Where is God?

​Where is God?  (Acts 17:22-31 & John 14:15-21)

Our readings today invite us into one of the most profound and enduring questions of the human heart: Where is God?

It is a question that has echoed across centuries. People have looked for God in temples, in sacred mountains, in distant heavens, in extraordinary experiences. And often, beneath the question itself, there lies an assumption, that God is somewhere else, far away, hidden, absent.

But the scriptures set before us today gently challenges that assumption. In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks in deeply intimate and mysterious language:  “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” This is not the language of distance. This is the language of indwelling.

Earlier in John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Now, astonishingly, he extends that same relationship to his disciples: “You in me, and I in you.” This is a mystical vision of reality.  God is not presented here as a distant ruler in a far-off heaven located in a different place, but as the Living Presence at the very heart of our being, the Loving Source from which all life flows.

John’s Gospel invites us to see God as the Hidden Inner Intelligence at the heart of all things, the unseen Life that animates everything that is. This is echoed in the Prologue of John’s Gospel: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all people… The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world.” Not just a few, but everyone.  And this presence is not merely around us, it is within us. …The Father in me, and I in you and you in me... 

This vision resonates with a saying from the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God as something that is not coming with signs to be observed, but is already within and among us. The Eternal, the Immortal One, the Silent Source of all things, dwells among us and within us as our deepest reality.

And yet, there is a paradox.  John’s Gospel does not only say that God is within us, it also says that we are within God.   We are not only temples of the Divine Presence; we are also participants in a greater Life that holds us, surrounds us, and permeates all things.

How can it be that simultaneously God is within us and we are within God? It moves us beyond our normal spatial categories.  But perhaps the language of consciousness helps us glimpse the mystery more deeply. If our consciousness is like a wave arising within the great ocean of Divine Consciousness, then God is both within us and beyond us at the same time. The light of awareness within us is not separate from the greater Light from which it comes.

This same vision appears, quite remarkably, in our reading from Acts. The Apostle Paul stands in Athens, surrounded by temples and altars, speaking to a people steeped in philosophical and religious thought. And instead of dismissing their beliefs, he begins with affirmation. (In other words, like Paul we do not need to be afraid of other religious systems… we should feel confident to find the points of truth and resonance that exist within them).

And so the Apostle Paul, speaking to people of another religious persuasion, points to an altar inscribed: “To an unknown god.”  In doing so, Paul acknowledges something deeply true: that God is, in a real sense, unknowable to the human intellect. Beyond concepts. Beyond definitions. And yet, this “unknown” God is not absent. Paul goes on to say: “He is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.”

Here Paul is believed to be quoting from Epimenides’ Hymn to Zeus, showing that even within Greek philosophy and religion there was an intuition of this truth. In him we live and move and have our being.  God is not elsewhere. We are, as it were, swimming in the Divine Presence, like fish in the ocean.

There is a story sometimes told: one fish turns to another and asks, “Do you believe in the ocean?” And the other replies, “What’s the ocean?” So immersed are they in it, they cannot see it. And perhaps this is our condition. We ask, “Where is God?” All the while, we are already in God.

Another image may help us.  Imagine two twins in their mother’s womb. One says to the other, “Do you believe in life after the womb? Do you believe there is a mother?” The other replies, “No, it’s absurd. How would that even work? How would we breathe? How would we be fed? There is no Mother and there is no life after birth”. But the first insists, “Sometimes, if I listen carefully, I can hear her heartbeat… I can sense her presence, I think I can even hear her loving voice.”

In the same way, we live within a Reality greater than we can fully comprehend. We may not see clearly. We may not understand. But something in us senses… listens… knows. We have an intuition of something deeper and something greater.

And yet, if this is true - if God is both within us and all around us - then another question arises:
Why do we so often experience God as absent? Why does God feel distant?

Jesus offers a clue in our passage when he speaks about seeing and knowing. “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me” (vs19) “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you…” (vs20)

And elsewhere this language is echoed, in the Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus says: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  Not one day, in some distant afterlife. But they shall see. The pure in heart see and experience God in this world in a way that the rest of us do not. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

The implication is that God is always present, but not always perceived. And the purer our hearts are the more we see. The less pure our hearts are, the less we see of God.  The problem is not the absence of light. The problem is the condition of the window. The Divine Light is always shining. But if the window of the heart is clouded, the light appears dim. Clean the window, and the light that was always there begins to shine through.

And how do we know when this begins to happen?  Very often, it is not through dramatic visions or extraordinary experiences, but through something much more subtle, and yet deeply transformative.

We begin to feel a certain lightness of being.  As the window of the heart is gradually cleared, as we loosen our grip on the false, ego-centred self, something shifts within us. The heaviness begins to lift. And in its place, there arises a quiet inner joy… a gentle peace… a sense of spaciousness… and a spontaneous love.

These are the signs that the Divine Presence is no longer just an idea to us, but a lived reality from the inside… the presence of unexplained joy, gentle peace, a sense of spaciousness and a spontaneous love that wells up from within… these are the signs of the human heart opening up to God.  It is as though the Light that was always shining begins, at last, to be felt.

And it does not remain contained within us. It begins to flow outward. Like the living water Jesus speaks of in his encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4, this Presence becomes a spring within, overflowing into love, into kindness, into service.  We find ourselves loving not because we ought to, not to try and get other people’s attention or win their approval but simply because something within us is beginning to overflow with love.

And this brings us to the practical heart of Jesus’ teaching. In John’s Gospel, Jesus says: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” But in John’s Gospel, there is really only one commandment:  “Love one another as I have loved you.” This is not about earning God’s presence. God is already present, always present. This is about learning to live in harmony with that Presence.

The word translated “keep” (from the Greek teros) carries the sense of watching, guarding, attending to, keeping one’s eye upon. It is about learning to becoming mindful of the Divine Presence that is always here.  To live in love is to keep our attention aligned with the Divine Life within us.  It is to allow that inner Presence to shape how we think, how we respond, how we relate.

And this is where our faith becomes visible in the world.  This week, across the UK and Ireland, we mark Christian Aid Week, a time when we are invited to respond to human suffering, poverty, and injustice, not simply with sympathy, but with action.  It would be easy to think of this as something extra, an optional act of charity. But in the light of Jesus’ teaching, it is something much deeper. It is an expression of that very commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Because if God truly dwells within each person, if every human being lives and moves and has their being in God, then to love another, to serve another, to stand alongside those in need, is not simply a moral duty. It is a way of honouring the Divine Presence within them. 

And perhaps more than that, it is a way of keeping the window clear in our own hearts. For when we turn outward in love, when we give, when we act with compassion, something within us opens up. The flow of grace is no longer blocked. The inner life and the outer life begin to align.

And so, acts of generosity, justice, and compassion are not separate from the spiritual life. They are its natural expression. They are what happens when the living water begins to flow.

So, where is God? Not far away. Not hidden in some distant heaven. God is the Living Presence or Consciousness within you, closer than your breath, nearer than your own thoughts, the open awareness in which your breathing happens, the open awareness in which your thoughts arise and disappear.  And at the same time, you are held within God, like a wave in the ocean, like a child in the womb, a fragment of consciousness within the great ocean of consciousness. 

The invitation of the Gospel is not to go somewhere else to find God… but to awaken. To become aware. To live in love. To clean the window pane of the heart to let more light through.

And as we do, slowly and gently, we begin to see - not a different world, but this world, shining with a Light that was there all along.  Amen.