Based on the readings from last Sunday

I read the apportioned biblical texts for Sunday and was pretty shocked.  Well, the first reading shocked me.   It stayed with me for a long time.   Particularly compared to the Gospel reading.  

So the first reading was the follow-on story of King David and his love-child with Bathsheba.  What happened was at one point he’s looking out his window and he sees on some roof somewhere below him a beautiful woman bathing.   Even though he has a whole bunch of wives already, he wants her to be another wife.   Thing is though, she’s already married to one of his generals – Uriah the Hittite.   So, he makes plans for his general to go and fight the Ammorites.   And he wants Uriah to be in the very front – because there’s a higher chance of him getting killed.   And at some point Uriah does in fact die.   

And here we come to today’s story… David waits for an appropriate time of mourning, and then marries Bathsheba.   Then the prophet Nathan comes to the court and tells King David a story about two men; one who’s rich and has a whole lot of sheep and goats, and a poor man who has only one little lamb.   The poor man treats the lamb as a member of the family.   Then a guest comes to stay at the rich man’s place.   The rich man goes and kills the poor man’s lamb so his guest can have some food.  

King David hears this story… and he’s incensed!    “That man should be put in jail!   He should pay the poor man back!”  So then Nathan says: “You’re that man!”   And he goes and tells him about what he’s done and how God didn’t like what he’d done to be able to marry Bathsheba.   David then repents – and God forgives him… BUT, he’s told through Nathan… the son you’ve had with Bathsheba will die.   And the story continues that the poor innocent child does indeed get some illness and does in fact die.         

Then there’s the Gospel story where Jesus is invited to eat at the house of a Pharisee.   In the middle of the meal, a woman – a sinner (remember though, in our world a “sinner” almost always has to do with some moral failing of some kind.   NOT so back then.   Sins more often than not involved not remaining within the boundaries of ritual purity like touching a dead body, or mixing meat and dairy).  So this sinner woman comes into the house – she begins to kiss Jesus’ feet, to cry all over them, and then dry his feet with her hair.   Then she anoints his feet with some very expensive oiled perfume.  

The host cannot believe Jesus is allowing this woman to touch him!   She’s a sinner of course!   So Jesus tells him a story; a man loaned two other men some money – 50 pieces of silver to one and 500 pieces to another.   But neither one could pay him back – so the man forgives both debts.   “Which man do you think was most grateful?” asks Jesus.   “The one who had the greater debt I suppose”, says the host of the meal.   “Right!”, says Jesus.  Then he looks at the woman but tells the host, “When I came to your house, you didn’t greet me with a kiss.   She hasn’t stopped kissing my feet.   You didn’t wash my feet when I entered.  She has washed them with her tears and has dried them with her hair.  You never anointed my head with oil, but she’s anointed my feet with expensive perfume.   Her sins, which were many, are no longer burdening her.”    And he says to her, “Your faith has saved you.  Your sins are forgiven!    Go in peace.”   

Wow- what a difference.   There’s so much to say on any one of these stories.   They almost sound like opposite stories; one with justice and fulfilling debts – maybe even revenge.   While the other seems to be about grace and mercy.   The thing is, the bible is full of opposites; of God’s judgment and mercy, of death and life, of obligation and gift.  

This does lead me to some questions.   Not “What do you believe?” – like about the texts, or about what the texts might tell you about God, or the people who wrote the texts.   They are all good and interesting questions.   But I was led a little differently.   “How do you come to the beliefs you have?” and yet, “What led you to believe what you believe?” 

This was the seminary thing – we would look at a what we believed… and what the church taught about certain thing, and what that was based on, etc.   Seminary had a particular slant to it for sure… it was of course a Lutheran Seminary.    But the thing was – we already came buying what the seminary was selling.  But seminary did help us understand more deeply, intellectually, theologically what we’d bought; the good, the bad, the ugly, the graceful, the beautiful.

But still, there’s the question that evangelists might ask at your door: “You know there are so many beliefs out there… how do you know which one is the right one?  We have one bible… but so many denominations!   We have one bible… but so many interpretations!”  

