In higher education there is often a requirement for a “capstone” project that shows the student not only learned the intended information but also has a working knowledge of it and can apply it.

Artists may have to produce a sculpture or painting.

Musicians may have to write or perform a musical piece.

For many fields, that project is a paper, or thesis.

For my Masters degree in Divinity I had to write a Constructive Theology paper that expressed theological ideas in a useful way, touching on various points like “who is God?” “what is the purpose of the Church?” “What is Salvation?” and making sure those ideas worked together in a systemic way.

And then defend it before two of our professors.

Let’s go to God in prayer.
God of wisdom, may the words that I speak, and the ways they are received by each of our hearts and minds, help us to continue to grow into the people, and the church, that you have dreamed us to be.
Amen.

Most fields have jargon – words and phrases that are meaningful mainly within that field and which make things more difficult to understand if one is not in that field.

In the medical field, a bruise might be called a hematoma, and a cut might be called a laceration.

When talking about the internet, you might hear terms like “bandwidth” which is how much information can be delivered per second, and “latency” which is how long it takes from when the first piece of information is sent until that first piece of information is received.

In seminary, one of those phrases is “theological loci.”

Theological loci means areas of theology, each of which also has a fancy name:
Theology really means the study of God
Christology is the study of Christ.
Pneumatology is the study of the Holy Spirit.
Ecclesiology is about the church.
Harmatiology for sin, Soteriology for salvation, Theodicy for why God permits suffering.

Theologians have been debating these for centuries. And while church leaders have written doctrine – or teaching – on all of these subjects, that teaching usually falls a little short.

And if you go to where professional theologians go with these ideas, it can get pretty complicated.

So we often use metaphors.

In my Constructive Theology paper, I compared creation to story, with God the Creator as author.

This has a lot of implications regarding time, space, causality, and other things I will not get into this morning.

And it suggests an answer to the question of “where is God?”

When I was little, I knew God was in heaven, which was “up there.”

As I grew older, and realized that “up there” kept changing as the earth rotated and as it made its way through its orbit around the sun, I realized that “up there” wasn’t a good answer.

Besides, it made God a space alien.

And I had to look for another place for God.

Sometimes we think of God being in the holy places, like churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, shrines, cemeteries, and ruins.
Sometimes we think of God in nature.

In my constructive theology with God as author, God is outside the story altogether. If you have ever written a story, you have created characters who cannot be where you are. They live in a world of your creation.

If I stop there, God is a distant creator unaffected by the creation.

But if you have ever read stories by various authors, you may notice they have a certain style. You might be able to read a story that has no indication of the author, and yet be able to guess who wrote it if you recognize the style you have read in several other stories.

Stephen King and Jane Austen don’t write much alike.

So a lot of who the author is will appear in the story.

Our world reflects the God who created it. An author can also be moved by the characters the author creates.

Sometimes there will be a direction the story is beginning to go and the writer thinks “no, that’s not something this character would do” because the character takes on a life of its own, in a way.

So the author creates the story, and therefor the author is in the story, and the story changes the author, so the story is in the author.

That brings up another great theological term: perichoresis.

Perichoresis was originally used to show that each person of the Trinity dwells within the others, or as Jesus said

“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me;”

– John 14:11, NRSV

but can also be used to show that God is in us as we are in God. Or as Jesus said:

“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.”

– John 17:22-23, NRSV

And following from that, God is in creation as creation is in God.

As Solomon is quoted in our reading this morning,

“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!”

– 1 Kings 8:27, NRSV

God is not contained within any building, nor even within the earth, or within heaven.

Just as authors exist across the world through their writings, thereby not being contained within their bodies, so the creator of our story is not even contained within heaven, but also in creation.

So why do we bother to come to church?

We come to church because here we gather with others to focus a little more on how God moves in creation and how we can move in God’s creation. We come to church not because God is inherently more present here, but because we become more present here.

We sing, pray, praise God, and listen for the ways that God is leading us to continue to grow into the people and the church that God has dreamed us to be.

This is a time to refresh and refine our understanding of who we are called to be.

So my challenge to each of us this week is to remember this time of focus, but to also remember that God is available to us everywhere, at every time, in every situation.

Let us continue to follow the light.

Amen.

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Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue