Stitching up a God Understanding
Key texts: Judges 4:1-7, Psalm 123, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Matthew 25:14-30, preached November 15, 2020 at St. Andrew’s, Glenwood.
How many of us have said or thought the following: “I prefer the God of the New Testament to the God of the Old Testament.” I get what that means: the God of the Old Testament seems more angry than the God of the New Testament. Once we look at the variety of God understandings as revealed in Scripture, we see it just doesn’t hold to such a dualistic assessment. In the New Testament texts today we have destruction, weeping and gnashing of teeth, judgement and labor pains. In the Old Testament, we have a wise female leader chosen by God to lead the people into 40 years of peace and plenty. Let’s drop that old saw of the angry Old Testament God.
The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament — what is different is how people expressed their particular understandings about God over time and in different circumstances. We are all on a faith journey of discovering more and more about God at work in our lives, as were our ancestors in faith.
My Sunday school teachers and youth group leaders taught me what they understood about God, and I honor each of them by continuing to seek understanding - not by blindly regurgitating what they taught and believed, but by faithfully opening to revelation, to new discoveries about God.
An understanding of God is like a very old patchwork quilt handed down to us from generations past…
Over here is a bit of delicate black satin that is beautiful yet fragile and torn.
Over here is some sturdier fabric that is a bit discolored from use.
This piece is textured and this piece is shiny.
And over here is a hole, that needs some patching on top of the patchwork.
Our understanding of God is a patchwork of understandings handed down to us throughout the ages, from mother to son to granddaughter to Sunday school classrooms. From pastor to Bible study participants to youth group to campers to young children learning to say bedtime prayers to God. From father to daughter to co-worker to godchild to the person they sponsor in a 12 step group. We discover God through one another, through nature, through music and art, through Scripture. Parts of our understandings are delicate, other parts are sturdy. Some understandings will last, some need immediate repair.
The Bible itself is a patchwork of various understandings of God. There are multiple names for God, both plural and singular. (In the Hebrew Scriptures, which many of us grew up calling the Old Testament, God is Yahweh, which is singular, and Elohim, which is plural.) In some stories, God is understood as very distant, beyond relationship with humans. In yet other stories, God is up close and personal, interacting with an individual through conversation, like with Moses. The ancient authors of the Hebrew Scriptures were stitching together their own particular discoveries into a complex and communal quilt of God understanding.
When we read about the story of Deborah, which is found in the Hebrew Scriptures book of Judges, we discover that the community understood God as acting in their best interest when they behaved righteously.
Deborah the prophetess, by Marc Chagall; imagined under the Deborah Palm
If you continue on with Deborah’s story (which I hope you will do so that you get to the very dramatic moment where a woman named Jael offers “hospitality” to the exhausted and thirsty enemy captain Sisera), you’ll observe that the ancient Israelites understood God as working through people, including women, to give military victory.
This week I watched the recording of the “Who’s Who of the Hebrew Scriptures Bible Study” in which Hannah (Graham) and eight members of the community studied Deborah together. I learned that Deborah is one of five prophetesses in the Hebrew Scriptures. She is the leader of the people, judging over disputes, and leading their military exploits.
I learned from this recording a bit more about Deborah’s Palm, a date palm tree that symbolizes peace, plenty, grace, elegance, majesty, military triumph. This story is stitched carefully into our collective God discovery quilt with fine detailed stitches that merit our close attention. Let’s admire the God we discover in the life of a female judge who served God’s people with elegance, who brought about military victory and peace, who promoted flourishing and plenty for the community.
Fun fact: In this era of the Israelite saga, it is understood that God chose the prophets, and the people chose the judge. Deborah was both prophetess and judge, chosen by God and chosen by the people.
If you like learning such details about the characters in the Bible, I recommend watching the Who’s Who of the Hebrew Scriptures recordings —and reading along with your own Bible at home. (There are 11 Bible characters in the series. Each one is about 45 minutes long.)
Hebrew Scripture stories sometimes portray a God we very much long to discover, one that uses someone like Deborah to deliver the people from times of trouble. The God who uses capable women and men to care for the needs of the community and bring about a life of peace and plenty. The God of the Hebrew Scriptures is not all fire and brimstone.
When we read parables of judgement in Matthew’s Gospel, located in the collection of New Testament literature, we discover more understandings of God at work in the world. We understand God as the wealthy and generous man, giving each of three servants an enormous fortune to invest. A talent is 6000 denarii —five talents is equal to 100 years wages! That’s two lifetimes of earnings! Let’s imagine a person earned $75,000 a year. The man entrusted them with $7,500,000!
Imagine that God hands you that incredibly large amount of money. As you hold it in your hands would you think:
“God loves me abundantly and entrusts me with this astounding gift. I better get to it! After all, who am I to doubt God’s decision?”
Or, would you think:
“I have never seen such a sum. I have no idea how to handle this. I’m so afraid of screwing this up that I’ll just bury it all so I don’t lose any.”
This parable invites us to discover how we understand the one who bestows such incredible gifts on us. Do we get excited about serving this generous God, or do we feel unworthy and so afraid that we bury the talents?
When we seek to discover God, we may get confused. Why the weeping and gnashing of teeth parts? This may trouble us, and cause us to be afraid, yet it is a small part of the arc of God’s love story in Scripture. Perhaps we fixate on the parts that highlight God as angry because someone programmed us to think that God is like a really stern and unforgiving principal. Perhaps we can set that programming aside, along with fears about our own unworthiness, and discover the gift of plentiful love that God gives to us in astounding heaps.
When we look to discover God, we look to discover love. The essence of God is love, an active serving-others-type-of-radiating-outward goodness. This love of God has worked through the gifts of judges and prophetesses, kings and peasants, angels and exiles. This love of God worked through the gifts of midwives who defied Pharaoh and through Queen Esther who exposed a plan of violence against her community. This love of God worked through gifted musicians singing psalms of praise and exuberant people dancing in the streets to celebrate God’s loving gifts. This love of God worked through a community covered in roadside muck and dust as they were marched away in exile, the gift of God’s love story being the only thing of value that they carried with them. This love of God is discovered in the New Testament by the magi who brought gifts as they seek a newborn king, by the fishermen who have a gift- a desire to know and follow God’s teachings. This love of God is a gift for us to discover as we read how Jesus healed and ate with outcasts and taught people to love one another. This love of God is still be poured generously into our lives, and it is our life’s work to discover it, grow it and share it.
God understands us, whether or not we can fully understand God. The more we seek to understand who God is and how God loves us and leads us, the more we find our discoveries stitching together with the God understandings around us, the more we discover who we are, and how we are called to love and to lead our community into peace and plenty.
God’s love is a total gift.
Beautiful.
Well-designed.
Useful.
How will I receive such a gift?
Crazy quilt hand-stitched in the 1960s by Anna Stasia Moores Simpson, my great grand mother.
If discovering God sounds like a scary quest rather than a gift, we risk burying the treasure and missing out on the incredible return on our God discovery investment. When we begin to notice God’s grace, forgiveness, and redeeming love stitched throughout the scripture story, we will see the whole of our lives, the whole of creation, is a part of the gift, a part of the beautiful old quilt that is passed down from generation to generation, heavy and warm with love.
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Questions for further reflection…
What have others passed down to you as understandings of God?
Who passed on their discoveries about God to you?
What was your reaction to the large sum of money the man gave to the servants? Excitement? Shock? Eagerness? Competence? Fear? Anxiety? Desperation?
What are some of the ways you have imagined or understood God from your own experiences of God?
Where do you see love being generously given at the moment?
Feel free to share any reflections, ideas, or questions in the comments section below.
