I often wonder what we imagine when we hear the word “God.”
This is an important question for people of faith, because we place significance – not just some significance, but ultimate significance – on “God” – this in spite of the fact that we don’t really know who or what God is.
Today, our modern society tends not to place “ultimate significance” on God. Most people, whether they think of it this way or not, tend to place ultimate significance on human ingenuity – the many great benefits that we have gathered from the scientific method.
This makes sense.
We have made all manner of astonishing strides in technology, engineering and medicine by interpreting empirical data and observing how things interact and exist in the world of three dimensions. And, to be sure, we benefit too! We – people of faith – we take medicine and use indoor plumbing; we are not so foolish as to snub the advantages offered by human ingenuity. But in addition to placing our trust in the many gifts of science, we, as people of faith, make another assertion. We insist that human life is crucially influenced by something that cannot be observed.
By God.
As the Apostle Paul wrote, in his Epistle to the Hebrews: faith is the conviction of things not seen.
But there’s a problem with all of this.
Our language has trouble accounting for this great mystery. When we try to understand the nature of God, we end up using the same language we use when we talk about each other. This is because our language is designed to refer to subjects and objects – things that act, and things that are acted upon. God, who cannot be contained by a physical body, is not limited by the subject/object construction of the world – but our language is ill equipped to express a reality that is not based on this separation. Each time we refer to God with a pronoun like “you”, “he” or even “she” we “ reinforces the idea that God can be thought of in the same way that we think about each other.
**
To illustrate my concern about all this, I want to tell you about a formative memory that happened to me in the hallway of the Emergency Department of the hospital in central Connecticut where I served as an chaplain intern.
I was doing my rounds, walking through the Emergency Department, when a patient waved me over. He was a white guy who I guessed to be about my own age.
“Are you the chaplain?” he asked?
He was lying on an emergency room stretcher – the kind that has wheels especially designed so that the staff can push you to the side of the hallway and forget about you. With a groan, he managed to get up onto his elbow.
“Take it easy…” I said.
“I’m alright,” he said. His voice was gravely with a kind of deep seated weariness. He was dressed in polo shirt and khakis, as if he might, at one time, have been the kind of guy who just finished the back 9 – except that his clothes were shabby and stained from having been on his body for a very long time. He wasn’t fooling anyone – he hadn’t come in from the golf course; he’d been picked out of the gutter.
“I’m not exactly the chaplain,” I said, “really, I’m more like an apprentice chaplain.”
“Well, you’ll do,” he said. “Can you say a prayer for me?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I need you to put in a good word for me with the Big Guy,” he said, pointing upward with a grimey finger.
“Is there something in particular you want the Big Guy to know?” I asked, playing along.
“I need a break,” the man said. “I was sleeping in my car, but it got impounded. My mom’s dead and my Dad won’t talk to me, so when these nurses figure out I’m sober, they’re going to kick me out of here, and I’ll be on the street again.” He paused to let out another groan. “Do you know what it’s like on the street at night?”
“No, I don’t”
“Well, good for you,” he said. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it man.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
“I need a break. I figure you got some pull with Him, right?” He did his pointing routine again. “I need you to do the talking. If you do it for me, maybe something will go my way for a change.”
“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” I said.
“Sure it is,” he said. “You’re a chaplain right – or a rookie chaplain anyway… you’ve got more say so than I do, that’s for sure.. Look at me, man. God doesn’t listen to drunks. Believe me, I know.”
I should’ve just given him what he wanted and moved on, but this was a provocation. I couldn’t help myself.
“I believe that you are as much of a child of God as I am. So I think your prayer is as good as mine is.”
The man just laughed at this. I couldn’t help thinking he was laughing at me.
“I guess you are a rookie!” he said. “Man, that is a good one! If you think God listens to drunk prayers, you got another thing comin’. You must not know about drunks, and you sure don’t know about God!”
