June 26, 2011

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 2     Genesis 22:1-18
     Matthew 10:37-42


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Last Sunday was Trinity Sunday, a day set aside to reflect on the Church’s vision of G-o-d as portrayed in the Nicene Creed, today is our turn to reflect on OUR vision of g-o-d. A quick glance at our hymns this morning will quickly give you the thread that ties this theme together. Our opening hymn speaks of a god who comes to us unheard, unseen, unknown in unexpected ways yet calls us to recognize that god’s presence. Before the Gospel we sang of a god beyond, within, between us. At the offertory we will look at how to discover such a god and as we leave how to embody that god.

Then to make the point abundantly clear that this is no easy task we are given two sharply different visions of G-o-d in our readings. Our first reading describes a god that demands the sacrifice of a son but at the last minute relents when it is clear the father is prepared to follow through. This god is revealed as a great and all-controlling power made manifest in the unusual and the extraordinary. In the Gospel that same god’s son says the only thing this god demands is our love and compassion towards one another. This god is made manifest in human interactions as ordinary as giving another a cup of water.

So our mission impossible today, if we choose to accept it, is to answer for our selves the question Lord Alfred North Whitehead asked 85 years ago in our Sentence for the Day: “Today there is but one religious dogma in debate: What do YOU mean by ‘G-o-d’…” 

If you are expecting I’ll have the answer for you by the end of this sermon you will be sadly disappointed. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate your confidence in me that I could if I would. The problem is I won’t because I can’t. After 62 years of life, 3 years of seminary and 30 years of ordained ministry I’m still working on what my picture of g-o-d is. But I have not given up as I have come to understand that seeking to develop that picture is at the core of living my faith, never mind that I don’t expect it to ever come fully into focus.

The other reason I won’t because I can’t is: Why should you accept that my picture of God is correct? Unless you are a spiritual couch potato just accepting the pictures portrayed in scripture or defined by the church, you have already done some work on your own picturing God. This is a very personal and intimate undertaking. It is also a process. The pictures we envision are evolving. Even if theoretically we could all come to accept the same picture of God, along the way we have considered various images that we have accepted or rejected. If we were to take a photo of our present vision of God out of our wallets to compare, I doubt any two would be the same for our journeys in faith may be similar but are not the same.

To understand Whitehead’s question better it might be helpful to know a little more about the man himself. First, Whitehead was not a theologian although he inspired a school of theological thought. He was primarily a mathematician and physicist with a proclivity for philosophy. He was Bertrand Russell’s teacher and later co-authored with him a seminal work on the principles of mathematics. His father and uncles were Anglican vicars and his brother was a bishop, but prior to WWI he considered himself an agnostic. Perhaps because he lost a son in action in France he revived his interest in theology and religion but never formally joined a church. At the age of 63 he accepted a position teaching philosophy at Harvard even though he had never studied or taught it before.

Whitehead’s contribution to theology came in a series of lectures entitled “Process and Reality.” While defending the idea of god it was not the God pictured by the Abrahamic faiths. The god he pictured was formed by his life experience and work as a physicist. He witnessed the collapse of the rigid, fixed Newtonian physics he had been grounded in due to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity describing an ever-changing cosmos. He postulated that as the entire universe is in constant flow and change, God, as source of the universe, could be viewed as growing and changing as well. But he would have cautioned against taking his view as the whole truth. He once observed, "there are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil." Not surprisingly the school of theology he inspired is called “Process Theology.”

I’m not sure about whether or not God is ever growing and changing, but I am sure that humanity’s understanding about God is. It is clearly seen in scripture itself which rather than being God’s Word is our forbearers’ words about God. Or as one scholar puts it:

‘...it contains their stories of God, their perceptions of God’s character and will, their prayers to and praise of God, their perceptions of the human condition and the paths of deliverance, their religious and ethical practices, and their understanding of what faithfulness to God involves’

I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to gain a better picture of God is by having a better picture of our selves and our interactions with each other. Perhaps, it isn’t that we are made in the image of God, but our understanding of God is made in the image of us – and our experiences.

To justify this position I would share with you two unlikely theologians found in the book The Colour Purple. The first is the character Celie, a poor black girl in the American South. She says, “When I found out that God was white and a man I lost interest.”

The church gave her that picture of G-o-d. It has done it in its theology, hymns and prayers. But it has done it most effectively by making sure only people like me – white, middle class, male and heterosexual – get to wear these robes and represent Christ, whom we consider to be one and the same with God. While in the last 30 plus years the Anglican Church in a few places has begrudgingly acknowledged that G-o-d might also look like a woman, we know that at least in NZ the Anglican Church doesn’t currently believe that God looks like Geno, a gay man in a committed relationship.

With such a limited picture of God, is it any wonder so many have lost interest?

Shug, my second theologian expands her friend Celie’s image of God:

“One day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being a part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact when it happens you can't miss it...

She goes on to observe, “I think it annoy God if you walk by colour purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it... People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back...’

If Shug is right that purple is one of the images of God, it is both ironic and tragic that many of those who wear purple in the church are missing the beauty of those like Geno in the world around us. 

My hope is that each of us will take seriously expanding our image of God from what has been handed down to us to one we can see and experience in the present. As our vision expands may we be transformed. As we are transformed the Church will be transformed, even maybe her bishops. It’s a process.

As Geno said a few weeks ago, “It could happen.”