from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and Congregational and Ministry Studies at Calvin College

Posts Tagged ‘God’

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Spirit at Work: Revealer

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Read these words slowly, meditatively, and well:

Christian theology presupposes that there is a God who can be known precisely because God has revealed the divine life to humanity through creation (general revelation), but especially through God’s redemptive acts in history that culminate in the Christ event as witnessed in scripture (special revelation). Christian scripture—the authoritative, inspired word of God—is trustworthy, because the triune God has providentially acted in such a way that the Christian church has been given a faithful and reliable account of who God is, what God is like, and how we are to live before God. … The primary check and balance for Christian theology, therefore, is the biblical narrative, the publicly accessible constitution of Christian faith, the special revelation that witnesses to the triune God, especially the incarnate Divine word—Jesus Christ. The biblical materials are the primary source and norm for knowing the identity and character of the triune God. (R. Plantinga et al., Introduction to Christian Theology, p. 76)

How do we humans know what we know (or, at least what we think we know)? The question of knowledge (epistemology) is one of the most centrally important—and vexingly complex—issues facing humankind today, and cries out for a solid, appropriate answer. With change happening all about us, and the pace of that change continuing to accelerate, thoughtful human beings increasingly are asking what—if, indeed, anything—is sure and lasting, what is certain and true.

Christians boldly claim that God is the font of all knowledge, the foundation of certitude about the nature of reality. God’s Holy Spirit makes (all) knowledge possible—knowledge about God, about the world God made, about humanity, and about God’s grand campaign through Jesus to rescue a world sadly distressed and broken by sin. Christians declare that without the revealing activity of the Holy Spirit, humans can know nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Christians make a second claim about the Spirit’s role in human ability to know: The Bible, a corpus of sixty-six books which form the Old and New Testaments, is one of the Spirit’s strategic means to instruct humans about God and the world. Though quite similar in certain respects to other ancient writings, the Bible is also unique and special. It was written by the finger of God, as it were. Thus these biblical books are Holy Spirit-infused—“God-breathed,” as St. Paul puts it (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16). The Spirit intends these books to serve as Scripture—the very Word of God to humanity. Christians receive and regard it, therefore, for what it is—an utterly holy and uncommon book. They believe that through it God’s Spirit “reveals” truth—that is, sets forth sure and certain knowledge—about God, about the world, and about God’s intentions and ways with the world.

Christians make yet another claim about human knowledge and about the Holy Spirit’s work as Revealer. They declare that though Scripture is God’s written Word and thus holy in and by itself, it will never accomplish its God-intended reach and purpose without the Spirit’s continuing work in the hearts of its readers. The Spirit must rouse them to trust and obey the Bible’s message. They must become prompted to not merely read the words, but also to “hear”—to heed—those words. “The Holy Spirit,” Jesus promised his disciples, “will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).

Christians gladly sing what they confess about the Spirit’s role in communicating God’s Word to them:

He, himself the living Author, wakes to life the sacred Word,
Reads with us its holy pages and reveals our risen Lord.

(“For Your Gift of God the Spirit”)

Regularly, too, they make the plea of the words in Charles Wesley’s hymn their very own plea:

Spirit of faith come down, reveal the things of God
And make to us the Godhead known …

These three claims, taken together, in part explain why many Christians weekly incorporate a “Prayer for Illumination” into their Sunday worship. Immediately before they read Scripture and prepare to deliver and listen to a sermon, together both preacher and congregants call upon the Spirit for help to hear God’s Word. Their joint prayer is an act of declaring that they utterly depend upon the Holy Spirit.

Depend on the Holy Spirit we must—and not only during a worship service. We need help daily to put into practice some of the central Scriptural truths worth living and dying by: the Triune God is God alone; God is our Creator and Savior; God makes good—always—on his pledge to sustain us along our life’s journey; and, our earthly journey ended, God will bring us safely home.

No Mother Half So Mild

Friday, December 10th, 2010

L

et’s be clear: God is not female.

Let’s be clear: God is not male.

