who is god?

September 11, 2022 • Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Psalm 103:1-2, 8-11 (The Inclusive Bible)
Rev. Jeff Wells preaching

[You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhRQw-qSRlo

Today, we begin a new worship series we are calling “Back to Basics,” in which we will unpack concepts like Faith, Prayer, Justice, Giving and Service, the Holy Spirit, and much more – through creative, collaborative, open-hearted, and transformative lenses. The series will extend for eleven Sundays through November 20. 

Today, we are starting off, appropriately, by focusing on God. The passage from Psalm 103 gives us a partial sense of how the ancient Israelites understood God. The characteristics of God the Psalm describes are echoed in many other passages through the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. The Psalmist tells us God loves justice and takes the side of the oppressed and downtrodden. YHWH is tender and compassionate, slow to anger, and always loving. God does not condemn or turn away from us for falling short but forgives us when we harm ourselves, one another, or the living Earth.

Yet, we know that the Jewish understanding of God was a source of mystery and contention. Also, the ways of viewing God evolved and changed over the centuries, without ever arriving at a universal consensus. 

About 1,200 years after the Hebrews escaped from Egypt, Jesus came along to promote a religious revival among the Jews. Jesus didn’t set out to found a new religion. Yet, in the first decades after his death, the Jesus movement engaged in a radical reimagining of God and God’s relationship with humanity. The early Christians drew the circle wide to offer God’s love, compassion, and forgiveness to all gentiles – that is all human persons – while dropping the demand that they follow Jewish purity rituals, food laws, and other practices, like circumcision. 

Later, and right up to the present day, powerful forces within Christianity have repeatedly tried to impose an “orthodox” and exclusionary view of God and a single “right way” to be in relationship with God. They have often used expulsion and violence to silence those who would not submit to such “orthodoxy.” That is true in virtually every denomination and every faith tradition in the world.

Our own Church of the Village community has evolved a broad theological vision and practice in which, while we still have a significant focus on Jesus, on God as a Trinity, and on a God of love and justice, we strive to remain broadly open to other ways of experiencing God and we do not demand belief in a particular way of viewing the reality of God. 

Currently, many of us in this community are strongly attracted to the vision of God expressed in and influenced by liberation theology, feminist and womanist theology, process theology, and so more. These tend to describe God as not all-powerful, but very powerful – a God who exercises power not through domineering control, but through deep, loving relationships. This picture of God fits very well with the description we hear in Psalm 103. Yet, even those among us with an affinity for progressive Christian theology don’t all experience or understand God exactly the same way. We value our community’s theological and spiritual diversity.

We often say that God loves, lures, leads and guides us, rather than coercing or dictating to us. God may be all-knowing in the sense of knowing what has happened and what the future possibilities are, but God does not and cannot determine the future of the choices we will make, only encourage us to choose the best among the possibilities. 

Currently, we are in the midst of another radical re-imagining of God, widening the circle of God’s love again in our realization that God is in deep, loving relationship not only with human beings but with every cell and particle in all living and non-living parts of the universe. Sadly, the main expressions of the world’s religions are far from adopting or promoting this new vision. The corollary of this vision is that we, too, are inextricably related to, dependent on, and connected to all of the other biotic and abiotic entities around us. We need to expand our minds to embrace them all as a part of our community to be cherished and cared for. We are called to love ourselves, love our fellow human beings, and love all of the elements that make up our vast and amazing ecosphere and universe – all of them bathed in the living waters of God’s love.

Perhaps the way of salvation – for humanity and for a living Earth – lies, at least in part, in celebrating and learning from our diverse experiences and understandings of God. The great Muslim scholar and mystic, Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240) asserted that a truly religious person ought to feel “equally at home in a synagogue, temple, church or mosque since no faith has the monopoly of truth.” [1] Al-Arabi wrote: 

“Do not praise your own faith so exclusively that you disbelieve all the rest. If you do this, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God…cannot be confined to any one creed, for [the Quran] says, ‘Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah.’ (Quran 2:115).”

In addition to the other characteristics of God I listed earlier, God is inclusive and expansive – we could say God is universally so. These are characteristics of God we ought to try to emulate, as well. If humans could achieve that, we might be able to actually end war, poverty, and all forms of oppression and exploitation. 

On Thursday this week, I experienced some internal turmoil as I faced the need to lead what I suspected might be a very contentious meeting of a group I am involved with. I prepared by talking with several members of the group to get their perspective on the situation we faced and advice on how to proceed. In addition, Thursday morning I sat down to meditate for about 20 minutes. I was listening to a guided meditation titled, “A Leader’s Journey to Inner Wisdom & Clarity During Intense Times.” [2] This became an opportunity to listen to my own spirit and to God. On of the most important things that came to me while meditating was the follow passage from the Letter to the Colossians: 

As the chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on compassion, goodness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing up one another and, if there are complaints, forgiving each other: as the God forgives, so also should you. Above all, add to these things love, which is a bond of maturity and harmony. Let the peace of Christ settle in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ abide in you richly. Teach and counsel each other with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with grace singing in your hearts to God. 

I read that passage at the beginning of the meeting on Thursday afternoon and encouraged all of us who were present to practice its ethos in our interactions – both in that meeting and beyond. The results of the meeting were much better than I had anticipated. We haven’t solved all of our issues yet, but we made good progress. This small example tells me a lot about the God who is our constant companion and who we continually seek together. Without a specific intention, but with a lot of openness, I believe God guided me to a much more open, compassionate, patient, and forgiving stance than the one I impulsively adopted out of my upset when I first learned of the situation. God lured me to a much better approach through conversations with trusted collaborators and through touching my own heart and spirit. Surely, God sought to do the same for everyone in that meeting.

This is how I think God works in our community. At our best, we open ourselves to God loving and luring us to act better, to love better, to be better. I cherish being part of a community that seeks God together, even as we love and celebrate our differing perspectives and our diverse ways of experiencing and expressing spirituality, theology, religion, and relationship.

I encourage you to take a few minutes to meditate on the following questions:

How has the way you understood God changed over time? 
What characteristics of God are most meaningful in your life?

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