Sunday, May 14 - Images for God

This sermon was preached for Sunday, May 14 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Acts 17:22-31, John 14:15-21, and Psalm 66:7-1

The other day I was talking with one of the folks at the Cathedral’s Drop-In Center for the unhoused community in Springfield. He was telling me all about how degrading the medical system is for addicts, how doctors never believe him and no one treats him like a human being. I listened and nodded, unfortunately unsurprised by his experience. But then he shrugged and said, “The Bible says it all happens the way it’s supposed to.” It took everything for me not to blurt out, “No! No, it doesn’t!” What I said instead was something lame like, “I seem to recall the Bible being full of voices crying out to God, this is NOT the way it’s supposed to be.” 

What I really wanted him to know was this, this, what you just told me, this is not the way it is supposed to be at all. Neglect, contempt, despair - that is not what God wants for him. Even if it weren’t for witness of the psalms, the Book of Lamentations, or heck any of the Books of the Minor and Major Prophets, I would know that, deep at the heart of my faith, what God wants for him is to be treated and seen as a human being. 

I left that encounter determined to exorcize the phrase “The Bible says…'' from my vocabulary once and for all. The Bible is not one monolithic book with one coherent viewpoint on God. It’s an entire library disguised as a book. It’s a cacophony of voices of all different kinds. It’s poetry and letters and stories and historical records and instructions and aphorisms and songs. It’s a collection of thousands of years of thousands of human encounters with the divine. I do not believe the Bible is meant to limit what we know about God - I believe it is meant to enrich and expand and enliven how we see God at work in our own lives. Yet so often Christians fall into the trap of choosing one primary image or metaphor for God and deciding that about sums up everything scripture has to say. We’re guilty of taking one voice and using it to squash all the rest, even the ones that resonate with the aching cries of our own hearts. 

That’s what I love about the book “Mother God.” Each image of God as mother - as the laboring birth-giver, the nursing breastfeeder, grandmother, and mama bear - comes directly from scripture. It also highlights other images of the feminine divine in the Bible that have nothing to do with motherhood - God as baker, seamstress, music teacher, and Sofia Wisdom. Teresa Kim Pecinovsky’s book is a small part of a larger contemporary project to uncover and amplify voices in the Bible that often get crowded out. Don’t get me wrong - this theological project is not about negating or erasing God as Father nor is it trying to cancel the masculine divine. It’s about expanding how we conceive of God, adding back in what’s been left out.

God is more than we can ever imagine, beyond any words we know. 

When Paul addresses the Athenians in our Acts reading today, he speaks highly of their religiosity. He sees how they are reaching out for God, searching for the divine truth. The Greeks are endearingly humble about their knowledge of God - one of their altars is “To an Unknown God.” But for Paul, the time has come to set aside that humble stance of self-aware “ignorance.” The time has come to make bold claims about God he has come to know in Christ. 

Yet we are to do this with great care and intention. Listen for Paul’s warning about using certain images for God here. “...We ought not to think that the deity is…an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.” Every image we have of God - whether or not it’s made from stone or paint or poetry, every metaphor - whether it comes from the Bible or not, falls short of encapsulating all of God. As humans, we can come dangerously close to worshiping the image rather than the God it points to. We can start to limit what we imagine is possible for God. 

A priest told me once about praying with her daughter at bedtime. Each night, they’d go over the day’s joys and worries and lift them up to God together in prayer. A couple nights in a row, the priest noticed her daughter becoming more reluctant to include some of her everyday schoolchild dramas into her prayers. When the priest asked her gently about her reticence, the little girl explained to her mother, “Well, God’s a boy. God doesn’t care about girl problems, Mom.”

There are moments in our faith lives when it is just as important to state what God is not than to offer another an image of what God is. To say to a little girl wondering if God cares about her problems, God’s not a boy. God exists beyond human identity boxes and categories like boy and girl.

And also, it is sometimes very important to say God was a very real human man who lived in a certain time and place. It is sometimes vital, sometimes life-saving, to make bold claims about the God we know. To say to the LGBTQ+ community on our banner in the pride parade: “God delights in you!” To shout from the rooftops “God is love!” to a world that seems more concerned with God is Judge. To whisper at a deathbed “God is here, God is here” when all seems lost. In those moments, hiding behind our humble approach to knowledge of God is not helpful at all. 

So how do we know when using a specific image of God - an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals - is proper or not? 

C.S. Lewis warns in “The Screwtape Letters” that a great way to lead a Christian astray is by teaching them “...to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling.” The ultimate test of a prayer is not how it makes us feel. The true success of a prayer comes down to how it inspires and equips us to live the way of love. Same goes for our images of God. For me at least, the key test is this: Is this image of God liberating or confining? Does this point someone along the way of love or does it lead them astray? 

As our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says, It's all about love. If it's not about love, it's not about God. If it's not about love, it's not about God.

Every image of God has a limit and every image has a danger. No image of God is universally compelling or healing to all people. Take the metaphor of God as Father or God as Mother, for example. Folks who have had a damaging or abusive relationship with their mother or father have told me about how that kind of language shuts down their relationship with God rather than opens it up. Or worse, how those names for God kept them chasing after an unhealthy, insidious version of love-that-is-not-love-at-all. At the same time, those folks with the same sort of experience with their parents have also told me how approaching God as a loving father or nurturing mother has been profoundly healing and has guided them to be better parents to their own children. What’s most important is that question, again: does this image of God expand my capacity for love of God, love of self, and love of neighbor?

So here’s my challenge for you: Try out new images for God this week in your thoughts and in your prayers. See what happens. Where does God the nursing mother lead you? What does God as lurking leopard, generous baker, or skillful seamstress empower you to do in the world? Do those metaphors enrich your ability to love?

Keep my commandment to love your neighbor, yourself, and each other, and you’ll be loving me, says Jesus. Love me and you'll be loving God. 

God the Father, God the Mother, God the Not-Parent-At-All, thank you for being more than we can imagine. Keep drawing us into your love. Amen.