Here’s a question for you:  does a fish know water is wet?    We’re around our environment so much that we assume it’s always been that way.  Or we take it for granted that that is the way it’s supposed to be.   Let me ask a question about something you might not be aware you know.   What image of God do you have?    So, think about God.   Might be a difficult question because you’ve probably not thought about this too much.  

Is God male or female?   Or neither… or both and more?   Is God a God of grace… of love… justice?   Or a God of revenge?   Is God meek?   Strong?  Omnipotent?  A friend?  Is there a metaphor that helps you “see” and understand God best?    Now truth be told, God doesn’t need us to have a guiding metaphor… God is whatever God is regardless of what we think… but having some mental construct sure helps us make better sense of this whole “God-thing” for us.       

But guaranteed – you DO have an idea of what God is because if I were to bring up some example of how God may be that goes AGAINST what you (unconsciously) think God to be like, you’d surely know it right off!   It just wouldn’t sit right with you right off the bat. 

The Jewish tradition has an inherent aversion to putting out images of God.   This stems from the commandment against idols and images.   See, here’s the thing…  images “contain”!   They limit.  They encapsulate.   And since God is not limited… any image we might have would be an artificial construct.      But the thing is… we can’t have a concept of God without an image of some sort.   So… how do we work this?   

Well, we go into this knowing that an image… any image… while helpful to us… (you know, to make sense of things better)… isn’t God!    Go into this knowing what you believe about God, whatever you think God is like or not like… it’s only a model to help you.  And it isn’t God.      God is so much broader, bigger… different-er than we can imagine.  

Now I know this runs the risk of all of us thinking that God is in some way merely an intellectual construct.   Again- of course not.  God is bigger than the model.   I’m a Lutheran Pastor, trained in the complexities of theological intricacy (I have to show off four years of grad school somehow, right!?) .  

Oh how hard it is to not fall in love with the God of our imagining!           And love that one more than the “real” God

And yet, as a pastor… can I not say anything relevant at all about God?      Is there nothing to say?       If God is NOT “the model”… what can I say?   Is my job as pastor on any given Sunday to offer comfort, while letting sleeping theological dogs lie?   Well, does the idea that God is not of your creation encourage you or discourage you?   It makes me want to jump head first into that rabbit hole and see where it might go.  

The Gospel story was of a woman who entered the home that Jesus was in, and began kissing his feet, crying, and drying his feet with her hair.  Then she anointed his feet with some expensive perfume.   And the story goes that he tells her her sins are forgiven, that her faith has saved her, and that she can go in peace.  

How do you think the woman in the story would describe God? 

You hearing this story – how would you describe God?

I’m a Lutheran pastor – I buy the whole “God and grace” thing!   Otherwise I don’t think I’d be doing all this.   I believe in a God of life!   I really do!

Now contrast this with the story of David and his marriage with Bathsheba on very dishonest and ethically immoral grounds.   Through the prophet Nathan, God first condemns him… then does in fact forgive David’s sin once he asks for it… but unfortunately the cost of his sin is the life of the child that he and Bathsheba had. 

If you were King David – how would you see God?

And hearing the story of King David (meaning you’re not a character – or even part of the culture)… what kind of God is described?

Now, which description of God are you most attracted to?     And yet the bible has both images of God.  

We all seem to be attracted to some descriptions of God – and not others… some images of God and not others.   We accept some, and we don’t accept others. 

I had a discussion once with a pretty theologically conservative couple many years back.  However this came up, I don’t remember, but in the conversation I said something about – what if homosexuals aren’t that way by choice?   What if they were born that way?   Well, that couldn’t be true for them because they even said, if this were the case, then that would have to mean that God made them that way… and that can’t happen – because this idea went against their beliefs about God.

And yet… what we say about God says more about us and how we want God to be, than it does about God and who/what God really is!    Once, many years ago, I walked onto the day room of the psychiatric ward of the Army hospital at Fort Jackson, SC.   I walked in, saw a group of young soldiers playing cards at a table, went over to them and identified myself as a chaplain, letting them know that I was there if they wanted to talk, pray, shoot the breeze, or whatever.    One of the young soldiers, a young female private, said right off the bat – “I don’t believe in God!”   So I said, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in, and I probably don’t believe in that God either!”       

