How Can Jesus Be God?

Isaiah 6:1-8; Colossians 3:9-20
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One of the mothers in the Coop sent me a question this passed Monday. She had been having a discussion with her 11-12 year old son around the question of whether or not Jesus is God. She wanted help with how to explain this very complicated and central matter of faith to a young mind. I thought this might make for a better topic this morning than the Isaac story from Genesis. So, “Is Jesus God?” and how does one explain that to a soon to be teenage boy.

One thing we have to note before we start is that young folk think in literal terms. They are actually quite scientific in the way they understand things. They prefer concrete, measurable, observable stuff – facts – something in their hands they can play with. But then, they also have very imaginative minds in which they create play worlds. I remember William making sounds of lasers and explosions while flying Lego space ships. Alice gets her plastic horses out and creates her own episodes of Heartland. Young minds also understand actions and feelings long before they can grasp ideas. They understand love feels like the urge to give and receive hugs rather some philosophical definition of it.

God, on the other hand, is such an abstract matter. Try explaining that God is love or God is Spirit. Young folk do much better when we use action words to talk about God like saying God made everything and rules and watches over everything. God is a much easier topic if we stick to what God does. The Bible is helpful for this conversation because it gives us stories of things that God has done.

Moving on, I think there are three crucially important things we can teach a child about God. One, God made everything. God is Creator and in love God made it all. Two, God loves them very, very much. And, God wants us to love him and to love each other even those who are mean to us because that’s what God does.

I’ve mentioned love there in all three so let me spend a moment on that. Love is an abstract concept. It may be difficult for a young person to understand when we say I love you for forever and God loves you more than that. I think there’s a popular children’s book out there to that effect. It’s quite touching for adults to say that but I just don’t think children get the concept of endless time. It’s best we stick to more concrete ways to describe God’s love; such as, “Because I love you I work at my job and here at home to keep you safe, warm, and fed; I help you learn to do stuff and to learn to make good decisions; I listen to you and want you to be the best person you can be; and I will always be here for you. God does all that for you and more.” It is easier to grasp what love does than to what love is.

Chances are we’ve tried to teach our children that part of loving God and loving others is praying to God for others and we have taught them that praying is like talking to a person so they begin to think of God as an individual person. Thinking of God as an individual person, they will ask questions like what does God look like and where does God live. Ideally, we should answer those questions with we don’t know what God looks like and though we can’t see God, God is with us always. Unfortunately, by osmosis kids learn pop-culture ideas such as God looks like a bearded old white man who sits on a throne in a big mansion way far away in a place called Heaven. I should also add that is the image of God I picked up as a child, but that may not be the case now because pop culture doesn’t have much of an image of God. God isn’t showing up in movies anymore. He lost his part to a team of superheroes using super tech.

Looking at the question of “Is Jesus God?” and please note the importance of this question. It is the central question, the foundational question of the Christian faith. Everything else hangs on the answer to this question. So, it’s a big question and imagine how confusing it can be to young minds that think very literally. With their imaginative minds they can, as I did when I was a child, create a nice “play world” of a bearded old man sitting on a throne in a mansion in Heaven running the world surrounded by angels and loved one’s who have gone on before us. But when we say God came to earth and became a human person, Jesus, it messes with that “play world” and they start looking for concrete answers to questions like: what happened to the bearded old man when he was here as Jesus? When God was here who was running everything from heaven? Was baby Jesus able to keep the planets in their orbits? If Jesus was God, how come he called God “Father” and prayed to him? It gets confusing if you think of God as an individual person, and then try to have that one person in two places at the same time.

Just think about it: the question “Is Jesus God?” truly shatters the “play world” that a child has constructed in faith in their imaginations about how God fits into reality. It does it for adults too. To say that Jesus is God shatters all the idols we construct of who, what, where, and how God is. Moreover, the questions that flow from saying Jesus is God poke all kinds of holes in the imaginative “play worlds” children in faith construct with respect to God. Then, the older the child, the more perceptive and analytical they become, if their faith “play world” of the bearded old man, yada yada, yada has been reinforced by the adult world, their teenage and soon to be teenage analytical minds begin to deconstruct that play world, they will likely throw the baby out with the bathwater because it sounds ridiculous, like a child’s “play world”. This is what the philosophical schools of Modernity have done with the bearded old man image of God that the Church created in the Dark Ages.

