A
series of University Sermons entitled
THE
ONE WITH MANY NAMES
Jesus’
metaphors for God
Introduction
Trinity
College Chapel, at the University of Melbourne is one of those places most
conducive to worship.
It is the venue for a congregation of faculty, staff and students who
gather during teaching terms from 1.15 to 1.45 pm each Wednesday.
They
are a stimulating and encouraging people, whose comments on the preaching and
whose personal friendship nourish enthusiasm for the sacred ministry.
The eleven sermons in this series were delivered in First Semester, 1992.
They were announced like this:
“The
nature of God is ‘mystery’; that is, ultimately beyond our understanding.
However, metaphors used by Jesus yield rich insight into the relationship
between humanity and God.”
In
The One with Many Names, I explored with the lunch hour congregation a range of
these metaphors for what they say about personal wholeness, human relations and
life in society.
I
hope you will find them enlarging to your faith.
John
Bodycomb
Chaplain
October,
1993
by
John Bodycomb
Exodus 3:4-6, 13-14. God speaks to Moses out of the blaze. Note what happens when Moses inquires God’s name!
John 1:14-18. God’s being and nature, in the extent to which these can be understood, are seen to be disclosed in Jesus.
Somewhere there is an elderly medico with a brass plate on his consulting rooms that says ‘John Black, MB, BS’. But nobody addresses him as ‘John Black, MB BS’. The nearest was that policeman investigating a drug-related burglary who said ‘Are you John Black?’
Instead, he is variously know as, and addressed as ‘Dr Black’ by patients, ‘J.B.’ by colleagues, ‘Dad’ by sons and daughters, ‘Grandpop’ by their kids, ‘Uncle Jack’ by nephews and nieces, ‘Blackjack’ by R.S.L. mates, ‘John’ by his mother, and ‘Sugar’ by his wife. His late father always called him ‘Jonno’, and the medical student courting his youngest daughter calls him ‘Sir’.
I think that makes at least ten ‘aliases’; there may be more. Question is: What is his proper name? Well, thereby hangs a tale. His birth certificate says ‘John Marmaduke Black’. His parents were rather cute. They named him after an old uncle who had made a lot of money on the stock market. Unfortunately, Uncle Marmy lost it all before his nephew was very much older. Very few know his middle name, and he prefers to keep it a secret.
The other names sit comfortably with him; they denote the many and varied ways he is known and regarded. They all point to an aspect of his being which is as real as any other aspect. My calling them ‘aliases’ doesn’t mean he is a devious man, bent on a lifetime of evasiveness. ‘Alias’, like ‘alibi’, comes from the Latin word for ‘other’. It simply means another name in another situation.
So to ‘Why God has many aliases’, introducing our series on ‘The One with many names: Jesus’ metaphors for God.’ I want to approach the subject under three headings: ‘God’s personal space’, ‘Idolising ideas’, and ‘The icon of the invisible’.
1.
God’s personal space
The notion of ‘God’s personal space’ may seem a trifle odd until I explain. I use this metaphor of ‘personal space’ because it’s a familiar one to most. We say someone’s personal space is being infringed if they’re being crowded physically or psychologically. We use the expression when behaviour is invasive, intrusive, presuming a degree of intimacy or familiarity which is quite inappropriate.
There’s a strong tradition in the Hebrew scriptures that says God’s real name is withheld from us. Remember that storey in Genesis 32 of Jacob’s mystical experience of wrestling all night with an assailant who eventually dislocates Jacob’s hip? The assailant gives Jacob a new name (‘Israel’), but refuses to disclose his own. Jacob realises this nameless assailant is the Holy One. Because he has wrestled with God ‘face to face’, so to speak, he calls the place ‘Peniel’ – ‘face of God’.
Exodus 3 records the call of Moses to lead his people out of captivity. The Voice comes from a bush that is ablaze, but not being consumed. As Moses creeps toward it, the Voice says, ‘OK, that’s near enough, Moses!’ So Moses covers his face. The he says, ‘Suppose I go to the people; who do I say sent me?’ To this the voice says, ‘Tell then the One called “I am” sent you!’
