Conversion 3: From God-masking to The Lord
A sermon by Pastor Noel Anderson at First Presbyterian Church of Upland
TEXT: ROMANS 8: 31-39 CEB
Masks We Hold up to Others
Last week, we talked about the masks we wear and how much better off we are without them. But consider: if we can put masks on ourselves, we can also put masks on others. I noticed this within the first year that I was a pastor. It surprised me. I’d meet somebody, a stranger, and I’d say, “Yes, I’m a Presbyterian minister.” And you’d see them suddenly go from being comfortable to going kind of stiff. I’d try to talk to them down to earth like a normal human being but they’re holding up the “pastor mask” in front of me and they want me to talk to them only through that mask. You know, so don’t be human. Perhaps we’ve all done that; I’m sure I have.
The bigger issue is that we can also do this with God! What is the second commandment? “You shall make no graven images.” And this is “No Idols.” But what is an idol but a mask that human beings construct for God. So the second conversion we undergo as Christians is one from God-masking—putting a mask on God—to letting the Lord be the Lord in His own way. That’s God masking. We’re to become like Christ. Our mission statement is “Growing in Christ, making Him known.” We are growing into Christ—but we Christians can also try to make Christ like us, and that’s idolatry. We can easily prefer to define God according to our own self interests–either individually or culturally–and that’s wrong. We gotta get beyond it.
Our Favorite God masks
In my family we had a favorite picture of Jesus. And it’s this one. According to one pole taken in the late 80s, this was America’s favorite picture of Jesus. My parents both said this was their favorite picture. My older brother’s a pastor and yeah, that’s his favorite picture. And it makes sense because we were all Swedish and it was made by a Swedish artist who was a member of the Covenant Church. So we have Jesus the Swede! The idea that Swedish people made Jesus look quite Swedish may be a textbook case of God-masking.
The Jesus Movement in the 70’s brought all kinds of new life to the church. Everybody was coming back to the Lord. Charismatic movements flourished across denominations and people were again falling in love with God, swooning, tonguing, and singing Maranatha songs. New art featuring Jesus arrived. You see that Jesus? That’s a strong, healthy, strapping, American Jesus, isn’t it?
Speaking of an American Jesus, one of my favorites from my teen years featured Jesus looking like the captain of the Football team.
When I was in junior high it was my favorite picture of Jesus because I thought the one my parents liked (Swedish Jesus above), looked too feminine. I wanted a male–a manly Jesus. So this one very popular in America in the 70s and 80s—Jesus the football captain. Kind of looks like Kevin Costner.
Next: Jesus the hippie. Part of the Jesus movement was not so much about turning Jesus into a hippie as it was to say, “Jesus was a hippie like us.” There’s common ground—long hair, the beard—but this idea of God-masking at its heart is that we re-make Jesus into an image that serves us and our own interests. Radicals say Jesus was a radical, liberals say he was a liberal, conservatives say he was a conservative–all are attempts to put a mask on God to make him more like us and serve our own self-interests. Every one of them is wrong.
The tattoo dude Jesus. I kind of like this one and no, this wasn’t a joke—this was a serious portrait that somebody painted trying to honor Jesus. Gotta love it. The tat says, “Father.”
Next we have the black Jesus, who is actually a very nice looking shepherd. There were activists in the 70s who seriously tried to prove that Jesus was actually Ethiopian and therefore African. With all due respect to the virtues of the movement, I think we have to say that this is no different than the Swedish Jesus.
Next we have the Perfect Dad Jesus. This is Jesus as the perfect Dad—to one you never had. Yeah, I would like to think of Jesus as the perfect dad, helping me with my batting stance.
Next is “Ms. Jesus.” Some feminists have portrayed Jesus as a woman. Some have actually tried to argue that he was female, but that’s kind of a lost cause. But I concede that there’s art to this and it is not entirely without reason. We all want to say that we identify with Jesus. Jesus is meant to identify with every one of us, so why not have a portrayal of Jesus to identify with every aspect of what makes us human?
