June 27, 2004
By Althea Gerdes

How big is your God?

When the group “My Picture of God doesn’t fit me Anymore” was meeting, Robert Hughes and I were e-mailing each other back and forth. And I noticed that in one of the e-mails Robert had changed the name of the group from “My Picture of God doesn’t fit me anymore” to “ My Picture of God is too small?” So I ask you again how big is your God? When I first asked this question, I would say it seems like we’ve put God in a box and defined God this way and that’s the only way God can be. John 14:6 seems to say that there is only way God can be. We often read this verse like this---Jesus is the only way, the only truth and the only way to life and to the Father.

John 14:6 has troubled me for well over ten years—this verse has come up time and time again in the theological exploration groups I have been involved with. In fact I remember specifically that verse as the first one we struggled with. One of the things I have discovered is that we often see many other verses in scripture through the lens of this one verse—or at least our interpretation of this verse or what we have been taught that it means. So is Jesus the only way, the only truth, and the only way to life and to the Father?

I started reading the Bible with a new possibility. What if our understanding of this verse is not what the writer meant at all? What could the rest of the Bible be saying to us that we are missing if we are misunderstanding this verse? What does this verse say about other religions? What does it say about Jesus and who Jesus is? And what does this verse really mean when it says Jesus is the only way? If Jesus is not the only way, the only truth, nor the only way to life, then “What did Jesus Do?”

That is a very disturbing question and a very uncomfortable one to live with. And I am so glad that I have found people and a church that are willing to struggle with these kinds of questions together. I am convinced that many people have questions like this but cannot struggle with them because they have nowhere to do that. One cannot find one’s way with questioning one’s faith alone. I cannot say this strong enough. You can read and read and read and explore on your own and have all the experiences that come as part of life, but unless you have a community and friends to support you, you will get lost—in fact many people either leave the church, give up on any kind of belief of God, or accept the teaching of the church they are in. This is staying in Stage 3 that James Fowler talks about in his book the Stages of Faith. They accept the traditional teachings of the church. They give up the questions; they give up the struggle, because the struggle is too hard to do alone.

I still cannot answer the question, “What did Jesus do?” to my own satisfaction, so that is not the subject of this sermon. But I have learned to be more comfortable with living with the questions. And maybe that is the answer I need. Maybe it is the answer we all need. I have thought all along that I just wanted the answer to that question. But maybe the answer is we need to live with the questions. Maybe that is the only way we can really see how big God is. Maybe we will be able to see that God is not limited by even our understanding of this one verse. John Spong says that “the persistent theological search is of God for it expands life, while religious claims to possess exclusive truth are sinful because they thwart truth itself and allege that God can be boxed inside our thought-forms.”

I have gone through a whole process of seeing the Bible differently. Marcus Borg calls it history remembered. Spong speaks of the gospels as liturgical documents used in the early church. One can look at the Bible from a literary view or an archeological view. And as we have studied we have seen that just as there is not agreement between scholars today about the Bible or about God, there was not agreement between the early followers of Jesus either. We have been studying the book of John in House Church and the Gospel of Thomas in the Liberty Group. These books were written at about the same time and possibly in response to one another. Christian dogma and orthodoxy had not been born yet. Each book has a particular view that they are trying to articulate. We have learned how John won in the process, but that many of the teachings of Thomas are still present in our world today often by groups as widely diverse as the charismatic movement, the mystics, Jewish Kabbalah groups, and Quakers. Often these groups were left out by powerful political systems in control of churches and institutions. So we are still often seeing John 14:6 through almost 2000 years of orthodoxy; an orthodoxy that says that Jesus is the only unique person from God in history. Thomas claims something entirely different in his gospel. He says we can all be like Jesus, that Jesus wants us to discover God’s light in us.

So what I would like us to do this morning is try to see John 14:6 without 2000 years of orthodoxy. By orthodoxy I mean the usual belief about John 14:6. I want each of us to try to see something new. And it will be okay if each of you sees something entirely different. Orthodoxy tends to distrust our capacity to be discerning, but I believe in the priesthood of each believer (a very good Baptist belief and it is in the Bible, too) and that each of us can discern the Spirit. Early Christians understood metaphor much more easily than we do. We live in a world of logic and reasoning, in the world of the printed page and information from every direction. We think in a way early Christians could never have conceived. So when these early followers of Jesus were trying to explain to people they met the experience and the teachings of this Jesus they told it in parables, sayings, and metaphors. These are ways of passing on the stories in an easy to remember form in an oral culture.

Elaine Pagels tells us that “the story of Jesus became for his followers what the Exodus story had become for many generations of Jews; not simply a narrative of past events but a story through which they could interpret their own struggles, their victories, their sufferings, and their hopes. As Jesus and his disciples had traditionally gathered every year to act out the Exodus story at Passover, so his followers, after his death, gathered at Easter to act out the crucial moments of Jesus’ story.”