Therefore, we adults need to be real mindful of the imaginative “play worlds” our young folk have formed in faith. We have to be real careful that their image of God is Trinity rather than God being an individual person…and I probably just stepped off onto another planet for you. We have all been so schooled in thinking of God as an individual person that the reality of God being Trinity is an abstract thought we readily dismiss. But stick with me.

It is much easier to say that Jesus is God if our imaginative play world in faith is that God is the fellowship (the loving communion) of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who is with us always. There was an old bearded dude, a godly man, who lived a long time ago in the 300’s AD named St. Gregory of Nazianzus. He was one of the theologians behind the Nicene Creed. He said, “When I say God I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Thus, he defined God not as an individual person, but as a fellowship of persons. God is a fellowship of persons who love one another so completely that they are one. God is not an individual person that I relate to. God is a relationship with whom I am in a relationship.

The Apostle John in his letters wrote that God is Love and God is Spirit. Thinking about love; you can’t have love without someone to love. That’s narcissism. Love happens in the context of relationship. Therefore, if God is Love, then God is relationship – the loving communion of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I know that’s too abstract for a young mind to grab, for most adults too. But once you get used to it…it’s beautiful.

To say God is Spirit is to say we feel, we sense, we experience the love of God by means of the presence of the Holy Spirit interacting with us and working in us. The Holy Spirit is like light from a candle and heat from its flame. The Spirit helps us to participate in the loving relationship of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The love that the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father is the Holy Spirit whom we experience personally and who brings us to participate as by adoption in the love of God the Father’s love for Jesus God the Son and Jesus the Son’s love for God the Father.

The heart of the Christian faith is not simply obeying the will of God, the old man who sits on the throne, so you can go to Heaven when you die and having faith in Jesus as your “Get Out of Hell Free” card. That is the faith “play world” that I grew up with. The heart of the Christian faith is participating in the love between God the Father and God the Son by relationship with them through the presence of God the Holy Spirit with and in us.

So, pick your jaws of the floor and lets talk about explaining all this to a young mind. First, I will concede that there are images in the Bible of God seated on a throne in Heaven. It would be appropriate to say those images are of God the Father but are incomplete images because there’s no Son or Spirit pictured in them. But, in the imagery of the Book of Revelation that imagery finds its completeness. There, God the Father on the throne is a fantastic light display. Jesus, the Son is present among the churches and as God acting on the world stage. The Holy Spirit is also there present with the church opening our eyes and minds to understand the Revelation and to comfort us in persecution. Simply seeing God as God on the throne is an incomplete image. We need the Son and the Holy Spirit to fill it out.

Second, I would use the analogy of a family to talk about God to a young mind. A family is a relationship of persons bonded in love, a love that is a given. In a nuclear family there are parents, children, and the bond of love between them that even others can feel when relating with that family. No two families are alike just like no two churches are alike and all families feel different when you enter into a relationship with that family. God the Father is analogous to the parents. God the Son is analogous to the children or even friends whom the parents welcome into their lives. God the Holy Spirit is the bond of love and friendship that helps us and nonfamily members to feel like part of the family. When I was growing up I spent a lot of time with my best friend and his family. There was a wonderful attachment of love there for me. Mom Landis always referred to me as her adopted son.

To say that Jesus is God is to say one of the members of the family of God really became one of us as part of the human family. He teaches us what the unconditional love of the family of God is like and unconditionally welcomes us to come and be a part of it. The Holy Spirit with us helps us to feel that love. Just as I felt adopted into my best friends family, so it is with us and the family of God and the extended family of God, the Church.

To say that Jesus is God is not to say he is all of God. God on the throne is not all of God. So also Jesus is not all of God. There’s the rest of the God family. This puts to rest those questions of did God leave heaven and stop running the universe when Jesus was here. Rev Dr. Victor Shepherd, who was Dana’s minister for most of her life and also the theology professor at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, uses a water bottle analogy. Take a water bottle and fill it up with water from Lake Ontario (or Lake Huron, or the Georgian Bay, or the Saugeen River, or the Spey River or Williamsford Lake). It becomes not just a water bottle filled with Lake Ontario water. It is a bottle of Lake Ontario water. Though it is a bottle of Lake Ontario water, it does not contain the whole of Lake Ontario. So also, Jesus is fully God the Son but not the whole of God. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are still out there doing what they do.

