Images of God

My first image of G-d looks very much like Charlton Heston, as Moses, when he came down from Mount Sinai in the Ten Commandments.

This is probably not a mistake.

By that, I mean, that’s probably how the movie moguls wanted it to be.

This is in no way to imply that G-d looks like Charlton Heston.

I know that G-d was supposed to be the burning bush, but as a kid, watching the Ten Commandments over the Easter weekend, I couldn’t yet make that conceptual leap.

So, G-d looked like Moses to me for a while.

Robe and staff, a powerful man, an authoritative voice. An angry G-d with rules that he threw down upon the people, for disobeying.

What is your earliest image of G-d?

By now in my life, Charlton Heston has thankfully been replaced by a multitude of images of G-d, and I no longer have to rely on Chuck.

I’m of an age that when I was a kid, John Denver starred in a movie with George Burns, who played G-d. While I’m sure we didn’t go to the movies to see that film, I’m sure I saw it on television. And so the image of G-d the angry punisher was joined by G-d the loving trickster.

The next popular image of G-d I had was that of Allanis Morrisette, in the movie Dogma. As G-d, she didn’t say anything, and she wore an outfit that seemed to come right out of Forever 21. But as G-d, she smiled, benevolently, and she gave forgiveness and mercy.

Add to this dozens of images of G-d from 16^th century woodcuts, paintings of many periods, and what am I left with?

A complex image, a multitudinous image of what G-d might be. If G-d even is, at all.

Many of us struggle with the idea of G-d. Some of us here don’t believe in anything that even remotely smacks of an idea of G-d, but still this image of G-d is powerful, and even we wrestle against it.

A little earlier in the service you were invited to consider the images of G-d that have failed you in your life.

I haven’t read any of the responses, but I think I can make a pretty good guess about what some of the cards have to say.

We are, after all, a group of people, like many other groups of people, and our common humanity is formed from many common experiences.

I’m guessing there are comments in the cards about abuse, about abandonment, about loved ones dying without explanation. There are probably cards about how life hasn’t been fair, or that G-d didn’t love you in the way you were promised as a child.

I don’t wish to minimize any of those experiences.

I merely name them as being universal experiences.

If we can see that our common humanity is indeed common, then we can not only more easily sympathize with the other 7 billiion people with whom we currently share our planet.

Each of these people has had reason to cry in their lifetime. Sobs of grief, tears of laughter, a deep sigh of contentment or resignation.

The air that is in our lungs right now will someday be in the lungs of all of these people.

One of our favorite hymns goes “When I breathe in, I breathe in peace, when I breathe out, I breathe out love.”

Today we have had five more people join our Fellowship. Five more people with whom we shall breathe, locally, and intentionally, to create community.

Often people who join our community are those who have been disappointed by the image of G-d they were given as children. That image of an all-powerful protector, failed to protect them. Or the image of 

an angry-father G-d scared them. Or the omnipotent G-d abandoned them.

This, of course, can be expanded to also include the churches of our youth.

Like many other local churches, we’ve been talking this month about the theme of G-d. For us, this can be a tricky topic, because there are so many triggers so many of us have around G-d and G-d language.

Even if we don’t believe in this thing called G-d, still the concept exists all around us.

For many years, anytime anyone would say to me “I’ll pray for you,” or “Have a blessed day” my blood would practically curdle. I found their statements to be intrusive and presumptuous. Who decided I needed their G-d for anything?

One day, however, I realized that often these expressions, when offered intentionally and thoughtfully, were mere an act of kindness.

An act of extra kindness.

“I’ll pray for you” doesn’t automatically mean “if you don’t convert, repent and give up your sinful ways, you’re going to Hell where you will burn, burn, burn!”

It is a simple offering of care an intention.

How often to you struggle to find a phase that explains to the person that you care about, that you will think of them, in the most sacred way you know how, in hopes that they will heal, or that their situation will improve?

Tandi Rogers, Growth Strategies Specialist for the UUA, and a friend of mine were having a discussion recently, and she gave me permission to share this story with you.

"In my darkest hour the church curmudgeon showed up on my doorstep with a huge painting of flowers he knew I loved. He walked across my bed with muddy boots, pounded a handful of nails in the wall, hung the picture, turned to me, and said, "I know you're hurting and I'm going to sit here and be with you while you cry some. But we need you. Every morning look up at this picture and know that the world needs you. So do whatever you need to do to get back on your feet, because it's too hard to walk this path with out you.” 

That's why I've given my life to my religion and my religious community, because quite frankly, I've lost my life and was reborn, re-gathered, reclaimed, and recalled. 

Suck it up. We'll let you rock in the corner for only so long. The world needs you."

Might not that man, that curmudgeon become a new image of what we wanted G-d to be? Can we let go of our pain and disappointment about what we thought G-d should have been?

And instead embrace an idea that we are all holy expressions? Each of us is a miracle. A miracle of evolution and natural processes, each of us has survived as individuals because we, most of the time unwittingly, have been able to thwart off the dangers of life so far?

Can you come to see yourself as holy enough to bring a picture of flowers to someone, in your flawed, muddy boots, and hang that picture for someone else?

Can you be gracious enough to be grateful for those muddy boots and the carrying human being they brought into your life?

So often we hear that people join churches to feel a deep connection with something larger than themselves.

Look around you.

Collectively, we are that thing we wish to find.

May we have the wisdom to recognize this truth, the grace to celebrate it, and the wherewithal to endure this, our beloved congregation.

So mote it be.

© 2012 The Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and delivered to

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County

December 09, 2012