In the book we are reading for Creative Writing Group, “Word Painting”, Rebecca McClanahan gives us a good definition of both literal and metaphor. She says that literal language means, literally, what it says. It is the meaning as defined by the dictionary. These are meanings that we have agreed upon over time. But metaphor is very different. Metaphor is derived from the Greek word metaphora. Moving vans in Greece are often marked with the word metaphora to suggest the transfer of items from one place to another. “Metaphor occurs when one thing . . . is carried over into another. An imaginative transfer takes place…a comparison between two seemingly unlike things…(it) does more than shed light on the two things being compared. It actually brings to the mind’s eye something that has never before been seen…something fresh into the world…a new image or idea is formed.”(p.89-90)

We have read John 14:6 all these years very literally. The way of Jesus has been defined for us. But if this is a metaphor than there is a suggestion of a brand new image or idea formed. There is a suggestion that two seemingly unlike things, the human and the divine are not just being compared, but that something new is happening. For me Jesus isn’t just an example or a model, but Jesus is a living opening to God’s Spirit. As for the early Jews, the story of Jesus becomes a way to act out and experience this union of the human and the divine. Jesus brought together life and death into resurrection—and it is a resurrection full of hope. It is A Way to bring something new from fear, death, grief, and suffering---a hope for newness in the midst of pain. Jesus as the way can be experienced time after time not as a past event but in new ways to bring hope again and again.

The way that Jesus lived was by the Spirit and it truly was a new way for the people of that culture. They had been living by the law just as we today often try to live by the law of orthodoxy and dogma. Jesus knew how to follow God’s Spirit in a way we have yet to learn how to do. Living by the Spirit means that we are no longer afraid to question what we have been taught. We are always seeking God’s Spirit in a fresh new way for our day and our time. We are seeking “The Way”, a fresh happening for today. The story lives on in us, “the way” is present, not just a 2000 year old story. To live by the law or orthodoxy or tradition is to fall back into the trap that Jesus found us in 2000 years ago. That is living by a God defined by someone else. That is saying that God is this way and cannot be any other way. That is putting God in a box. I like having our values here and I think they are very important, but if we begin to say that if you don’t live these values the way I think you should live them then for me we have moved into orthodoxy (the law). We really don’t have to all agree on anything except that we are following Jesus and God’s Spirit. I like it that Jack keeps telling us that we are have the Spirit at the center of our congregation. I pray that this is true. I want us to seek to follow the Holy Spirit in the way that Jesus did. I want some new birth process to keep on happening. I want us to be creative and active in our faith, challenging the status quo, seeking justice for the oppressed of our time. I want freedom, liberation, salvation, hope, faith, love, and joy in our life today. And I believe that this life can be found in the search---in the journey together. It will not be found in having the right answers or in having the right beliefs. It will not be found in the man, Jesus, but in the way that Jesus chose to live. The word “heresy” originally meant the “act of choice.” The early Thomas groups were “seekers of God rather than believers.” This was a group joined together by spiritual power after an encounter with divine power. The way became new.

The act of breaking the bread together is an act of hospitality, an act of bringing people together, an act of God bringing us together today, an act of choice. God is in our midst. God is within you. The way, the truth, and the life, the very kingdom of God is in you.

There are a number of ways I believe we have made our God too small. God is bigger than the Bible. The Bible is a written book put together by men and women. The written words on a page seem like a reduction of who God is and what God does. Those who have a Bible and can read are not the only ones who can know God. God is bigger than that. The Word made flesh is so much more than that. Whether you believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God or not, just believing that God cannot talk to you any other way beside through the written word is a terrible limitation of a big God. This belief sure leaves a lot of people out in the world who either don’t have a Bible or cannot read, and leaves so many people out who read the sacred books of other religions.

God is bigger than how we usually think about Jesus. The belief that Jesus is God may have reduced our concept of God. This God who looks and acts like a man may be more controllable, more manageable, less mysterious, and easier to understand, but that is not God. God will always be beyond our words, our definitions, and our power to control. God gives each of us only glimpses of who God is. We often make God in our own image and think that God will act like us. We have evangelized by destroying other cultures believing God is like us. Whether we believe Jesus is God or Jesus is not isn’t the issue for me. The reduction of our view of God is what concerns me. How big is your God? Big enough for all people, all beliefs, all times, every situation, able to know you very personally and at the same time big enough for everyone else. Is your God bigger than any words you have, any definition? Is God out of your control or do you think that you understand how God works?

