KNOWING GOD
Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8
I love storytelling. I love to tell stories; I love to hear
stories told; I love to read stories. And hands-down, the best
collection of stories is found in the Bible. I can imagine
Philip’s grandchildren rolling their eyes and saying, “Gramps, we’ve
heard that one before” as he told again of his amazing adventure with
the Ethiopian eunuch. The richness of scripture stories is akin
to the widow’s oil and meal in the time of Elijah – no matter how much
is taken, no matter how thin it seems, there is always more. To
engage the Holy Writ is akin to sitting down to a feast of the finest
foods – where to begin, when to stop?
Then we add a sideboard to the feast – a secular holiday - Mother’s
Day. Some might object to integrating the secular into our
worship but if observance should be included, it is Mother’s day.
With no intent to elevate that above our central purpose today of
worshipping God and meeting him in this place, surely recognition of
our mothers and motherhood is fitting in the context of giving thanks
for the blessings of this life as we seek to deepen our relationship
with God.
In fact, our earliest relationships with those who care for us generate
some potent and lasting images of God. Unfortunately, our
relationships with those who give us birth and who raise us up in
childhood are often far from ideal. At birth, by the very nature of our
immaturity, we are necessarily trusting of those on whom we depend for
our basic survival needs – food and drink, clothing, shelter,
protection, and yes, even nurture including sight, sound, and touch.
One of my coworkers celebrates her birthday today – and as it happens,
the day she was born was Mother’s Day in that year. That set me
to thinking that in a very real way, the day we are born is, after a
fashion, Mother’s Day, no matter the calendar. That vital force
that separates potential from realization is called birth – a privilege
physically reserved for mothers.
And it is the mothering nature – whether provided by male or female –
that is the nurturing force in our lives, the source of safety and
inclusion, of drawing the family into a unit with love and
self-sacrifice. We tend to contrast the role of mother with that
of the father nature – whether male or female – which gives emphasis to
the will to learn and work and provide, to protect and maintain, also
offered with love and self-sacrifice.
But let’s be honest – our own fathers and mothers were not always the
best images for what God as parent might offer to us. In fact,
some of us were so abused by our parents that to use that imagery for
God only serves to create a deep barrier to receiving the love by which
God draws us to himself. I recall an instance where a friend was
caring for a young girl in a foster parent role. The child would
ask for a spanking or to be slapped at bedtime – it was what she knew,
what she took for love. Imagine her concept of God as a loving
parent as she grew into adulthood.
“In the beginning,” with the creation of human as male and female – in
God’s image – we have a strong intimation that God is greater than our
anthropomorphic icons. Even so, these icons are necessary for us so
that in our limited capacity for understanding, we might grasp even a
hint of God’s essence. Little wonder that the ancient prophets –
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea - spoke of God’s fatherhood as well as God’s
motherhood. In more recent times, medieval mystics such as
Hildegarde and Julian of Norwich, spoke of Jesus our mother, not in a
way that would detract from the traditional understanding of God but in
ways that enlarge our relationship with him.
In our own time, I think one of the most powerful stories I have read
was a sermon related by a Jewish rabbi, Margaret Wenig. This
story, this sermon, is entitled “God is a Woman and She is Growing
Older,” and was prepared almost entirely by stringing together quotes
from the holy day liturgy, readings from the Hebrew scriptures. I
offer you to hear a rather extended quote (click here to read full sermon):
God is a woman and she is growing older. She moves
more slowly now. She cannot stand erect. Her face is lined. Her voice
is scratchy. Sometimes she has to strain to hear. God is a woman and
she is growing older; yet, she remembers everything.
On Rosh Hashanah, the anniversary of the day on which she gave
us birth, God sits down at her kitchen table, opens the Book of
Memories, and begins turning the pages; and God remembers.
"They now can fly faster than the winds I send," she says to
herself, "and they sail across the waters which I gathered into seas.
They even visit the moon which I set in the sky. But they rarely visit
me." There pasted into the pages of her book are all the cards we have
ever sent when we did not bother to visit. She notices our signatures
scrawled beneath the printed words someone else has composed.
Then there are the pages she would rather skip. Things she
wishes she could forget. But they stare her in the face and she cannot
help but remember: her children spoiling the home she created for us,
brothers putting each other in chains. She remembers seeing us racing
down dangerous roads—herself unable to stop us. She remembers the
dreams she had for us—dreams we never fulfilled. And she remembers the
names, so many names, inscribed in the book, names of all the children
she has lost through war and famine, earthquake and accident, disease
and suicide. And God remembers the many times she sat by a bedside
weeping that she could not halt the process she herself set into
motion. On Yom Kippur, God lights candles, one for each of her
children, millions of candles lighting up the night making it bright as
day. God stays awake all night turning the pages of her book.
God is lonely, longing for her children, her playful ones. Her
body aches for us. All that dwells on earth does perish. But God
endures, so she suffers the sadness of losing all that she holds dear.
Ah, yes, that's where we learned to wipe the tears. It was
from her we learned how to comfort a crying child, how to hold someone
in pain.
"You will always be my child," she says, "but you are no
longer a child. Grow old along with me...the last of life for
which the first was made."
We are growing older as God is growing older. How much like
her we have become. For us, growing older means facing death. Of
course, God will never die but she has buried more dear ones than we
shall ever love. In God we see, 'tis a holy thing to love what death
can touch. Like her, we may be holy, loving what death can touch,
including ourselves, our own aging selves.
God holds our face in her two hands and whispers, "Do not be
afraid, I will be faithful to the promise I made to you when you were
young. I will be with you. Even to your old age I will be with you.
When you are grey headed still I will hold you. I gave birth to you, I
carried you. I will hold you still. Grow old along with me...."
Ahh, that is why we were created to grow older: each added day
of life, each new year make us more like God who is ever growing older.
We see that the love of God expresses itself in creation – as
father, as mother, as servant, as shepherd, as vine. When Jesus
speaks of himself as being the true vine, he is drawing on an image
from early Judaism which envisioned itself as the vine through which
God would nourish the world. The 80th Psalm, the stories from
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Hosea – these served to establish
Israel as God’s vineyard; in the 12th chapter of Mark, Jesus explicitly
identifies Israel – or God’s people - as the vineyard. So this is
actually a rather controversial claim that John records.
I truly hope you can receive this image this morning with the sense of
God inviting, enfolding us into this vineyard with the love of one who
was willing to suffer rejection, torment, death and the grave to defeat
death, to defeat the self-loathing and fear that caused those to whom
he came, to whom he comes, to reject his love and crucify him, thinking
to escape the judgment of darkness that always comes with the light.
This invitation has an analogy in the idea of adoption. I don’t
know how many of you are adopted. There are many reasons that
birth parents cannot raise their children. It always seems sad
when that happens. Yet there is a bright side to the idea that
someone wanted you enough to make you their child even if another gave
you birth – to be chosen. I have had occasion to experience some
of the emotions and ponder the meaning of adoption in my own family -
one of my grandsons was adopted by his father.
What are your images of God this morning? What are your
images of love? Love is willing to sacrifice, willing to renounce
its claim to self and be offered up for the sake of another, to be
willing to follow in the way of life that leads through the cross.
Perhaps John has said it best: “…since God loved us so much, we also
ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love
one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone
who loves is born of God and knows God.”
Amen.
The Rev. John Dryden Burton
St. James Episcopal Church
Springfield, Missouri
EASTER V
10 May, 2009