God the Verb

Sometimes we forget the power of our stories — the creative force that has shaped us and sent us. The hands that have folded bread into our palms. The water that has quenched our thirst. The wind that has whispered our names. This is why history matters — both the world’s and our own — for only by remembering the tale of our becoming do we know where we’re going. In other words, our stories remind us of what we are doing here.

This is what the Basis of Union is to the Uniting Church: a document holding together the story of Christ that pours itself out into how we are called to be united — not only between denominations but with the world itself. It hums with movement and conviction, reminding us that God is less a noun and more a verb — restless, reconciling, and fiercely alive. And this God has and continues to call us into this slight yet significant difference ourselves.

In fact, the Basis goes out of its way to say the Church is not a denomination, not a building, not a culture, not a continuing city, citadel or cathedral we construct to crown ourselves — but a people. And not just any people: a pilgrim people, never stagnant, never stationary, but always on the way toward God’s kingdom, where Christ feeds us with the wild wind of Spirit so we will not lose the way.

This heartbeat — united yet always uniting — was the very reason for our birth. We weren’t motivated by wealth, power or efficiency, but by the powerful verb of confession: repenting of the sin of denominationalism, the idolatry of our own nouns, our cherished cultures, and our comfortable structures. So on June 22, 1977 — forty-eight years ago today — the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches laid down those nouns and picked up a verb: uniting. A verb whose ripple widens — among our three streams, among all churches of the world, among the whole world itself — but, above all, toward the One who was reconciling the world to himself to begin with. God the verb. Happy birthday, indeed.

Today’s scripture tells a story that lives in the same spirit that birthed the Uniting Church — a story of naming and repenting idolatry. A story of movement — of prophesying and pilgriming, of watching and waiting, of eating and resting, of seeing and hearing. A story sandwiched in First Kings, where God’s people again and again turn to idols and away from God’s life-giving covenant. And a story where God keeps sending prophets to speak on God’s behalf — to call out idolatry and injustice, and to invite repentance so the people might return to the living movement of God’s Torah.

The story of Elijah.

A drama of epic proportions, swinging from blistering highs to bone-deep lows. Just before today’s reading, Elijah is blazing with confidence on Mount Carmel. He stands alone against the prophets of Baal, calls down fire, and watches heaven ignite the drenched altar. The crowd falls on its face, shouting, “The Lord indeed is God!” Elijah runs before the storm, cloak flapping, heart pounding with triumph.

And then, the ground falls away. One furious threat from Queen Jezebel, and the prophet of courage becomes a fugitive of fear. Elijah flees south, deep into the wilderness, until he collapses beneath a solitary broom tree and sighs, “It is enough, Lord. Take my life.” The one who prayed for fire now prays for an end.

Yet God doesn’t turn God’s back on Elijah — God moves closer. An angel taps him awake with bread and water. Rise. Eat. The journey is long. Twice the angel comes, and twice Elijah rises, strength renewed with every humble mouthful. For forty days and nights, he walks to Horeb — the mountain of encounter, whose other name is Sinai — where Moses met God in a law of love all those years ago.

But the parallels don’t end there. Just as Moses rebuked God’s people for worshipping a golden calf, Elijah rebuked the false prophets for worshipping Baal. Elijah, like Moses, journeys through wilderness with manna provided along the way to the same mountain where divine encounter had once split the world open. And it is here where Elijah wedges himself into a cave’s shadow and waits.

This is no coincidence. Elijah expects what Moses saw — the wild movement of wind, earthquake, fire. God in utter action. But instead, the hurricane tears through — and God is not in the wind. The earth shakes — but God is not in the quake. The fire roars — but God is not in the flames.

Then, something unexpected. Something never heard before in Judean history: God’s movement so slight and so subtle you could almost miss it — the sound of sheer silence. A whisper thin as breath on glass.

Elijah wraps his cloak around his face, steps to the cave’s edge, and hears a question — not condemnation, not rebuke, but invitation: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And in that hush, God sends him on the way: to return, to anoint, to raise up, to keep moving.

Last weekend, like most of the world, I was transfixed by the hyperbolic scene playing itself out in America. As the US president was celebrating his birthday that conveniently shared the same date as the 250th anniversary of America’s military, squeaky tanks rolled down DC’s streets lined with a dismal crowd of MAGA supporters. A scene that gave off North Korean, Russian, and Nazi Germany vibes, yet also a feeling of juxtaposition while over 12 million people across America in over 2000 cities called out America’s non-king. A non-king that continues to lead through the ways of injustice, the idol worship of power and greed, and who knows nothing of the law of love passed down through the ages in a religion he claims to align himself with.

