Jan. 29, 2017

Matthew 5:1-11

1 Cor. 1:18-31

 

“God created us in God’s own image, and darn it – we’ve returned the favor.”[1]  That’s a line from a book I’m reading at the moment.  The message is that instead of reflecting God’s image, which is what we were created to do, we’ve imposed our image onto God.  We’ve projected our attributes onto God, and in so doing we’ve reduced God to an impotent cocktail of human qualities, and even if we’ve happened to select good qualities we’ve usually forgotten their inadequacy to capture the divine.

We carry anger within us and so we paint a picture of a god who shares our anger.  We are prone to harsh judgments of others, especially when our points of view are threatened, and so we value the notion of a God who will judge the same.  We have violent tendencies, and therefore often so does our God.

These may sound a bit harsh, and perhaps you are thinking that they don’t really apply to you.  And, fair enough.  So, I’ll give you another example, which I shared with Wednesday night’s study group: I used to feel that if I hadn’t prayed in a while – perhaps a few days got away from me – that upon returning to prayer my first order of business was to adequately beat myself up for the negligence.  I used to feel like, of course, that’s what God would want.  “I’m sorry, God.  It’s been too long, I know.  I’m bad, I’ll do better or at least try harder, but if you don’t mind can we talk now?”  God would want that sort of stuff because I would want that sort of stuff.  If someone had ignored me for days I would want something of an apology before granting the kindness of my dedicated attention again.  …What a relief it is to remember that God’s just a bit better than me!  What a relief to remember that God is much more like the prodigal father who runs out to greet his son even while he’s still far off!  What a relief to hear God say, “Hey!  Welcome back!” rather than “and where have you been?”  That little shift made quite a difference.  It made me want to pray more; it made me actually enjoy my time in prayer.

The point is that we find ways to make God small, to make God like us, and we do it to our own detriment.

In his book, “Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White” Adam Hamilton talks about his tendency to do this.  So, to keep himself in check, to keep himself humble and open, can you guess what he does?  He goes out and looks at the night sky.  He writes, “It would take us 80,000 [years traveling at the speed of light] just to cross our own Milky Way galaxy… Once leaving our galaxy it would take us 42,000 years just to get to the next closest one.  There are more than 100 billion galaxies in the universe.  God stands outside of, and his presence permeates, the entire universe… As one subatomic particle is to my entire body, so I am to the entire cosmos,” he says.  So, he concludes with the Psalmist, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.”[2]

And, that’s a good thing.  We need to find ways to keep it like that.  When we pull God from the heavens we suffer from what Richard Rohr calls “transcendence deficit.”  God has to be utterly beyond us if God is going to have significance within us.[3]  If we are really seeking what it is that Christ is offering – real presence, divine fellowship, sacred love – then God must be more than our human projections.

Our scriptures today bear this out.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are those who mourn; blessed are the meek, and the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers.”  In a unique and profound way God is near to these.  They aren’t valued in and by the world, but that has no bearing on God’s choice.  As one preacher puts it, “God is not necessarily impressed with the impressive.  God does not necessarily feel privileged to be among the privileged.”[4]  This God of the infinite cosmos has decided to act differently.

In fact, says Paul, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.”

He’s talking to the Corinthians about their prestige problems, how they are clamoring after this leader or that, seeking superiority over one another, trying to be among the churchly elite.  Paul’s reply is to remind them that they are people of the cross, people for whom God died a shameful death so that their shame of ever being unknown, of ever being unloved, might be put to death as well.  They’ve been made immeasurably great in God’s eyes, without need of being better than anyone else.

I’ve told you about Flannery O’Connor’s “Warthog from Hell!” story.  A girl in a doctor’s office pegs Ruby Turpin in the face with a book and nearly chokes her to death as she screams those words at her.  Ruby had such judgmental notions of people, and the girl could clearly tell.  In her pious Christian faith, she put people into categories of value.  At the bottom were “poor blacks and white trash,” above them were dutiful, respectable homeowners like herself and her husband Claude, and on top were people with more money and bigger homes.  She was confused a bit by this because she did notice that sometimes those people on top weren’t actually quite as worthy as she.

The story ends with Ruby later on looking into the night sky and contemplating the indecent assault that she suffered.  It’s then that she has this vision of a bridge extending from earth to heaven and a long parade of souls – “white trash, and blacks in white robes, lunatics shouting and leaping like frogs” making their way to God.   And here’s how O’Connor ends it.  “And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claude, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right.  She leaned forward to observe them closer.  They were marching behind the others with dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior.  They alone were on key.  But she could tell by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.”[5]

Even their virtues were being burned away.   What a remarkable phrase!  Even what is good about them is transformed by the presence of a transcendent God.   God is always more – more brilliant, more beautiful, more miraculous. God is always beyond.  It is those most ready to discover that truth who find themselves blessed.  It is those most shocked by it who will bring up the end.

Still, as Paul tells us this “more” comes in strange packages – “Christ crucified” of all things.  We find it when wonder brings us to our knees.  We find it when in serving another we experience instead the grace of another letting us in.  We find it when without answers or solutions we grieve with those who mourn.  We find it in the great and terrifying relief of saying to God, “I am not my own anymore. I am yours.”  We find it when we are willing to in one way another die that spiritual death, so that with him we might be raised.

 

 

[1] Divine Dance, page 157.

[2] Seeing Gray, page 15.

[3] 156.

[4] Denise Anderson, The Christian Century, Jan. 4, 2017, page 21.

[5] FOTW, Year A Volume 1, page 306.