Next, the “Buddy Christ.” from the movie “Dogma.” This is perhaps the worst, but it is one of most excellent critiques of popular American evangelicalism. The whole idea of taking Christ–who is the Lord Incarnate, God Almighty, worthy of our admiration and worthy of all Glory–and turning him into a buddy? That is blasphemy. I noticed something in the hip churches in the 70s and 80s I visited in Orange County–everyone there very surfer dudish in all their OP wear and flip flops—and it was all: “Yeah, it’s all cool to be Christian. And yeah, Jesus was a cool guy! And if he were here today he’d be out surfing with us.” I got the impression that if Jesus actually appeared they wouldn’t hit the ground and worship him in fear and trembling; they’d slap him on the back and say, “Alright, Dude, let’s catch a wave!” That is a minimization of Christ. That is a Christ that you don’t have to take too seriously.
And this kind of masking gets made in other ways as well. God is revealed as Father—not as mother, not as grandfather, not as buddy. Among all these choices—If I were to pick one mask for God among the many—I think I would choose God as grandmother. Doting, always approving, wonderful, warm all the time—that would be great. I definitely would not choose father. Fathers kick your butt. Really, I mean who isn’t a little afraid of their father at some time in their life? But we don’t get to make these choices. We don’t get to choose which God we’re going to worship, or which God we’re going to serve. But this is exactly what the world does.
Some “scientists” devoted themselves to the task of trying to determine what the historical Jesus may have looked like. They came up with this portrait—which is, of course, insulting to Christians across the board. These “scientists” managed to make him look not only ugly but also utterly befuddled. It turns out, the model for this drawing was both a gangster and prisoner. Now I love gangsters and prisoners! I certainly prefer them to the so-called scientists.
A couple things we do know: Jesus was Jewish. He was Semitic. He wasn’t European. He wasn’t white,. He wasn’t Asian, He wasn’t white-skinned. He was Jewish. So when we Americanize Jesus, we do our faith a disservice. Besides, it is right that we should acknowledge his Semitic human nature and middle-eastern-ness, because in doing so we can’t easily escape the essential other-ness of Christ that we otherwise are so eager to put a self-styled mask upon.
Next a rendition drawn from the Shroud of Turin. The Shroud of Turin was the earliest model artists used to draw the face of Christ. And you can go back as far as the 4th-5th centuries and find that artists from the earliest time, looking at the Shroud of Turin, which was faint then, used it as a model for how they would portray Jesus. We really don’t know what that image on the Shroud looks like.. Every depiction is an artist’s rendering. The European draws it; it looks European. The Indonesian draws it; it looks Indonesian. An African draws it; it looks African. I thank God we don’t know much more—that we don’t have a photograph of Jesus—because if we did, people would worship it rather than the one to whom it points.
There was a picture of Jesus in the bedroom I shared with my big brother. He put it up and it became my favorite.although it’s not particularly pleasant. In this picture you can’t quite sure whether Jesus’ eyes are open or closed. It is Jesus on the cross being crucified. Over the years this stuck with me because while it isn’t pleasant to look at, it offers a kind of challenge to the viewer. Are his eyes open or are they closed? The way my brother explained it to me—the eyes of faith see the eyes open—He is Risen, but eyes without faith would say his eyes are closed because he is not risen. Is Jesus dead or is He alive? I also liked it just because it wasn’t particularly pleasant. It reminded me that Jesus wasn’t a buddy but he suffered for us—a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.
Mask Issues: We Got ‘em
We all have mask issues. We all have the temptation to think about God in a way that pleases us or serves us. This is true of every people and group in the world. We have to beware. People who don’t have faith—and they’re very vocal today— see a different God. They see an angry, Old Testament God. The angry, Old Testament God of wrath. The God who is angry over your sins. Isn’t that God of the Old Testament? I would say no. What we read of is at at least a partial mask drawn by the ancient Jewish people, whose personal interests and ancient worldview affected their propensity to make masks for God as well. Did they know God completely? No they had a limited understanding of God and a limited revelation of God. What they got right was how contemptible to God their own sinfulness was.
But we live in a different world. We live under a new covenant—one that proclaims to us that the angry, Old Testament God is not in fact God’s true nature. That is not what God is like.
We have to let God be God on his own terms. This is hard work. We must say we are not content with any mask that we might make. You may rightly ask, “But how can we know God as He is?” I’m going to suggest the way. First of all, we must let God tell us.