These and other stories seem to be saying that there’s something profoundly mysterious here, ultimately beyond our understanding, and consequently beyond our expression. In this connection, I find one of the most fascinating names for God (or perhaps ‘metaphors’ would be better) is ‘Ruach’. This is the Hebrew word which variously means ‘breath’ or ‘spirit’ – or ‘wind’.
The metaphor of wind is in the Christian scriptures also, of course; notably in the story of Pentecost (Acts 2), where you read about something that is likened to ‘a rushing mighty wind’. This metaphor speaks of a great energy not generated by human agency. The United States is pouring money into the development of high-tech wind turbines, which could provide a quarter of the nation’s power needs within thirty years.
But we don’t generate the wind, or control it for that matter. We position our yachts or our turbines in such a way as to gain the benefits of the wind, but as Jesus said, ‘The wind blows where it wills’. That the wind is a reality there is no doubt. You witness branches waving and leaves being picked up; you may hear that eerie howl.
But try as you may, you cannot lay hold on the wind. You can stretch out your hand and snap it shut, and say, ‘I have the wind in my hand’. All you have is stale air in your sticky palm, for the wind is alive and dynamic – and has moved on. Perhaps there is a caution here for those who believe they can capture the mystery in a theological formula. Perhaps you can no more wrap God in a dogma than enclose the wind in your hand.
2.
Idolising ideas
That will do for ‘God’s Personal Space'; second heading is ‘The idolising of ideas.’
In Exodus 32 there’s this other ancient story that reminds us how some will react to the kind of thing we’ve been saying. The pilgrim people are getting impatient because Moses hasn’t come down from the mountain, where he’s gone for a chat with the Holy One. They gather around Aaron, Moses’ elder brother and say, ‘Look here, we don’t know what’s become of this chap who was to lead us. Let’s make a god to lead us out of this place’.
Aaron, who doesn’t seem to know what else to do, says, ‘OK, off with all your baubles and bangles. Bring them over here’. He takes all these gold trinkets, puts them on the fire, and fashions a golden bull. The people say, ‘This will be our god’. Then Aaron builds an altar, and next day (while Moses is still conferring with the one called ‘I am’), they bring offerings for a big celebration. It turns into a veritable orgy.
Then Moses returns, with the tablets on which God’s precepts for the community are inscribed. He is livid with what he finds. In an extraordinary reaction, he melts this idol down to a formless blob, pounds it up into tiny pieces, puts the lot in water, and then makes the people drink this rather abrasive mixture!
There’s a curious little sidelight. Moses interrogates Aaron, who offers the lamest excuse you ever hear. ‘Don’t get cross with me’, he says. ‘You know how cussed these people can be. I just threw their ornaments in the fire, and out came the bull!’
Karl Barth, the Swiss theologian who died in 1968, is generally regarded as the most influential Christian thinker of this century. Barth is to 20th century theology (‘godtalk’) what Einstein is to physics, or Pasteur is to bacteriology, or Michelangelo is to Renaissance art.
His major work was a thirteen volume Church Dogmatics, which few have read in full. Perhaps that is not critical to their salvation! Barth himself would joke about pushing his barrow-load of theology around heaven, while the angels were too busy with other things to be bothered with his theology! Barth believed that theologians should not take themselves too seriously – lest their precious ideas about God become like golden bulls!
I think I am becoming more sensitive to the presumptuousness of much godtalk. It seems such an impertinence, and downright idolatrous to give such status to our ideas about the being and nature of God. Let me put it this way. Have you ever tried to put into words the scent of a gardenia, the taste of ripe strawberries, the spectacle of a starlit sky, the sound of a surf, the feel of a baby’s skin?
