Last week we looked at the opening statement of the Apostles’ Creed: I believe in God the Father. I quoted two of Jesus’ descriptions of God from the Sermon on the Mount.
Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Matthew 7:9-11
Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?...Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you - you of little faith? Matthew 6:26-30
I didn’t directly quote the Matthew 6 reference. I used Arabian Babblers and Mums instead of “birds” and “lilies” but I was making the same point. Jesus’ picture of God as father is that God knows everything there is to know about you, all your needs, sorrows, hopes, crashed dreams, successes, joys, and complexity and he is for you, he cares for you, he will provide for you, he has adopted you into his family and will treat you as his own.
I don’t want to suggest that trusting Jesus here is easy. But I don’t think it is a stretch to claim that much of the fear and anxiety lingering in our lives and hovering in our churches is found in our inability to believe that God really is a good and gracious Father and is working for our benefit. All the time. No offense to the birds and the lilies but our answer to Jesus’ question - “Do we really believe we are more valuable than they?” - speaks volumes about our understanding of God. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.
Two books that I would highly recommend are The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson and Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund. These two books, in very different styles, attempt to articulate the central truth of God’s fatherly love for us as seen in the heart of Jesus.
Many of us who grew up in the church have been told that God loves us since before we could crawl. Yet we still have a difficult time believing it. Many others have been given a much different message of a god who is making a list and checking it twice - the divine principal who can’t wait to send you to detention. That god is no more real than Santa Claus.
Note: Ortlund’s book is much more readable (for the last decade, I’ve actually wanted to write an essay summarizing Ferguson’s book entitled “The Whole Christ for Dummies” because I think it is so important but not the easiest book to read).
Almighty
The Creed reminds us that God is not only a loving Father but also Almighty. “Almighty” captures all of the big words we normally use to talk about God. All-knowing, all-powerful, sovereign and all-wise. God speaks creation into existence. God sustains all things. God raises dead people from graves. God calms seas, shuts the mouths of lions, commands storms, and co-opts giant fish and evil kings, all for his purposes.
At the end of the book of Job, God answers Job and his friends with an appeal to his Almighty-ness.
4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone7 when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb,9 when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band,10 and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors,11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?
12 “Have you commanded the morning since your days began and caused the dawn to know its place,13 so that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it…17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?18 Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this. Job 38:4-18
This continues for four full chapters. God takes Job on a tour of the cosmos. And that is the answer given to thirty-seven chapters of philosophizing. God is God and Job and his friends are not.
Humanly speaking this does not feel like a satisfying answer. Why do terrible things happen? Job lost everything. God doesn’t explain it. His answer is: “Trust me. I am in control.”
Why does an almighty God, who is also a loving father, allow the horrors of history? I think we understand the irritations and frustrations of everyday life. We don’t like them, but we can see how the slog of life stems from our own foolishness and sin or that of those around us. But the heavy stuff, the children caught in brutal men’s wars, the exploitation of the weak and the vulnerable, the unjust distribution of resources, the kids with cancer in Children’s hospitals - all the things I subconsciously attempt to avoid thinking about most of the time - are impossible to understand. Incomprehensible is one of the attributes of God according to the great statements of faith.
I don’t know the answer, of course. The fact that God made the Leviathan (Job 40) and the Behemoth (Job 39) doesn’t strike me, at first glance, as a clear answer to the problem of suffering. But if we strip God of his goodness or his almighty-ness, it doesn’t appear to me that we have much left to stand on.
Here is how I have thought about it, for what it is worth. God is either in control or not. If not, we are in loads of trouble because every human attempt at control has failed miserably. God is either good or not. If not, then what’s the point? And life, for all of its mysteries and horrors, doesn’t seem to be pointless. Our search for beauty and truth and longing for justice and moments of wonder (Lewis’ encounter with joy) or simply walking through the woods or reading a Mary Oliver poem about a loon, all point to a point to it all.
What I know about God, revealed in the beauty of creation and more clearly in the god-man, Jesus of Nazareth, is enough for me to trust God in spite of the preponderance of stuff I don’t understand about God. God’s goodness and almighty-ness keep us from despair.
Collect for the Eleventh Sunday After Trinity
Relatively speaking I am a low church Presbyterian. I don’t wear a robe or a collar. The worship committee changes the colors in the sanctuary every once in a while, but I couldn’t tell you what the colors mean.
While preparing for my sermon this week about Anger in Proverbs, the Old Testament commentator Derek Kidner referenced the “Collect for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity.” I know enough High-Church to know that a “collect” is a prayer - a collection of the congregation’s prayers that is then offered to God.
I searched what the Collect was for the eleventh Sunday after Trinity and its opening line reads:
“O God, who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly in shewing mercy and pity.”
We don’t say “thy” or “declarest” much any more and we spell “show” with an “o” and not an “e.” But consider what this prayer is saying. God’s almighty power is most chiefly shown in his mercy.
God’s Almighty-ness is most clearly seen in his seemingly foolish commitment to love us. God’s power is most evident in his forgiveness. It is easy to be a tyrant, just look at history. True strength (the mightiest power of all) is found in a man hanging on a cross and praying, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The weakness of God is stronger than any human strength.
This is not mere intellectual meandering. God’s fatherly almighty-ness, as shewn in his mercy and pity, is the motivation for and the power from which we are able to bring light and life, hope and healing, justice and joy into the shadowy spaces of the world.
Dane Ortlund says it this way:
Only as we walk ever deeper into this tender kindness can we live the Christian life as the New Testament calls us to. Only as we drink down the kindness of the heart of Christ will we leave in our wake, everywhere we go, the aroma of heaven, and die one day having startled the world with glimpses of a divine kindness too great to be boxed in by what we deserve.
In other words, do you want to know how we can muster the hope to wade into the chaos and dysfunction and discord and anger of this anxious age? Drink down the kindness of God revealed in the heart of Christ. The truth that God is both Father and Almighty means the world and history is going somewhere. A story is being told. And it is a story worth joining.
Because God is Father and Almighty we can have the courage to get out of bed. And practice piano with your son. And plant garlic on a cold October afternoon in hope that spring might return. And work against racism in our lending practices. And demand truth in public discourse. And plant trees. And pray for peace in Israel, and in Gaza, and in Ukraine, and in Sudan and in Washington. And read a book. Or write one.
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