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.
