Is Your God Too Small?

 

Matthew 15:10-28

Proper 15 / Year A

In 1952, the English clergyman J.B. Philips wrote a book with the provocative title “Is Your God Too Small?”  I read it as a teenager and it had a profound impact on me and my thinking about the Entity we call God.  Philips argued many of us hold on to limited, outdated views of God, often formed in childhood, but not fully able to keep up with our experiences as adults.

He named several basic common misconceptions:

·    God as Resident Policeman: little more than a guiding conscience.

·    Parental Hangover: most often a projection of how we experienced our father… kind, harsh, demanding, unforgiving, cruel… you fill in the blank.

·    Grand Old Man: someone who has a white beard and is properly addressed using archaic language, often Victorian.

·    Meek and Mild: soft and supportive, free of the passions of this life.

·    Heavenly Bosom: offering escape from life’s troubles through personal piety and devotion.

·    Managing Director: Busy at work taking on the big picture, but unaware of the minutia of our individual lives.

Of course, there are more conceptions than these and, yes, those Philips identifies can have nuanced expressions, but taken alone or as a whole, by definition every person’s understanding of God is too small.  How can we creatures ever possibly fully apprehend the Creator?  I think the main reason I am fascinated with scientific discovers and mind-boggling attempts to explain reality – most of which I don’t understand – is they remind me of the simple truth my notion of God is too small.

Philips owned up to his limited understanding.  “My concept of God was too small,” he said, because “I thought of God as just a slightly bigger, smarter version of me.”  So, with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy…

·    If He looks just like you, your God might be too small.

·    If He talks just like you, your God might be too small.

·    If He believes everything you believe and holds the same opinions you hold, your God might be too small.

·    If, in your mind, He has a gender, your God might be too small.

To speak of God as He is to make God small, limited, human.  Even naming God God functions to limit what/who it is we seek to describe.  I remember once hearing a speaker say he never uses the name God, but opts instead for the Holy One.  It is his way of highlighting how when we talk about God we are talking about what is ineffable.   I like what Evelyn Underhill observed, “If God were small enough to be understood, God would not be big enough to be worshiped.” 

Acknowledging the limitations of how we speak about God is a good first step toward confessing what will always be true… our understanding of God is too small.  Perhaps nowhere is this truth more consequential than our understanding of what God wills for the human family.  As I said last week, some truths are etched in stone, others we need to hold more lightly and examine again and again to make sure we have it right.  Why?  Because we are human and if history shows us anything, it is that we don’t always get it right the first time, or even the second.  And that’s OK, as long as we don’t carve it in stone, worship it as gospel, and defend it with venom.

The gospels often portray the humanity of Jesus – he gets thirsty and asks for a drink, he becomes tired and falls asleep in a boat, he weeps at his friend’s grave.  And in this morning’s reading we see Jesus’ human compassion restricted at first by provincial prejudices, saying to a distraught Canaanite woman “I was sent only to serve the children of Israel”, going so far as to imply through metaphor she and her kind are dogs.  But the woman’s response shocks him.  He sees deep faith where he thinks it should not be, and yet it is evident, unmistakable, remarkable.  It opens his eyes to see past his preconceived ideas which enables to perceive their common humanity. It is then Jesus realizes something new about God’s will for his life.  Strange as it may seem to say, up until this moment, his thinking about God was too small.

I try to keep all of this in mind when I think about God.  In terms of cosmology, God is completely beyond anything any of us can comprehend.  In terms of theology, who God is and how God interacts with us will always be something of a mystery which we will attempt to describe, but never fully capture.  In terms or morality and ethics, it seems to me this is where we can come closest to understanding God’s will for all people and living into God’s dream for the human family.  But, we have a long, long way to go because, like our view of God, our understanding of God’s dream for us is too small. 

So yes, our God is too small, but with a heart and mind open to consider the meaning of new experiences (as we see Jesus doing in this morning’s reading), it can grow over time and we can move a little bit closer to grasping something which is absolutely beyond us.  The good news is the Holy One desires to be known so we are well served to spend our lives letting ‘Him’ come into clearer focus.