Today, I would like to share on the topic, “The Living
God.” This topic arose as I reflected on the multiple global tragedies
happening in the world today. Wars, poverty including hunger, mental health
challenges including depression, rampant hatred and violence, and the rejection
of Jesus and his teachings by evangelicals, compel a deep and persistent hope and
longing for the living God. These three words present us with a blessed
assurance that is the integrity of our faith and witness. Jeremiah 10:10-12 (NRSV)
says, “But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting
King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his
indignation. Thus, shall you say to them: The gods who did not make the heavens
and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.”
The words of Jeremiah are a reminder that there is the
world’s agenda that it affirms by creating its own god. This is an ideological god,
or a tribal god, the kind that justifies the power to dehumanize millions of people.
This god is made in the image of the human
ego, its fears, hubris and limitations. It is a very, very small god. Karen
Armstrong, a British journalist and former nun, investigates the 4000-year
history of God. Her book shows the reader that the definition of God is
constantly being repeated, altered, discarded, and resurrected through the
ages, responding to its followers' practical concerns rather than to mystical
mandates. The book shows us how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have
overlapped and influenced one another, gently challenging the secularist
history of each of these religions.
The key words
are, “responding to the practical concerns rather than mystical mandates.” In
other words, this tribal god responds, throughout human history, to the agenda
of those in power. This god becomes a projection of Make America Great Again,
the slaveholder’s religion, and a religion-politics that is antithetical to the
life and teachings of Jesus. This god advocates for a new kind of Jesus that
validates capitalism and its politics while denying the needs and concerns of the
poor, working class, those on the margins of the faith community, society and
the environment.
I have been reading a book titled, The Door of No Return,
The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade” by William St.
Clair. The author tells the grim story about the Cape Coast Castle, located in
Ghana, West Africa, as the greatest symbol of forced migration. For hundreds of
years western nations used religious doctrine to justify places such as Cape
Coast Castle and the enslavement of Africans. I’m talking about a dehumanization,
affirmed by the ideology of a tribal god, on a massive global scale which became
the accepted foundation of a new world in which we live today. This same tribal
god was used to affirm what was eventually called manifest destiny as well as Jim
Crow and lynchings. I mean how else can we make sense, if that’s possible, out
of a people who go to church, receive communion and then go out and lynch
another human being except that they worship of god of their own making. In his
book, Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman writes about being
confronted at the University of Columbo in Ceylon about the involvement of Christianity
in the slave trade on his pilgrimage of friendship to India, Burma, and Ceylon,
present day Sri Lanka. For those who
Thurman met the question was, “How could Thurman justify being a Christian in a
Christian nation that worships a small, tribal god?” This is the work of the prophet.
The Old Testament prophets Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea,
Ezekiel, Joel and Amos dealt with a stiff-necked culture and society that
rejected the living God for a tribal god and its many trinkets. The prophet could
only speak what the living God had called them to speak and experience. They
suffered because of this calling. Typically, somewhat like today, this was a
minority theological position and not well funded. This is further affirmed by Jesus
the Christ of Nazareth, son of the living God, who, according to scripture, had
no place to lay his head, was crucified and then resurrected.
So, what or who is the living God? In a book titled, Christian
Mystics, Mattew Fox, American priest and theologian and former Dominican, looks
at Meister Eckhart, a German Theologian, who prayed to God for forgiveness and
to help him move beyond a human projection of God. “Have you ever prayed God
to rid you of God? The work we do in our fields of calling requires that we
follow the prayer of Eckhart and rid ourselves of those projections of God that
get in the way of the grace and mercy necessary to transform the work we have been
called to do. Further, the living God could care less about our biases Oh yes,
God loves each of us, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, but the living God
does not cater to the human biases that seek to diminish a diverse humanity. This
is most vividly seen in racism, antisemitism, transphobia, homophobia, political
thought, gender and sexual diversity. God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do
regardless of how comfortable or uncomfortable it might make us, and God has no
need for us to believe. And I’m pretty sure this includes Jesus. The sooner we move
beyond a projection of God the sooner we will experience a genuine grace that
overcomes all our fears. In second Corinthians 12 the Apostle Paul speaks of praying
to God three times to rid him of the thorn in his flesh and in the end, God does
not remove the thorn but says, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is
made perfect in weakness.” (vs. 8-9) The thorn in the flesh of the Apostle Paul
was there to keep him from arrogance and projecting his profoundly strong ego
on to God. This is Paul’s story, not yours. The text does not condone suffering,
but it does ask us as Christians to look at suffering from a different
perspective. Ridding ourselves of the projections will enhance the experience
of God encountered in the Frederick Buechner quote.
Biblical scripture flows out of a spirit filled real-life
experience with the one true and living God. The writers, such as Paul, have
experienced the all-pervading presence and desire that has transformed their
life. The scriptural readings of Exodus 20:3, Isaiah 43:10-13, the Pauline Epistles
including Ephesians 4:4-6, and 1 John 5:20 are an invitation, even a longing for
each of us, to live into a relationship with the living God of love. To
experience an unnerving and unwavering hospitality that rids us of shallow
preconceived notions and makes us free in Christ.
Let us pray!