God is bigger than Christianity. I want to explore other theological perspectives. We have done some of that in the Liberty group. We have talked in person to a rabbi, to a couple from The Community of Christ Church, to a Native American healer, and we have studied books on Islam and Buddhism. A couple of months ago I went to hear a discussion between representatives from three very different faith groups who are in Congregational Partnership together under the umbrella of Kansas City Harmony. Their program was called “Sons and Daughters of Abraham” and included the Al Inshirah Islamic Center just down the street from us, Congregation Beth Torah, and St. Monica Catholic Church. They have been through 9/11, which had repercussions for both Muslims and Jews, and the priest scandal in the Catholic Church. They shared what they have learned, how they are a like, and how they found ways to talk about how they are different and at the same time support each other in some very difficult circumstances. They have opened their hearts and minds to new questions and new answers, to increasing respect and validation of others, and are letting go of prejudices and misconceptions that cut them off from one another. This experience reminded me of the song I learned in Sunday School when I was a little girl, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” This song is still true for me.

But even though God is this great big God, God never has to make me feel small to make God feel better or bigger. There is never any sense of condemnation from God. When we think the voices we hear inside us that make us feel small are the voice of God, we are making God in our own image. That sounds like something we do to each other and ourselves. In fact, God always thinks I can do more than I think I can.

So to be a follower of Jesus and his way of living is to learn to disagree without putting others down, refusing to make them seem small or less than they are, and not condemning their life for what they do or for what they believe. Paul says to us in Romans 12:3 “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment.” This respect for others is the narrow way Jesus tells us about. Jesus asks us to love our enemies. Our God is not limited by our denominational lines or by different ways of seeing and experiencing God between other religions. We cannot believe that God is going to bless our country without blessing other countries as well. John Dominic Crossan insists in his books that God is all about hospitality from the very beginning of Genesis to the end of the book. And everyone is invited. There are so many verses we have ignored that say “all people.” We have ignored these verses. We think that our understanding of the way of Jesus is the only way that leads to life and to God. Jesus never intended for us to be exclusionary in our thinking, speaking, or listening. Jesus’ disciples thought he was hospitable to a fault.

We all come from very different places and we each have had many life experiences. One of the things I have appreciated about House Church has been the sharing of our stories with each other. They deepen our time together. John Spong says, “Sharing faith stories as equals…is a way into the very life of God. We can do that in our House Church, but can we do that with other people who are not like us? We are in such a competitive, busy world that we think we have no time for sharing or it seems like a waste of time. But if the sharing of our stories is a way into the very life of God, then both the telling and the listening are essential blessings that we are missing.

The God I know likes it when I ask all my questions, and I want our church to be a place to ask your questions and be heard. I want this church to be a place to tell your story, tell others about how it really is at your house, at your job, or in your sphere of influence with family and friends. Telling the stories really are acts of confession. Without confession, forgiveness is not possible. Our prayers and our sacrifices go unanswered. And we do not know God.

Christianity was called “The Way” before it was called Christianity. There is a reason for that. Jesus lived “The Way”. Our reduction of God to the death and resurrection of Jesus and our focus on being “saved” for a later life leaves out so much living today. How big is your God? Is God big enough for your life today? Big enough that you can bring your questions to church? Big enough to change your life in big ways and small ways? Bigger than Jesus and the Bible? Bigger than the universe? Bigger than denominations, political parties, systems of this world, religions, governments, nations? Bigger than you? Bigger than your enemy?

We are called by God, by God’s own Holy Spirit to renew our minds, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, to be born again, to repent, to change, to seek new ways to live, and to find ways to be all we can be. We cannot do this unless we practice the radical way of life that Jesus lived. Jesus was willing to live outside the theological and cultural boxes of his day. Will you? Is your God bigger than what someone else tells you God is? Is your God big enough that you can hear God yourself and not depend on others to do it for you? Is your God big enough to struggle with you through the questions of your heart and mind? Is your love of God and God’s love of you big enough to live with the insecurity of not knowing what God is doing or even what you believe about God?

In some Jewish meditations, Jonathan Wittenberg says that the mystics, the Talmud, the Midrash, the Zohar, and the Hasidic masters all declare that God’s call to each of us has never ceased. “For God speaks to every person all the time in a voice limited only by the capacity of each one of us to apprehend it.” Everything and everyone is connected to God. Keep on looking, seeking, and asking. Our God is a big God.

BENEDICTION

Learn to live by the Spirit
Not by might nor by power nor by the law
Live in radical insecurity
Follow THE WAY of Jesus
God is bigger than all our theologies, all our science, and all our knowledge
God is far more than we can ever think or imagine
God is connection, gracious, and awesome.
Keep on seeking. Seeking the way of Jesus, seeking the truth of Jesus, seeking the way to a life more abundant in the presence of a very big God.