The Silhouette of God--January 28, 2021

 The Silhouette of God--January 28, 2021

"For in [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority." [Colossians 2:9-10]

There was a time--really not that long ago--when the conventional wisdom looked at the natural world and said, "See how it is? Only the strongest animals, and only the fittest species survive--that must be how God is, as well--God wants the strong to dominate the weak, and those who don't make the cut weren't worthy."

We could also talk about the time in which scientists looked at the vastness of the universe, and how tiny our little blue speck in all that ocean of inky void called space, and therefore concluded, "Well, if there is a God who made all this (and we are skeptical), this God must be indifferent to the piddling concerns of the hairless bipeds who walk around on it; God must be like an impersonal force, like gravity or magnetism, at best."

There was also a time when the most brilliant minds in economics said, "The demand of customers with money is the force that governs everything like an invisible hand on the world, and if the market says that some people aren't worth feeding while others luxuriate in ivory palaces, well, that's the market's decree--and God's, too."

And, while we are on the subject, there was a time (well, we are still living in it) when even many Respectable Religious Leaders said, "You can tell who really has God's divine favor because they will be the ones with more wealth; if you are poor, it is because God has set up a world in which that's your punishment for laziness, and if you are rich, it is because God is specially blessing you--so pat yourself on the back, slugger.  You've earned it."

Each of those--and there are surely other variations on that theme--took some observation about the world, whether in biology, physics, economics, or what-have-you, and projected it onto God.  And what do you know, but you end up with a god who is just as greedy, indifferent, and self-centered as we are at our worst.

Well, the book we call Colossians would beg to differ--not just about what God is like, but how we arrive at our conclusions about God.  Our verses for today say that for followers of Jesus at least, Jesus himself is our clearest picture of the fullness of God.  We don't get to say, "I really like laissez-faire capitalism, so I bet God is like that, because that's what I want God to be like," and we don't get to say, "Here's this political platform I want to support--how can we remake God in that image?"  We don't take the ambiguities of the world, or the universe, in which we live, and try to reverse engineer what God must be like based on our observations of sharks hunting for prey or supernovas blowing up their planetary systems.  

No, the letter to the Colossians starts with Jesus and says, basically, "This is what God is like.  You want to know how God feels about the weak and the ones labeled 'unfit'?  Look at how Jesus treats them."  Colossians says, "Instead of taking your preferred economic theory or tax policy and then trying to shoehorn your picture of God in to endorse it, we look to Jesus, and the way he announces blessing on the poor, teaches his followers to forgive debts as well as personal infractions, and how he keeps talking about the last being first."  And instead of narrowly focusing on what would be good for me, my business, and my income, or me and my group, and then looking for (or manufacturing) a way to say that it's also God's will, Colossians points us to Jesus, and the way he deliberately focused on the good of others, even when it wasn't good for him in the narrow or immediate sense.  

Jesus, in other words, means a complete overhaul of what we thought we meant by the word "God." Instead of an angry white bearded fellow hurling lightning bolts on rule-breakers and doling out prosperity as a reward for being more deserving, as so many old paintings taught us to imagine, in Christ we are presented with a God who loves enemies to the point of death, gives generously to stinkers without any question of deserving, and who doesn't make decisions based on "What's in it for me?"

Somewhere along the way, I think we forgot that.  We soft-pedal Jesus where his teaching would rearrange our personal or national budgets. We ignore him when his example would lead us to embrace people we had gotten used to pretending weren't there.  And we try instead to turn him into our mascot who will endorse whatever things I want him to.  But Colossians says that Jesus has to be Lord even over all those other things we think are so important--"the Market," "The Law of the Jungle," "The Fundamental Forces of the Universe," and even the "Bottom Line."  All of those categories--politics, economics, national identity and pride, and all the rest--they may seem like they are powerful authorities that command a great deal of influence in this world.  But Colossians insists that Jesus outranks them all.  If you want a clear picture of God, you don't look to those other powers and authorities: you look to Jesus.

It's almost like how a lunar eclipse shows us the true shape of the Earth.  Short version:  when the Earth gets in between the sun and the moon and they all fall in a nice line, you get an eclipse of the moon--the moon starts to disappear in the shadow that the Earth casts on it.  Well, pay attention the next time you can observe one or see photos from a previous one, and you'll see that the shadow curves--because it is revealing the shape of the Earth that is casting the shadow!  In a way, these verses from Colossians say something similar about Jesus: Jesus us what God looks like when projected onto the screen of human history.  Jesus is what it looks like when God dwells fully in a human life.  Jesus, you could say, is the silhouette of God that we can see and understand and know.  So if something doesn't fit with the character of Jesus, well, it doesn't line up with the shape of God, either. No matter how much we want our pet political parties or economic agendas to rule the day, Colossians says that Jesus is the One who overrules them all and shows us most clearly who God really is, and what really matters to God, as well.

Today, then, it might be worth it to re-examine everything we do, say, think, and value in light of Jesus--because Jesus shows us what matters to God and how we go about living in the world.  And before we blurt out some casually hateful thing, or post some angry screed on social media (with no intention of listening to someone else with a different point of view or even making room for conversation), or make choices based on pure self-interest, maybe it's worth looking at our choices, actions, and values in light of Jesus first.  And if something really doesn't fit with the character of the homeless rabbi from Nazareth who ate at scandalous dinner parties and loved the nobodies, well, maybe it's time to acknowledge that those somethings are out of step with God, too.  And maybe then we can leave them behind so that our hands are free to pick up with more Jesus-shaped work to do.

Lord Jesus, help us today to see God in you, and to re-examine all of our lives for what does or doesn't reflect you in the world, too.