GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY?

Transcription

1 Matthew 6: 5-13; Job 38: 1-7, GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY? God the Father? Almighty? We don t hear those words very much, do we? Here in church we address God in prayer every week, but we rarely, if ever, say Almighty God, or heavenly Father. Those used to be the most common ways to speak to, or about God, up until the early 80 s perhaps? Do you remember the prayer of confession that was printed in the back of the old hymnary, which was used very frequently in United Church services? It began like this: Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men. We haven t used that prayer for many years. Sometimes we used to repeat the Apostles Creed, which is still said regularly in Anglican and Catholic churches. It begins: I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. That ancient creed, from the second century still stands in our Voices United today, but we never use it (at least not in this congregation). We repeat the new creed instead: We are not alone, We live in God s world. We believe in God, who has created, and is creating. So a shift has gradually occurred, over 30 years or so, in our language about God. We may consider why we ve changed in this respect. First of all, faith and theology has always been shifting, down through the centuries. We re always trying to speak in a way appropriate to our times, always looking for ways to think more deeply, and more adequately about God. The church has always embraced change, within continuity. I am not suggesting that we should shift back to that older way of speaking. I guess that, as a theological teacher in a theological school, I was one of the people who encouraged and promoted that shift. Now in the United Church we more commonly address God as Creator, Creator Spirit, Gracious God, or simply Holy One, or Eternal One.

2 So does that mean that we no longer believe that God is our Father, or that God is Almighty? Have we been intimidated by the criticisms of the secular world? Have we backed off, retreated from our basic beliefs? Well, I don t think so. Our faith may remain essentially the same, though we seek to understand it more deeply, and to speak of God more adequately and truly. Let s begin with Father. We ve read from Matthew 6 this morning that Jesus taught us to pray, Our Father, who art in heaven. Even though the term Father has been removed from some of our hymns, and we rarely address God as Father, the Lord s Prayer is the one place where we continue to use this term every week; this prayer is so well beloved there s no way we would want to set it aside. In the New Testament we constantly hear Jesus speak of my Father, and your heavenly Father, and our Father. Sometimes in the Greek New Testament, the word Abba appears Abba Father in Aramaic, the language that Jesus actually spoke. It seems the disciples remembered Jesus speaking of his Abba. The memory was so vivid, that many years later it was passed on into the scriptures in Jesus own original tongue. Abba father is an intimate term. It implies a loving relationship. Not a remote, threatening authority figure, but someone very close. Evidently, this is how Jesus experienced God, and he encouraged his disciples to think of God as a loving Father. Now does this mean that the Creator of the universe is literally a father like, I m a father, and many of you are fathers? Is God literally a male progenitor? You can understand why, late in the 20 th century, many Christian women became dissatisfied with that idea. As one woman theologian put it: If God is male, then male is divine. In other words, if God is actually male, then men are more like God than women are.

3 And indeed, in most traditional societies, men have held all the positions of power and authority, and have generally been dominant over women. And so, it was argued, if we keep talking all the time about God as Father, we subtly perpetuate and legitimize the dominance of males over females. Now women in the 20 th century, were increasingly unwilling to accept the dominance of men, or the idea of a male God. After all, for the first time in history women were entering into the learned professions in large numbers. There were women lawyers, engineers, scientists, doctors, scholars of all kinds, ordained ministers and theologians, and yes, premiers, prime ministers. Maybe soon we ll have a woman American president. Can we really have a male God, called Father, sitting on top of the pyramid? You can see why that became a problem. Maybe you ve heard the story of the astronaut who went into outer space in a rocket ship. When he returned to Earth the reporters were all around him, asking, Did you see God up there? The astronaut answered, Yes, I did. What does he look like?, they asked. He answered: She s black. The story illustrates, of course, the absurdity of trying to describe God in human terms. Now, we ve always known that God is not male or female. We ve always known that God as Spirit is beyond gender. More than that, we ve always known that all our words fall short when we try to speak about God. Our little finite minds are incapable of grasping or comprehending the infinite power and mind, the eternal One, who stands at the beginning and end of all things. We humans can only talk baby talk when we speak of God. So we know that all our words for God are analogies or metaphors. We use metaphors all the time about all kinds of things. For example, Jesus called King Herod that fox. Obviously, Herod was not literally a fox, but he was like a fox: crafty, tricky, and a thief.

