Promises or Possibilities?

What does God look like?

What does God look like?  I have wandered deep and wide with other religious traditions.  I have been moved by the many faces of God they honor.  They leave me yearning for some that resonate in my Christian tradition.  Now, Jesus is a face of God for me.  We Companions have several powerful, beautiful icons of Jesus.  Jesus of Sinai is my favorite--the large one that graces our small altar where we pray moves me deeply into the mystery.  Icons offer one face beautifully.    I wonder what the other faces of the Trinity look like.  Does the Creator have a face?  How about the Holy Spirit? I yearn to see more of God face to face.  Articulating this desire could make me a heretic, I suppose, because Jesus isn't just part of God.  Yet we do say that God is one and a trinity of "persons."

When I reach for an image of God in my mind's eye it inevitably comes up "Father," and likely a great white and bearded one like Michelangelo's.  Try as I might, nothing else comes from my memory banks.Seeing The Shack this week offered a deeply satisfying possibility.  Not a white God, not an exclusively male God, the images in this film based on a popular book fed and enlivened me.  Long have I needed an image of God that would include me.  "Created in the image of God" has been important in my journey, yet I did not grow up seeing myself reflected in the masculine images that were present.  The Shack imaged the three Persons of God as masculine and feminine--and multi-cultural.  I could breathe in a new way and I wept with relief at the gift.  The dialogue theologically resonant, too.  I'd like to hear some of it a second time.

I do recommend it--perhaps as part of Lenten practice.  I found it a great way to seek God's face--and to ponder that question "What does God look like?" as a way to wake up to more.  The possibilities for imagining God's face are as infinite as God is.  S/He has many faces.  I think it is one of the ways God enjoys being with us, playing with us and stretching us.

For some of us the stretch will be too great.  The question of God's gender rocks the boat.  For some of us seeing God as a different race has never occurred as a possibility.  There is a great invitation in it for all of us, though.  We are called to remember that while we may experience a sense of increasing closeness and "knowing God" over the course of our lives we also cannot fathom God, really.  God is beyond whatever we may cook up on a good day or concretize God as on a bad one.

What does God look like?  Ponder away, but know that S/He is always lovingly present, infinitely accepting of our attempts (which can never honor the fullness) and, I would bet, gently amused as we grope around.  Many blessings in your musings this Lent!

Be Holy

Be Holy, for I, the Lord your God, am Holy!

Fifteen “Thou Shalt nots” to only 3 “Thou Shalts!”  That’s there in today’s daily Lectionary reading from Leviticus.  But look: “shalts” frame the “nots”.  “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy” appears at the beginning and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself:  I am the Lord” concludes it.  

YES to holiness. No no no no no…to theft, lies, murder, grudges, and judging, just to name a few.  YES to love.  

The passage tells me what I know in my bones to be true.  Holiness and Love are intimately related.  It has been easy to get confused about this.  With Bishop Michael Curry and countless others I am part of the Jesus Movement.  This is not my childhood Christianity—not primarily centered on trying to be a good girl—or nice.  It isn’t “Be holy…be pious” or “Be holy…be perfect.”  “Be holy: Love (like me!)” says God.  

bell hooks calls it out:  our culture is mostly embarrassed and down right bad at loving.  She counters our “isms” that keep people down based on race, gender and class with a love ethic.  all about love: new visions lifts up love as a life-giving way.  She debunks the assumption that being ethical takes the fun out of life.  Love is what we “DO,” not so much what we feel. It transforms our lives.  She says “I know no one who has embraced a love ethic whose life has not become joyous and more fulfilling.”   

That’s what I want: love, joy, freedom.  Lent is a season to “go for these,” but not without cost.  Jesus, God enfleshed, loves with no limit.  He loves even on the cross. He teaches what his Jewish roots did and do.  Become love-able.  

We are able to learn to choose love, to become Holy.  God would not ask us to do what it is impossible to do.  Becoming more love-able means looking at where I fail at it.  Ouch.  The point isn’t the focus on failure.  

I am heartened by a story told from time to time. When asked what about life in the monastery, a monk answered, “We fall down and we get up, we fall down and we get up.” The point is not that we fall down on loving, but to keep getting up.  Let’s dust ourselves and each other off and claim our love-ability this Lent.  Dare to be holy!