   

Is God just of our making?  Is there nothing objective we can say about God?  Can we not make any absolute claims about God?  Answer this by looking in yourself: whatever absolute claims or objective statements you’d want to make about God – I bet – are pretty much in line with what you want God to be like.   Am I right?   What if “the truth” about God were that God had something… at least one thing … that you didn’t agree with, something that you thought was not right?   How hard would it be to accept this?  

The truth is… no matter how we see God, no matter what image we have, no matter what model we hold of this grand divine being… and no matter the experience you then have of this God that you can imagine… it is absolutely a subjective experience.    

“But what about one true God as revealed in the scriptures???”    Well, how do you account for the fact that there’s at least two examples -here as listed above- of two very different expressions of God?    And the bible is full of very different experiences and revelations of God on a pretty wide spectrum.   As much as some people may want to try and make all those divergent expressions of God fit into one mold – trying to explain away all the divergent images of God – so they fit nicely into one theological explanation… you really can’t do this AND do justice to the cultural and biblical context the words were written within.    You may WANT God to be this way and not that way… and you may WANT the bible to express one unified experience of God… but unfortunately the stories in the bible itself just don’t do that.   

         

Just as you may want God to be one way or another… (and NOT the opposite) so did the people in the bible the stories are about!   They wrote about the God they were experiencing… through their own subjective lenses of life: the good, the bad and the ugly… and the rest!

So, what can we say?    Anything?    I can’t just be reflecting only what I want?!

I remember the first week of seminary, one of my professors there told us, “If you haven’t had a crisis of faith before you got here… you will before you leave.”  Sort of makes it sound like a crisis is faith is necessary.    Why?    Perhaps because we all need to be aware of the “water” we’re in.   The water the fish is in, is wet.   That’s obvious to us, because we can see the water!     Well, what kind of things in our lives are “water”… things we can’t see anymore because we’ve always seen them and now are invisible to us?    What kind of beliefs do we hold that are assumptions we always thought without even thinking there could be another point of view?     

How about this to add to your turmoil…  the healthier we are – in mind/body/spirit… I venture to bet, the healthier an image of God we have too!   

The assumption I am going under – a metaphor if you will – is to the degree we are healthy, to that degree we experience a healthier theology of God.  

We have a “lens” of understanding and vision through which we can see and understand the God-stuff.  

 can only “see” and connect with God through the lens we see life through.    

Considering that we can’t help BUT see God through our own life-experience, up-bringing, social context (poor people in “developing” countries certainly see God in a very different way than middle class suburbanites in the US), country.  Where we fall on the political and theological spectrum also has an influence on how we see God.   Whether we’re more inclined towards the intellect or the heart plays a role too.    How much all these things (and more) play a role is different for each person, but how can they NOT play a role?!

   

    

So many… MANY… centuries ago, the Rabbis asked a question of the Torah (first five books).   Rabbi’s do this – they read, observe, study, observe some more… and ask questions… and then ask more questions.    In the Exodus text is says, “I am the Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”   One of the questions they asked was, why would the text say… “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”?   Why… “the God of… the God of…   the God of…”   and not more simply, “the God of Abraham (comma), Isaac (comma), and Jacob?    Simpler – yes?      But over and over, the text says the former, more complicated version.  

One of the answers the rabbis came up with is that each generation must connect with God on its own terms.   We all must relate to God on our own levels, through our own lives, with our own hearts and voices.        

Maybe in all this, we’re just as important a character in the “story of God” as God is.   Maybe we’re telling the story of God as well as the writer of the David story… or the Gospel writer.   Actually we are… we’re telling OUR story of God.    So, maybe it falls to us – as disciples of Christ – of a living God – to use images of God (the healthier the better) as a means to help us grow, to move forward, to live better, to make the world a better place, to work for justice and peace, to continue to do what Christ came to do… to ”proclaim the Gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (right out of the beginning of the Gospel of Luke- where the story of this forgiven woman comes from).