God's self-portrait
Micah 6: 6-8
from Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
January 29, 2023
Since I was a child I have been walking, traveling, becoming, talking with God. I grew up in church and fell in love with Bible stories from an early age. After my parents tucked me in at night, I would invite God to come in, sit down on the side of the bed and talk to him (him because that’s what I was taught) about what a six-year-old talks about: the dog, the cat, my family, my friends. Then I’d say goodnight to God and ask Jesus to come in. We’d have roughly the same conversation. There was no conversation with what I knew as the Holy Ghost because I was a child and I was afraid of ghosts. But God was always a very real presence, the one responsible for all living things, and the author of my life. And Jesus was a good friend, the best friend I could ever have.
It was a pretty simple faith. When things were good, God was good. When things were difficult, hard, and painful, it hurt all the more because if God is good and loving, how can God allow such suffering, loneliness, and despair? As a teenager I still talked to God before falling asleep, but now with tears and anguish over my parents’ divorce, my father moving away, how disconnected and needy I was, begging to know why my life was so full of grief. Like the psalmist, “I found myself in trouble and went looking for God; my life was an open wound that wouldn’t heal” (Psalm 77: 2, The Message). I wanted God to rescue me.
One night I had a dream in which Jesus, unrecognized by those who needed his help, came to help end a conflict and suffered with a young woman who had been wounded and healed her. I believed that God was speaking to me through this dream. God would suffer with me and heal me but I needed to recognize God already working in my life. From then on, everything changed; not the circumstances in my life but how I experienced them. Through this dream I also felt a call to ministry, that if I could make a difference in the life of a young person, much the way my church had saved my life, I would give my life to that.
It wasn’t until I left full-time ministry for parenthood that the questions began in earnest. Not having a congregation to inform my reading, I read where my longing took me. Being a mother led me to renew my search for the sacred feminine that began in seminary because I needed a Mother in heaven who would help me be a mother on earth. I read The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd, books by John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, Diana Butler Bass, Anne Lamott, Barbara Brown Taylor, and If Grace is True by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland. I read poetry by Ellen Bass, Marie Howe, Mary Oliver, and Wendell Berry. I learned about panentheism, the idea that God is in all things and all things are in God. I gravitated toward process theology, that God is always changing, just as the universe is always changing, and everything is interconnected and interdependent.
After September 11, and then Sandy Hook, the question that continued to burn within me was, “If God cannot rescue us or protect us, what is God for?” The suffering-with-us God was no longer enough. I read these words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written while he was in prison, and I heard truth I didn’t want to hear but truth nonetheless: “God would have us know that we must live as [those] who manage our lives without [God]. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us. The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets [God’s self] be pushed out of the world onto the cross. [God] is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which [God] is with us and helps us.” Once again, I felt like I was on my own, whatever faith I had unraveling, my questions like pulling a thread.
But it was author and Afrofuturist Octavia Butler who disturbed all my notions of God with the words “God is Change”, change being a power greater than ourselves, the greatest power there is. So many times, I felt life was at the mercy of inexorable change, but I wanted, needed a God who cared. So, if in her future world God is Change, then it would mean that “God is Love” had failed. In Octavia’s words, “Belief initiates and guides action—or it does nothing.” We can believe God is Love all we want but if it does not initiate and guide our actions, it does nothing.
The prophet Micah would agree wholeheartedly. Those who thought they were the elite of God’s people were offering sacrifices stolen from the poor to a God who is in solidarity with the poor and oppressed, a God who brought this people out of oppression. This is a God who rescues, a God who saves but for what? So God’s people can show off their generosity of ill-gotten goods? It is like prayer without action, without repentance, without righting our wrongs. Love is a verb. Love is enfleshed or it is nothing.
Author and activist James Baldwin wrote, “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him.” I am not ready to give up on God as Love. I’m not ready to give up on God as justice, which Cornel West said is what love looks like in public.
But I can no longer believe in a God as a superior being, as a personal source of power, someone or something to which I consign my agency. Within the last few years I have come to the awareness that I am a Christian Atheish Humanist.
Christian, in that Jesus (remember who this Jesus is) is my guru, my teacher, who provokes me, challenges me, disturbs me, who loves the world better than I do; Atheish, in the words of comedian Neil Brennan, I’m rather agnostic about my atheism. I believe that if God is Love and active in this world, it is through us, the power that resides within each of us and in our life together. I am content to leave our origin and what lies beyond this existence a mystery; Humanist, in that where I need help in my faith is my faith in humanity. In the 12-step tradition, the second step states, "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." If someone cannot connect with a Higher Power in a traditional sense, they are encouraged to think of the group as their Higher Power, that the group possesses wisdom and knowledge that they do not.
