Hand-made Gods

DATE: May 25, 2014
SCRIPTURE:
Acts 17:22-34 and Psalm 66:8-20
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton

In 1990, I spent the glorious month of May in Italy, including one unforgettable weekend in the village of Assisi.  The views sprung fully-formed from the pages of a fairy tale book:  cobalt blue skies and Crayola green grass; red-roofed Etruscan houses clinging to the hillside, and those breath-taking stone cathedrals, ancient and holy.  A daughter of New England congregationalism with its simple, even austere architecture, I found those noble cathedrals with their ornate frescoes, vast spaces and countless statues both foreign and captivating.  They stirred something inside me, the very voice of God, calling me to deeper service.  It is in a lower chapel of the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi that I sat in prayer one May afternoon and accepted a call to ministry.

Fast forward to 1993, when I spent a year in Chile, South America as a Global mission intern with the Pentecostal Church of Chile (one of our United Church of Christ global partners).  I remember another sunny spring day, when I walked through the streets of a Chilean town with a few members of our youth group.  As we passed a Catholic church, one of the young men, began to sing, “dioses to madera and de metal…”  Gods of wood and precious metal.  It was a popular song sung by one of the church’s musical groups about the dangers of worshipping idols.  I loved the catchy tune, and Spanish-style guitar, but the lyrics made we squirm.  So I stopped him mid-verse.  I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something about showing a little respect for other expressions of Christianity. It was an idea completely foreign to these devout Pentecostals.  To their way of thinking, Catholics were not Christian at all; they were idol worshippers.  Just look at all the statues that adorned their churches, all those saints that Catholics confused with the one true God.

There I was, a main-line protestant muddling my way through a defense of Catholicism for my Pentecostal friends.  I don’t know whether I changed any minds, but the scene remains lodged in my own memory – maybe because that whole year was an exercise in wrestling with the question:  What counts as Christian?

Since then, the question has broadened to the even more perplexing, “What counts as faithful?”  When is a god made up, and when is it a genuine expression of the Divine, as encountered by others?  Is it all relative?  So many paths up the same mountain?  Or do Christians have some corner on the Truth market?  As people of faith, when are we called to spread the Good News, enthusiastically inviting others to embrace this Christian faith, convinced that it does make a difference in our lives and when should we temper our zeal and honor the religion (or even the lack of religion) of the people around us?

Don’t hold your breath:  I haven’t got any pat answers.  But it seems to me that these are urgent questions –as pressing as they are tangled, and while they spark conversations that may never completely resolve themselves, I believe they are worthy of our thoughtful, prayerful attention.  Paul’s encounter with the good people of Athens persuades me to venture out into this admittedly rocky terrain.  But it’s not just Paul, 2000 years ago (give or take) – it’s also what’s going on right now, all around us.

We live in a multi-faith world, in a town that is at least one third Jewish.  We are worshipping, right now, in a synagogue, surrounded by symbols of Jewish worship. Within five miles of us you can find other synagogues, mosques, various Protestant, Catholic, Unitarian and Christian Science congregations.

Then there’s the news.  Among the articles I have read, just this week, are a story about navigating interfaith marriage [¹];² several pieces on the anticipated visit to Israel/Palestine by Pope Francis, and an article titled, “Unity is a difficult mission for Christians in Israel” – about the ethnic diversity of the minority Christian community in Israel.³ Everywhere you turn, people of different faiths are bumping up against each other, living under the same roof, settling in the same cities, vying for the same sacred sites.

Last October, A Malaysian lower court ruled that the word “Allah” (which is the Arabic word for God) is exclusive to Muslims, so a Catholic newspaper cannot use the name in print.  In response, Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary here in the U.S., has argued that “Christians should not call upon the God of the Bible using the word “Allah,” because “Allah” refers only to the god of the Quran, a god who is radically different from the true God of Jesus Christ.”⁴

This seems to me to be a risky proposition, this declaring which word is the right word, which God is the true God.  It is risky, I think, because it is way too easy for us to confuse the Creator with Her creation, to confuse our idea of God, with God Godself.  So we end up with a hand-made god, God formed in – and limited by – our own image.    As soon as that happens, it gets that much harder for us to relate to those who imagine God differently than we do.   So our bumping into each other turns hostile.

It’s like that classic children’s book, Old Turtle, which begins:

Once, long long ago, yet somehow, not so very long…when all the animals and rocks and winds and waters and trees and birds and fish and all the beings of the world could speak…and understand one another…there began…an argument.  It began softly at first… Quiet as the first breeze that whispered, “He is a wind who is never still.” Quiet as the stone that answered, “he is a great rock that never moves.”… “She is a great tree,” murmured the willow…” “You are wrong,” argued the island, “God is separate and apart.”⁵

So the argument went, getting more and more heated, until Old Turtle intervened, and reminded the animals that God is gentle and powerful… “God is all that we dream of, and all that we seek…all that we come from and all that we can find.  God IS.”

