November 15, 2020
/Proper 28
Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18; Psalm 90; 1 Thessalonians 5: 1-11; Matthew 25: 14-30
The Rev. James M. L. Grace
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
The other day a friend shared a story with me about her child’s first communion. At the time of the story, my friend was a member of the Catholic church, where services of first communion are more common for young children than in the Episcopal church. In any case, she said that as she watched her child receive communion for the very first time, she began to cry, and the tears she shed were not tears of joy. They were tears of sadness.
Why the tears of sorrow? Shouldn’t a child’s first communion be a happy occasion? An occasion of celebration? Why the sadness? My friend explained to me the purpose of her tears – she was afraid that her son would grow up with the same idea of God as she was taught by the church. What kind of God was this? It was an angry God. A God that demanded obedience. A God that was quick to extend the hand of punishment, rather than mercy. That is the kind of God my friend grew up knowing. And that was the image of God she thought her son would receive. Which is why she cried at her son’s first communion.
It is true that this image of God is contained within the verses of our psalm for today – psalm 90. Verse 7: “we are afraid because of your wrathful indignation.” Verse 9: “when you are angry, all our days are gone.” Verse 11: “who regards the power of your wrath? Who rightly fears your indignation?” Those verses identify God as vengeful, angry, and full of wrath. Not exactly popular images of God in 2020.
While that concept of God is not particularly helpful, neither is its opposite: the image of God as the cosmic all-allowing ultra-tolerant best friend. This “God as my best friend” portrayal of God seems more popular today, instead of its angry counterpart. Why?
I think it might have to do with human pride. Our modern society, in my opinion, has such an over-inflated sense of itself, that the fear of God has lost its relevance. Our technology, our government, our knowledge, our economy has permitted us to ascend to a point where an angry God who humbles us has lost its value. We would much prefer God to be like - like a docile lap cat, that will sit and purr quietly and ignore us, while we go along with our important business.
I am not making light of harmful God concepts. I lived for a long time in fear of an angry God. And it is indisputable that God’s wrath and anger has been used to justify persecution and harm to those whom Christians deemed as outsiders. All I am saying, is that we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe we need both: the disciplinarian God and the friendly God – two sides of one coin. There is purpose in the difficult language of the psalm – at the very least it humbles us, it reminds us we are not God. Psalm 90 starkly confronts us with our mortality and that at the end of the day, all of us are accountable to God. Those are reasons to shed tears – not tears of sadness, but tears of joy. AMEN.