Images of God

Lately, I have been struggling with my image of God. I have struggled to connect the things I have learned in my head with the stuff that is in my heart. It feels as if God, in the world around us, has become some sort of justifying evidence used to justify actions, inaction, and a whole slew of other things. And somewhere, along the way, the voices telling me (and others) who God is became louder than who my heart knows God to be. My image of God has become somewhat warped and confused. So, I have been seeking, wandering, and wondering who is God? How do I connect to God?

I have visited tables, worship services, sung praises, cried desperate prayers, and translated a whole lot of Greek. I know I won't ever fully know who God is in this life but I am catching glimmers of the Divine. These glimpses shimmer in and out of my vision and are cracking open the shell that has begun to enclose my heart. A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across a quote by C.S. Lewis. It reads, "I want God, not my idea of God." That, my friends, that is what I want. I don't want the cooked up concoctions my mind and others' minds create. I want God. So, I am taking deep breathes and asking God to remove those often warped images in order to clear a space for God to reveal God's self to my heart.

I am paying close attention to when the Divine hits my heart. When God reveals something about God's own self that catches me by surprise and breaks down the wall around my heart. Because isn't that what we should all be doing? It isn't very loud work, at first, it is quiet work--work that stirs deep within my heart and moves me, spiritually, from one place to another. When my image of God gets clouded and warped I believe that I am called back into community and back into my own heart. I am called to ask questions, to talk with people, worship God with a community of faith, partake at the table, and to spend time alone meditating on God's word. This is work I have done for quite some time now and it stems from a love of God and God's creation.

For the past five weeks, I have been a TA for Greek school. I have been leading extra Greek practice for a small group of students everyday for five weeks. (We are coming up on our sixth, and final week, thanks be to God.) We have been making our way, somewhat sporadically, through the first four chapters of Mark's gospel. In the thick of memorizing Greek vocab and paradigms, it is hard to remember why you started learning it in the first place. The goal of being able to read and translate the New Testament in its original language gets a bit lost in the ever growing list of verb forms, participles, and nouns with endings that begin to all look the same. But every now and then, you just might be lucky enough to receive the gift of translating something that shatters the wall around your heart and reveals something to you about God you didn't expect to be revealed.

In preparation for class, I translated Mark 3:1-6. In the New Revised Standard Version this passage is entitled, The Man with a Withered Hand. My personal, slightly rough and wooden translation reads:

"And he entered again into the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. And they (the Pharisees) were watching him closely, to see if he (Jesus) would heal him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he says to the man who has the withered hand, "Rise into the middle." And he says to them, "Is it right to do good or do wrong on the sabbath, to save a life or to kill?" But they were saying nothing. And he was looking around them with anger, grieving at the insensitivity of their hearts. He says to the man, "Stretch out the hand." And he stretched out his hand and his hand was restored. And immediately, the Pharisees came out with the Herodians and they held a consultation against him, in order that he might be destroyed."

Please excuse the roughness of my translation. I also felt that I needed to use my own translation because it was in the act of translating this story that God revealed something to me.

This may not be one of the most well known stories about Jesus but it has become one of the most meaningful ones to me. At first, I didn't give it much thought. It was simply to be an exercise in translation for my small group to grapple. I finished up my translation and as my group was working on their own translations I reread what I had translated. In blue ink, I underlined verse 5. "And he was looking around them with anger, grieving at the insensitivity of their hearts. He says to the man, "Stretch out the hand." And he stretched out his hand and his hand was restored."

I hear a lot about the anger of God from various places, people, and perspectives. The anger of God most likely makes most of us feel uncomfortable but it is a truth that cannot be avoided. But as I sat in my classroom, I felt God reach straight past the walls around my heart to touch my heart with these words. I realized that Jesus' anger was an anger brought on by grief. The Pharisees are sitting around, unconcerned for this man with a withered hand. The text doesn't say a whole lot, but I believe it says enough. It seems that they could care less about this man and his hand--all they want is to trap Jesus, to destroy him. They are worried about rules and regulations, no healing on the Sabbath, and that causes them to overlook a fellow human being. And Jesus gets angry but the very next statement tells us exactly why; it is a deep grief at the insensitivity of their hearts (or "hardness of heart" as the NRSV translates). Jesus is grieved, Jesus is hurting at their lack of care and understanding and perhaps, at their desperate desire to destroy him.

I believe that God grieves deeply and that God's heart is too often broken. This one verse told me what God's heart cares about--God's beloved children. It told me that God hurts and becomes angry when we harden our hearts and we fill it with insensitivity towards others. What might this world look like if we did the opposite of what the Pharisees did and we saw a hurting human and instead of an opportunity to hold fast to the way things have always been done?

Adela Yarbro Collins provides the footnotes to the gospel of Mark in the HarperCollins NRSV Study Bible that I use. She states, "The Markan Jesus claims that healing work ought to take priority over observance of the sabbath" (p. 1728). Jesus goes against the norm and against the rules to see a hurting human being. I cannot help but wonder what type of place our world might be if we all did something similar. It is clear, at least to me, that God wants us to have hearts softened to our fellow siblings of humanity.

I know I have a lot of work to do on the state of my own heart. I need to soften it towards others and reach out in love. I need to see the humanity of those around me and I need to let go of my own hold on rules, regulations, and the way things have always been done.

This verse touched my aching heart and provided me with a comfort I desperately needed. God cares deeply about God's children. God cares about those who hurt and God calls us to care for those who hurt. God also cares about the state of our hearts; desperately wanting us to soften them towards others.

If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read my rambling thoughts. May we learn to love and care for one another.

Grace and Peace,

Margaret