Being Careful When We Talk About God

Several years ago late on a summer afternoon here at St. Paul’s, after we were already closed for the day, I was just gathering up some things in my office and getting ready to go home. I saw a young girl perhaps 15 or 16 come walking across the courtyard. I could tell she was upset so I rushed to open the door and find out what was going on. She stood there with tear streaks running down her face and asked me, "Does God kill babies?"

I invited her in and listened to her story. Her older sister had been pregnant for several months and each checkup showed that things were going well. But that day her sister had visited the doctor and the doctor couldn’t detect a fetal heartbeat. Further tests showed that the child had died. In an apparent effort to comfort this young girl, people had told her, "God must have wanted this little child in heaven, so God took it." Needless to say, she didn’t find that very comforting. Not only had her sister lost the child that the whole family already loved before even seeing it, but now people were telling her that God had killed it.

Of course, God doesn’t kill babies. Sometimes bad things happen because of our own sinfulness and bad choices. Sometimes bad things just happen, and we have no idea why. We do know that God loves us and even suffers with us through those difficult times. And we know for sure that the beloved little baby who died is wrapped in God’s loving embrace.

It is very important how we word the statements that we make about God, because if we aren’t careful, we can end up implying terrible things. This is particularly true when we confront the issue of Jesus’ death on the cross. A common thing to say is that Jesus died for our sins. That is true, of course, but without further elaboration and nuance it can be interpreted to say that God the Father, offended by our sins, insisted on a bloody human sacrifice to somehow make up for our transgressions. The vengeful, bloodthirsty God who demands a human sacrifice isn’t any more attractive than the God who kills babies, and the image of God that is presented is just an inaccurate. Yet I know several people who have left the Church and have even rejected Christianity because they think this is the Christian God.

Let’s think just a bit about who God really is and what Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross really mean. The creation stories make it abundantly clear that God created us and our world out of love. God created us as loving companions to each other and loving and beloved companions of God. But from the very beginning we have used God’s wonderful gift of free will to reject God’s love and the love of others. Like Adam and Eve, we choose to listen to the serpent.

So the history of humanity is a story of wars, exploitation, greed, and betrayal. With the birth of Jesus, God intervenes in human affairs, not to punish us for all our terrible deeds, but to offer us forgiveness and an even closer relationship. Jesus comes into our world not as a conqueror and avenger but as a helpless child completely dependent on the goodness of Mary and Joseph. And as an adult, Jesus announces the coming of the Kingdom of God as a kingdom where the care of the poor, the comfort of the sorrowing, companionship with the sick, the estranged, and the imprisoned will take precedence over the desires of the wealthy and the powerful.

Jesus told the truth about our sinfulness and it’s consequences. Jesus told the truth about God both with his words and with his actions. And he did it in a world that needs lies to keep the selfish in power and to justify lives devoted to acquiring things and excluding people. In such a world, the truth is very dangerous, far too dangerous to tolerate. So we betrayed him, and we beat him, and we nailed him to a cross, and we watched him die. And he forgave us again and again, and prayed for us until there was no more breath left with which to offer prayers.

Through it all, God the Father suffered as any father would suffer watching his son dying in agony. God the Father suffered as Mary suffered. God the Father suffered along with Jesus intending that this extraordinary act of love – the love of God for us – would convince us to change, to accept God’s loving embrace, to be the kind of people we are created to be.

Last Sunday was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. We lift up and honor the cross because it is the symbol of God’s amazing love for us. It is a symbol of how far God has gone and will go to save us from our own folly. It is a symbol of how much we are worth to God.
My prayer for all of us is that we will always see in the cross God’s gift of salvation and that we can always see whatever crosses we might bear as an opportunity to share in God’s redemptive love.