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One of my favourite “snarky moments by God” moments is the burning bush encounter that Moses had with God when God called him to go back to Egypt to be God’s voice to Pharaoh and to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. In the conversation, Moses made several unsuccessful attempts to get God to reveal God’s name. You see, back then they believed that if you knew the name of a god, then you had power over that god, the power to conjure that god up and get it to act on your behalf. After a couple of attempts, God got fed up with Moses and seemingly gives Moses a name just to shut him up. In Hebrew it sounds like “Yahweh”. Grammarians would call it the first-person singular form of the verb “to be”, which is basically “I am.” A full translation into English of that one little word would be “I am who I am, I will be who I will be.” The humour in the moment should not be missed. Moses was trying to get a name out of God to be able to control God. So, God is like “You want a name. Here’s one, ‘I am who I am, I’ll be who I’ll be’. Now shut up and go do what I’ve asked.” Yes, a snarky moment by God, but point made. You can’t control the one who just is who “We” is and who will be who “We” will be.
Uh oh. Did you notice that? I used “We” instead of “He” as a pronoun to refer to God. Do you remember that from last week’s sermon. I heard that all that using “We” to refer to God stuff in last week’s sermon was a little confusing, so I thought I would take another shot at it. So here we go.
I suspect that it is highly probable that nearly all of us were Sunday Schooled into an image of God as someone who can’t be seen, but who probably sounds like Charlton Heston’s voice speaking from the burning bush to Moses (also played by Charlton Heston) in Cecil. B. Demille’s movie “The Ten Commandments”. Interestingly, in that movie there were several times that God spoke and it was apparently only at the burning bush that it was Heston’s voice but disguised a little so that it sounded like God was calling Moses with a voice that sounded like Moses’s own voice. That there is some pretty profound theological thinking on the part of a Hollywood director. And get this, in the credits DeMille decided not to credit the person who supplied God’s voice for the rest of the times God spoke. DeMille's autobiography contains all he ever said about who’s voice it was. He said it was that of "a man I had known many years, not a professional actor...It was agreed among us that, out of reverence for the part of Voice of God, the name of the man who played it should not be revealed”. That’s pretty deep too. The voice of God is that of an old friend who shall remain nameless. That’s from way back when in the days when Hollywood was a bit more reverent.
I think DeMille has probably hit a chord with a good many of us in his portrayal of God. I think most of us would go “Yeah”, to thinking of God as an unseen presence who is an old friend who is kind of just there in a familiar way and chooses to remain nameless and who has “His” own voice but who also speaks to us personally in a voice that sounds much like our own. That being the case, I think most of us would then be comfortable with thinking of God as “You” – as a person, an Other, to whom/with whom we have a relationship. That is, if you’ve gotten yourself out of that mode of thinking about God as the Creator of the universe and giver of the moral law who sits on a throne way, way, way off in a far, far, far, away place up, up, up there called Heaven judging the dead and who God doesn’t get involved in things down here much if ever.
Any reading of the Bible will leave you with the Truth that God is a “You”, a person whom we can relate with and who is very involved in the goings on of things. God is particularly involved with a certain family of people historically known as Israel whom God has expanded to included people who come from other families and bloodlines. Throughout history God has proved faithful to this people out of great love for them and through them is blessing the world.
When this God, this “You” somehow got involved in this world by becoming a part of it as the man Jesus of Nazareth, well, let’s just say our understanding of God as being simply “You” get’s complicated. Jesus was/is “You”. He wasn’t simply “You” dwelling in a human. He was “You” become a human. So, “You” dwelled among us as Jesus of Nazareth. That being the case, Jesus also carried on his own relationship with “You” whom he called “Father” who was the "You" who called Jesus, “Son”. If Jesus had a relationship with “You”, does that mean that Jesus simply had a relationship with himself and thus spent a lot of time talking to himself and doing the God-things that he wanted to do? And, what about those times when other people heard God the Father speak to Jesus, the Son? "You" is somehow both Jesus and the unseen voice he subordinated himself to and called "Father".
Jesus and others also speak of the Holy Spirit who is God or “You” present with, among, and in us. The Holy Spirit is “You” whom we ourselves experience. The Holy Spirit includes us each and us together in “You” as participants in the family of "Father Son and Holy Spirit" but don’t go thinking that makes us equal to “You”, or "Divine" in ourselves. As the Holy Spirit, “You” is at work in us and through us healing things and giving hope just as “You” did in and through the human being “Jesus” and just as “You” did as the God whom the people of Israel thought of as Father.
So, let’s take a moment to ponder the implication of God, whom I’m calling “You”, self-revealing as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They each are “You” without the others disappearing in some way. When “You” became Jesus, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit didn’t cease to exist. When we encounter “You” as the Holy Spirit, the presence of God with us, God the Father and God the Son don’t cease to exist. Quite the opposite, the Holy Spirit makes it so that we share in the relationship of God the Father and God the Son as God's beloved children. We are participants in the family so to speak as children of the Father and siblings of the Son who is the firstborn. Before Jesus and before the giving of the Spirit, when “You” just seemed to be “You” and there was no talk of Son and Spirit but some talk of “You” being Father to his people Israel, even then God the Son and God the Holy Spirit were still part of “You”. So, if “You” is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then “You” is really at heart, in essence “We”.
Does this mean that we have three God’s instead of one? No. It’s hard to grasp because of our culture's overly individualized definition of what a person is. We do not have three God’s but, it would be helpful for us to think of God as a family into whom we have all been unconditionally included, a family whose personality is unconditional love and unwavering faithfulness, a family that is always present to us and listens, a family that when all Hell has broken loose on us is there somehow making all things work to a good that will in time materialize. God is a family who is for others rather than for itself. The more time we spend with the family the more we absorb and become like that family. Though we ourselves will fail miserably, we must strive to live up to that family name - Trinity.
This family has a distinct way of being that I think Paul probably described best in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, the love chapter. It reads: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” God, “We”, is a communion of persons who give themselves to each other so completely in mutual unconditional love that they are one. We, you and I, have a home in “We”. It becomes evident as you and I love as Christ Jesus has loved us in giving his life to and for us. Think “We” when you think of God. Amen.