Maybe the Athenians were on to something, when they built a statue to the un-named God.  Maybe it’s not a bad idea to pro-actively confess that the divine is beyond our imagining, to leave a little open space among the shrines,  a comma – not a period, with the word ‘and’ inscribed over and over:  God is rock and wind; grace and love; wisdom and beauty.  God is like a King and a mother hen and a woman who goes searching for her lost coin.  God is present in the light of Shabbat candles, and in the toll of the bell that calls Muslims to prayer; in the incense that carries Buddhist prayers up to heaven and in the smoke of the Lakota peace pipe; because God who made the earth and everything in it, God is the creator of Jews and Muslims and Christians and Buddhists and Lakota and Spiritual-but-not-religious and…and… and…

When Paul arrived in Athens, he spent the day exploring.  He wandered through the streets, noticed the details of his host city, and spoke with Athenians in the marketplace.  I suspect he also listened.  He found something to admire about them: their curiosity, and their religious devotion.

But Paul didn’t stop there.  He went on to proclaim his faith, to testify to the living God that had changed his life.  Here, perhaps, is the harder part:  for us liberal Protestants, it may not be such a radical idea to respect our neighbors of other faiths; but to proclaim our own?  Well, that would be rude, wouldn’t it?  Yet all throughout the book of Acts, we read accounts of our ancestors in the faith doing just that:  telling about God, about the risen Christ, and inspiring women and men to join that still emerging early church.  All of which is to say, it’s ok to tell our story.  It’s ok, even good, to share what we know of the God who has created the universe; to paint our own picture as vividly as possible, to boldly share what it is that we have found life-giving/life-saving/life-restoring about that One in whom we live and breathe and have our being.

Along the way, we need to confess, over and over, that we cannot contain this God in any shrine, cannot pin Her down or box Him in.  All our most creative efforts to depict God will finally fall short.  Always, we risk forgetting that we are in God’s hands …and not the other way around.

But I don’t think that means we should stop trying.  Even though our most artful expressions are but a feeble approximation of the Lord of heaven and earth; still, the sacred art we create, the sacred spaces we construct and the sacred stories we tell might just inspire others to come to faith.

This is where I feel compelled to insert all kinds of caveats:  like, don’t try to convert a follower of another faith, and always listen first, and be humble and gracious and trust that God who is in you is already in your neighbor…

Maybe it would help to revisit the whole meaning of conversation, to come at it from another angle.  Father David Neuhau pastors a Hebrew-speaking Catholic church in Israel.  The church recently opened a pastoral center in south Tel Aviv, the heart of the Israeli economy and a hub for many immigrant Christians.

When he talks about this new center, Father Neuhau makes a point of saying that this is not a mission to convert Jews. But he does hope the Christians from Asia and Africa living in Israel can build relationships with Jews that don’t remind them of the Crusades or the Nazis, or other Jewish suffering at the hands of Europeans.

“What we are looking for and looking toward is a conversion of hearts, where Christianity will not be associated with the cause of Jewish suffering,” he says.⁶

When I read that, something snapped into focus for me:

Perhaps conversion is less about the other, and more about me.  Less about convincing someone to change her mind, and more about aligning my own life with the truth I have encountered; less about constructing idols and more about being an icon, a window to the Divine, someone through whom others might experience – not hostility – but love and generosity and grace.

In the comments section of the article about Father Neuhau, someone wrote, “Belief in god appears to cause more conflict than it prevents…Religion is not the source of peace in the world.”  I read that, and I think, “Dear God, where have we gone wrong?”  “Make me an instrument of your peace,” begins the prayer of St. Francis.  So how do we be that?  This, I believe, is the heart of the matter:  How might we live our Christian faith so that others regard us, not as the cause of suffering, but as its balm? 

The psalmist wrote:  God brought me out to a spacious place.  Here, then, is my prayer today:  that we learn to occupy that spacious place between the shrines, a space replete with commas… generous enough to contain my images of God and yours, my stories about God and yours¸ a space where we can confess that keeping God small does more harm than good, and reminding one another, again and again, that we are all held in the very palm of God’s hand.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Scripture Texts

Intro to Acts 17

The book of Acts describes the formation of the early church, during the dynamic first century, when both modern Judaism and Christianity were taking root under the watchful gaze of the Roman Empire.  On June 8th, Pentecost, we’ll read about the day that God sent the Holy Spirit to inspire the birth of the church – with wind and tongues of flame.  After that, apostles like Peter and Stephen set out to spread the Good News throughout the region.  Eventually, these early church planters were joined by Paul, who had had a major conversation experience on the road to Damascus.  Today, we skip ahead to a later chapter in the book of Acts, to pick up on Paul’s journey.  He has just been thrown out of Thessalonica and Beroea, but not before persuading several to join the movement, “including not a few Greek women and men of high standing,” according to the text.  We find him now in Athens – that Greek university town known for its inquisitive residents …

Acts 17: 22-34   NRSV – adapted

22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, God who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is that God served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and [he] allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for [God] and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For “In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.’ 29 Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because God has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom God has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”  32 When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 At that point Paul left them. 34 But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

Psalm 66:8-20 – NRSV Translation, revised

8Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of God’s praise be heard, 9who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip.10For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. 11You brought us into the net; you laid burdens on our backs; 12you let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.

13I will come into your house with burnt offerings; I will pay you my vows, 14those that my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble. 15I will offer to you burnt offerings of fatlings, with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams; I will make an offering of bulls and goats.

16Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what God has done for me. 17I cried aloud to God, and God was extolled with my tongue. 18If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. 19But truly God has listened and has given heed to the words of my prayer. 20Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer or removed God’s steadfast love from me.