4 My wife used to call our toddlers little lambs. Come on, little lambs, time for bed. Obviously, they were not literally little lambs, but something like little lambs. Now the Bible is rich in metaphors about God. We hear that God is a consuming fire. God is a great Wind. God is a King. God is a mighty rock. All metaphors. Of course, God is not literally any of these things. But all of them are true. So also, when we say God is our Father, we are using a metaphor. The fatherhood of God is a very important metaphor, the main one used by Jesus. We should not lose this metaphor; it may be especially meaningful to boys and men. If in the past we over-masculinized God, we should be careful now not to over-feminize God. But motherly and female metaphors are also there in the Bible. For example, in Hosea God is compared to a mother bear. Isaiah 66 says God s love is like a mother s love. Jesus compares God to a woman sweeping her house for a lost coin. In the text I read this morning from Job we hear of God s womb.! All of these are vivid metaphorical expressions. It seems valuable to balance the metaphors, in order to enrich our thinking about God. They are all ways in which we strive to speak about that great infinite Source, power and mind, from whom we all originate and to whom we will all return. While Father is one important metaphorical way of speaking about God, it may not be a suitable metaphor for everyone. People whose fathers were cruel, or unloving, may not find it helpful to think of God as father. But if we do think of God as Father, we think of God as transcendent, beyond creation, beyond space and time - Other than creation. The metaphor of Father implies that God is the external origin of creation, just as human fathers are, biologically, the external origin of their children. But if we speak of God as Mother, we summon up another good image of God as the divine womb from which we are all born. It helps us to think of ourselves as being in God, and God being in us. It s an even more intimate metaphor than father.

5 Perhaps thinking of God as Mother also helps us to move away from any macho notion of God as all controlling or domineering. And here we come to the notion of God as Almighty. Almighty means, of course, all powerful, omnipotent. Why don t we use this term very much anymore? Have we decided that God is not Almighty? I don t think so. Nevertheless, many people are uncomfortable with addressing God as Almighty, perhaps because it seems to imply that God is all-controlling. Definitely, for Christian faith, God is not mainly about power. We are never told that God IS power. We are told that God IS love. God is powerful, yes, but if we focus on God as power, we run the danger of legitimizing human domination. In the past it was common for people to think that whatever happened was God s will. Perhaps many people still think this way. Weather disasters were said to be acts of God. Whether good things, or bad things, it was part of Christian piety to say Thy will be done. Even a terrible accident, involving the death of children or young people, was thought to be, in some mysterious way, God s will. The time and manner of someone s death was thought to be God s personal, direct decision. It was common to say The Lord has decided to take him. Natural disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes, and terrible diseases, were seen as somehow providential, all part of a divine plan. And this way of thinking has been comforting for some people. Things that seemed very very bad could appear to be good in disguise, because they were, in some inscrutable way, God s will. But this whole idea has become less credible in the last half century or so. Most of us have found it hard to believe that the good and gracious God, whom we find revealed in Jesus, actually wills the great wars, the holocausts, the natural disasters and dreadful diseases.

6 After World War II there developed something called post-auschwitz theology. We began to see that concentration camps and genocide were certainly not God s will. Rather, God actually suffered in and with the victims of such atrocities. The idea that God willed everything has come to be seen as an unbiblical idea. In the Bible many things happen that are contrary to God s will. The biblical God is not all-controlling. In the Bible, God weeps over our violence and hatred. As for Jesus, he heals the sick; he never suggests that disability or sickness are God s will. So, considering all the evil and suffering in the world, does this mean that God is absent and inactive, and perhaps powerless? Now, as modern people we know that normally the physical world operates according to natural laws. These laws make our world more or less dependable and predictable. The physical universe has a certain rationality. It is not a mere chaos. What we call the laws of nature actually reveal God s rationality, might and power. These are, after all, God s laws. God rules in and through natural processes. The Creator has built into the universe a certain autonomy, the autonomy of natural laws, and the autonomy of free human beings, who make their own decisions. Apparently God respects the autonomy of the created order, and does not constantly intervene in supernatural ways. It would appear that in some way God is limited, perhaps self-limited. Perhaps, given creation as it is, God cannot actually do anything and everything. A common complaint against God is that, if God is Almighty, why couldn t he have done a better job, and created a world without all this suffering and misery? It s an obvious question. And I m sorry, but I don t have the answer. We cannot begin to fathom what choices God made in creating the universe. We don t know whether God could have created a completely different universe. This is beyond us. The poet who wrote the book of Job imagines God answering such complaints: God says:

7 Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? Now, we might add that the New Testament gives us a different perspective on God and God s power. There we hear of a God who is the direct opposite of an all-controlling patriarch. This is the self-emptying God, who, in Christ, comes among us as a servant, who takes on our human weakness, suffers with us, and even enters into our death. The cross that stands before us here in the church, proclaims the holy One who overcomes the power of evil and death from within. The resurrection reveals the God who finally has power over death and evil, who finally determines the destiny of each of us, and of all humanity, and of all creation. The resurrection shows us, in a quiet and gentle way, the mighty God, who will finally prevail, and bring all things to their completion and consummation. That s why we pray Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done. For thine is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever. And so, though we may understand our faith somewhat differently, and though we may speak to and about God using different words, the essentials of our faith have not changed. Our faith remains the firm ground on which we stand, which directs and inspires our lives, which gives meaning and hope. We know that whatever disasters or tragedies may await us, we can face them with faith and confidence, because We are finally in the hands of our gracious eternal Mother, our almighty Father, who is disclosed to us in our Lord Jesus Christ.

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