So, winding down, those are just a couple of ways of explaining Jesus being God – the image of family and the water bottle thing. That Jesus is God is the central confession of the Christian faith. It doesn’t matter if you are Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, or Presbyterian or Baptist. It is important for us to remember that children build imaginary worlds to play in and they will build one to play with God in. So, we must help them keep their image of God as Trinitarian as possible. Most of us grew up in a play world where God was that bearded old man and we feel uncomfortable thinking in Trinitarian terms, but God is Trinity. We need to have our “play worlds” adjusted. God is Trinity is the confession of the Christian church when it comes to who God is. Jesus is God the Son become human and he has opened up to us his own relationship with God the Father in the Holy Spirit. Ponder that. Amen.

Let God Be God

Genesis 24

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In the last two sermons I’ve been trying to get across that although Abraham is “the father of faith”, he truly appears to have had a problem when it came to ultimately trusting the God who called him to leave his father’s household and all the security he had there and go to a land that God would show him; and once there, God would give him numerous descendants and God would make them to be a great nation that would be a blessing to the other nations.  Abraham did faithfully go but once he got to the land he had a difficult time trusting God to provide for him.  Something that becomes horribly and painfully evident when he came to the brink of child sacrificing his son Isaac but God stopped him by providing a ram.  Abraham then named the place, “The Lord will provide.”  His lack of trust leads to Abraham striving to provide for himself and creating messes that only God can clean up.

Two moments thus far in Abraham’s story demonstrate this lack of trust.  First, instead of trusting God who made the promise to make a great nation from him and his descendants to protect his life, Abraham deceitfully cashed in on Sarah’s beauty by saying she was his sister rather than his wife whenever they went somewhere new.  He feared someone would kill him and take her if they knew she was his wife.  Well, Pharaoh in Egypt and King Abimelech in the land of the Philistines believing her to be his sister did take Sarah to add to their collection of wives and Abraham wound up collecting a generous dowry for her.  God had to clean those two messes up by threatening the lives of the two kings…and of course, Abraham got to keep the dowries making him very wealthy and in turn very powerful among the kings of Canaan land.  That’s an interesting way of playing the “livestock” market, if you ask me…exploit your wife.

Second, when Abraham and Sarah had grown old and it seemed that they wouldn’t have children, in an act of slave owner privilege Sarah got Abraham to bear a child by one of her slaves, Hagar, in an attempt to make God’s promise of descendants come true.  Hagar gave birth to Ishmael.  But then, according to promise and against all possibility God provided and Sarah became pregnant and gave birth to Isaac.  And, as you would expect when an inheritance is on the line, Ishmael’s very existence became a threat to Isaac receiving the full inheritance he was entitled to being the “bloodline of the promise”.  Abraham expulsed Hagar and Ishmael into the deserted wilderness of Paran where they would have certainly died had not God stepped in and provided for them.

Another moment of Abraham’s distrust that we didn’t cover was when Abraham bought land in the land that God promised to give him in order to bury Sarah.  Though his neighbouring kings or tribal leaders were more than willing and adamantly tried to give Abraham a place to bury Sarah, he had to secure a spot of his own to bury his wife.  He bought land in the land not trusting God to protect Sarah’s grave.

In today’s reading we find Abraham stepping in to secure a wife for Isaac instead of letting God carry through with his promise and provide a wife for Isaac.  At this moment in the story it almost seems as if Abraham steps into the place of God.  Similarly to how God called him, Abraham gets his most faithful servant to go to the land Abraham in faith left in order to find a wife for Isaac so that God’s promise of descendants could come about.  Abraham doesn’t want Isaac to marry a Canaanite for reason we won’t get into.  Abraham is afraid to let Isaac himself go and see the world because he thinks that if Isaac leaves the land that God had promised to give them, he won’t come back and God’s promise to them would become null.    And, yes, by now we should be picking our jaws off the floor, astounded, and bewildered at how Abraham just can’t seem to trust God to make his own promise come true.  It really is perplexing how he won’t let God provide. 

So Abraham tells his faithful servant to go to the land and to the kindred God told him to leave behind and find a wife for Isaac so that God’s promise to make his descendants numerous and to be a great nation may come true.  He made his faithful servant swear an oath that he would never take Isaac there.  His servant faithfully up and went just like Abraham did when God told him to go.  He took a small caravan along of men and ten camels and jewelry and other dowry stuff and headed out from what is southern Israel today to northern Syria.  He came to a town called Nahor, which was apparently named after Abraham’s brother.  Very prudently he went to the local watering hole; not the bar but rather, the well that lay outside the city, the place where he knew the young women of the town would sooner or later come parading by to get water.  There by the well, he prays for God’s help for the task.  

