Who is God?

It’s a profound question that has been asked by billions of people over time and is constantly being asked by many of us here tonight. But I want to return to this very fundamental question as we begin a new time in Mt Albert Baptist’s history : especially the history of this evening congregation. It’s so fundamental in fact that I want to leave our series on Acts for the time being and get back to the basics of what the good news of Jesus Christ is.

Now I’ve often said that I consider the good news to be “Love God and Love People.” It’s a summary of the whole law as spoken by Jesus in Mark 12:29. but I’ve recently discovered that it’s not enough. I’ve been selling you short. There is a third component to this which is “love yourself.”

Love God, love people, love yourself.

Any without the others is folly. We need all three. So I want to spend some time over the next while unpacking these three aspects to the Good news of Jesus Christ. To begin though, let’s try and answer this question. Who is God?

The question stems from the very core of our being. Most people in new Zealand believe in some kind of God, they just aren’t sure exactly who or what it/he or she may be. Many people shy away from having any opinion on who God might be. But the nature of our faith, the nature of Christianity is that when we are confronted by Jesus, he demands that we make a statement. He demands that we commit our opinions.

So in mark’s gospel we have this incident where Jesus seems to be gauging where the disciples are at with understanding him.

It’s a popular and familiar story. The story goes like this.

After a hard day of watching Jesus performing miracles and teaching, Jesus is walking between towns with the disciples and he strikes up casual conversation.

“Who do people say I am? What’s the buzz on the street?”

it’s quite a statement to make about yourself really. It could be construed as being a bit self-seeking. You see, that if I were to ask you this question, “who do people say I am?” you’d look at me funny and then answer, “they say you are Stu McGregor” or some of you might say “some say you are the son of Bill.”

And the disciples began to answer.

“John the Baptist.” Was one answer, which is interesting. John had only recently been executed and there had been several witnesses to the fact that Jesus had been baptised by John not too long ago. So that people would draw this conclusion is interesting : maybe the messages were similar enough to create the confusion?

“Elijah” was another answer. Remember Elijah was prophet who had a special connection with God. There’s the story where Elijah is hiding and despairing of God’s interactive presence in this world. And God instructs him outside and stand on the mountain and to quote from the bible here, 1 kings 19:11-13,

Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake;

and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.

God’s concern for Elijah was so intimate that he virtually appeared to him in a similar way that he appeared to Moses. Elijah was the one who set that challenge down to the worshippers of the fertility idol, Baal…

Elijah was also taken to heaven before he died. He was a great figure in Israel’s history. It’s quite an honour I’m sure for Jesus to be associated with him.

“any of the other prophets.” Was yet another reply to Jesus’ question. And we might find some commonality here with our current situation. Most people acknowledge that at the very least Jesus was a good man, the Muslims believe he was a prophet of the same calibre as Moses and Abraham. It never ceases to amaze me that most people have some kind of opinion about Jesus and it very rarely criticizes him as being a charlatan or a bad guy. Most criticism is levelled at the people who wrote about him or follow him. But more on that later.

So the answers are abundant. But this is the light part of the sermon tonight. This is the easy part. The hard part comes with the next question Jesus asked his disciples that day.

“Who do you say I am?”

I’m sure we’ve all got an answer here. And I’m sure we all applaud the answer given by peter who was so ready to blurt things out. Peter says

“You are the Messiah.”

It’s a beautiful moment in the gospel of mark. It happens right after a blind man receives his sight again. He describes his vision of this world as gradually coming into focus as Jesus massages mud into his eyes. He was blind but now he saw, and peter and the disciples were blind but they were beginning to see. The parallel is beautiful. And we look at this passage, in the centre of the gospel of mark, and herald it as the climax. Now people know. Now people understand we say. The truth is out and the story will take a triumphant turn here. The hero is revealed, and people will now respond. And we expect a smile on Jesus’ face as he nodded with that, now you’ve got it kind of nod. And we sense the wonder and amazement on the disciple’s faces as they all suddenly understood the implications of this insight. The was the beginning of a new era of history! YAY!

But Jesus didn’t respond with rejoicing. The bible says that he sternly warned them not to tell anyone of this.

Eh?

He started instead to talk to them about how he was going to suffer and die. And that he would rise again. And it was all very depressing.

Eh?

What happened to the good news? After all, messiah, that’s pretty big stuff. If Jesus had seen the matrix he’d know that it meant he was to conquer the dominant roman empire through jujitsu. He was meant to be the all American super-hero that would overthrow the evil megalomaniacs who were trying to take over the world…

So peter took it upon himself to remind Jesus exactly what was going on here and that talking about suffering and death and stuff like that was just not helpful. Maybe he needed to be more positive than that. So he took Jesus to one side, away from the others and began to rebuke him:

“Jesus, this is just silly talk. We won’t let that happen to you…”

and before he could finish Jesus had stopped him in his tracks. Turned his back on peter, facing the others said, “Get behind me Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God but of the things of people.”

And here is our lesson for today.

Peter had the right words, but the wrong idea.

This is the problem of the ages. This is the problem of us here tonight. We’re going to go heavy but bear with me here.

If I say to you, who am I? You will answer with words, and give a summary of what you see and experience and your interpretations of those things.

The problem lies in the plain fact that words do not communicate very well at all. The contemporary philosopher, Foucault deconstructed language in this way. Language may be a good way of communicating but not necessarily a very accurate way. I could say the words, “I love you” but a hug says it better.

When we describe things we can only describe what we experience which is the first limitation.

