The Poetic God

I was born as a pastor kid. My father is a Presbyterian church pastor, and my mom...I wouldn't say she is a church activist, but she always goes to church every Sunday. But I'm sure she is a Calvinist, she spent her youth in a Reformed church. I was raised technically under Dutch Calvinist theology, which emphasizes discipleship, total depravity, predestination, and so on.

              When I was three years old, I remember my family and I went to Carrefour. It’s a grocery store, like Target or ShopRite. It was easy for me to control myself in the fruit aisle, the vegetable aisle, or the furniture aisle. But a three-year-old boy in the toy aisle? Oh, God, lead us not to temptation.

              Therefore, I asked my mom, “Mom, can I get a new toy? I saw a cool Underwater LEGO Robot Vehicle right there. It’s only 15.000 rupiahs.” 15.000 rupiahs at that time, you can buy 20 bottles of water. So, it’s like $20 today? This is so memorable, I even remember the price. Then, my mom is just being a mom. She said, “We only buy important things because our money is tight. You know that, right?” With a frown and a sad face, I replied, “okaaaay.” So I walked away with disappointment.

              But every step I took, I kept thinking of that toy. The further I went, the stronger the Underwater LEGO Robot Vehicle was depicted in my mind. It was so tempting, and I couldn’t resist anymore. So, I sneaked around, went back to the toy aisle, where the three-year-old me fell to temptation. I take the Underwater LEGO Robot Vehicle out of the box and put it in my left pocket.

              Later, at the dinner, my hand accidentally knocked over my water bottle. The water fell into my left pocket. My mom was concerned about me being soaked at first, until she found the Underwater LEGO Robot Vehicle. She was so disappointed and mad. Her face turned red. I was terrified and started crying.

              My father saw that his wife couldn’t take it anymore, so he took over the conversation. My father interrogated me about why I stole the toy. I answered because we don’t have the money. Again, he asked, Did I know if it was a sin. I answered yes. Will I do that again? I said, never. Then my father started a prayer, asking God for mercy for me, to forgive my sin, and help me not to do that again. From that moment, I regretted what I had done, and at the same time, I was terrified of God, who brings justice. God’s all-seeing eye is true, just like what my Sunday school teacher told me. The all mighty God is always watching us, ready or not.

              Last week, we learned from Rev. Johnson that Amos was called to speak up when no one else would, to say something difficult to hear. While Amos had the option to sit down and relax on his farm in southern Israel, he chose to accept God’s call to pronounce the divine judgment on the Jeroboam dynasty, Amaziah the northern Israelite priest, and the rest of the Northern Israel kingdom.

              Our Scripture reading today is a continuation of last week’s passage, inviting us to journey deeper into Amos’ vision over the Northern Israel Kingdom. He delivered a powerful and unsettling warning to those who exploit the vulnerable for personal gain. The divine judgement waited for corrupt business practices, systemic inequality, and a culture obsessed with profit over people. The prophet calls out those who can't wait for Sabbath to end so they can get back to cheating the poor—rigging prices, using dishonest scales, and selling people out for the price of a pair of sandals. God sees it all, Amos says, and the consequences are coming. The land will tremble, joy will turn to mourning, and a darkness will fall like a solar eclipse—a chilling metaphor for justice delayed no longer.

              Imagine if a three-year-old child is walking around a market in Gaza, and they steal bread because they haven’t eaten all day, do you think the land will tremble? Imagine a person who cannot go to church because they have mandatory work on Sunday. Do you think God would make the world without sunshine?

              There's a volcano in Indonesia, known as Mount Tambora. In 1815, Tambora erupted, becoming one of the most catastrophic volcanic events in recorded history. And it was not even a big sneeze… No, it was just a cute little sneeze… But the sneeze did not just cause earthquakes and tsunamis; it also sent massive amounts of ash and sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, disrupting global weather patterns. This led to what became known as "the year without a summer" in 1816, particularly devastating in Europe and North America. Crops failed, temperatures dropped drastically, and famine spread across regions. Snow fell in June in parts of the northeastern United States, and constant rain and darkness haunted Europe.

              I hope it won’t happen again. I believe you hope it won’t happen again, and I know God doesn’t want that to happen again either.

              After my ordination as a minister, I chose to pursue my studies at Drew University because I wanted to learn directly from Catherine Keller, a prominent scholar in the field of constructive theology. Her work has been profoundly shaped by process theology, which is not very popular in Indonesia, but I was enlightened by it. Process theology understands that nothing is final because everything is in the process of becoming. Everything. The creatures, the world, the church, and God. Well, it’s very very not Calvinist, but I buy it.

              Before she starts the class, Catherine always reads a poem that is related to the required readings. She invites us all to meditate on a poem. Whether she reads it or her students do, it always ends with amen. Again, I know it’s very not Calvinist, but I enjoyed it.

              Later, I realized why she always starts the class with poetry. One of her notable works is called theopoetics, or the poetics of the divine. Theopoetics is a pushback against theology, which often emphasizes logic, understanding, and well-structured arguments. Logos or –logy in theology is always a matter of knowing. Meanwhile, in poetry, we don’t always get what it says, but we feel the emotions. In poetry, grammatically incorrect is accepted, because it has never been about right or wrong. Sometimes it’s about capturing fleeting moments of beauty. And sometimes, they are written tears from a cruel and painful experience. It’s similar to “when words fail, music speaks,” so does the poetics of the divine.

              This theopoetics resonates in my head while reading Amos 8. What if it is just God’s expression of disappointment and melancholic sadness instead of divine judgment? God was so disappointed with the injustice, exploitation, systemic oppression, dishonest scales, and reduction of human values. It’s just too scary if it is literal.

              Roland Faber, another process theologian, notes that theopoetics is the envisioning of God who uses creativity to create, as poetics shares the same root of a Greek word, poiesis, which means to create. God is the poet of the world, he said. God’s poiesis, however, is a relational act of tender patience and saving love, not a unilateral act of physical production or destructive force. God’s poiesis appears as the unity of creative beginning and reconciling end, as the tender embrace of the world's self-creativity. In other words, instead of treating theology as a set of fixed truths, the poetics of the divine invites a more open-ended, experiential, and poetic engagement with God, grounded in the complexities of human life, emotion, and creativity.

              Therefore, allow me to re-interpret Amos 8 with theopoetics nuance in our current situation:

Hey, listen up, I want you to know that I see the weight you carry, and I recognize that it’s systemic. There are those who manipulate the laws—cheating the poor, rigging prices, cutting off insurance, capturing and sending people to places they don’t want to be. I don’t want that. I don’t think you want that. God certainly doesn’t want that. A lot of people might end up hurt if it came to that.

You are not alone in your anger, your heartbreak, or your hope. God sees it all. The land feels restless and trembles. The sky is crying, and the river is full of tears. The heart of God is like the sun going down at noon. Please remember that your experience is real, your lament and mourn are valid, and you are not alone. It is a bitter day for all of us.                        This is the word of the Lord… Thanks be to God.

              Dear friends, today I invite you into the poetics of the divine—a way of seeing, thinking, and feeling that beckons us to listen closely to the cries of the earth, the silence of misery, and the rhythm of the Spirit moving in our stories and songs. The words that we spelled out might be stuttered, discordant when heard, and misunderstood when said. However, all those words will come to an end at some point, that is, Christ, the Omega. In that way, God, as the poet of the world, writes our life as divine poetics. In that same way, we are invited to love God by also writing our own living poetry. Amen.