amazing God

Mention the word heresy to most people and I wonder whether you will get a mix of high school history remembering vicious persecutions in the middle ages and later or, more probably, a blank stare. Even if people know what heresy is, it has very little to do with them.
Today we remember Irenaeus - Bishop of Lyons in the second century - whose most famous book is Against Heresy, a book which argues against a prevalent heresy of the time Gnosticism.
Gnosticism in some for or other was not (and is not) confined to Christianity. Many religions have within them groups which claim to have a special divine knowledge which puts them a step above everyone else. Various outshowings of the sects develop from this point - if you look up gnosticism on the internet you will find today those who claim to have knowledge for life - pulling from the various mystical experiences of different religions.
All heresies have one thing in common, no matter how they are worded, and that is that they make God smaller than God really is. Gnostics replace a day to day God with knowledge which they hold for themselves, other heresies deny Jesus was God or that God is any more than an vague idea.
In the Gospel today (Matt 8: 23-17) the disciples are left wondering - what sort of man is this that the winds and the waves obey him - the answer, which they will come to understand and know - is that this many is God and the whole of creation is in eager anticipation of God. So why make God smaller than God is - surely that will lead to trouble.
Let me add a note here about Christian mysticism which, from the outside, it would be easy to confuse with a heresy like gnosticism. Whilst both claim revelations of the Divine both the purpose of those revelations and the attitude of those who receive them are very different. The point of mystical experience seems to be that God shows God's love and this is rarely contained within those who draw close to God and secondly if you read the mystics, far from proclaiming themselves better than everyone else, they find themselves bemused as to how God has shown such favour an acutely aware of their own shortcomings and imperfections.
Perhaps then, a suitable slogan for today would simply be Amazing God. Not a god who needs to be made smaller by our reasoning but a God who reaches out to share Godself with us, in all the wonder of that act.