Nor, for that matter, is God a rock, a path, or a light. God does not use physical eyes to see, ears to hear, or hands and arms to ward off enemies and protect saints. For God is spirit.(John 4:24)

But God is personal. Thus, we human beings, persons made in the image of the One who is Personal (capital P!), must now summon up a host of metaphors to describe the God who relates to us, and whom we worship. Thus we say metaphorically—”so to speak”—that God has fingers, hands, feet, and arms to thresh fields , to trample down enemies, to hurl arrows, to heap up oceans. But the language is metaphorical. It is “so to speak.”

It is not the case that God is like we are in being personal. Rather, we are like God in being so. Compared to God, the most passionate and warmly personal human being is cold and impersonal.

Another point: Since both God and humans are personal, we humans can grow both in knowledge of and intimacy with God. In fact, we must grow. For to love God more and more requires that we learn more and more about God.

All the above by way of preface to this week’s theme. Now, on to the theme itself. I wish to make two points:

  • Scripture bears witness that God’s sublime character is maternal. Maternal, and paternal, too.
  • To disregard God’s maternal and paternal character—both of them—derives from failure to listen to God’s Word. It results in shriveled appreciation of God’s beauty and diminished adoration of God’s character.

Though Scripture never calls God “Mother,” female imagery about God does abound in the Old Testament . In Moses’ lengthy song about God’s covenant relationship to the people Israel, he scolds: “You walked out on the Rock who gave you your life, forgot the birth-God who brought you into the world.” (cf. Deut 32:18) Isaiah describes God as nursing, playing with, and consoling Israel as only a mother can do (cf. Isaiah 49:15-16; 66:11-13) The Psalmist describes his soul as being quieted in God’s presence “like a weaned child with its mother (cf. Psalm 131.2) Both the Psalms (17.8) and the book of Ruth (2:12) picture God as a mother bird, giving refuge to her offspring . And in the New Testament Jesus compares his sadness at Jerusalem’s stubborn rebelliousness to a mother hen who longs to gather her scattered brood. (cf. Matt. 23:37)

Three activities of God spring quickly to my mind when I ponder God’s maternal qualities:

  1. God creates and nurtures.

    Pondering the immense mystery of his having come to birth, the Psalmist exclaims in wonder and delight:

    Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;

    You formed me in my mother’s womb.

    I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!” (Psalm 139:13)

    Moreover, the very One who fashioned and made us, now feeds us at Zion (God’s nourishing presence):

    You newborns can satisfy yourselves

    At her nurturing breasts

    Yes, delight yourselves and drink your fill

    At her ample bosom…..

    You’ll nurse at her breast,

    Nestle in her bosom,

    And be bounced on her knees. (Isaiah 66:11-12)

  2. God protects

    Human mothers seek to shield their children from life’s threats and hurts—from sickness, from heat and cold, from malnutrition, from abuse. The Psalmist pleads for God’s mother-like protection:

    Keep your eye on me;

    Hide me under your cool wing feathers

    From the wicked who are out to get me,

    From mortal enemies closing in.” (Psalm 17:8)

  3. God consoles

    At times life is harsh, difficult, and sad. Amid our tears, tenderly God holds us in motherly embrace, and speaks softly to soothe our troubled hearts:

    As a mother comforts her child,

    So I’ll comfort you.

    You will be comforted in Jerusalem.” (Isaiah 66)

    4. Several days after the birth of our first child, Karen, Marcia and I traveled with our little one from Sheboygan, Wisc., to my parents’ home in Holland. We went there because Grandma, a polio patient confined to an iron lung, could not come to us. How full of joy Grandma was to see her granddaughter for the first time in the lung’s mirror.

    What happened next astonished me. Grandma asked to be taken out of the lung and placed on a stretcher. She then asked that I lay Karen on her paralyzed body, Karen’s cheek touching hers. My mother’s poignant sigh: “O my dear little one, if only I could hold you!”

    ”Twas an anointed moment for me, something of a sacramental event. Every time I remember it, I catch fresh glimpse of a God who loves (me) as only mother can. It prompts toward the sanctuary (cf. Psalm 73:17), there to sing with my fellow saints:

    Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made,
    Were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade,
    To write the love of God above, would drain the ocean dry.
    Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.

    O love of God, how rich and pure!
    How measureless and strong!
    It shall forevermore endure
    The saints’ and angels’ song.”

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