The God Who Carries--July 10, 2023

The God Who Carries--July 10, 2023

[Jesus said:] “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." [Matthew 11:28]

You might know the old joke about the difference between cats and dogs--it goes something like this:  Dogs say to themselves, "My humans take care of my every need, give me food, provide me with shelter, and give me love.  They must be God."  On the other hand, cats look at the same evidence and say, "My humans take care of my every need, give me food, provide me with shelter, and give me love.  I must be God!" And we all have a good laugh about how independent and self-possessed cats are compared with their canine counterparts.

But there's a theological question underneath the joke that is worth looking at in its own right:  what do we expect in a god (or God)?  Is God the caregiver, or the one who needs care?  Is God the one on the receiving end... or the giving end of the equation?  Does God depend on our offerings, devotions, gifts, and support, or are we dependent on God's grace and provision?  At the grand divine table, is God the one being served by heavenly waiters and human servants--or is God the one feeding us like beloved children and honored guests?  Or to put it in other words, do you recognize God's glory by all the things humans do for God... or do you see the glory of God most clearly in the ways God sustains us?

Well, I'll just lay my cards on the table: I'm convinced that Jesus would have us believe that God's glory is in God's choice to carry us, not in God somehow being carried around, like some ancient pharaoh in a palanquin or sedan chair, ferried through the streets of a parade on poles carried by slaves or royal attendants.  The God-ness of God is shown most clearly in bearing our burdens, not in our subservient acts of bearing burdens for God.  It's a pretty poor deity, after all, who needs help carrying things.  And it's a sure sign you've got yourself an idol if it needs human help transporting or protecting it.

To be honest, we human beings have a harder time getting that into our heads than you might expect.  To hear the biblical writers tell it, we keep fashioning our own gods and telling ourselves they need to be fed with sacrifices, housed in temples, and protected from offense or indignity.  And by contrast, the living God keeps insisting that the divine doesn't get hungry, need shelter, or rely on us for protection.  Ultimately, we are convinced, the living God shows us the fullness of divine glory by bearing the weight we cannot carry alone--the heavy lumber of the cross itself.  The God-ness of God, so to speak, is clearest in the way God carries us and our burdens, not in our offers to schlep God and God's baggage around.

An awful lot of what we human beings have invented and slapped with the label "religion"  turns out to be our attempts to do things for God that the living God doesn't need to have done, honestly.  We easily let ourselves believe (implicitly, if not out loud in so many words) that God needs to be powered up by our prayers or our offerings.  We convince ourselves that God's glory is dependent on having political power or "godly" candidates in office.  We fall for thinking that God's reputation needs to be defended by our "culture warrior" posturing, as if God might puff out of existence if there aren't enough public displays of piety in city halls or schoolyards.  And then along comes Jesus who insists just the opposite--that he brings us into the presence of the God who feeds like a mother, who carries us like a father, and who bears our heaviness like we are sleeping children needing to be brought home.

The cats, in other words, have got it wrong--at least in the joke.  The way to recognize the living God isn't to spot the one being pampered and fawned over, but to turn our eyes to the God who, behind the scenes and without fanfare, lifts up the weary, shoulders our burdens, and gives us rest.  That is what love does, after all--and God's glory ultimately is visible in the way God loves.

O God, help us to see you where you really are--as the one carrying us and our burdens, rather than the one needing to be carried.