The story of Buddha conversing with his students:

“Once upon a time there was a certain raja who called to his servant and said, ‘Come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of Savatthi who were born blind... and show them an elephant.’ ‘Very good, sire,’ replied the servant, and he did as he was told. He said to the blind men assembled there, ‘Here is an elephant,’ and to one man he presented the head of the elephant, to another its ears, to another a tusk, to another the trunk, the foot, back, tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that that was the elephant.

“When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them and said to each, ‘Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?’

“Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, ‘Sire, an elephant is like a pot.’ And the men who had observed the ear replied, ‘An elephant is like a winnowing basket.’ Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a grainery; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.

“Then they began to quarrel, shouting, ‘Yes it is!’ ‘No, it is not!’ ‘An elephant is not that!’ ‘Yes, it’s like that!’ and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.

“Brethren, the raja was delighted with the scene.

“Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing.... In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.”

Now this story is often used to illustrate that all religions are part of the same thing, which I completely disagree with. But the story does illustrate that we all see different aspects of things. We all interpret this reality differently to each other. Each one of you will go away from tonight having experienced something different to the rest of us.

But we will all say that we went to church. Though how we describe that will be different.

Peter claimed that Jesus was the messiah. But how he understood that was radically different to what Jesus was all about. Why else do you think he told peter not to tell anyone? It’s because peter had the wrong idea. The right word but the wrong idea.

And I think this is how it is often with how we view God.

I think we have ideas about how he interacts with us and then can get disappointed when he doesn’t.

If someone says that they don’t need God, then what about God is it that they don’t need? The statement reflects what they perceive God to be. Perhaps their understanding is that God is about helping when you pray to him, he’s a provider, a Christmas wish list fulfiller. And in a middle class affluence it’s easy to see that this is not a god that is needed.

But because they feel that they don’t need God doesn’t mean that they don’t. Me, I say I need God like I need air to breathe. I believe God is so essential to our human condition that he constantly affects us in the same way that gravity does. We can’t conceive of what it would be like to not have God since he sustains everything that exists. It was spoken through him and by him.

Humans are made in God’s image. Which means there is something about us which is deeply concerned with God.

But who is God? If we say that God is sovereign, we say part of the truth but not all. If we say God is provider we say part of the truth but not all. If we say God is judge we say part of the truth but not all. I am going to go so far as to say that we cannot and are incapable of knowing God very well at all. Which is not saying that we can’t know him so much that we can be sustained and loved and embraced by him, but we cannot know this God fully because simply put we are finite and God is un-finite.

When the bible talks about God being He does that mean that God has a gender? The bible also talks about God mothering us too in Isaiah 66:13. most people acknowledge that calling God ‘He’ is really helpful for thinking about father etc, but it is only a useful description that allows us to connect. It’s a scriptural description, and it is the best way for us to understand God’s relationality with us, but it is not the entire picture.

God spends a lot of time explaining the mystery of who he is to Job. And Job is put in his place by this. We cannot know everything about God, but we can know more than we think. We have enough resource in this book to be able to know God in the way that we need to know him. But God remains God.

If we limit him to an idea, it’s idolatry. If we claim that we know God absolutely, it’s idolatry. If our image of god is that he gives us things when we ask him for them, then it’s idolatry. If our image of God is that he never answers our despair, then it’s idolatry.

If we try to pin God down, it’s idolatry.

“Get behind me Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God but of the things of people.”

Often we come to express our feelings to God because of our experience of him. And we never get beyond that. God is greater than anything we can conceive because he un-finite.

And I think the scale of the un-finite should fill us with a great deal of terror. I often think of the scene in 2001: a space oddysey where one of the astronauts is flung into space. You don’t slow down in a vacuum and you can’t swim back, you just keep going. It would be nightmarish to think that you have three hours life support and all you are doing is drifting aimlessly through the universe. For ever. And you’d be perfectly preserved as you are frozen by the absolute zero of space.

The horror of that emptiness and void that you’re traversing through. That’s infinity. And when we say we connect with God, that’s only part of the scale of who it is we connect with.

When we pray, this is who we are praying to. Do you see what I’m saying? If we limit God to our own understanding, then we miss the point. Consider that vastness making himself known through Jesus Christ. And doesn’t grace and love spring into life? Doesn’t the sheer magnitude of scale do something for us?

I believe that one of the contributing reasons to why the church is in decline is because we have reduced God. We have reduced Jesus. We have reduced the holy spirit.

We’ve reduced God to being absent and distant and heavenly. We’ve reduced Jesus to being a smiley guy with sheep around him, but with a brutal ending to his life (thanks mel Gibson for enriching us there), we’ve reduced the holy spirit to being a miracle working, ecstasy giving Star wars ‘force’ type of miracle worker. And we miss the depth that they all bring.

A simple look at two creation accounts from genesis and john, provides so much depth. The spirit brooding over the waters at creation like a dove, the Word, being spoken and things came into being, And God being the primary source of everything, the speaker, the initiator of powers that defy our imagination. So much depth just from the story of creation…well it blows my mind anyway.

Paul endorses humility when speaking about these things of faith. He finishes his chapter on love with the words that sum up everything I am trying to communicate here tonight. 1 Cor. 13

9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;

10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

It’s true. We know God only in part. We know Jesus only in part. And we know the spirit only in part. When we talk about these things we need humility.

You know what doesn’t fail ever when talking about the good news? Using the very words of Jesus from the Gospels. No-one disagrees with them. No-one. They disagree with hypocrisy or the religion surrounding them which are the structures we build when we don’t acknowledge that we only know in part about these mysterious things.

Use the words of Jesus. His words will never fail people. But mine will.