1. God must self-reveal.
God must self-reveal. This is the most serious point. This is what divides us—Christianity—from every other world religion and all of paganism, that we are not allowed to construct God or anything about God. This is the hardest work of theology—this scraping off the barnacles that we create along the way. We easily say things about God that we’d like to think. Anytime you begin a phrase, “You know I’d like to think of God as…” I say, beware whatever follows. We’d all like to think of God as something, but we don’t get to create God. God is not a construction of the human imagination. God either speaks for Himself or else the language is unreliable, idolatrous. This is what separated Abraham from everyone else in the world: he didn’t go looking for God, God went looking for him. And this is the biblical narrative throughout. The people wanted to set up a golden calf, but no, you mustn’t put a mask on God. God speaks for Himself. All Christian theology is based in revelation—in God’s self-revelation.
2. We must resist our own inventions.
The second point is that we must be resist our own inventions. This is hard! As we live with God and live to please God, the Church in all her forms has made up things about God in order to function ,pre efficiently, effectively, or influentially. “God wants to lift the cup this way instead of this way. God wants us to do this, God wants us to do that.” Much of this is our attempt to mask God. And whenever we put up any kind of a mask for God, whenever we make Him something w want Him to be, we lose in the relationship. We don’t gain. We only gain by allowing God to speak for Himself and refusing to have anything in our own hands or under our own control.
3. God’s Word is His self-revelation.
Thirdly, God’s word is His self-revelation. God speaks for Himself, and His own words about Himself are sufficient.
So we ask, How are we to know what God says? Ultimately, God is known through Christ. It is just that simple.
4. Jesus Christ is the Word of God.
Jesus is the Word of God. A popular American rhetorical device calls the Bible is “the Word of God.” With great care, I’m going to say that isn’t perfectly true. God’s word is in Scripture. We experience God through the words written on the pages of the Bible. But nowhere does the Bible claim itself to be the Word of God.
We call it the Word of God written. What does the Bible say about the Word of God? John 1: In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. And through the Word all things were created. The Bible makes it clear that the Word of God is Jesus Christ. Jesus is God’s Word made flesh. Jesus is the Word. The Bible is our access to Christ. It is the unique and authoritative witness to the Word of God: Jesus Christ.
Now because we have big hearts and because we love Jesus, we look at the Bible and say I’m opening the word of God. In the same way, this is really just the container. Or this is the window. If I’ve got a big pot of coffee here and I offer you “a cup,” I’d say “Would you like a cup?” And you say, “Yeah I’d like a cup!” But if I just give you an empty cup, you’d go be disappointed (By the way, I’d never do that to you!). What you wanted is not the cup itself, but that wonderful black, hot liquid that is contained by the cup. You don’t want a cup, you want the thing inside the cup. In the same way: Do you want the Bible? No, I want the one whom the Bible proclaims and to whom the Bible makes its unerring, constant witness. We believe not in the Bible, we believe in the One to whom the Bible makes its witness. Jesus Christ is the Word of God, primarily and finally.
5. God is Known through Christ.
Fifth, God is known through Christ. This is good news because it means we can know God as he is. God is not un-knowable. God has been revealed decisively, completely, sufficiently, in the person of Christ. When we see Jesus we are seeing the Lord God. Those who have the Son, have the Father. Jesus is the face–the true face of God–to us. All of our renderings, paintings, and pictures are all wishful thinking, mostly painted to make us feel better about ourselves.
We Still Love the Masks
I got in trouble in 8th grade in the Covenant Church in Omaha, Nebraska, because in the church library there was a huge portrait of Jesus. And it wasn’t the Swedish one you saw, it was another Swedish one, where Jesus had long, flowing blonde hair and bright, blue eyes, looking as Swedish as lutefisk. And I, in 8th grade, said to a number of women in there having their tea: “That doesn’t look like Jesus!” They said, “What do you mean, what’s wrong with it?” I said, “Jesus was Jewish. He would have looked Jewish.” And they said, “You should just keep your opinions to yourself.”
I have until today.
We know God through Scripture. It is through the Bible, Old Testament and New, that we get the full picture of who Jesus is. Some teenager made this painting I love—Jesus breathing through Scripture—from behind the Scripture. Revealed through the Scripture. How do we come to know Jesus? How do we come to know who God is? How do we come to know God? Just like this. Like: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong.
As our text says, we are His children. I want to close with this verse again from Romans 8, which is the good news:
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
This is the Word of the Lord. †