What does our God look like?

Reverend Blythe Cody

Sunday, 2 July 2023

Before I begin this morning I am going to invite you to close your eyes and focus on the picture that comes into your mind when I mention the word God. Meditate on that picture for a moment.

I am sure that there would be some similarities between us in what came to our minds with the mention of the word God, but there would also be some differences. Our picture of God comes from somewhere, even if none of us can articulate exactly what that origin might be. It’s likely a combination of stories we have been told, sermons that have been preached, people who have treated us well or badly. That picture of God has an enormous impact on how we live our lives, how we treat others and how we feel about ourselves. It is worth taking some time to think about it.

We have all just heard three passages of scripture read out to us. A passage from Genesis, one from Romans and a Gospel reading from Matthew. We all heard the same words, but we didn’t all hear the same story.

All of us come to the Bible with our own deeply ingrained ways of interpreting the world – this inevitably shapes and can warp our interpretation and our understanding of scripture. Every single human being views the Bible through cracked, blurred lenses that blind us to biblical meanings, challenges, and beauty.

We can’t really know what is going on until we understand the context of the story. For example, if you observed two people shouting at each other this would usually evoke a strong emotional reaction; this depends however on the context in which the event takes place: observing the same social interaction but knowing that the two individuals were being filmed for a movie would give you a completely different reaction. Another example: If you see an object in the distance, you will be deduce that it is a boat if you are looking out over a lake but you will likely come to the conclusion that it is car if you are looking at a road.

I don’t think there is any place where this becomes clearer than in the difficult to understand passages of scripture. We have some of those difficult passages this morning. How do we begin to understand these stories? How do we tell this story as part of the story of God? If we don’t tell God’s story well, we can’t tell the story of the world well and we can’t tell our own story well. After all, God’s story is our story, and our story has become God’s story though Jesus Christ. To summarise. How we understand God is how we understand the world and how we understand ourselves. How we see God directly influences how we live our lives.

With that in mind, let’s discuss today’s difficult passage from Genesis.

John Humphrys asked the following question: 'Why would a merciful God have done to Abraham what he did to Abraham—faced him with that agonizing dilemma, “Sacrifice your child if you believe in me”? Why would God have faced a human being with that wicked choice?'

Maybe you have asked this same, or a similar question. I know that I have.

So, what do we do with this passage?

The temptation can be to ignore the problem, deny that there is a problem or exaggerate the problem and stop reading the Old Testament because it is full of things that we just don’t like. We quickly read over those Old Testament stories and stick to the New Testament where we feel God is much nicer and easier to understand.

There is a different solution, though, and it is not a new solution, it is a solution that was used by the earliest Christian preachers. These preachers recognised that the Bible wasn’t the problem and God wasn’t the problem. Their solution was to preach Christ from every single book in the Bible, applying Jesus’ Emmaus way of reading.

The Jesus Emmaus way of understanding scripture is illustrated in this passage of scripture from Luke 24:

Two disciples are walking the seven-mile journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus. The day is Resurrection Sunday, and the risen Jesus appears to them, but for reasons we don’t know, they do not recognise him. They are immersed in their grief over the death of their teacher, Jesus. You can hear the despair they are feeling in these verses: “But we were hoping he was going to redeem Israel.” They didn’t get it. They had been with Jesus, but they had no idea what had just occurred. They had no idea how the world had just been turned upside-down. But Jesus doesn’t reveal who he is right away, instead he asks them about their weekend, getting them to share their story and their understanding of what has been happening. And then says this to them:

‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26 Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ 27 Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. (Luke 24:25-27)

So what is the Emmaus way to read the story of Abraham and Isaac?

Before Abraham the story of the Bible is one of a steady movement away from fellowship with God. Abraham arrives, though, and the narrative is sent in a new direction—from a steady migration away from God, to a journey into the Unknown and toward God. Before Abraham what do we find in the story? Adam and Eve, through their own choices, have to leave Paradise, Cain kills Abel sending humanity into jealousy and violence, it is a violent world under a flood of judgment, and finally Babylon rising in rebellion to God. It’s a world moving away from God. When Abraham laid down his knife on Mount Moria, he began something new for humanity,

Israel’s long journey to discover that God is a Father, not a receiver of sacrifices.

In answer to the question posed by John Humphry’s earlier in this sermon, Jonathan Sacks answered:

'We know that child sacrifice was incredibly widespread in the ancient world; we know that from every kind of archaeological evidence. Child sacrifice—which is referred to many times in the Hebrew Bible as the most abominable of all acts—was the kind of thing you expected a god to ask of you. It’s what gods regularly asked from their devotees. The essence of the story of Abraham is that at the critical moment, God says “Stop—I am not that kind of god”… He was teaching him, “I did that just so you should learn exactly what would happen if you don’t listen carefully.” So God slammed on the brakes; it was the most effective way of all of history.'

So, how could we summarise this story in an Emmaus way? I think we could say that the story is a traumatic lesson, designed to cure Abraham, Isaac, and all their descendants of any temptation to ever sacrifice their children. This is the lesson., for Abraham and for us: God does NOT EVER want that! ALWAYS look for an alternative. Christ is that alternative. He has done all that God requires to secure our salvation and resurrection.

For the people of Israel the story of God begins to be all about ‘God provides’. They are no longer simply thinking in terms of relationship with the gods as a relationship of exchange. Relationship with God is a celebration of God’s giving (God’s grace). God provides what is necessary for the restoration of life.

I challenge you this morning to think back to that picture of God that you imagined. Ask yourself if you like it. Ask yourself if it reminds you of what you know of Jesus. If it doesn’t, I invite you to spend some time asking yourself, asking God, why your picture of God looks the way that it does.