Years ago, I went to Germany with my parents and youngest sister. The trip was
offered by the alumni association for my mother’s college. One day, our tour guide was sick, so we were left pretty much on our own. The bus driver dropped us off for several hours in a small Bavarian town. Those hours included time for lunch. Mom and Dad took the four of us to a small, typically German restaurant where we had a lovely lunch – a lunch that featured the typical foods of the area. When we got back to the bus, we found that almost all the others (all but two) had gone to McDonalds. It was familiar. Going there asked little of them. Now, they did note a few differences. The McDonalds in Germany had beer on the menu, which for the alumni from a conservative Christian college was something memorable! In the first chapter of her book Wearing God, Lauren Winner talks about coming back to the Bible. She says, “I began to realize that my pictures of God were old… They were old like a seventh-‐grade health textbook from 1963: moderately interesting for what it might say about culture and science in 1963, but generally out of date. My pictures of God weren’t of Zeus on a throne, the Sistine Chapel God. Instead, my pictures were some combination of sage professor and boyfriend…. It lead me on a search: what pictures, what images and metaphors, does the Bible give us for who God is, and what ways of being with God might those pictures invite?” What pictures of God are prevalent in our own church traditions? What pictures dominate our own faith life? It is so easy to limit ourselves to a McDonald’s menu of images for God – images that are familiar, perhaps safe, unchallenging, images that don’t threaten the careful theologies we’ve crafted, our approaches to faith. McDonalds, as a sometimes treat, is OK. But, we know that it is not the best choice for a healthy diet if someone would choose to eat every meal there. So it is with our limited vocabulary for God. If we limit our images, our metaphors, even our names for God, we stunt our spiritual growth. And, sometimes, our vocabulary is even harmful to faith or the ability to have faith. Winner speaks of the familiarity of certain images having a deadening effect on our relationship with God. We become insensitive to their meaning because they aren’t challenged by the myriad of other Biblical images that remind us that all images of God are incomplete. She writes of the Biblical witness referring to God as “clothing, fire, comedian, sleeper, water, dog.” And that is not an exhaustive list! In earlier times, the church lifted up images like drunkard (can you even imagine that as a Biblical image?), beekeeper, homeless man, and tree. What images of God are prevalent in our world? How many think of God as the angry old white man who is judging us? Judge! That’s a prominent image. A woman struggling with her divorce told her pastor that she pictured God as the angry judge who saw the sin of her broken marriage. Many speak on behalf of Christianity in our own society and declare God’s anger, God’s judgment. You would think that God is the Supreme Court. I pulled the book Good Goats: Healing Our Image of God off the shelf. One page asks, “Is God a prosecuting attorney or a defense attorney?” The book invites us to see God as something more than the judge –that is,to see God as the one who wants the best for us. “How do our images of God draw us into worship, reverence, adoration of God?” Winner asks. “How do our images of God help us great one another as bearers of the image of God?” The very wise pastor of that woman going through a divorce said, “You need to change your image of God!” She needed to expand her vocabulary of who God is—and meet the God who wept with her. Winner, an Episcopalian professor at a seminary, was raised in the Jewish tradition. She spoke of a sermon preached by Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig who, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, spoke of God as “your grandmother who yearns for you to visit her.” Years later, Winner discovered that much of her imagery was taken from the Bible. She didn’t make up the idea of God as grandmother. It has strong, strong Biblical roots. This morning’s passage from Deuteronomy gives us a glimpse into the variety of images there are for God in the Bible. Janet Martin Soskice noted that Deuteronomy 32 identifies God as father “who created you,” and Rock that bore you…the God who gave you birth.” “Both paternal maternal imagery are given in quick succession,” she says, “effectively ruling out literalism, as does the equally astonishing image of God as a rock giving birth.” Winner reminds us that the Bible is full of these varied images because each one tells us something about who God is. Carolyn Jan Bohler wrote: Every meaningful metaphor implies some differences between the thing and that to which it points. When a metaphor suggest something quite the opposite of what we think, it can evoke a negative reaction that might actually help us clarify the objects under consideration….To be useful, a metaphor for God needs to evoke [two] reactions at the same time: “Oh, yes, God is like that,” and, “Well, no, God is not quite like that.” Language is always limiting. And each language has its own limitations. I was astounded, when I started seminary, that I was expected to refer to God without gender specific pronouns. I couldn’t write, “God Himself” and not get red marks on the paper! I was introduced to what seemed to be difficult and awkward language. God, Himself, became God’s self. Then, one day, when I was writing a paper, I was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of God as something far more than an anthropomorphized being. The language – uncomfortable at first – invited me to contemplate the mystery of God. Winner wrote of a similar journey. And she noted how bereft we are of images beyond Father, Lord – male. I wondered if she went through the language battles we did when I was in seminary – asking the community to use more inclusive words, partly because it forced the community to look at whether it was being inclusive. A friend spoke of sitting in worship at her home church – hearing the pastor speak to “you men” over and over again. She said, “I kept translating that in my mind, saying that he means men and women. But, suddenly, he said – ‘oh, and this is for you women.’ I realized that his language had not included me.” Why expand our vocabulary for God? Winner speaks of God’s desire for us to be God’s friends – and friends spend time knowing each other. If we see God only in one way, our relationship with God is like many of those we have in our lives – we recognize someone, in a particular context. I know the checker at the grocery store. I know the mail carrier. I know my doctor. But, they’re not my friends. I only know that one part of who they are. How are you known? Are you not known differently by the different people in your life? We have different roles. Shopper, mail recipient, patient, parent, spouse, child, co-‐worker, boss, neighbor, friend. We cannot be summed up by one image, by one title. Something is lost when we become one-‐dimensional. And so it is with God. So, over the next few weeks, we’re going to explore some different images and metaphors for God. Some may resonate with you! Some may be difficult. I would encourage you to face what’s difficult and ask why. Ask God why it’s a difficult image for you. See where that questioning leads you. By no means will we exhaust the images for God. We could probably spend years lifting up a different image each Sunday. Maybe we would be well-‐nourished by such a feast of images! Challenge me. Challenge me to expand the images that we use in worship. I hope this will be an exciting exploration. Please feel free to reflect with me – after church or contact me during the week. Let us feast on the rich imagery given to us in the Biblical witness and encounter the God who seeks our friendship, who desires to be known – as father and mother, as young man and old woman, as tree and spirit, as fire and water, as the one who clothes us, as the laboring woman, as bread and wine, as healing laughter.
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We continue to be mindful of the dangers of this pandemic, so we are not having in person worship services. You may join us on Facebook each week , Sunday morning at 10:30 AM, or watch the service later on Facebook. The services are also connected to this website by sometime on Monday in the worship section.