Torah to those whose names I bear, teach me Torah, too. Its mystery beckons, yet I struggle with it’s truth. You meant Torah for me: did you mean the struggle for me, too? Don’t let me struggle alone; help me to understand, to be wise, to listen, to know… lead me into the mystery.”[1]

Moses leads the people out of Egypt. And then teaches them the law. He alone goes up on Mount Sinah but the hope was all the people would head up. Yet Moses alone treks up and down. Only to find the people goofing off. Or complaining. Or worshipping a golden calf. Of course they would, everyone else is. That’s how religion was practiced by everyone. There are no atheist cultures. There’re gods everywhere and for everything.

Moses must have been baffled trying to explain God to the people. Truthfully, Moses seems baffled by God again and again. At one point, he asks to see God’s face. And God says, “No one can see my face and live. But here is what I will do. Hide yourself in the cleft of the rock. I will cover you as I pass by, and afterward you may see my back.”

Not the best translation. My favorite read, “You will see where I was.” There is the mystery of God.

We cannot look upon a statue, an idol, or even the ocean itself and fully see the face of God. We cannot contain the totality of the divine in an image, doctrine, or definition. But we can look upon the world and be drawn deeper into wonder.

The more I learn about science, the more in awe of existence I become. The more art I encounter, the more in awe I become. The more I study, travel, listen, and meet people, the more I find myself standing in holy astonishment. I believe all of this is part of seeing where God was.

God was in the creation of each of us. God was in all that brought us here.
In history. In relationships. In sacrifice. In beauty. In survival. In the mysterious web of existence too vast to fully explain. And I use the word mystery carefully.

Not as a cop-out. Not as “we just don’t know.” I mean mystery in the truest sense:
reality so deep that no single explanation is sufficient.

Are we bodies in motion, as the physicist might say? Yes. And more than that.

Are we chemical reactions, as the chemist might say? Yes. And more than that.

Are we DNA and inherited traits, as the biologist might say? Yes. And more than that.

Theology was once called the queen of the sciences, not because it rejected other fields of study, but because it resisted reductionism. It reminded humanity that truth is often larger than any one lens. We are always tempted to shrink things. To reduce God to a bearded man in the sky. A divine rule-enforcer. An angry father figure. A statue. A storm god who smites sinners with lightning bolts. A cosmic accountant keeping score. Which is why I my favorite name for God is “Gracious Mystery.”

What people say about God often reveals more about themselves than about God.

If someone is consumed entirely with heaven and hell, obsessed with the eternal destination of the soul, I suspect they are deeply afraid of death. Their faith becomes centered on escape rather than transformation. They miss the heaven of shared meals and friendship. They overlook the hells of poverty, war, loneliness, oppression, and despair unfolding right here on earth.

If someone focuses only on God as judge and rule-maker, they can miss the joy of scripture itself: the idea that the Bible and tradition exist to free us from ignorance, cruelty, selfishness, and despair.

If someone focuses only on holiness and purity, they may forget that faith is deeply communal. We are not called to become isolated spiritual elites separated from the world. We are called into sacred action: justice, mercy, compassion, peace.

One of our vision statements from 2013 says, “Where God has no limits.” I do not focus on it often because of course God has no limits. If God has limits, then it is not God. As Augustine of Hippo once said, “If you think you understand God, what you understand is not God.”

We can see where God was.

Was God in the pile of lumber many of us hammered into a house yesterday in the parking lot? Yes. God was in strangers building a home together. In shared skills. In generosity. In laughter.  In aching muscles. In stories told while carrying plywood beneath the sun.

God was there. Can you see where God was?

Is God in the brick and mortar of this church? Yes. God is in baptisms and funerals.
In casseroles after loss. In hymns sung off-key but wholeheartedly. In children learning they are beloved. In marriages celebrated. In prayers whispered through tears.

God was there. Can you see where God was?

And as Pride Month begins, I will say this plainly: I have seen God in LGBTQ+ people too. It was the Rev. Bill Federici who first introduced me to the United Church of Christ and helped me discern my call to ministry.

I have seen God in the yearning to live truthfully. In the struggle to be seen. In courage. In community. In joy reclaimed after shame. Because God has no limits.

Every single person bears the image of God. You will never look into the eyes of someone whom God does not love.

So may we lean into the mystery. May we seek God’s footprints in the ordinary and the holy alike. May we stop searching only for God in distant heavens while ignoring the burning bushes right beside us.

For God is not a distant cosmic manager obsessed with rule enforcement. God is the loving presence drawing humanity toward deeper aliveness, connection, justice, and wonder. Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1] Mishkan T’Fliah: A Reform Siddur. Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2007. Page 33.