Each of these is an everyday reality, common and unremarkable. Yet to put them in words is uncommonly difficult, even if you have the soul and vocabulary of a poet. You know the best words at your disposal cannot be equated with the realities they try to capture. If this is the case with a scent, a strawberry, a starlit sky, a surf or the skin of a baby, how much more should we be humble about our metaphors for the Divine!
Into the midst of this human dilemma (‘How can we speak of God?) comes One whom Christian Faith believes to be uniquely qualified to do so. Saint John says ‘It’s true that no one has ever seen God at any time. Yet the divine and only Son, who lives in the closest intimacy with the Father, has made him known’ (John 1:18).
The letter to the Colossians says he is ‘the visible expression of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1:15). In fact, the Greek word is eikon. He is ‘The icon of the invisible’. Let’s be quite clear what an icon is, since Orthodox churches are replete with icons and Western Christians need tutoring in what these mean.
An icon is a sacred object, to be sure, but its sacred quality is ‘derivative’. It points beyond itself to the truly sacred. It draws no worship to itself or for itself. It points toward the ultimate. It is in this sense that Saint Paul says Jesus the Christ is ‘The Icon of the Invisible’.
But he’s not a two-dimensional, static representation of the sacred. This one is a living, breathing, talking icon – who speaks about this mystery, and about the relationship between humanity and God.
And how does he do it? With metaphors; lots of them. We’re apt to overlook the fact that Jesus used not one metaphor, but many. His choice of ‘father’ as a preferred mode of address is only one of these metaphors. In these coming weeks we will be looking at ten of Jesus’ metaphors for God. Why did he use so many? Because a metaphor is only a metaphor, and one cannot possibly convey the wonder and the richness of this mystery.
Something else we need to recognise is that Jesus’ ‘metaphorical’ ways of talking about God don’t always seem to be totally consistent with each other. For instance, some put the emphasis on human responsibility and God’s judgment. Others seem to emphasise human frailty and the inexhaustible forbearance of God.
In other words, if we look to the teaching of Jesus (or the scriptures in toto for that matter) for onesimple and straightforward, totally coherent and consistent doctrine of God, that may be forcing what’s there to fit with what we want to find.
Is this a bad thing? Does it intimidate us, make us feel insecure in our faith? Worse still, does it push us toward over-dependence on one metaphor, so that we’re in mortal danger of making a golden bull from it? I suggest that none of these things need to happen. On the contrary, it can be wonderfully liberating if we’re prepared to think of ourselves as pilgrims on the way.
Your see, it suggests that we should perhaps set a higher value on our own ‘special moments’. Many, many more people than sit in church pews every Sunday can report awareness of the mystery: their own ‘special moments’. God is no more locked in the four walls of a building than in the formulae of theologians.
This imaginativeness of Jesus’ metaphors also means one need not be dismayed by the dogmatists who say ‘we have a monopoly on the truth, and we are guardians of the only way it can be expressed’. That seems rather presumptuous, and hardly fair to God!
And finally, it suggests that we might begin to spot clues to the transcendent in unexpected places – like a swimming pool. Let me end with a story.
In the late 1950s a large component of my work was adult education in the church, through what we called ‘parish life conferences’. We were very much into non-verbal communication, and particularly the visual arts. I had invited this group to paint something which expressed their relationship with God. A lady who was about seventy produced a picture of herself swimming.
When it was her turn to talk about her painting, she said ‘When I think of God I think of water, and when I think of water I think of God.’ I’m relying on my memory for this because I foolishly didn’t write it down at the time. But as I recall, she said that plunging into water always meant three things for her. It meant security. I think being ‘encapsulated’, so to speak, may have connected with pre-birth memory in the womb. It meant weightlessness. She could let go and float. And it meant cleansing.
She swam two or three times a week (in the sea), which kept her body in good tune, but which was also a time of spiritual renewal. I’m not about to suggest we have our lunch-hour services in the Beaurepaire pool, but you never know! You never know where, when and how the Eternal may come to you.
Reproduced
here on the Warragul Uniting Church web site with the permission of the author,
Rev Dr John Bodycomb - 2004.