How Do I Connect With God?

This was a presentation I gave about a year ago in a religious forum on campus here at Central Michigan University. The 'Campus Religious Leadership Association' here, a group of leaders involved in campus ministry at CMU, hosted it and I offered to speak. We had a decent turnout (about 45, including clergy), and received some excellent questions afterward. The topic of the night was, 'How Do I Connect With God?' Obviously, that raises flags for Lutherans right away, and you'll see that I address that right off the top. I offer it here because it is a decent summary of how everything in theology is interconnected, and finally finds its beginning and end in Jesus Christ. Remember that it was written with a non-Lutheran audience in mind.

How Do I Connect With God?

Four Views: The Sacramental Life

Pastor Jonathon Bakker

Christ The King Lutheran Chapel

Mount Pleasant, Michigan

To begin speaking about ‘connecting with God’ puts Lutherans in somewhat of a conundrum. Lutherans, you see, are not so concerned with how we connect with God, but rather with how God connects with us. Now, to the average ear that sounds like two ways of saying the same thing, but to Lutherans that point makes all the difference in the world.

Connection with God all begins with creation. “In the beginning…” God created the heavens and the earth, night and day, land and sea, the sun and the moon, stars and planets, plants and animals, and finally man. When God created these things out of nothing, he created them by his Word and called all of them ‘good.’ When God created man, he fashioned man out of the dust of the earth and called him ‘m’od tov’/very good.

Humanity is special in God’s eyes. We are the crown of creation, created in the image and likeness of God himself. And from the very beginning, God has had a plan and destiny for humanity. The end for which he created us is eternal fellowship with him, but humanity wasn’t ready for the end yet when they had just begun. God had a plan for humanity along the way. Be fruitful and multiply, he said, fill the earth and subdue it. Along with a beginning and end, God also gave humanity a middle, a period in which to mature and develop and grow. Like a puppy is not ready for full freedom in a home without gradual training and discipline, humanity also was not ready in the beginning for eternal fellowship with God. God’s connection to humanity began with the creation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Without getting into too much detail, the subsequent fall into sin in the Garden put humanity on a different course throughout history. Creation was turned upside down in the fall into sin. Instead of looking to God for every good thing they needed to live and thrive, humanity looked to themselves. God’s connection to humanity was corrupted by human desire. God’s plan for his creation, though, never changed. There was still beginning, middle, and end for humanity. The middle, though, consisted of a different kind of maturation and growth. Death changed everything. Adam and Eve had been created for eternity. They would eventually get there, but now they had to die first.

I have to apologize at this point because I haven’t spoken explicitly about sacraments, but stay with me, I will. There was one promise made to the serpent in the Garden before they were all banished about a Savior who would crush the head of the serpent. That Savior, of course, is the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Though this is an enormous generalization, Lutherans believe that the Bible is basically about the Son of God; before, and after his birth. The Old Testament, then, served the people of God by preparing them to meet this Savior, and Jesus Christ is therefore for us the fulfillment of the Old Testament. God worked in the Old Testament through many means and events to defend and deliver his people Israel. Looking back at the Old Testament after Jesus birth and death and resurrection, though, we see that there is much more to it than that.

Looking at the Old Testament this way, we see God at work establishing patterns of salvation for his people. Wood, water, bread, and blood all play recurring and prominent parts in God’s work for his people in the Old Testament. The great flood destroyed all of humanity with water except for the eight members of Noah’s family in the wooden ark. The blood of the Lamb spread around the doorposts protected the children of Israel from the last plague wrought against their Egyptian captors – the killing of the firstborn sons. Those same children of Israel escaped hard-hearted Pharaoh’s army on dry ground as they crossed the Red Sea between walls of water, and that same water again drowned Pharaoh’s army to the deep. When they were hungry in the wilderness, God sent them manna – bread from heaven. When they made sacrifices for their sins, the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled on the altar and on them. When Naaman, commander of the Syrian army, had leprosy and sought a cure, the prophet Elisha instructed him to bathe seven times in water of the Jordan River.

We could go on, but the point is that in all of these things, God was preparing his people to recognize what it looks like when God works in the world for the salvation of humanity. In other words, in these things, God connected with humanity to bring them toward the eventual destiny which he still has in mind for us. If similar things were to happen again, it would only make sense to see God in them.

When Jesus was born, these patterns began to show themselves again, only this time God wasn’t in the background. In Jesus, heaven meets earth and God acts to fulfill his plan for humanity in a very direct way. In Jesus you have the consummation of creation.

When he is baptized, and then later when he institutes baptism for those who follow him, you see that water was created for something more than quenching thirst and sustaining life. Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea and Namaan’s washing prefigure a fuller meaning. When Jesus turns water into wine, and then wine becomes his blood (all questions of how this is possible aside), you see that wine and blood were created for more than enjoyable drinks and bodily fluids. The sacrifices of Israel and the Passover meal take on a greater significance. When Jesus feeds thousands with a few loaves of bread, and then bread becomes his body, again, bread is more than just food. Manna from heaven never did these things, but God was at work in them all the same. Finally, when Jesus makes his living as a carpenter, and then makes his death on a wooden cross, all wood, including Noah’s ark, takes on a deeper salvific meaning.

In all of these things, Lutherans speak about God acting sacramentally to bring about his intended plan for humanity. We believe that God still works through these sacramental means, to call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify the whole Christian church on earth. The discussion of what is and what isn’t a sacrament is a discussion for another time, but for us, in these sacramental actions, we believe that God binds himself to creation to bring about the eternal fellowship with him for which we were created in the beginning. For Lutherans, the Sacramental Life is the means by which God connects with us and brings us to eternal life.

Thank you.