Officer Chuck Enders, the ranking - and only - member of the Smithsburg Police Department, spends three hours each morning at the local High's dairy store. It appears, to the rest of the world, that he is wasting time, drinking cheap coffee and flirting with the girl behind the counter. But if you ask him, he is "keeping his finger on the pulse of the community," minding the relationships that help him to more efficiently and effectively police his close-knit little community.

Now, no matter what his true motives for hanging out at High's are, Officer Enders' actions highlight one of the most important things about small town living - relationships are everything. Even to this day, when I call up my Dad with a question about this, that or the other thing, he is very slow to give advice, and very quick to suggest two or three names of people who he knows that might be able help me. "It's not what you know, but who you know that matters," he always says. And I can see by your nodding heads that his sentiment makes sense to many of you.

For it is the case that, whether in a small town, or large corporation, whether out in the world, or right here in the church, it is the quality of our relationships, rather than our individual competencies that determine the path of our existence. For example, while I'm sure that my seminary degree and my prior teaching experiences had something to do with my being invited to come and minister in this place, I agree with many of you who say that it was the relationships that we forged during my interview process that convinced all involved that we were called to work together. And while I have been known to dust off some of my old seminary textbooks from time to time, it is actually the willingness that you all have had to welcome me and trust me that facilitates my ministry from day to day. Now, that is not to say that everything has been roses, here or anywhere else in our lives, and negative relationships often do more to reduce our quality of life than positive relationship cause life to flourish. But I think we can all agree, for the moment, that our ability to relate is at least as important, if not more important, than our ability to understand in most areas of our lives: that is, with one noticeable exception.

It is surprising to me how often, in the face of the visceral and often-times harsh realities of life, we jump to our understanding rather than our relationships in matters of faith.

The progression typically begins with a problem. One that has some basis in our experience, but somehow defies our basic set of tools - that is to say it is not something I can call my Dad about and have him put me in contact with a local expert or friend. Let's say we have witnessed a tragic and unexplained death. For example, let's say we have seen a tower fall, unexplainedly on 18 innocent bystanders. We have no experiences like this on which to fall back and our education and mental abilities are doing very little to help. And what's more, none of our usual go-to's - our friends, our neighbors, tor even our priests - are doing a very good job of explaining it either. So, in a last, desperate cry for help we begin to speak of God, that is, we begin to do theology.

Hmmmm, God, God, God, what to say about God. Well, we know that God is good, right? But what does that mean? Ask my eighth graders and they'll tell you, Good is not as easy a word to define as one might think. So we move on, but the harder we try to speak of God, particularly in the face of tragedy, the more abstract and, ironically, limiting, our notions become. OK, so maybe good is not a good word here. God is Holy, that is other than we are, his ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. So that means that even though this doesn't make sense to me, it must make sense to God. Now, what was God thinking? Well, God is always Just, so those people deserved it. Oh, and he is always merciful, too, so they definitely didn't deserve it. And God is the first cause of everything that happens, so he must have knocked the tower over. But he also gave us free will, so maybe somebody knocked it over on them. Well, maybe evil things just happen in the world. But God created the world, and, well, God is good. Isn't he?

Now we are back where we started, and probably a little worse for wear. And this is a fairly brief example. But why did we choose to begin thinking in this way in the first place? Why did we talk first of what we understood about God rather than simply calling upon him for help? One might suggest that as homo sapiens, that is, "thinking people," such intellectualism is hardwired into us. Or, one another might notice that such patterns of theology are a part of our Christian heritage. Form the earliest days of the church, men and women of faith have sought to define God, mounting up abstractions on top of metaphors on top of theories in order to describe the one thing that is, ultimately, beyond our ken.

No matter what our reason for speaking thus of God, this example demonstrates how theology, when it relies too heavily on understanding can become abstract and knotted and generally unhelpful to those of us who wish to cope with the really hard things that are going on in our lives.

So what are we to do? If attempts to talk about God that begin with our understandings of the Divine frequently end up circular and unenlightening, then how are we to proceed? Should we just ignore the problems of life? Or better yet, should we just ignore God and try to figure things out on our own? No, I don't think either of these are the answer. We do need to start with God, but we need to let him take the lead.

God does not desire our understanding, he desires our relationship. Let me say that again. I believe that God is not concerned with whether or not we understand the nature of the divine, and he is not concerned with whether or not we can apply our understanding to the problems at hand. God is concerned with being our being in relationship with him. And how do I know this, you might ask? Is this, ironically, some form of understanding that I am trying to put over on you this morning? No, I know it because God told me so.

Though relationship is the underlying theme of divine revelation from the brooding of the Spirit over the waters onward, we can see it very clearly in the story from Exodus included among today's readings. When Moses encounters God for the very first time, God's revelation of himself is not worked out in terms of definitions and concepts. He does not say to Moses, "I am omniscient of perversions of justice being perpetrated against the innocent and it is in my nature to provide for and facilitate through delegated agency the release of oppressed people." He says, "I have heard the cries of MY people and I am sending YOU to set them free." And when Moses asks God for some way to speak about him to HIS people, God does not give his name as "The un-begotten prime mover of the universe, the very ground of being, who created, ex nihilo all that is and named it good." He says that his nature is un-important. He says, "I am who I am," my nature is what it is. But Moses, tell them that "I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob." What is important for MY people to know is that I am the God that was in relationship with THEIR ancestors and I desire to continue that relationship with THEM.

And God still desires to continue that relationship with us, the spiritual descendents of Moses and the Israelites. He has heard our cries of oppression and he knows the path that we are on. And his solution to this problem? It wasn't a stone tablet resolving the tension between righteous judgment and divine mercy, it was a consummation of the relationship between God and human-kind in the most intimate way God knew how, the joining of God and man in Jesus Christ our Lord.

God has taken the first and largest step toward a lasting relationship with each and every one of us. Not only does he know our failings and our unfaithfulness, but he knows our temptations and our frailties. He knows our pain and our suffering and our very mortality. He has quite literally taken the pulse of this community and, in doing so has opened the way to an eternal relationship. All that is left is for us to take up our part of the relationship.

During this season of Lent, we are called to take stock of our lives: to examine those things that tie us to this world and to think about how we might prepare ourselves for the next. Part of this stock-taking necessarily deals with God. In thinking about God, as in talking about God, we have a couple of options. On the one hand we can choose to try and understand God. We can look at our lives in the abstract and attempt to theologize an abstract path forward that will lead us, by education and acetic praxis, from the current, temporal reality into the divine reality that lies just beyond the veil of death. Or we can spend our time getting to know God. We can look for those areas of our lives which have caused us to stray from the faithful relationship that God has established with us and we can turn-around and begin again to look for God. Jesus calls this move repentance, but we can simply think of it as mending a broken relationship: as getting our fingers back on the pulse of our communion with God.

It is not very hard. It can be as simple as hanging around a High's dairy store for 3 hours each morning, or -- perhaps more appropriately - spending just a few minutes in prayer. But it begins with an intention to seek God while he may be found, and it continues with a commitment to be in relationship, even if we don't completely understand what we are doing or why we are doing it.

Beloved in Christ, God is who God is, and whether we understand what that is unimportant. God desires to be in relationship with us, he desires to love us and to be loved by us. All we need to do is enter, willingly, intentionally and seriously into that relationship. Relationships are everything in this life and Relationship is everything when it comes to God. In the final analysis, it is not what we know that saves us, it is who we know.
Amen.