Maybe God is Like That Too
Maybe God is Like That Too
My children have a book called Maybe God is Like That Too. It’s a sweet picture book with a simple story. A boy asks his grandmother if God lives in his city because he has never seen God before. The wise grandmother answers, “Yes. God lives here. But you have to know where to look.”
She explains, “Wherever you see love, joy, and peace, God is there…wherever there is patience, kindness, and goodness, God is there, too. When you see faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, that is God at work.”
The rest of the book is the boy’s eyes opening up. He sees moments of kindness, moments of joy, moments where he sees gentleness on display and realizes that, maybe, God is like that, too.
God’s Nature in Jesus
Our lectionary text for today is John 5:19-40. Remember that the Gospel of John began with a beautiful, poetic, but abstract theological discourse about the Word becoming flesh.
But then the Jesus of John spends the next 4 chapters being very human—he calls the disciples, attends a wedding and ensures a proper celebration, drives money changers out of the temple, speaks to Nicodemus in the dead of night about being born again, tells a Samaritan woman at a well about living water, and heals a boy near death as well as an ill man.
While Jesus certainly scatters a few theological lessons throughout these action-moments, he seems to take a break in chapter to five to preach a little. Our twenty-one verses for today are a pieced-together, multi-point argument for God’s nature in relation to Jesus and vice versa.
Most of us know verse 24: Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.
“Yet if we reduce Jesus’ sermon down to verse 24, we miss the complicated richness that Jesus lays out before and after, which is much less about parameters and consequences and more about opening our eyes to see God. ”
In fact, those of us who grew up in the church know this verse to the near exclusion of the rest of the sermon that surrounds these words. Verse 24 is solid. It gives us parameters to our theology, expectations of our faith, and consequences to our adherence.
Yet if we reduce Jesus’ sermon down to verse 24, we miss the complicated richness that Jesus lays out before and after, which is much less about parameters and consequences and more about opening our eyes to see God.
The rest of this pericope is a verbal inter-weaving of Father and Son. God and Jesus are intimately knit together.
The Son cannot act without the Creator.
God gives life and so does the Son, God judges and so does the Son, and the Son does all that he does because it is the will of God.
Jesus’ actions and works are the tasks given by God and testify to that same God. In other words, when you look at the Son, you look at God.
Knowledge isn’t always knowing
Jesus’ audience had never before seen God, but they sure seemed to believe they knew a whole lot about God. They had clear expectations for how God would act, what God would expect, and what the Son of God would seek to accomplish.
But now Jesus stands in front of them after healing the sick and near dead, teaching a rogue pharisee about a second birth, reforming the temple, befriending a marginalized woman to give her eternal truths, and using his miraculous power to keep a celebration going and, after all of this, posits that when you see Jesus—when you see what Jesus does—you see God.
So in John’s coming chapters, when they see Jesus refusing to judge an adulterous woman, giving sight to the blind, weeping over the death of a friend, challenging the prevailing theological system, bringing that friend back to life, washing his disciples’ feet, and commanding that they love one another as a sign of their commitment as disciples, they see God.
Explaining God to children
Oh, I wish explaining God to my children was easier.
In our picture book, I wish the grandmother could have just pointed to a single thing or idea or truth and said, “That’s God right there.” But the grandmother doesn’t because the grandmother can’t.
Instead, she sends the boy on a lifelong journey that calls him to look for God everywhere he goes—to be oriented toward seeing testimonies to God’s character.
Jesus does something similar in our passage. He could have left his sermon at verse 24: believe God and have eternal life, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he sends the rabbis and disciples and everyone else off to see God in everything that Jesus actually does. He orients them to a lifelong journey of love and relationship and seeking the wholeness of others.
This week, as you read your Bible and contemplate the works of Jesus written in our Gospels, tell yourself, “Maybe God is like this, too.” And maybe even look out at the world around you as you encounter it and look for signs of Jesus’ character on display out in the wild.
Maybe God is like that, too.
She might have the title of queen, but let’s not mistaken her for an authoritative and respected monarch whose voice sets a nation in motion.
Chapter two reminds us all that change does not require power as a catalyst. In a world that increasingly communicates that only people at the top—the people with power—are the ones capable of making this world change, Esther reminds us this is a false conclusion.
When we tell ourselves that we are too insignificant, or that our voice is too weak, or that no one is listening, Esther reminds us that voices do not require volume, bravado, or a platform to make ripples.
When we see the sheer power of those in authority around us and take from it that we are too small to affect change, Esther reminds us a well-timed word has the power to rescue a nation from death.
Humanity was saved by a baby born in a borrowed stable.
The nation of Israel was saved by a powerless orphan queen.
Our nation gets a little closer to real civil rights by a twenty-one-year-old Freedom Rider causing a little “good trouble.”
Girls all over the world gain a spot in a classroom by a Pakistani teenager refusing to stay quiet after men opposed to the education of girls try to assassinate her.
Power has never been a prerequisite for change. Hope and a belief that God’s world should be better are, but not power.
Reverend Shelley Woodruff is the Interim Pastor for Community Engagement at FBC Decatur.