More than a half a century ago, JB Phillips wrote a little book titled Is Your God Too Small? In it he asks what our God looks like. Does your God look like a jolly Santa Claus sitting up in heaven doling out presents to those who are good? Does your God look like a policeman who directs traffic between heaven and earth and hell? Or is God a detective who determines who is good and who is bad? Does your God look like a kindly grandfather who would take you on your lap and read you stories?
He suggested that God is bigger than all that. A God big enough, he argued, would be big enough to encompass the science of nuclear fission, big enough to encompass the whole universe with its stars and planets. God is cosmic.
I read those thoughts when I was just a teenager and it had great impact on me. I started thinking theologically about God, and it enriched my faith. As I matured I appreciated JB Phillips thoughts more and more. Yes, God is cosmic. But as I matured in faith I also realized that even though God is the Lord of the nations and the Creator of the universe God is also small, that God can be seen in the ordinary things. Most importantly I learned by faith that God, even though cosmic, is also seen as a human being. Through faith in Jesus Christ we see the fullness of God.
It is in the name of Jesus Christ, and on behalf of the Lord of the universe, that I greet you with God’s grace, God’s mercy, and God’s peace.
Text: John 14: 8-9a
Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
Prayer: from Psalm 19:14
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
What does God look like? There is much in our tradition that teaches us that we are not even to speculate on that question. In the Ten Commandments, that we as Christians have inherited from Judaism, teach us that we are not to make any graven image of the Holy God. God is so holy, that Orthodox Jews have historically even refused to say out loud the name of God. In the Orthodox Christian Church this ban on the imagery of God continues in that there are no three dimensional images of God are allowed.
Islam also forbids any depiction of God. Images, portrayals, or other artistic means of representation are prohibited because they contain or limit God. God is bigger than our imaginations, bigger than our thoughts.
“No one has ever seen God,” writes John in the first chapter of his gospel. We don’t know what God looks like. Nevertheless, we try to define God. Sometimes it is easier to define God in negative terms. God is not graspable; God is not a creature; God is not a thing; God is not definable. It is difficult to relate to a God who is defined negatively. It is hard to pray to a God who is wholly beyond description, a God who is an idea or a principle. How does someone pray to such a God? When I am in despair, when a loved one is dying can I pray, “O great spiritual otherness, beyond my comprehension, O highest human aspiration, thou vast important idea….”?
I don’t think so. We want something more than that, something solid.
When we are lost in the darkness, when we are batted around by the storms of life, when we are at the end of our rope or our wits end an indefinable, nameless, bloodless principle won’t do. We want something… somebody like the Good Shepherd to carry us to safety.
At the beginning of his gospel, John speaks of God and Jesus in glowing theological terms, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God…. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” John continues by saying that no one has ever seen God. God is cosmic. God is awesome.
Then, in the rest of his gospel, John goes on to describe God in the most personal and intimate terms. The gospel tells us that Jesus has made God known. The gospel tells us that in Jesus we see God. The gospel tells us that Jesus and the Father are one.
What does God look like? God looks like Jesus.
What does Jesus look like? What does the gospel tell us?
In many ways Jesus is hard to figure out. He goes to a wedding celebration and 180 gallons of water become wine. He goes to the Temple in Jerusalem and with a whip expels the merchants and the clergy. He meets a woman, a Samaritan woman of questionable reputation, and pries into her personal life. He breaks the religious laws by healing a man on the Sabbath. He feeds thousands of people. And we ask ourselves, “What are we to make of this?”
Jesus is asked repeatedly, “Who are you?” He answers:
Then Jesus identifies himself clearly: “The Father and I are one. If you have seen me, you've seen the Father.” Yes, God is awesome. Yes, God is cosmic. And God is also seen in Jesus Christ.
After a Sunday worship during Lent this year, a mother of one of our younger Sunday School students told me that her daughter had a question for me, a theological question. I’ve learned to be wary of questions kids ask because usually their questions tend to be penetrating and very difficult to answer. Kids ask questions like: When did God begin? Where is heaven?
My son, Timothy, was an astute theologian as a young boy, he still is. As a very young child, when we were living in a manse that belonged to the church, he asked me. “The church belongs to God, right?”
I said, “Yes.”
He went on, “And the house we live in belongs to the church, right?”
Not knowing where this was going, I still said, “Yes.”
So the house we live in belongs to God, right?”
“Uh hum.” I responded hesitantly.
“That can’t be,” he said triumphantly, “I’ve never seen God take a bath in our bathtub!”
Our young Sunday School student at the Greenville Church wasn’t trying to trump me in a theological debate. She had a real question: “Is God a man?”
She stumped me. At first I didn’t know how to answer. Was she asking if God was a man as opposed to a woman? Had this young child already matured to the point where she was challenging sexist conceptions in theology? I thought not. She was truly wondering about this because she had been learning about Jesus, and Jesus is a man.
How to answer? God is cosmic. God is awesome. God is bigger than anything we can comprehend, and yes, God is a man. How could I explain it to a young child? It came to me. In the children’s sermon I had used a globe as a prop to explain that God loves the whole world, and every person. The kids had told me that a globe was something that looked like the world. The world is way too big for us to see all at once, so we use a globe so we can understand what the world looks like.
So it is with God, I explained to our young theologian. God is so big that it’s hard for us to understand just how big God is. So God sent Jesus so that we might understand what God is like. In Jesus we see what God is like. I don’t know if she got it, but I hope we do.
Those of us, who call ourselves Christians, believe that we have come to know what God is like through the person of Jesus. For the unbeliever to think of God as a human being is laughable and naïve. For a Muslim it is an offense to think of God as a human being. But for those of us who have come to faith through our relationship with Jesus, it is the gospel, the good news.
Jesus is real. He is the beacon in the darkness to guide us along the way. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who finds us when we are lost, takes us by the hand and leads us home. Thanks be to God. Amen.