Images of God on Mothers Day

 

Mothers’ Day can trigger in us…

feelings of trauma… or memories of comfort and affirmation.

 

When Fei asked me to preach on Mother’s Day…

I thought it would be a good time

to consider… our images of God…

 

because they can be lovingly shaped…

or harshly distorted

by our early experiences of care or abandonment

at home and in the Church.

 

Perhaps a loving God

would want to be for us

what we need God to be

at any particular stage of life.

 

Perhaps we’re free to ask for that.

And we certainly don’t have to allow others

to impose their image of God on us.

 

If we were to choose our image of God as Mother or mothering…

 

we could use the revelations of modern science

to imagine a baby in a mother’s womb…

 

attached to mum, nourished by mum,

every cell of this baby…invested with their mother’s DNA…

and her blood… coursing through baby’s veins.

 

Baby finds life in the mother; the mother’s life courses through the baby.

 

Maybe our… life with God… is a little like that –

 

mutual-participation.

 

Our life in God…God’s life… in us.

 

Or maybe we missed out on a gentle loving father

who’d hoist us high upon his shoulders…

or never had a big brother…to stand between us

and the bully in the playground…

aren’t we free to ask God… to be that for us?

 

Of course our ideas of God

might just be glorified projections of ourselves.

Or on the other hand… isn’t it interesting

how we may become… a lot like the God we sing about –

depending on the church we attend. [pause]

 

And there are plenty of… what I’d call false and unhelpful mages of God

like the doting grampa… Santa Clause blend…

or god as punitive judge,

or God as the deadbeat dad… whose never around when you need him.

 

So I propose these false images of God

can be overcome by returning to the person of Jesus

as our authority…

 

If we make Jesus our authority…it’s a move which challenges

all the un-Christlike ideas of God

 

Now most of us get our first image of God from our parents…

And we want them to think… we’re good little boys and girls

 

so we accept and affirm as true whatever is revealed to us

through our parents

and the particular church culture

in which we were immersed.

 

This can be true even if our parents were atheists

 

But later we begin to ask questions…

 

Was the faith I received real?

Or was it just the latest iteration

of many generations and centuries?

 

What if I’d been born in the outback of Australia or India,

wouldn’t I simply and sincerely have conformed

to their local religion and believed in their understanding of God?

 

What if my God had a different name and eight arms or a trunk,

would I be any less loved?

 

Who am I to say my God is the more authentic ‘model’?

 

Why would I suppose their God was evil… and mine good?

 

Or that my God would hear my prayers… but theirs gods were deaf?

 

Or how is it….in an accident of birth or borders,

I’d now escape scott free…

 

while God consigned them to the Lake of Fire?

 

Are my questions a sign of heresy or proof of sanity?

 

The problem worsens when we realise we don’t even have an accurate understanding of ourselves and what it means to be human…

Just a small part of creation—

 

how dare we limit the source of creation

to our definitions?

 

We can find this humility in the fathers and mothers of the early church.

 

In the fourth century St. Gregory the Theologian, said,

“It’s difficult to conceive God but to define God in words

is an impossibility.”

 

Yogis and gurus of every stripe are with St. Gregory on this..

believing we can’t claim…to truly know or grasp God

 

they say…we can only… experience God. [pause]

 

And if we call a Jesus follower

we could conceive of Jesus as a cartoon character…

drawn from our favourite lifestyle…

 

So we have chill-out Jesus versus cage-fighter Jesus;

hippy Jesus versus Rambo Jesus;

 

And in the US of A… you’ve clearly got American Idol Jesus

versus United Nations Jesus.

 

But then a strange thing happens.

 

If you drive north, passing through Canadian immigration…

you’ll find God has adapted…

to the nationalist passions of Canadian worshipers!

 

The God who lives south of the 49th parallel

seems obsessed with freedom and prosperity

 

But somehow when he visits his chalet in Canada,

the same God (supposedly)

is more enthusiastic about tolerance and the common good.

 

And so it goes:

the highest moral values of any given people group

get stamped onto their image of God,

reinforced in their worship and downloaded into their people

It can’t be helped.

Religion is a human phenomenon.

 

People are built for worship…

Ad lib about book Why God wont go away nuns and Buddhists etc].

 

Every society and culture

composes its own ways to approach the divine.

We develop ideas about God based on apostolic experience or our sacred texts. We develop different ideas—sometimes bad ideas,

even deadly ideas.

 

So far, I’ve said nothing here…

the New Atheists* aren’t preaching with great fervour.

 

Their salvos against faith can be bitter

and hit close to home…

enough to trigger shame and defensiveness if you do happen to believe.

 

To the degree they are truth-tellers

The new atheists are helpful

as we examine our images of God.

 

Reading them is like drinking saltwater

when you need to purge your system

from the poison of toxic religion.

 

But if God isn’t merely a delusion

And if God is more than a projection.

 

If there is a God… who is the source of all life and goodness…

 

A God of love so strong as to surrender to the worst we can do…

Like an unconditionally  loving mother or father or brother or sister

Then maybe God is revealed…

in the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth

and we don’t need to be purged

of the faith…hope…love and life

we’ve experience by following him.

 

Remember how Jesus wept over Jerusalem like a mother hen…

who dined with people labelled sinners,

welcomed strong women and tax collectors, advocated and protected the adulteress

and restored the disqualified.

 

We never see him spouting hatred or using the Law to accuse and condemn.

 

The only time we see him point a rebuking finger

is at the oppressive religiosity of first century revivalists!

 

This image of God renders a decisive judgment on us on the Cross,

and his verdict… is “Mercy!”

 

In this century, Pope Francis bore a far more gracious

and ‘evangelical’ message

than revivalist preacher.

 

At his first Good Friday Mass as pope, Francis said

 

One word should suffice this evening…

that is the Cross itself.

The Cross is the word

through which God has responded to evil in the world

 

a word

 

which is love, mercy, forgiveness.

 

Instead of a punishing Judge, the Father in Jesus’ parable waits and  watches for and then runs to those who’ve come to the end of themselves – and embraces them even before they can say I’m sorry.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised how the message

that Jesus shows us what God is like—

is often well received by those who don’t profess the Christian faith.

 

Finally, a word about that false image of the Santa Clause God…

Who lives far away and visits only once a year…

 

How different from Jesus who said, “I am with you always,”

How similar to the physics

expressed by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians

when he tells us it is the universal Christ

who hold all things together…

 

How amazingly close this is

to the science informed image of God we started with…

 

imagine a baby in a mother’s womb…

attached to mum, nourished by mum,

every cell of this baby…invested with their mother’s DNA…

her blood… coursing through their veins.

 

Baby finds life in the mother; the mother’s life courses through the baby.

 

Maybe our life with God is a little like that –

 

Didn’t Jesus pray…at the last supper

Abba just as you are in me and I am in you.

May they also be in us

so that the world may believe you have sent me

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Audio of selected readings and reflections

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Audio of the complete service