I have found my Higher Power and it is you. You are the very real presence of God. Everyone. It is the world. It is everything about this existence. All that is, is God’s self-portrait. Everyone, everything has dignity and worth. Everyone, everything contains a lesson or a blessing, sometimes both. Everything contains a choice: how will I respond, who will I be, what will I change or create or diminish or destroy? I too possess the power to be a lesson or a blessing or both, which is an awesome, humbling responsibility.
So, when you hear me say "God", this is what I mean. When I pray, I open myself to the Source of Life and Love, the wisdom of this existence, the mystery in which we all live and move and have our being. When I pray, I accept that there is a power greater than myself and that I am not the main character in my story. When I pray, I acknowledge I don’t know everything and that I need help beyond my abilities. When I pray, I recognize, in the words of Shakespeare, that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in my philosophy. When I pray, I trust that life will unfold as it will and that I will have the love and the courage to meet it. When I pray, I know that I am not alone.
I say all this because maybe some of you have similar thoughts and feelings and think that because your beliefs in God have changed, that you are questioning whether you still belong, can still be part of this church. I think if Church, if community is to have a future, it really needs to be focused more on how we want to live rather than what we believe. And not just how we want to live but justice and wholeness for all people, especially the marginalized and criminalized and politicized, justice and wholeness for all creatures, the earth itself, and actions that lead to that. Loving God by loving our neighbor with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Make our welcome truly extravagant, loving wastefully, unconditionally. Practice incarnation. God’s self-portrait.
Benediction
Go forth into the world in peace.
Be of good courage.
Hold fast to that which is good
and render to no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the faint-hearted;
support the weak; help the afflicted.
Honor all people.
Love and serve God,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The grace of our Savior Jesus Christ be with us all. Amen.
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
January 29, 2023
 |
| Photo of a human figure in shadow looking up at the Milky Way and a night sky full of stars and planets. Because of a filter, the sky is tinted gold, pink, lilac, and blue. |
Since I was a child I have been walking, traveling, becoming, talking with God. I grew up in church and fell in love with Bible stories from an early age. After my parents tucked me in at night, I would invite God to come in, sit down on the side of the bed and talk to him (him because that’s what I was taught) about what a six-year-old talks about: the dog, the cat, my family, my friends. Then I’d say goodnight to God and ask Jesus to come in. We’d have roughly the same conversation. There was no conversation with what I knew as the Holy Ghost because I was a child and I was afraid of ghosts. But God was always a very real presence, the one responsible for all living things, and the author of my life. And Jesus was a good friend, the best friend I could ever have.
It was a pretty simple faith. When things were good, God was good. When things were difficult, hard, and painful, it hurt all the more because if God is good and loving, how can God allow such suffering, loneliness, and despair? As a teenager I still talked to God before falling asleep, but now with tears and anguish over my parents’ divorce, my father moving away, how disconnected and needy I was, begging to know why my life was so full of grief. Like the psalmist, “I found myself in trouble and went looking for God; my life was an open wound that wouldn’t heal” (Psalm 77: 2, The Message). I wanted God to rescue me.
One night I had a dream in which Jesus, unrecognized by those who needed his help, came to help end a conflict and suffered with a young woman who had been wounded and healed her. I believed that God was speaking to me through this dream. God would suffer with me and heal me but I needed to recognize God already working in my life. From then on, everything changed; not the circumstances in my life but how I experienced them. Through this dream I also felt a call to ministry, that if I could make a difference in the life of a young person, much the way my church had saved my life, I would give my life to that.
It wasn’t until I left full-time ministry for parenthood that the questions began in earnest. Not having a congregation to inform my reading, I read where my longing took me. Being a mother led me to renew my search for the sacred feminine that began in seminary because I needed a Mother in heaven who would help me be a mother on earth. I read The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd, books by John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, Diana Butler Bass, Anne Lamott, Barbara Brown Taylor, and If Grace is True by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland. I read poetry by Ellen Bass, Marie Howe, Mary Oliver, and Wendell Berry. I learned about panentheism, the idea that God is in all things and all things are in God. I gravitated toward process theology, that God is always changing, just as the universe is always changing, and everything is interconnected and interdependent.
