Sermon Text

May 24, 2009
The Seventh Sunday of Easter

WHAT IS GOD LIKE?
John 17:6-19

What do you think God is like? Is God like the depictions in Michelangelo’s great Creation fresco, a muscular older man with life in His fingertips? Is God like any of the actors who have portrayed God on the screen – George Burns, Morgan Freeman, or the sonorous, disembodied voice of Alexander Scourby? Or is God like the surprising, half-tongue-in-cheek Trinity of the recent novel, The Shack?

Mostly, when we have talked about God over the centuries, we have used ultra-superlative words – omniscient, omnipotent, for example. We have also used words that say what God is not – not male or female, not graspable or apprehendable, not definable. God is not a creature, not a thing, not a principle, and not (Star Wars notwithstanding) even a Force. Islam forbids any representation of God, images, portrayals, or artistic attempts to capture God in any way. Orthodox Judaism even refuses to utter God’s name. So all of our words about God end up being metaphorical, an effort to describe the indescribable.

What do we do with this lack of a clear and concrete portrayal of what God is like? How do we pray to this kind of God? With a sardonic smile on his face, Methodist Bishop Will Willimon offers the following possibility: “O great spiritual Otherness, beyond our comprehension, O highest human aspiration, Thou vast, important Idea, …”

But, when you walk down some dark path in life, don’t know where to turn, or lose your way, you are unlikely to expect a noble, indefinable, faceless “idea” to take your hand, or to hold you safe.

In John’s Gospel, after establishing the closest possible relationship between the living and risen Christ and the ineffable God, we’re not given much more in the way of help in understanding. Jesus himself is hard to figure out in this Gospel. He comes to a wedding, miraculously whips up 180 gallons of wine so that the party doesn’t have to end; he goes to the Temple, a place of prayer, and drives out the moneychangers and animal sellers (all of whom, by the way, were in cahoots with the Temple hierarchy); he meets a woman at a well and pries deeply into her personal life; he frees another woman found in the very act of adultery; he confounds the chief religious thinkers and leaders of his day.

And then the question comes, “Who are you?” Jesus responds, “I’m bread, and light, I’m the vine, I’m the door, I’m the good shepherd, I’m the water of life.” All very nice images, but what are we to make of it all?

Finally, seventeen chapters later in John’s Gospel, we’re given a bit more of a glimpse into what God is like. Jesus says to us, “The Father and I are one. If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” In Jesus, God is no longer indefinable, unknowable, incomprehensible. When we look at this Jewish teacher from Nazareth, who was born under questionable circumstances, lived but a few brief years, was unjustly condemned and executed, and unexpectedly raised, we see as much of God as we are capable of receiving.

Let me say that again, because this is important, and is at the heart of Christian faith. In Jesus, we are shown as much of God as we are capable of receiving. Unique and enigmatic as he is, Jesus is still within our human frame of reference.
Remember the opening verses of John’s Gospel? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” There are beautiful words in that Prologue. But then, in the subsequent chapters, there again is Jesus at the wedding party, driving people out of the Temple with a whip, confusing us by his words and deeds, being rejected, suffering, and dying in shame on a cross and calling it his “glory.” To say that this is what God is like goes against our human grain, to say the least.

But still, that is the audacious claim of Christianity. Christians believe that, in Jesus, we can see as much of God as we are capable of receiving. We Christians are those people who are seeking after, trying to figure out, trying to emulate, falling in love with, and trying to live like this Jewish teacher from Nazareth who shows us in everything he is and does what God is like.

Notice that this revelation actually provides a double challenge to faith! For one thing, no longer can we abstract God, make God like anything we want. Jesus and the Father are one! This is what God is up to in the world! If you wonder what God is like, look at Jesus! And here is the other challenge, and a subject for another Sunday: If you wonder who you are supposed to be, who God always intended you to be, look at Jesus. You see, not only does he show us what God is like, he also shows us how we are meant to be.