Jesus Is the Definition of God (8-13-2023)

August 13, 2023

Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost (A)

1 Kings 19:9-18; Psalm 85:8-13; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

When they got into the boat, the winds ceased, and those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

The first day of school in Fairfax County is a week from tomorrow, if you can believe that, and we’re getting ready for EWS to start a couple weeks after that. And so it occurs to me, I wonder how many of you remember your first day of school ever? Do you remember who the teacher was on the first day of school? I see some nods. I think first teachers are memorable because, before our first day of school, most of us didn’t have any experience to know what a teacher was. On my first day of kindergarten, I knew there was mom, I knew there was dad, I knew there was grandma, and now there is Miss Humphrey. And who is this? She is an adult, like the ones I know, but she’s also different. It took a little time to figure that out.

Before we have any abstract idea of what a “teacher” is, in general, first we know actual teachers. Actual human beings who come into our lives and start relating to us, and through those experiences eventually we gradually come to understand what a teacher is, from our experiences of real-life teachers.

The same thing may be true of other people who we encountered as children. Your idea of what a “pastor” is was probably shaped by the first pastor you knew as a child. Your experience of what’s supposed to happen when you go to the doctor comes from your first experience of a pediatrician, when they stick you with those terrible needles.

Even our experience of parenting is shaped by the actual parents we each had. For better and for worse. There may be things that your parents did for you that you appreciated and found helpful that you tried to model yourself – and maybe there are things your parents did that you swore you’d never do to your children. But either way, your idea of a parent, a teacher, a doctor, a pastor – all of it comes not from knowing some abstract definition but from your experience of actual people who played those roles in your life.

One of the many insights of Martin Luther that I have found especially helpful important is that our understanding of God, Luther said, works exactly the same way. When the disciples of Jesus, at the end of today’s gospel story, say of Jesus “Truly you are the son of God,” it is not as though they had a general, abstract understanding of who God is, and a general, abstract understanding of what it means to be the son of God, whatever that is. And then they said, Oh, Jesus must be the Son of God, and I already know what the “Son of God” means.

On my first day of kindergarten I didn’t say, I always knew the definition of “teacher,” and now I see that’s who Miss Humphrey is. No, first I knew Miss Humphrey, and that’s how I slowly began to get a sense of what a teacher is. And the disciples of Jesus would tell you that they only know who God is because they have seen Jesus. It is Jesus who shows us who God is and indeed what it even means to be God. It is Jesus who shows us the character of God.

Of course, the disciples of Jesus didn’t operate in a vacuum. They had already grown up in a story of God acting in the history of their people, the Jewish people, which we call the Old Testament. When Jesus fed the five thousand, they remembered learning The Lord is my shepherd, who makes me to lie down in green pastures, who spreads a table before me, who ensures that I am satisfied and lack nothing.

When Jesus came walking on the water, after the disciples got over their initial shock, they remembered learning how the people of Israel had to cross the Red Sea with Pharoah’s army chasing them and God somehow made it possible for them to get through the waters to the other side. They remembered learning how in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless waste, and the spirit of God was like a mighty wind blowing across the waters, and how God put the sea in its place to create the dry land. Just as Jesus showed his mastery over the seas and the storms.

And when Jesus saw the disciples’ fear and said to them, “Take heart, it is I” – in the Greek, literally, “Take heart, I am.” Perhaps when the wind calmed down, they remembered learning about Moses standing before the burning bush, asking “If they ask me who is sending me, what shall I tell them,” and receiving the answer, “Tell them that I AM.”

In that context, the disciples came to understand that Jesus was revealing to them the character of God. Healing and feeding, listening and welcoming, eating with sinners and forgiving them. Lifting up women, tax collectors, lepers, the least and lowest in the society of that day. Because these are things God does. We know this because this is what we see Jesus doing. Likewise, the things we never see Jesus doing – lording it over others, being fearful of or subservient to human authorities, counting anybody out, condemning the strangers or those who are different, avenging himself instead of turning the other cheek – these are things we know are not in the character of God, because they are not in the character of Jesus.

Luther said that if all we knew about God was the abstractions that we could figure out from philosophy -- God is the name for whatever is responsible for the existence of the universe – if that’s all we had to go on, we would be quite reasonable to conclude that the God who made this universe and this world is probably not our friend. There’s a lot of scary stuff in this world, and if all we knew about God is that God is the one who made it, we might very well be afraid of God. Luther said it’s only because we have come to believe that God’s perfect self-expression is in Jesus of Nazareth that we know God is our friend, that God in fact is love, that God is merciful and compassionate. And that God can be merciful and compassionate even to me.

We see this understanding of God slowly emerging in the story of Israel in the Old Testament. In the first reading today, Elijah looks for God first in the might wind, and then in the earthquake, and then in the fire, and then eventually finds God in the silence. We see this understanding of God slowly emerging in the New Testament, as the disciples of Jesus gradually come to understand Jesus and his character.

And so, when the disciples of Jesus, at the end of today’s gospel reading, worship Jesus and say, You are the Son of God – it’s not because they already knew what the son of God was and finally figured out, Oh, Jesus! That’s what you are, you’re the Son of God. Now I know which box to put you in, you go in the divine box. Putting God and Jesus into a box, putting other people into boxes, that’s a move of control and domination, not of worship and adoration. Rather, I think the disciples suddenly realized that the compassion of Jesus that they’ve been experiencing is not simply that Jesus is a nice guy, but that Jesus is God trying to tell us who God is and who God wants to be for us and with us. And when the disciples realized that this compassion and mercy is far greater and far vaster and far deeper than they had ever begun to imagine, they are provoked to awe and wonder and devotion.

It even causes them to ask – if it really the God who seems to be showing the divine self to us in the human being Jesus – if God is coming among us as a human being, would this God also invite other human beings to do the same things Jesus does? Would God help me to do the same things Jesus does? It’s the question Peter asks, and this is what Jesus does for Peter – sure, get out of the boat, you can try it too. And when Jesus invites Peter, and invites each of us, to do what he does, he promises to pick us up when, inevitably, we fail.

This is why Paul says in the second reading today that faith comes from hearing about Jesus. Yes, Paul says, we know from the Old Testament, anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how is anyone to call on the Lord, if they have not first believed in him? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard who he is and what he is like? And how is anyone going to hear the story unless there is someone to tell the story? And how is anyone going to tell the story unless they are sent?

That’s what I’m charged with doing every Sunday. It’s not to give a Bible lesson but to tell you what has been told to me, what’s been told and retold throughout the history of the church. That the face of God becomes visible to us in Jesus of Nazareth. That it’s his character that shows us who God is with us and for us, and that this God is good. And then we gather at the table to together experience the presence of Jesus again for ourselves, so that all of us can go out from here and try to do what Jesus does all week long, as best we can. Knowing that when the storm is fiercest, he’ll show up. Knowing that when we fall, he’ll be there to pick us up.