The prayer is a humdinger if not very presumptuous, but it shows if anything he realizes that he and the God of Abraham are in this task together.  “Lord, grant me success, show steadfast love to your servant Abraham.  Here’s the sign you’re going to give me, she will be the one who gives me a drink and offers to water the camels too.”  

In a servant’s eyes, somebody offering to water the camels is a major sign of good character.  Camels, when they are thirsty, will drink a lot of water…a lot of water, and they are slow about it.  For ten camels it would take a couple of hours and a lot of lifting of a ten-gallon clay jar to get the job done.  Lower it into the well empty, raise it up full, carry it, pour it into the trough, and do it all over.

Just as he finished praying he looked up and there was Rebekah, jar on shoulder heading down to the well.  She filled her ten-gallon jar and came back up.  Abraham’s servant ran to her and asked her for water.  He drank water from her hand and then she offered to water the camels too.  When she finished he gave her a nose ring and two bracelets.  They got to talking and he found out that she was the daughter of Abraham’s nephew, Bethuel – a name which happens to mean “Dwells in God”.  In a show of great hospitality Rebekah even offered him a place to stay for the night at her father’s.  Abraham’s servant spontaneously praised God for bringing him to Abraham’s relatives. 

Rebekah ran ahead to tell her brother Laban that they would have guests for the night.  Laban ran to the well to meet the man and to invite him in.  When the servant got there he refused to eat until he told why he was there.  I think he knew that hiding the fact that you’re looking for a woman isn’t a good idea.  He told them Abraham’s story and that Isaac needed a wife.  He told him about the prayer he made at the well and how God answered perfectly.  Laban and Bethuel answered, “The matter is from the Lord’ and tell him to take Rebekah to be Isaac’s wife.  The servant again worshipped and then got out the dowry gifts and they celebrated.

The next day they got up and Laban and Rebekah’s mother wanted her to stay another ten days, but the servant wanted to get on his way.  So they decided to do something remarkably rare in a patriarchal society, they asked Rebekah if she wanted to go.  Without reserve Rebekah simply answered, “I will.”  Rebekah became the second person in the story who was asked to leave the security of her father’s household and go to a land God would give her and her descendants.  She unreservedly said yes and went.  We should actually call Rebekah the mother of faith.

Well, I’ve tried to tell the story here in a way that you would hear the similarities between this servant’s task and God’s call to Abraham.  I hope you have seen the similarities but also how they are different.  In faith Abraham says yes to God’s promise left his father’s household for the land but refuses to let God provide for him once he’s on the land.  So he gains his own wealth and power by deceit.  He has descendants not by his wife but by her slave.  He nearly kills Hagar and Ishmael.  He nearly kills Isaac.  Fearing he will fight with his neighbours over Sarah’s grave he buys land in the land that God said was his already.  He’s afraid Isaac will forfeit the blessing and inheritance of God’s promise if he ever leaves the land.  He doesn’t want Isaac marrying a Canaanite so he sends his servant back to where it all began to find Isaac a wife.  Abraham just won’t let the God of the promise provide for him and fulfill his promise and instead provides for himself and strives to make the promise come true by his own efforts.  Though it led to great wealth and him becoming a powerful king, it also resulted in him living in a mess of fear, deceit, hurt, acting according privilege, and treating others as expendable.  It took the horror of that whole sacrificing Isaac thing for Abraham to get the message that “the Lord will provide”.  But…you can’t teach an old patriarch new tricks.  Abraham is who he is and God uses him and works good from his failures.

This servant, on the other hand, faithfully goes to the land Abraham by faith left behind to find a wife for Isaac.  Mysteriously, the first place he stops belongs to Abraham’s brother’s family.  Instead of wheeling and dealing in deceit he prays for guidance and, wondrously, before he even finishes praying, Rebekah comes along.  All her family realizes this is of the Lord and don’t want to stand in the way of it.  They even ask Rebekah if she will go.  There is no deceit; just worship and hospitality, overly generous hospitality; and respect for the woman concerned.  

I finished last week’s sermon saying that Abraham’s story leaves me with a question: what would have happened if Abraham humbly and simply did as God asked rather than sought his own gain by the promise God made to him?  And also, what would life be like if we just do as God asks and let him provide rather than seeking our own gain? I think here we have somewhat of an answer.  Instead of leaving a bunch of hurt and exploited people in our wake and messes that only God can clean up, if we let God provide, our relationships will be full of the abundance of God, hospitality, respect, celebration, wonder, and worship.  Let us simply and humbly let God be God.  Amen.