“Your God sounds like a Judge, or a Prison Warden or something. Is that what you think God is like?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you what God is like. God is a CEO. God is the BIG CEO. The biggest! And he’s running it all just like a business. He’s gotta keep things running smooth. Smooth! So if He likes you, or if you say the right things to Him, He just might listen to you. But if you get in His way… forget it… you’re outta here.”
When I told that man in the hallway of the Emergency Department that I believed that he and I were both children of God, I sounded to him like an idiot. Like an innocent kid.
His addiction, his trauma, his loss – the long cold nights on the street – the force of all of his suffering made my Sunday school truism sound like so much treacle – like hallmark card spirituality.
And yet I would not then, nor will I now, abandon what I understand to be the foundational assertion that lies at the very heart of Jewish and Christian religious truth – that we all share a common inheritance – that we are all made in the image of God.
Rich or poor, it doesn’t matter.
Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low;
proclaimed the prophet Isaiah
the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly,
says Mary, the mother of Jesus…
God has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
When we use the same language to talk about God, that we use when we talk about each other, our minds get in the habit of imagining that God is just one of us.
And from here, it is an easy step to begin to believe that, since God must be powerful – God must resemble what we see in our mind’s eye when we imagine someone power.
In the Middle Ages, when Kings were the first thing people thought of when they imagined power – God became a King.
Today, when a CEO is recognized to hold the greatest power – God becomes a CEO.
In all these cases, the foundational assertion of our religion – that we are made in the image of God – is flipped and the opposite, most dangerous, idea becomes dominant – the idea that God is made in our image!
**
This morning is Transfiguration Sunday.
On this Sunday, we consider the story of the Transfiguration – a passage that relates a play-by-play narration of a transformation. Our religious tradition presents this story as the moment when the part human and part divine Jesus, is transformed into the fully divine Christ.
This moment, then, is critically related to the question that we asked at the outset – “what do we imagine when we hear the word “God?”
Our religion is based on the improbable and audacious premise that God became incarnate and shared our world with us in the form of Christ.
As Christians, then, we have a simple answer to the question that has beset us this morning. When we imagine God, we can imagine Christ.
This is a stumbling block for a lot of people. I’ve met a lot of folks who say that Jesus was an interesting guy with plenty of good things to say, but to say that he is God?… That, for them, is just going too far.
I don’t seem to have much trouble with the idea.
I suppose my comfort with the idea follows from the idea that we spoke of earlier – that idea that we are all children of God.
If we begin from this premise, why should it be all that peculiar to speak of one individual who, more than anyone else, exemplified our baseline condition of sacredness.
If Christ helps us to imagine sacredness – What then, does this story – the story of the Transfiguration, teach us?
Jesus takes three disciples with him, and they climb a mountain apart.
Why doesn’t Jesus let this happen in front of the multitude? Why not, for that matter, purchase a Superbowl half-time ad? Wouldn’t that make more sense? Why so secretive?
If Jesus wanted to run the world like a King, it would’ve made sense to do this transfiguration thing in front of the multitude. If he was CEO, he certainly would’ve bought a superbowl ad. That would’ve made sense.
But Jesus was not a King or a CEO. He was not interested in power.
At the mountain top, Jesus became radiant. The story does not say that the sun shone on him, or that God made him radiant. He just started glowing. This Transfiguration, from human to divine, seems to happen from within, not from without. It is not something that happens to him. It is something that happens from him.
Jesus speaks to Moses and Elijah. This is not a solitary moment – it is a moment that involves community. The community that looks backward (to the prophets) and forward (to the disciples).
When Jesus becomes Christ, he does so within community.
And finally – when God speaks, God does not order the disciples to obey Jesus because he is all powerful.
No.
God might have said that if God wanted to emphasize power.
But God chose not to emphasize power.
In this case, and in many other cases throughout the Gospels, God chose to emphasize love:
“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
To imagine God, then, is not to imagine power. To imagine God is to imagine love.
Amen.