A Few More Thoughts about God
(This is an extension of a sermon I preached on March 9, 2025)
One of the things I usually say about God is that God is not an old, white man. God is, especially, not Santa Claus in a robe instead of in a red suit. God is not a man or a woman, for that matter. One of the ways that we can think about God in a realistic sense is to go beyond our images of people and try to consider that God is spirit. Of course, that makes God really hard to visualize, but it also frees up our concepts of God to allow them to be bigger and deeper than what we may have considered before!
God is love. Even in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament), while God is sometimes portrayed in the human style of being angry, there are plenty of references to God’s love for people. God is referred to as a shepherd, for instance; it’s one of the most endearing and attractive pictures of God in the whole Bible! The prophets, admittedly, talk about God’s anger with people’s failure to treat each other with justice, fairness and kindness, but they also portray a deity who is angry because of offered love that is rejected time and again. However, forgiveness is always possible in these depictions of God.
I try to remember that God is omniscient, that God knows everything. When we pray, if we can remember that God knows what we are talking about even before we utter anything, perhaps our prayers could look more like a comfortable friendship where not many words are necessary, where just “being with God” is enough.
God is more than we can imagine! Theologians have argued for centuries about whether or not God changes. I don’t see what the attraction is to a stagnant being who doesn’t ever change its mind! If God doesn’t change, why do we pray? Don’t most of us at one time or another ask God to change, to ease up on us or those we love, to bring peace to the world, to help the poor?
Our understanding of God must grow with us. God is revealing things to us all the time if we are awake and aware. Go stand outside on a clear, starry night and see if you don’t experience some of the hugeness of God. Stand on a mountaintop with waves upon waves of mountains before you and realize just how big God is. Walk on a dark beach at night, with the deafening sound of waves crashing and feel what it is to be in awe of power and might. Our vision of God needs to grow and change. It’s a constant challenge in our spiritual walk.
There’s so much more to say about God than you want to read here. This Lent, one thing to give up is a limited understanding of God. If God is doing a new thing, as Isaiah 43: 19 says, then possibly, that new thing is continuing. The old has passed away, St. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians. If God is doing it, we can be part of it!
About jamiebrame
Greetings, fellow earthlings. I'm the retired Program Director at Christmount, the national retreat, camp, and conference center of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in Black Mountain, NC. From September 2019 through October, 2020, I served Timberlake Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Lynchburg, VA, as interim minister. After taking more than a year off, First Christian Church (DoC), Wilson, NC, offered me the position of Interim Minister, beginning May 10, 2022.
Originally from Eden, NC, I graduated from John Motley Morehead High School, earned a BA in Religion and Philosophy at Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College), and eked out a Master of Divinity from the Divinity School at Duke University. I served, in various positions, churches (part time and full time) in North Carolina and Georgia, and have lived in Black Mountain, NC, since 1989. I married Renae in 1992 (she refers to these years as "looooooooooong" years.
I've spent the past 50 years or so trying to practice Christian contemplative prayer with some touches of Zen meditation to help the journey along. Married to a wife who is much holier than I am, I am fortunate to learn from her daily about how to do this thing called spirituality. Being an ordained minister doesn't make me holy (but occasionally, as you'll read, a little sanctimonious, so forgive me in advance!); but I hope that I put my education to good use.
I'd love to be considered a spiritual teacher, but I know myself too well to claim that. While I do a bit of teaching, I think the best teaching we do is when we remain silent (the old desert abba said something like, "if you won't learn from my silence, you won't learn from my talking"). But silence shouldn't turn into quietism, and we do have to speak out and act for justice and fairness and equality for all.
I frequently ask myself the question, "Does it matter?" about the major - and minor - issues of the day. What I think matters: love for God, equality, fairness, loving our neighbor, feeding hungry people, housing homeless ones, clothing naked ones, and especially caring for children; basically, caring for those who have some trouble caring for themselves. AND our relationship with God.
What doesn't matter: what you think of me. I'm not very Christ-like. You won't hear me talking about all the things I do for others, or all the things I do for God - I was taught that It's not about me, and using good works to get attention for myself isn't what Christian faith is about - look up "narcissism" on Google. I'm not sure Jesus thinks it matters much that I am like him or not, but I do. The old story from the rabbis is probably apropo: when I am hauled up before God at the end of time, God isn't going to ask me why I wasn't more like someone else: I will be asked why I wasn't more like me. The rabbis tell the story better.
I'm still a work in progress, as Renae will attest to.
Finally, I just hope that something you read here will make you think. Use what you can, ignore the rest. Go read some of the desert saints. Read the classics. Take care of people, never point to yourself, and don't follow me: I'm just hoping to be one more signpost to God.
And as one friend reminded me the week before I left Christmount, "It matters."
Oh, and my favorite color is probably blue, and I love cats, and I love my wife's music. I don't like beets.
Does It Matter 