Who do we think God is?

Christianity is often in the news, on TV, in the tabloid media, on the internet and of course all over social media.  Mostly though, I don’t hear the Gospel being preached, at least not very clearly.  How many times do we instead see court cases regarding whether someone can wear a cross at work, whether a registrar should keep or lose their job over their stance on same sex marriage, of child abuse carried out in one church or another, or because of warped views on theology; of cases of young babies at the centre of complex medical cases with grieving parents at loggerheads with healthcare professionals.  Ultimately- we hear of course about the extremes of misogyny and homophobia spread by a particular brand of so called evangelical Christianity.

What sort of image of God is portrayed in the media then? A poe faced old Man who doesn’t trust women, and trusts men even less; with a long list of rules as long as …. Well eternity?

An all-powerful super-being who randomly chooses who to heal and who to ignore?

A saviour who stands by and lets humanity tear itself apart?

Or an irrelevance, a scientific oddity of the gaps, thought of as a fairy story, something perhaps to keep the masses happy or at least occupied, a powerful placebo in times of trouble or distress.

No wonder church attendances are dropping if that is what people think of God.  No wonder Christians are viewed with a mixture of pity, of irritation and sometimes ridicule.

Perhaps if the Gospel was lived out, I mean really lived out, it might be a different story.  Ironically the closest we have come in recent times to see someone live out a life in the way Jesus demanded of us was Ghandi, and he rejected Christianity due to the way he was treated by the church of the time. He then went on to challenge the foundations of an unfair system by advocating nothing less than peaceful protest and support of the poor and disenfranchised.  Martin Luther King followed in some degree with a similar call and message.  Both ultimately paid a high price; but in so doing changed much.

Why do we get such diverse images of God portrayed in our midst?

Perhaps it is the human interest in bad news rather than good that seeks us to remember more a picture of a micromanaging God; Psalm 139 – you knit me together in the womb – or of a jealous and vengeful God – Deuteronomy – All these curses will fall on you, pursue you and overtake you until you have been destroyed for not having obeyed the voice of Yahweh.

But in today’s reading, also taken from the Old Testament, we hear a voice instead of love, - He redeems your life from the abyss….Yahweh is tenderness and pity…as the distance of east from west; so far from us does he put our faults – We hear a voice of patience, of faithfulness and of understanding.

Some of you will ask, and rightly so, which voice is real then?  How can scripture portray God in so many ways?  As a preacher, the honest answer I can give you is I don’t know.  One thing I have learnt though is that scripture is often writing of a significant depth.  One passage can have multiple meanings within it.  One passage can have multiple interpretations; true Bible study is often a bit of a battle with the words.  Even then with modern translations, we can’t be sure that what we get is what was originally meant by the original scribe.  We take a lot on trust and have to hold our opinions with a fair amount of humility.  We might get it wrong.  And the older the passage, probably the truer this is, often what we still have are scraps of the original manuscripts.  It would be like claiming that every word of Harry Potter is true when you had 3-4 words of one page of one book, with subsequent translations from one language to another and back.  What I am saying is we need to be careful in our certainty and be willing to embrace a sense of mystery and the unknown about God.

Of course, there is a way that we can be a little more certain of God’s nature, and that is to attempt to get to know the character of the man called Jesus.  If we claim that Jesus really was the incarnation of God, that is really was God in human form then perhaps if we look at some of the Old Testament scriptures through the lens of Jesus then it might become just a little easier to look at that particular puzzle and hopefully make a little more sense.

The writers of the Old Testament wrote their understanding and interpretation of God.  There were many writers and it is not therefore surprising that there were many interpretations.  God’s nature then almost takes on a rainbow effect.  He is loving but stern, patient but wrathful, jealous but forgiving.

The Gospel writer Mark, opens his Gospel with the words, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God”.  There you have it.  In the very first sentence.  Everything that follows relates back to this statement. Jesus is the Messiah, he was also in some mysterious way that was very difficult to put into words, God.

What then is the picture of Jesus, remember God in human form, that Mark portrays? In our Gospel reading today Jesus is seen not only associating with tax collectors but sharing a meal with them and others collectively termed sinners.  This was a big deal.  Hospitality was an important part of the social fabric of the time. More so than perhaps today.  The act of eating with someone meant you were showing them acceptance.  For a Jew this was replete with difficulties, because of the strict laws of purity that had built up over the years, (an example of interpretation).  Jesus’ response is quite simply to drive a proverbial horse and cart straight through their interpretation of purity and showed how the cleanliness laws were actually breaking society apart.  He then went on to show a disregard of fasting, and quickly developed a bit of a reputation as a drunkard and a glutton. So much so that even John the Baptist is forced to ask the question of him, “Are you the messiah?”

The issue is not that Jesus was plain useless at things like infection control, but rather that he was highlighting the abject hypocrisy of a society that had created its’ own ideas on what was right, on what was acceptable, and therefore what was “clean” and what wasn’t.

Jesus therefore acted in such a way to show people how empty the current situation was and how it needed to be changed. 

We can’t make ourselves clean, not in God’s eyes.  It is only by God, in God that we can be that which God wishes us to be – our true self.

So when you look at the various depictions of the Church today, which do you think is most likely to be spreading the real Gospel.

A Church that disciplines it’s followers for watching TV?

A church that spies on it’s followers?

A church that sees the rest of God’s creation as an enemy?  Or perhaps a Church that tries it’s best to follow the example of the only example we have really had of God.  By trying to live as Jesus lived, accepting that all people, all people regardless of faith, race, gender or sexual orientation, are equally worthy of love and respect.  Accepting that our understanding of rules however fair and good they may seem to us, always need to be held up against the mirror that is God.

It isn’t easy being that kind of Church.  But then it wasn’t easy for Ghandi, it wasn’t easy for Martin Luther King, and it wasn’t easy for Jesus when he lived the archetypal life based on love.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit

Amen