After September 11, and then Sandy Hook, the question that continued to burn within me was, “If God cannot rescue us or protect us, what is God for?” The suffering-with-us God was no longer enough. I read these words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written while he was in prison, and I heard truth I didn’t want to hear but truth nonetheless: “God would have us know that we must live as [those] who manage our lives without [God]. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us. The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets [God’s self] be pushed out of the world onto the cross. [God] is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which [God] is with us and helps us.” Once again, I felt like I was on my own, whatever faith I had unraveling, my questions like pulling a thread.
But it was author and Afrofuturist Octavia Butler who disturbed all my notions of God with the words “God is Change”, change being a power greater than ourselves, the greatest power there is. So many times, I felt life was at the mercy of inexorable change, but I wanted, needed a God who cared. So, if in her future world God is Change, then it would mean that “God is Love” had failed. In Octavia’s words, “Belief initiates and guides action—or it does nothing.” We can believe God is Love all we want but if it does not initiate and guide our actions, it does nothing.
The prophet Micah would agree wholeheartedly. Those who thought they were the elite of God’s people were offering sacrifices stolen from the poor to a God who is in solidarity with the poor and oppressed, a God who brought this people out of oppression. This is a God who rescues, a God who saves but for what? So God’s people can show off their generosity of ill-gotten goods? It is like prayer without action, without repentance, without righting our wrongs. Love is a verb. Love is enfleshed or it is nothing.
Author and activist James Baldwin wrote, “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him.” I am not ready to give up on God as Love. I’m not ready to give up on God as justice, which Cornel West said is what love looks like in public.
But I can no longer believe in a God as a superior being, as a personal source of power, someone or something to which I consign my agency. Within the last few years I have come to the awareness that I am a Christian Atheish Humanist.
Christian, in that Jesus (remember who this Jesus is) is my guru, my teacher, who provokes me, challenges me, disturbs me, who loves the world better than I do; Atheish, in the words of comedian Neil Brennan, I’m rather agnostic about my atheism. I believe that if God is Love and active in this world, it is through us, the power that resides within each of us and in our life together. I am content to leave our origin and what lies beyond this existence a mystery; Humanist, in that where I need help in my faith is my faith in humanity. In the 12-step tradition, the second step states, "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." If someone cannot connect with a Higher Power in a traditional sense, they are encouraged to think of the group as their Higher Power, that the group possesses wisdom and knowledge that they do not.
I have found my Higher Power and it is you. You are the very real presence of God. Everyone. It is the world. It is everything about this existence. All that is, is God’s self-portrait. Everyone, everything has dignity and worth. Everyone, everything contains a lesson or a blessing, sometimes both. Everything contains a choice: how will I respond, who will I be, what will I change or create or diminish or destroy? I too possess the power to be a lesson or a blessing or both, which is an awesome, humbling responsibility.
So, when you hear me say "God", this is what I mean. When I pray, I open myself to the Source of Life and Love, the wisdom of this existence, the mystery in which we all live and move and have our being. When I pray, I accept that there is a power greater than myself and that I am not the main character in my story. When I pray, I acknowledge I don’t know everything and that I need help beyond my abilities. When I pray, I recognize, in the words of Shakespeare, that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in my philosophy. When I pray, I trust that life will unfold as it will and that I will have the love and the courage to meet it. When I pray, I know that I am not alone.
I say all this because maybe some of you have similar thoughts and feelings and think that because your beliefs in God have changed, that you are questioning whether you still belong, can still be part of this church. I think if Church, if community is to have a future, it really needs to be focused more on how we want to live rather than what we believe. And not just how we want to live but justice and wholeness for all people, especially the marginalized and criminalized and politicized, justice and wholeness for all creatures, the earth itself, and actions that lead to that. Loving God by loving our neighbor with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Make our welcome truly extravagant, loving wastefully, unconditionally. Practice incarnation. God’s self-portrait.
 |
| "Jesus Takes a Selfie" by David Hayward. A three panel cartoon. First panel: Jesus takes a selfie with a cell phone. Second panel: Jesus looks at the screen. Third panel: we see the screen which shows faces of all kinds of people, genders, colors, ages. |
Go forth into the world in peace.
Be of good courage.
Hold fast to that which is good
and render to no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the faint-hearted;
support the weak; help the afflicted.
Honor all people.
Love and serve God,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The grace of our Savior Jesus Christ be with us all. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment