Memorial United Methodist Church

Who Is God?

Reflections of a Lay Leader

I must confess that I never thought much about God because it seemed so futile. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8). I can’t even understand the workers in the vineyard, the prodigal son, or the repentant thief on the cross, let along God.

Certainly God is beyond all human knowledge and understanding. But if we are made in God’s image and wish to do God’s will, then we must struggle with the nature of the one in whose image we are made, with who God is and what God wants of us. If God liberates, then we must liberate. If God loves, then we must love. 

In talking about God, theologians pile adjective upon adjective – imminent, transcendent, omniscient, omnipotent, immutable, panenthetic. But Scripture describes God with simple noun­verbs: Lord, refuge, strength, King, judge, helper, defense, salvation, glory, sun, shield, rock, God of gods, Lord of lords, light, love, spirit, father, guide, strength, power, the salvation of Israel. 

When Moses asked God’s name, God responded: “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14), which can also be translated “I will be who I will be” or “I am who I will be.” God simply is. No matter what happens, God is. Heaven and earth may pass away, but God shall remain. That God is and will be is God’s very name.  

Jesus tells us that “God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). Spirit. Ruach in Hebrew, rucha in Aramaic, Jesus’ language – the inspiring breath of God that gives life. With God’s spirit we, as humans, are in our soul made in God’s image and partake of God.

For Jesus, as reflected in the two great commandments, the essence of God is love, “for God is love,” says 1 John 4:8. And love exists only in relationship. Just as we cannot clap with one hand, we cannot love without relationship. Thus, for Jesus, all that matters is that we live in right relationship with God, which requires that we first live in right relationship with our neighbor. For Jesus, therefore, God is the God of love and the God of justice (Luke 11:42). Because God is our father, we ourselves love (John 8:42). Indeed, we love God because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, God identifies God’s self as a God of relationship and love, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God in covenantal relationship with God’s people.

And God identifies God’s self as the God of just action, who liberates the captive, who brings the Israelites out of the land of Egypt and into a land flowing with milk and honey. God identifies God’s self by what God is and by what God does.

Three reflections. First, I would suggest, that we should take literally the admonition that God is love. Love is not an aspect of God, but the essence of God. When we see love, we see God. Not figuratively, but literally.

Second, I would suggest that we take literally the view that God is everywhere. In the vacuum of space, within every atom, between every boson, lepton, and quark, God exists.

Third, I would suggest that the post­resurrection doctrine that God never changes is dead wrong. To the contrary, God is ever changing. Certainly the God of the Hebrews changes constantly. When Abraham convinces God not to destroy Sodom if God finds 50, no 45, no 40, no 30, no 20, no 10 righteous persons there. When the repentance of Nineveh changes God’s mind about annihilating that city. When God decides not to destroy the Israelites after all for creating the golden calf. God changes. How can it be otherwise if God lives in relationship with us? What kind of relationship would it be if one party to the relationship never changes? To the contrary, every time we withdraw from God, a knife enters God’s heart. God changes. God weeps.

We shall die not understanding God, but Paul assures us that “whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 8:14). And in the end, as Christ proclaims, “God is God not of the dead, but of the living” (Mathew 22:32) because in God there is no death but only life.

Your brother in Christ,
Mark Davies, Lay Leader
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