What is Your View of the Nature of God?

 

What Is Your View of the Nature of God?

 

Romans 15:4-13
15:4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

15:5 May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus,

15:6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

15:7 Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

15:8 For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs,

15:9 and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, "Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name";

15:10 and again he says, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people";

15:11 and again, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him";

15:12 and again Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope."

15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

We all know the story of the three blind persons examining an elephant: one feels the trunk and says the animal is like a snake; one feels its massive underbelly, and says it is a huge beast like a buffalo or a whale; and the third, feeling the tail, says it is a tiny, wiggly thing, like a lizard or a snail. So, what is your view of the nature of God? 

 

Those of you going through a particularly tough or challenging time right now may say that God is like the EMTs that arrive with an ambulance at the sound of a siren. God shows up when you most need help, and scrambles to perform triage at your disaster, in an order to offer the best care at that moment in time, and to stabilize you before things get worse. 

 

Others are in a better place, rejoicing in the season, experiencing the joy at the mountaintop, or at least enjoying a crisp trail hike in the pleasant woods of life. For you, God is the Emmaus Road companion, revealing Godself in a hearty meal and through free and stimulating conversation around the table. 

 

The God of those deep in grief is like a divine pillow, able to absorb the denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance without losing patience with the sufferer. Better still, your God “gets it,” and fully joins you in the experience. Regardless of what comes later, you will always have this “fully present” God view as at least part of your picture of the Divine. People who experience God’s presence during grief never forget it.

 

What about the perennial doubter? Her or his God is one able to be rejected, even scorned. This God is responsible for the world’s suffering and pain, as if God really were God, these things would be stopped immediately, with only happiness and joy left in their horrid wake. But since this isn’t happening, the doubter draws the conclusion there IS no God, or at least not one they can believe in. But most doubters (atheists, agnostics, etc.) I have met want to believe in a divine presence that is at the heart of creation. They rarely revel in the idea of humanity as nothing but an “accident” of the mechanisms of the universe, but thankfully they do find some joy in the fact that we ARE here. This reality often spurs them to acts of human kindness and community-based benevolences—many times even more than those who claim to believe in the “love of God” or that they are called to love their neighbor!

 

The God of the dutifully religious is a God of rules and precepts that must be kept, even if doing so leads to more human suffering. Acceptance is “free” from this God, provided all the jots and tittles are cared for. For this God, there is a “right” and a “wrong” way to worship, a “right” and “wrong” way to respond to the challenges of life, and a “right” and a “wrong” way to love one another. And there’s clearly a “right” and a “wrong” way to be the church, given that it is to be the Body of Christ, who always did what his “Father in heaven” said was “right.” This God fits very nicely into a tabernacle or a book.

 

Jesus turning over the tables in the temple is an image relished by those whose God is—first and foremost—in the corner of those seeking justice. On one hand, this view of God keeps an eye out for the oppressed and the exploited, using sometimes radical means to encourage—even force—change in their favor. On the other hand—the really evil hand—this view may lead to extremism, or even terroristic methods, using fear in an effort to accomplish its goals. The thing that the folk who hold this view should keep in mind that in the case of Jesus turning over the tables, the tables AND the temple actually belonged to him. He was free to use them as a prop for his anger over injustice. This is rarely true with the stuff justice seekers may mess with.

 

While these are just a few examples of views of the nature of God, they do cover some of the basic “natures” of God people experience: love, anger, justice, order, even aloofness or apathy. The biblical record is full of accounts of people—sometimes a “whole” people—exhibiting behaviors or pathologies resulting from their view of the nature of God. As a “disciple” and co-worker of Rev. Ron Hoellein’s during my two sojourns at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, this is one of the most valuable questions—and lessons—I learned from him. The question was, “What is your view of the nature of God?”, and the conversation was about owning up to how this view colored how you treated God, others, and even yourself. It certainly impinged upon how you interpreted scripture, or whether you even took it seriously.

