About a year ago, I posted a few critical posts about William P. Young's book The Shack. I said then how much I really appreciated the book but needed to get some ideas out before being more constructive. Well, here is the first of four sermons I preached this month as a way of addressing the book in more constructive fashion.
Voice of a Nova
Isaiah 55:6-9; Exodus 20:1-7
This week, I have been at Niners Camp. I was keynoting. Keynoting is when you're the preacher for the week. But preacher has a bad connotation so we call it keynoting. At this camp, I spoke twice a day. That's roughly equivalent to 10 sermons in one week. Needless to say, I borrow pretty generously from sermons I preached here and yes, our youth did call me on those. During one of the keynotes, I asked the niners to write down words associated with, descriptions of and names for God. Then I talked about how our words associated with, descriptions of and names for God fall into two big categories—BIG WORDS, NAMES, AND DESCRIPTIONS for God and NEAR WORDS, NAMES and DESCRITIONS for God. In academic theology, we would call “Big” words for God “Transcendent.” They are words like Almighty God, omniscient, omnipotent, Lord. Near words for God we would call “immanent.” These are words like “Father,” “Love,” and “Sustainer.” So, they had their list of words and I asked them to write a “B” beside all their “big/transcendent” words and and “N” beside their “near/immanent” words.
In our scripture reading from Isaiah this morning, we have both the Big God and Near God portrayed. This section of Isaiah is often called “Deutero-Isaiah.” The whole book of Isaiah has sixty-six chapters just like the Bible has sixty-six books. And there's a definite shift between chapter 39 and chapter 40 just as there is a break between the first thirty-nine books of the Bible—called the Old Testament and the later 27 books of the Bible called the New Testament. In the first part of Isaiah, the work addresses those whose future looks bleak because they are on the verge of the Babylonian captivity and dealing with the moral-political crises that preceded the deportation caused by the Babylonians. But much time separates the address of Isaiah chapters 1-39 and the address of Isaiah 40-66. These later chapters address those who are already “captives” in Babylon and seeks to give them hope, reassurance of God's love, and a call to repentance as their way forward and out of captivity. One of the themes emphasized in Deutero-Isaiah is the theme of the word of God which is understood not so much as a written word of God but rather God's intention lived out in the might deeds of God. This is the theme in Isaiah 55 where Isaiah declares the word of the Lord is like rain that comes down from heaven and brings life. The word will accomplish what God intends for the word to accomplish.
The big God, whose word formed the world and whose word delivered the people. This big God will draw near and forgive. This big God will draw near and be found. “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near;” God will abundantly pardon. Pardoning is something God does to draw near to us but abundantly pardoning is what a a Big and Near God does. Yet this near God remains the God whose thoughts are not our thoughts, whose ways are not our ways, who is as beyond us as the utter reaches of the universe are beyond us. So the youth were writing these descriptions of God and labeling their words “B” or big or “N” for near. And as they were doing this, one of the youth blurted out, “What if all my words are “Big” words for God. Hopefully, I suggested to her that she borrow some “near” words for God from a neighbor. Our language for God needs both “big” images for God. If we have only “near” images for God we run the risk for forgetting God's authority and our need to obey. God's might and our need to revere. If we have only “big” images for God we run the risk of neglecting God's love which is his ultimate description and we may not come close to God to reach for God and find God which is why God created us in the first place. Only a near God can hear you cry in captivity in your Babylonian captivity. Only a big God can do anything about it.
Yet so often, our language for God gets bogged down in our favorite words and images for God. We develop patterns and habits and speak of the Lord in redundant terminology. Habits of speech reflect habits of the mind. Change some of your speech habits and you change the way you think about something. I believe this, by the way, about other things if you will intentionally seek out new language describe things with which you think you are already familiar, you will find new insights and new knowledge in the process. Your family, or your finances, or your career, or your artwork, or your music or whatever see what happens. How do you see your children differently if you speak of them as your grandchildren's parents? How do you see your friends differently if you speak of them in terms of someone's son or daughter. Change the habits of your language and you will change the habits of your thoughts.
That may or may not be helpful to you in relation to those other areas of your life. But rethinking the habits of our mind is essential in relation to God. We read Exodus 20:1-7, the first three commandments in the Ten Commandments. These four commandments deal with how we understand God, speak of God, relate to God. They could be summed up like this: Don't treat God's authority, God's name or God's image as YOUR property. They belong to God and God alone. This includes the way God is understood in your own mind. It includes the way that God is spoken of in your own speech—even within your mind, even within your speech, the words you use for God the thoughts you have about God belong to God. And the God proclaimed in the Ten Commandments says you don't get to settle on one image for me—an idol, a limited set of descriptions, a small-sighted vocabulary—and say, “that's it, I've got a complete handle on God.” Stretching our images and understanding of God is not just for young people. It is an act of obedience to the God who delivered us and who has declare I will not allow you to narrow my scope. My ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts.
