God-ness and Goodness--July 8, 2026

God-ness and Goodness--July 8, 2026

[Jesus said:] "All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." (Matthew 11:27)

What do we really think we are talking about when we use the word "God"?

I mean, it might seem embarrassing for a preacher and a bunch of church folks to be asking what seems so obvious, right?  Of course we all know what "God" refers to, after all, we pray to God, sing to God, tell stories about God, and recite creeds about the nature of God, all with a straight face every Sunday.  We sure sound like we know what we are talking about, or at least that we have convinced ourselves we know what "God" means, don't we?

But my hunch is that while many people have a default working definition of the word "God" (whether or not they believe in such a being), those definitions tend to just project whatever we think about ourselves and make them, well, BIGGER.  That was certainly how the ancient Greeks and Romans pictured their gods and goddesses--Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Hades, and the rest of the gang were all as petty, insecure, vindictive, and promiscuous as ordinary mortals, but were just heightened in power (and willingness to hold a grudge, I suppose). If you worshiped them, you didn't necessarily expect your gods of choice to be especially faithful, truthful, loving, or merciful--only as much as you would think of any other person. You just also believed that your gods were powerful and could either help you or hurt you accordingly.

In Christian history, too, we sometimes have done something similar.  Saint Anselm of Canterbury, who lived in the 11th century, famously wrote that God is "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." In other words, whatever the BIGGEST thing you could think of was, God was even bigger. Whatever the most POWERFUL thing was that you could think of, God was even mightier. And so on--taking our own experience and just projecting it BIGGER for God's scale. And in the early 20th century the Swiss theologian Karl Barth criticized the generation that had come before him for just acting like God was simply the word "Man" but "written in larger letters." We have a way of assuming that the meaning of the word "God" is basically just "the biggest thing around." And therefore, we end up thinking (perhaps without realizing it) that the thing that makes God "God" and therefore worthy of our worship is simply that God is more powerful than we are.  Human beings end up worshiping power because we think that's what makes God... God.

But Jesus shows us something different.  He insists that we don't really know what God is like--what the heart of God is truly like--until we see Jesus' own self-giving way in the world. And Jesus isn't interested in mere displays of power or force; rather, he embodies love even when the world calls it weakness or foolishness.  He shows us a God who does not always need to look like the "biggest," the "greatest," or the "toughest" in order to intimidate, but who washes feet, weeps with grief, and gets nailed to a cross.  He reveals a God who does not need to attack the Roman soldiers or the angry mob crying for crucifixion, but bears the insults and responds with prayers for forgiveness.  He shows us, like Elijah learned from the "still small voice," that God doesn't always have to be seen in the whirlwind, the fire, or the earthquake.  God may just choose to be revealed in smallness, ordinariness, weakness, foolishness, and fragility.  That is, of course, ultimately what Christians confess about Jesus--that we do not fully know who God is until we have seen God in the Crucified One.  Whatever else we thought about God, or whatever else we meant by the word "God," it is incomplete until we have seen the way Jesus loves, the way Jesus welcomes, the way Jesus heals, the way Jesus empties himself that we might be filled.

These words from Matthew 11, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, are essentially Jesus' way of saying all this pretty plainly: we don't really know the One Jesus calls "Father" until we know the character of Jesus the "Son." Without seeing that God chooses to break bread with sinners, welcome children, touch the untouchable, wash the feet of the betrayer, and pray forgiveness for executioners, we will always end up thinking that God is just the biggest fish in the pond or the top of the celestial food chain.  We'll end up thinking that what defines God is raw power, when Jesus insists that God's "God-ness" is grounded in God's goodness--the love, generosity, patience, mercy, and compassion that don't always make the big splash we expect.

Too easily we end up focused only on might, power, and force as signs of divinity--we call natural disasters "acts of God" in insurance policies, for example. Jesus helps us to see where the meaning of the word "God" is truly centered--on the character of the One who has created us, not simply the size of the divine muscles.  When we are clear on that, it certainly does affect how we live in the world and what we think is truly worthy of honor and worship. So today's work is to let Jesus show us again the meaning of the word "God" by showing us his own love--so that we may indeed reflect the likeness of the One in whose image we are made.

Lord Jesus, enable us to see God in you, so that others may see God's goodness in us.