 

In so many of the Apostle Paul’s words—including today’s from Romans--we find him offering guidance as to the nature of the God of the Bible. Realized, of course, that even Paul’s guidance, while led by the Holy Spirit, are shaped by his view of the nature of God, too! First, as a rabbinically-trained Jew, next as a Christian-hating crusader, then as a traumatized “victim” of the direct intervention of the Divine, Paul’s views changed radically. Later, as the seasoned missionary, he morphs once again. In Romans, Paul is trying to collect his “views” of the nature of God into one stabilizing, guiding view that the early church can life with, hopefully in peace.

 

Here are a few of the key thoughts put forth in today’s lectionary passage:

 

-God is a God of steadfastness and encouragement. Steadfast may include patience, but in my understanding, it is more the “solid rock” imagery of Jesus. We all know what encouragement is, especially because it is something we all need, even crave. The encouraged soul is the empowered soul. At our highest level of Christian functioning, we are enable to turn and be a “rock” for others and a source of the kind of encouragement that first boosted us.

 

-God is a God of welcoming, even as Jesus welcomed the “least, the last, and the lost,” as we are fond of saying. The United Methodist Church that is about to split in two, thanks to competing and adversarial views of the nature of God, used to have a slogan, “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors.” Unfortunately, all three of these core elements of a functional community of faith are now quite in question, as the denomination fights over who goes where, who gets what, and who is “right” vs. who is “wrong.” But Paul makes clear that Jesus—if you want to truly follow HIM—is the welcoming aspect of God, incarnate. He opened doors that religion had closed, touched people it had declared untouchable, and loved those (especially the Gentiles) that religion said where quite unworthy.

 

-God is a God of confessing, or witnessing. But this is not at all what some think it is. The confessing church, as evidenced by the Barmen Declaration during the Nazi era, was one that stood against the fascism, hate, and terminal persecution of the marginalized. Note Paul’s use of the word here in Romans, where he is addressing the still-present hatred of Gentiles that existed in the early church, thanks to the Jewish influence. (Note here that I am using “Jewish” as a cultural reference to an “exclusive” religious population of that period, speaking not of believing, practicing Jewish siblings today.) Paul is referencing Jesus’ words, where Jesus is preaching inclusion of Gentiles by the gospel, and telling the “religious” in his audience that they, too, must be willing to include them, if they wanted Jesus to “confess” them before God. A “confessing” God is not one that confesses rules, dogmas, or even specific, agreed-upon interpretations of holy writ, but a God who includes ALL, who preaches (witnesses) this inclusion, and “praises” and “confesses” others who do the same.

 

-God is a God of hope, joy, peace, and power. The nature of this God is that God is a uniter, not a divider, to borrow a quote from a 21^st century politician. Hope, joy, peace, and power, for Paul—and Jesus—were central to God’s actual nature, as was the love that empowers and binds them all together. 

 

Paul is trying so hard to accurately frame the nature of God as evidenced by Jesus Christ, for only in seeing and believing that this IS the nature of God, can the church truly become the Body of Christ for a hurting world in need of redemption and reconciliation. Where did we go wrong? Was it in believing that the “sinners in the hands of an angry God” was an accurate view? Or when we burned heretics at the stake? Or is it what we are doing in the current “United Methodist Church” where we are choosing sides and bringing a meat clever down on something that has labored for decades now to confess its unity?

 

If Paul were alive today, he would be heinously disappointed with what we have done to the church he worked so hard to healthily launch. Jesus IS alive today, and I’ll be he’s not happy, either. Jesus gave his life witnessing to the loving, hope-filled, peace-enabling, and empowering nature of God. In his resurrection, he conquered the power of death, but unfortunately, he was not able to take away the deadly pain with which we continue to inflict each other, in the name of religious purity. Paul couldn’t accomplish this, Jesus has yet to bring it about, and one has to believe the Holy Spirit is grieved with the current “confession” of the church, in this regard.

 

As Advent week two is before us, may we celebrate the return of Jesus by resolving to recapture the first lessons he brought to us! May we adopt a healthy, uplifting, loving, hopeful, and biblical view of the nature of God! And may the people who call themselves the “people of God” resist turning the pruning hooks back into spears, and strive for peace with one another, instead! Amen.