This Sunday, we begin a sermon series entitled “Messages from The Shack.” The Shack is a book by William Paul Young. The author himself has six grown children. His wife repeatedly urged him to write down his theology for his kids. He didn't quite know how to do it. He is not a professional theologian or even a paid minister. He is a man who was hurt very deeply and painfully as a child. He is a man who hurt someone very deeply and painfully as an adult. He's a man who has been forgiven by the one he hurt and has learned to forgive those who hurt him. And so rather than try to explain all that in complex academic theological language. Young decided to write a story about a man who has five children. His main character is a man named Mac and unlike Young whose pain and mistakes were stretched out over decades. Mac's pain is compressed into a few years. While on a camping trip out in the wilderness, Mac's youngest child, Missy, is abducted and after a lengthy search she is presumed dead. Young's own pain and sin do not revolve around an abduction so there are many things about the sorrow of loosing a child that Young's novel does not address nor really understand. But it does a wonderful job addressing issues of rebuilding ones life in the face of evil done to and evil done by a human.
Three years after the abduction and death, Mac is invited back to the scene of the abduction, a place in the wilderness that looks like a Shack—hence the name the Shack. The “invitation” is strange and cryptic and unsettling. It comes in the mail during a Montana snow storm when no mail was being delivered. It comes from one “Papa” which is the name that Mac's wife Nan uses to describe God. After deep inner-turmoil, fears that he might be being set up by Missy's murderer, and some soul-searching, Mac decides to accept the invitation. When he arrives there, he encounters the Trinity. Papa—God the father, appears to him as a larger African American woman with a deep laugh, a healing hug, a hug tenderness, and scars on her hands and feet. God the son is what you might expect—Jesus Christ wearing Jeans and a flannel shirt. The Holy Spirit appears as one Saryu. She appears as a woman from India. And the name she goes by is Saryu which is a word from one of the languages spoken in India that means the wind. It is the sort of wind that catches you by surprise and refreshes you. One of the hurdles that readers have to get past in reading The Shack and receiving it is that it presents images for God that most of us have not pondered before. But in one important scene, Young helpfully narrates that these are only the images of God that Mac needed at the time. They are, in truth, the images Young needed in his moment of need. They are not meant to hardened and formed into absolutes any more than any other image for God should be used as an absolute image for God.
Papa explains to Mac that given his own tortured, tormented relationship to his father had God the Father come tom Mac as a masculine Father image, Mac would not have been able to accept God and relate to God. Indeed, Mac came from an abusive relationship with his father. One he ran away from when he was just fourteen years old. The healing for Macs heart and spirit needed to begin with a new way of thinking about God a new way of understanding and responding to God. Books like the The Shack are invitations for us to rethink our understanding of God. They are opportunities for us to consider the images, and language for God.
In this church, from time to time, the discussion has been had about our over-dependence on “Father” as a name for God—particularly in our prayers. We who pray in public for the whole congregation have a responsibility not only to consider our language but the language that we use as a whole people. When we rely to heavily on a limited number of descriptions for God we unintentionally limit the congregation's perception of God. The repeated description of God as “Father” is deeply painful for some who have difficult relationships or pasts with their father. It is problematic because Father is a masculine term and God is both masculine and feminine. In the opening chapter of Genesis the book explains, that God created us in God's own image—male and female. God's own image Genesis 1:26 explains, is both male and female. Our language needs to expand to make room for the breadth of God. I want to try to stress this point. On July 4th, when we have been celebrating our Nations freedom and Independence. It is easy for us to get sidetracked by this conversation and think it has something to do with politics or pushing a theological agenda. It is not for me something that is born out of political correctness. It is for me a deeply personal journey and understanding. The reason I try to avoid referring to God as “He” is not because I'm worried about offending people. The fact is I know quite well that my efforts not to refer to God as “He” offend people. I'm not trying to offend but I know that it's uncomfortable for people. But my own journey grew—painfully and fitfully but fruitfully—when I changed the language I use to describe God. We use “he” “she” and “it” to describe things that belong to this world and that God as one who created all the “hes” “shes” and “its.” But God God's self is not created. Creation does not contain the creator; the creator contains creation. And so I tried to convert my language to reflect the radical otherness, the bigness, the not bound by creation-ness of God by shifting my language for God.
Now, I just told you that this was not political so it may be odd for me to conclude with a reference to our founding political document. But, I believe the constitution of the United States is one of the truly great documents in human history. Rarely, if ever, has human history seen a situation where a people won their independence through war and did not subsequently dissolve into violence. Because of the steadfast, humble, and wise actions of our nations founders, the United States stands as a rare exception to the human tendency. Similarly, when governments organize themselves they tend to want to accumulate as much power for themselves. But when our constitution was formed, the final words were words that limited the government's power—it's that miraculous portion of the Constitution called The Bill of Rights. The first of which says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The freedom of religion—the first right guaranteed; freedom of speech and writing, and assembly, and protest. They belong together. The framers themselves understood the connection between how we practice our faith and how we speak. How we relate to God and how we gather with others. They protected all of that in what might generally be described as the Freedom of the Mind, the Freedom of the Spirit. The Constitution expresses our collective desire to protect a Freedom that emerges from God's own character—God has given us freedom to think and speak in flexible ways because God God's self is flexible and expansive. Ever willing to draw near to us but never willing to be contained by us. Amen.
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