Sunday, December 24, 2017

The Blessings of Our Peculiar God

We are blessed with a peculiar God.

We use the word “peculiar” to mean two things: that something is strange or odd, or that something belongs to or is characteristic of some particular thing. It could be said that our God is both, from our earthly perspective.

But it's not for our lack of trying to see Him otherwise. Thomas Aquinas, in the middle ages, attempted various proofs of God's existence, and while there is a certain pleasing symmetry in his arguments from natural law on the one hand and philosophical superlatives on the other, the end point, as it were, of these formulas is the three circles of the trinity as spoken of by Dante in the last lines of the Divine Comedy: a mathematical but unilluminating perfection. And what if there is a god? It is as Robert Farrar Capon once wrote in his introduction to systematic theology:

The important question is not “does God exist?” but “what is he like?” Is he nasty or nice? Does he wear overpowering aftershave? Does he force Chinese food on all his friends?

I cannot offer an opinion on the question of aftershave, but I am reasonably certain about the Chinese food, and I am utterly confident that He is nice— or rather, not nice, but good, loving beyond our powers of comprehension. And why? Well, because this is what scripture testifies.

And why scripture? Because it is only the revelation of God which truly brings us to know Him, and it is in scripture, that sacred history, that he shows Himself in the world. So, let us move half a century after Aquinas in the 13th century, to the philosophers of the Enlightenment in the 18th. In their faith in human reason, they took the superlative, perfectly spherical God of medieval theology and did it one better, and so we got the irrelevant God of deism, who can be counted on never to insert Himself into the world and disturb it; they took the bible and edited the miracles from it and reduced it to a source of moral tales which they did not in any case read—unless they already agreed with them.

What was their problem with those scriptural tales? Well, it's what they tell of what God is like: for all the philosophical perfections we attribute to God, the story scripture tells of his action in the world is so, well, skewed. The story it tells of God is that He chooses to work through particular people, and he does not reward heroes: he makes them out of the unlikely. Thus he picks Abram, and Joseph, and Moses, and David, and the many prophets; and while they in faith prove God's choice, it is clear in every case that it is not through their own merit that they have grace thrust upon them. Abram's only qualification appears to be negative: that he is childless. Moses is set apart at birth and is reduced to watching his father-in-law's herds in the wilderness when God calls to him. Joseph and David are boys, the tail ends of their families.

And now, today, the angel Gabriel from heaven comes to speak the word to Mary, who, of all women, is chosen to bear the Word of God incarnate. What is special about Mary? Luke and Matthew say only that she was virgin, as Abram's wife Sarai and Zachariah's wife Elizabeth were barren, so that the life-giving power of God might be fully shown in these children of the promise: Isaac, John, and last and finally, Jesus. And these promises are another characteristic of our God. The irresistible grace laid upon them by the Spirit is in every case accompanied by promises: to Abraham, to be the founder of a nation; to Joseph and Moses, to save the Hebrew people in Egypt; to David, to complete the founding of the nation; to Zachariah, the salvation of his people; and finally, to Mary, to bear the Messiah, the Son of the Most High.

Thus Mary, as with her forerunners, was a hearer of the Word, and also its bearer. And she is also its speaker: in her visit to Elizabeth, she prophesies the words we sang in place of the psalm today, praising God for his blessing, acknowledging his mercies, and foretelling the kingdom. Is there something special about her? Well, yes, of course: only one woman is the Godbearer, the Theotokos as the Greeks call her. “Blessed are you among women”: that was Elizabeth's greeting. And yet, in a way we are all made special as she is, for in this hall we are all God-hearers, and through baptism we are all made incorporate in Christ's body which is the church, even this child which is brought before us today. And in each communion we partake of that holy body and blood, so that God is in us in the most literal way, made part of our very matter, as Jesus's humanity was taken from his mother.

It is all so very unreasonable. Why should a bit of bread and a sip of wine put God in us? Why should a splash of water bind us to Christ? Rational humanity scoffs. Why should God be manifested in three men at Mamre, or a burning bush? Who can believe that elderly women or virgins can bear children? Rational, scientific mankind knows better, because it does not know God. We say, piously and superlatively, that God is beyond human comprehension, but it is so very hard to take this seriously. Humans want explanations, and if they are not forthcoming from God, then, well, our theologians can supply them if we do not, and eventually we explain God away entirely. Rationalism demands a God who can be examined at humanity's whim and leisure, but that is not what God is like. God is uncooperative and does not submit to such probing; God speaks, and it is for us to hear—to hear, and to repeat. At the end of Luke's narrative of Jesus's birth and childhood, he says that Mary “treasured all these things in her heart,” and it can be guessed that she is the ultimate source of the scriptural account we have. God reveals himself in the word, but it is we, his people, who must carry it forward. We must, like Mary, like men and women of faith through the ages, be speakers of the word, for how else will the grain of faith be scattered, that the angels may harvest at the end of days?

Our peculiar God has, in his inscrutable wisdom, entrusted his church with speaking his word, a strategy which one theologian described as appearing to be an act of supreme folly. But that is the God that is, and thus we have it that salvation is not something one can find, but something that one is given, given right here, through word and sacrament, but first of all through the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus, the son of Mary and son of God, the Messiah born of the line of David, as promised of old—for although the prophecy made to Nathan foretold the glory of Solomon, it also spoke, out of time, of the greater son of David, who is Jesus. Tonight we remember his first advent, singing with the shepherds; and through grace, we wait in hope for his second advent, when the Father's purpose is brought to its close, and we are united with him in the life which has no end, in his everlasting glory, the Father who with the Son and the Spirit lives and reigns unto ages of ages. AMEN.