How do you picture God?
Say I were to give you a piece of paper how do you picture God?
Say I asked you to make a film … how do you picture God?
Some people have thought of God as an old man with a beard up in the clouds. I don’t like that.
God is more mysterious, more majestic, more than anything I can begin to imagine.
I find it difficult to picture God.
As a working way of thinking of God I like an age-old phrase coined by an teacher of the church in the middle ages, Anselm …
God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
Think of the most incredible greatest thing ever … and God is greater.
What about picturing God in an abstract way. Maybe that’s more helpful.
Sometimes words can build up pictures in your mind’s eye.
That’s just what Paul does as he is writing to the church in Corinth.
IT’s almost like the story board for a kind of surreal, modern, arty film about God.
For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’,
That’s it. That’s got the makings of something for me. Complete and utter darkness, and then a pin-prick in the darkness reveals a light – and from a pinprick of light the light grows until the light is so bright you cannot look at it.
For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts
Then somehow the picture turns – the light is behind the camera and the camera is looking at me – and the light is shining deep into the darkness of my heart
For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
Wow … this is a mystery. The light of the glory of God.
But then comes a punchline that means so much for Paul.
For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
It is in the face of Jesus Christ that the light of the knowledge of the glory of God can be seen.
Look to Jesus and see God.
That changes the way we picture God. And that can make a difference in our lives too.
Jesus starts out in the squalor of a cattle shed, lives his life among people who are rejected by the well-to-do, people whose lives are full of suffering. And he plumbs the depths of anguish in the Gethsemane, feeling as if he is abandoned by God on the cross. This is a frail, vulnerable, pain-stricken image of God.
This Jesus is risen and comes alongside us in our moments of weakness. So Paul speaks of himself as a clay jar – dull, battered. God’s strength and power is there in the weakness he experiences.
But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. 8We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. 11For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. 12So death is at work in us, but life in you.
See God in Jesus and what becomes important is not the way you picture God but the presence of God you have with you in the deepest, darkest times – what’s important for Paul is to say, I believe.
And with that step of faith see God in Jesus and know he is alongside us through the darkest times and on into the glory of that wonderful light that through resurrection does shine in our lives.
Jesus opens up for us new ways of seeing God – he invites us to pray to God as our Father – and we realise God is someone who comes very close to us. Jesus shares with us a power, a strength that is unseen and yet so real in the Holy Spirit. And we begin to sense that God is not just that than which nothing greater can be conceive. But look to Jesus and discover God alongside us as one who cares, who empowers, as one who is Love.
So as far as Paul is concerned that shapes what he does …
For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. 6
Picture God through Jesus and then that means we are called upon to serve other people. Help other people.
If we see ‘the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’
We see Jesus Christ in the face of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the prisoner …
I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 37
just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,* you did it to me
Picturing God … that’s not so important.
Much more important is that we serve other people.
It’s great to support Stefan and Birgit – Stefan helping to train and equip people then to be ministers in churches all over Brazil. And in those churches people to serve. And Birgit – working with so many of those women who have been caught up in drug abuse, neglected in all sorts of way in the project where she works. MISSIONMotivated by our Christian responsibility we are trying to prevent addiction to alcohol or drugs and reintegrate drug dependent persons into society – for a better quality of life.
Serving others is something in some way we are all involved in.
What have you seen in this picture?
The face of Jesus?
Or a lot of faces? But whose faces are they?
Our thoughts this week go to those who are in prison –
An old country song about old age echoes Jesus’ words from our gospel reading for the Sunday of Prisons Week: ‘So if you’re walking down the street sometime and spot some hollow ancient eyes, please don’t just pass ‘em by and stare, as if you didn’t care, say, "Hello in there, hello."'
Looking into the eyes of those who are struggling, wherever they may be, can be difficult – perhaps it’s the look of hunger or thirst, isolation or vulnerability, of being trapped or in pain. But Jesus tells us of the importance of stopping, seeing (not just looking) and attending to their needs – and to remember that in so doing we are also ministering to Him.
When we, beginning in prayer, decide to look into the eyes of those affected by the reality of prison, we also see into the eyes of our Lord, and our response to their struggle is transformed.
Prisons Week
Karen shared with us some of the things she has done in supporting the prison chaplaincy at Eastwood Park, the Gloucestershire Women’s prison where for five years she helped to lead Bible Studies.
What’s going on here goes right to the heart of what our Christian faith is about. The service Stefan and Birgit share, the service Karen describes …
Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
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