What Else Do You Need To Know?

Sometimes the depictions of God in the bible do make me chuckle a bit. I know it’s no laughing matter, however, because that image of God has found its way into our hearts and psyches  – leaving us with distorted images that we then impose on ourselves and others.

Take today’s reading from Exodus 32. In the desert, the people of Israel have started to worship other gods for protection and guidance, and God gets furious. God says to Moses, “Your people have become depraved [and] have turned aside from the way I pointed out to them..I see how stiff-necked this people is…let my wrath…blaze up against them to consume them.”

Moses is like, “Hey, hey, God, take it easy. Remember you said these are my people…”

God huffs and puffs a bit and says, “Fine…they can live.”

At one level, I find it humorous – like God has an anger management problem – and needs a wingman to keep talking him off of a ledge.

At another level, however, it has left us with an idea that God is angry and judgmental and ready to punish us. Many people in Christian circles have internalized this image and now use it to judge themselves and others. And many of the ‘faithful’ have taken this on as their green light to hate other groups of people that they think God is angry with.

We see this most profoundly with the hate so many “Christians” have towards the LGBTQ+ community. This hate is a vestige of the vengeful God image. And while we can’t deny that this image is in our tradition, it is, ultimately, not who God is and not what God wants of us.

God’s kin-dom CANNOT be built upon hate. Period.

Our gospel from John 5, shows that Jesus, too, is lamenting how the people have strayed. Jesus says to the crowds (and I’m paraphrasing), “You had the prophets, but you did not want their vision. You had John the baptist, but you did not want his vision. You have the scriptures, but you don’t want its vision. Heck, if you have listened to the teachings of Moses, you would understand my vision and accept what I am saying. But I guess you don’t want that either…Instead, you keep gravitating towards leaders who are self-serving and full of themselves! They can’t save you!”

I have always loved the story of a man who is being chased by tigers and falls off of a cliff. He catches hold of a branch that breaks his fall and now is dangling from that branch – clinging for his life. In desperation, he yells into the sky, ”God, if you are up there tell me what to do and I will do it!” A voice booms back, “Let go of the branch!” The man thinks for a minute and then says, “Is there anyone else up there?”

Our scriptural tradition seems to often reflect this kind of story. The people are told what they need to do. Then they don’t do it and do something else instead. Trouble finds them and so then they ask what they should do and are reminded of the original instructions. Then they don’t do that again, do something else – getting into other trouble – and then ask again what they should do. And often, along the way, they pick leaders who take them further away from God’s instructions, tell the people what they want to hear and/or offer them a path other than the one God had instructed them to take. And then they often say, “Hey, God, how come you didn’t protect us?!”

We’re living in a time right now where self-serving leaders are setting in motion plans that seem absolutely opposed to what God’s plans are for the world and it is devastating to witness because most of us know that it will not get us closer to justice and healing.

Time and time again, the faithful are asked to reflect on some of the central questions in our tradition – What kind of life does God want us to live? How do we go about living that life in this moment?

I wonder how you would respond to those questions?

I’m not sure that I am bold enough to say with certainty, “Here’s the kind of life God wants you to live!” I think each generation needs to ask this question anew – with the hindsight of history and also the new set of circumstances that each generation faces.

But I do think that we can safely say that Jesus answered the questions in his own lifetime, and that this is what we have inherited as the “Christian scriptures.” And we see that what God wants from us cannot be built on hate or fear or holding back. The life that God wanted – as revealed through Jesus – was a life of love, of generosity, of kindness, of inclusion, of justice, of welcome, of forgiveness, of joy. It was a life that would cost Jesus something and often put him at odds with the powers around him. And yet it was a life that had purpose and freedom, rebuilt human community, attended to the most vulnerable and did not retreat in the face of suffering.

As we begin to turn our Lenten journey towards its conclusion, this is a great time for us to breathe deeply and take in today’s messages. That God is not out to get us or anyone else. That God wants us to live fully – just as God wants everyone to live fully. And that we are called to be ambassadors for God’s plan in the world – in this unique moment in history – as we take up the work that generations before us have started. This will mean trying to see the path laid out by God’s prophets in history and around us – aligning with their vision and dedicating ourselves to removing the barriers to God’s kin-dom.