Thought for Today
Psalm 103:13 As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.
Isaiah 66:13 As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
Matthew 5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
Matthew 12:50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
Yesterday was Father’s Day. For obvious reasons, it is one of my favorite days of the year. I do prefer to think of it as Fathers’ Day and treat it as a celebration of fatherhood. I personally had a great day yesterday. I worshiped with our family of faith and our son, daughter-in-law and grandson worshiped with us. Our daughter and youngest granddaughter came over to visit in the afternoon. A great day.
.The word father appears almost 1000 times in the Bible. Many of its appearances in scripture do deal with our biological parent. But, the father/child relationship is often used metaphorically to describe our relationship with our Creator God. In scripture, in worship, in prayer and often in our thoughts, we refer to God as Father. In the Lord’s Prayer, we begin “Our Father, who art in heaven . . .” We often refer to the Trinity as God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Psalm 103 in the verse above states the idea metaphorically. The verses above from Matthew’s gospel recognize that special relationship.
I wonder, however, if we don’t lose some of the totality of our relationship with our Creator God by not pointing out that there are also scriptures in the Bible that equally call on the maternal imagery to (vainly?) try to capture our relationship with God. Our attempt to describe our God is thwarted by our own finitude. What words can we use to describe our omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal Creator?
When Moses asked God whom he should tell the captives in Egypt had sent him, “Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" Our Creator God simply is the One Who Is, Who Was and Who Always Will Be. How can finite, temporal creatures understand and describe the infinite and eternal?
One of the things I inherited from my father was a Bible translation by Rev. Doc. James Moffatt, copyright 1922. In this translation, whenever Rev. Moffatt encountered the tetragrammaton, the Hebrew name of God transliterated in four letters as YHWH or JHVH, he translated it as the Eternal. I have always loved that way of expressing that idea of ‘I AM WHO I AM.’
Both our Old Testament and New Testament reflect the patriarchal nature of the societies within which they were developed. They were originally written in languages reflecting that patriarchal structure, including nouns which have ‘gender.’ In both languages, God’s name is a masculine noun in structure.
But thinking in such structures limits our understanding of the nature of God and of our relationship with God. Genders in languages do not necessarily have any correlation with biological genders. Our English language thankfully does not carry ‘gender’ association with nouns except in a very few instances (ships and boats do require feminine pronouns!).
“Anselm, the medieval philosopher and theologian, proposed the ontological argument for the existence of God. According to this argument, God is defined as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Anselm posited that existing in reality is greater than existing merely in the mind. Therefore, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, we can imagine something greater than God (a greatest possible being that does exist). However, we cannot imagine something greater than God, as it would be contradictory to suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined1. In essence, Anselm’s argument suggests that God’s existence is inherent in the very concept of God itself.” (internet search)
I’m not a philosopher; I’ve never taken courses in philosophy. I would paraphrase Anslem with, “Whatever you think God is, God is much more than you can imagine.” Father, Mother, and much, much more. I do remember that simple prayer I mentioned last week, “Thank you, God, for loving me into being. Amen” Powerful words of thanksgiving, of love and of our special relationship with our Creator God.
Stay safe, thank God for being God and for loving us, trust God,
Pastor Ray