But it was a particular scene from one “No Kings” protest that captured the hyperbole of this day to a tee: there, amongst the protesters in Philadelphia, was a large, floating golden calf balloon complete with orange hair, a red tie, and a blue suit — aptly named The Trump Golden Calf. A rebuke on the very people who see themselves as God’s people, who, just like the Judeans in Exodus and First Kings, without knowing it, have turned away from the God of justice and covenantal love. And for a country that calls itself “Christian,” this is not just a rebuke on its Christians but the nation as a whole.

Now, it’s easy to be an observer of this story — to judge and criticize harshly from these Australian pews as we look to the people who have raised up a false god in America. It’s just as easy to distinguish ourselves from the unobserving-covenantal Judeans, Ahab and Jezebel, who turned their backs on God toward Baal. But what’s not as easy — what’s far more tedious and gut-wrenching — is to look upon the Baals in our own life that are often covered by good intentions and societal expectations. Because an anniversary, like any anniversary, should not just invite us into celebration and showing off all our accomplishments as they parade themselves in front of us on squeaky wheels. It should primarily lead us into deep reflection — of why we are the Uniting Church in the first place, how we are doing with the sin we first repented from those 48 years ago of making gods out of our nouns, and what we are doing here.

Over the last month, a group of us have gathered on Wednesday nights to wrestle with these themes through the movement of the Holy Spirit. We’ve shared stories of the creative force that has shaped and sent us — of bread in our hands, water to our thirst, wind whispering our names, despite whether we came from Nunawading, Forest Hill, or Mitcham. Some stories told of burning bushes. Others of movements as quiet and invisible as a breath on glass.

Again and again, the theme that continues to emerge from these gatherings is this: that life with God is bound up in the unknown, the unexpected, the uncertain. That it’s often at the crossroads, the dead-ends, the depths of brokenness — ours and the world’s — that God shows up. Sometimes as loud as a burning bush. Sometimes quiet as a whisper. Often, in ways completely unexpected.

This is always the story of faith.

From Moses to Elijah, God appears where we least expect — trees aflame, parting seas, manna from the heavens, a still small voice — but always when we turn away from the glitter and glory of our golden calves and our Baals. And this God of the unexpected doesn’t just stop in the Old Testament, but personifies this truth in the most unlikely place of all: the body and flesh of a babe in an unmarried Jewish teenager’s womb. Born in obscurity, crossing boundaries, breaking bread with the lost and the least, turning tables, telling parables that confuse more than clarify.

Jesus the anti-noun, the embodied verb of God — the one who meets us not in certainty, but in our unraveling. Not in strength, but in surrender. And like Elijah, like Moses, like every weary pilgrim before and after — we are fed for the journey by the God who moves through the wild wind of Spirit.

For this is the God we follow. Not a noun we define, not a system we control, but a verb that forever spills forward — restless, reconciling, and fiercely alive.

So — what are we doing here?

Because this isn’t just a story to remember. It’s a story to live. Which means the Uniting Church must keep being what it dared to become: a verb. A movement. A people not settled in structures, busied in buildings or bureaucracy, but sent into the world.

We must not go the way of golden calves and those polished idols of nostalgia, safety, nationalism, or ecclesial pride — even when we expect it of one another. Even when our society expects it of us. Even when world leaders demand it of us. And even when that means we find ourselves in desert places and uncertain spaces.

Because in clenching onto the dead weight of certainty, we will be trading it for the living Spirit that moves where it will. Because here’s the thing: God has not stopped moving. God is still whispering. Still calling us forward. Still placing warm bread in our hands and saying, “Rise. Eat. The journey is long.”

So let us be pilgrims again. Let us be the Church that confesses rather than conquers, prophesies rather than pretends, waits rather than wallows, listens rather than lectures, moves rather than monuments itself.

Let us be the Church that gathers at the cave’s edge, wraps our cloaks over our faces, and says yes — even when we do not know the way.

Because Christ has walked it before us — the same Christ who knew what it was to despair, to wander forty days in the desert himself, and who found himself utterly abandoned on the cross and yet paved the way for the liberating movement of resurrection — the wild Spirit of new life.

And we do not walk alone. For this Spirit walks beside us as pilgrim people, even here and even now — never stagnant, never stationary, but always on the way toward a promised goal. Not toward our man-made cities, citadels, or cathedrals, but toward God’s kingdom, where Christ feeds us so we will not lose the way.

So, yes — happy birthday, Church. But now, let us rise and eat. For the journey is long.