During our recently concluded book study on What’s the Least You Can Believe and Still Be a Christian, a question was raised concerning the image of God as Father, a representation which is ESPECIALLY prominent in the New Testament. The person asked why it is God is always depicted as a male and never a female in the Christian religion. I therefore thought it appropriate to address the question of our images of God in my sermon this morning, on a day in which we honor the “fathers” of our country. Certainly, in our liturgies and our creeds, we speak of the Trinity as “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” conferring upon Christ the title “Son of God,” that is, “the Son of the Father.” For Jesus, it was his favorite image of Jehovah- God as his "Heavenly Father.” In teaching his disciples how to pray, he began with the familiar address, “Our Father.” However, what our Lord meant by it was not that God was LITERALLY a father to us, that is, in the same sense that you or I might be a father to OUR children. Rather, he was trying to demonstrate that God relates to us IN THE SAME CARING AND COMPASSIONATE MANNER a father or even a mother loves or SHOULD love his or her children. I have no doubt that Christ understood God transcended all gender stereotypes and that his use of "Father" in reference to God was a way of conveying the QUALITY of God's relationship to us rather than trying to define the PERSON of God. Therefore, if one wanted to address God as “Our Heavenly Mother” because a MATERNAL rather than the traditional PATERNAL image held a more intimate and meaningful connotation for them, it could STILL be appropriate.

Old Testament Jews often employed images like God as “Creator,” God as “King,” God as “Judge,” and God as “Shepherd.” Only occasionally did they use the image of God as “Father,” feeling it was much too PERSONAL an image to use of God. Yet, none of these representations--in and of themselves--describes God in all God’s fullness but each one helps us to understand with a little more clarity the nature of this God- a God who is mighty and all-knowing, just and compassionate towards his children.

In the second of God’s commandments that were given to Moses atop Mt. Sinai, God issued a strict prohibition against the making of ANY carved or constructed images concerning him. In Exodus 20, God commanded the Israelites, “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God...”(v.4) Where the FIRST commandment declares WHO may be worshiped, that is, that Jehovah ALONE is God and all others are mere imposters, the SECOND commandment tells us HOW God may be worshiped- that in our worship, we’re not to employ any images or representations of God of any kind. When the Hebrews came out of Egypt, they were delivered from a land that was filled with deities. Now they find themselves heading into a NEW land--the land of Canaan—where pagan worship ALSO abounds, where idols built to Baal and Astarte were in evidence everywhere. If Israel was to remain true to their God and survive as a people, they would to have to be uncompromising and unyielding in keeping themselves separate from those other tribes and their pagan practices.

Throughout her history, the church has often been less tolerant of divine images than they are today. Forty years ago, George Burns received rave reviews for his portrayal of God in the movie “Oh, God!” In fact, it proved so popular that he played God in the two follow-up films: “Oh, God! Book II” and “Oh, God! You Devil.” Walk through the aisle of any Christian bookstore or even modern church sanctuary and you will see images depicting the divine EVERYWHERE. But in the year 393 A.D., the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius banned the Olympic Games along with other festivals for being “too pagan.” In Calvin’s day, Reformers invoked the Second Commandment’s prohibition on graven images as they stormed Roman Catholic churches, smashed statues, and whitewashed the fine art on the walls. Among their concerns at the time was to thwart a widespread tendency to regard such images as idols or agents of a supernatural force. And although those concerns of the Reformation have faded, they still arise periodically. In 1966, a Marine Corps officer named John J. McGinty III was awarded the Medal of Honor for saving the lives of dozens of his men during an enemy attack in Vietnam. Eighteen years later, in 1984, McGinty RENOUNCED the award on the basis of all things- his Christian faith. He came to view the medal as “a form of idolatry” because it bore an image of Minerva--the Roman goddess of wisdom and war--which to him represented a false god.

But why does God place such a prohibition on “images” in the FIRST place. It wasn’t meant to be a prohibition against ALL images as later God would command the building of the Tabernacle and STILL later the Great Temple which included tapestries and objects incorporating cherubim, flowers, fruits, trees, and animals. It was God who ordered the construction of the Ark of the Covenant with specific instructions as to how it was to be made- the Ark serving as a visible reminder to the Israelites that God was in their midst. However, it was never intended to serve as an OBJECT of worship per se. 

For the past two thousand years, icons have been an integral part of Christian worship, especially for the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Yesterday, I returned from New Jersey where I attended the funeral of my oldest friend who was felled last week by a massive heart attack; we remained the closest of friends for over fifty-two years. The service held in a Greek Orthodox Church and as I walked into the building, I was immediately struck by the multitude of images that covered the walls, the ceiling, as well as the many stained-glass windows. The representations of the Holy Spirit, of Jesus Christ and his Twelve Disciples, in addition to dozens of assorted saints long-venerated by Orthodox worshipers covered almost every square inch of that sanctuary. It was explained to me how in the early period of Christianity, very few people were literate and so the faith was communicated not just through the proclamation of the word but also through pictures and icons. Besides, human beings found they needed SOME image of God in their mind or else it would be very hard to even speak of God and so images were used to help direct their imagination and concentration in the direction of God, never to serve as a SUBSTITUTE for him. 

Regardless of what images we might employ ourselves in order to help us worship, we need to remember that God transcends all such symbols. The Bible tells us that God is eternal, invisible, a spirit without form. In the Old Testament, we read how God intentionally gave his people, the Jews, no visual representation of himself, even refusing to give them his "name." When the Romans conquered Jerusalem in 70 A.D., Rome's general was convinced that they were atheists since they had no statues of their own on display. But here’s where the problem with images lay- idolatry substitutes a thing for the person, the living reality. However, the habit of continually associating an image or lifeless object to the Living God results over time in confusing the two so that it becomes more and more difficult to separate them. 

In the story of when the Israelite’s complained against God and Moses for their plight in the wilderness, God responded by unleashing fiery serpents upon them which killed some and left others very sick. After repenting of their complaining, Moses--on the instructions of God--made a bronze serpent and set it up on a pole. Those who had been bitten and looked at the bronze serpent were healed. But centuries afterwards, we read how Hezekiah broke the bronze serpent into pieces when he learned that the people were venerating it, offering incense to it. Originally the serpent had been meant to be a reminder of the God who saves and heals them but bit by bit, it became an idol, a god for the Israelites to worship. 

A similar instance can be found in the story of the golden calf. When Moses descends from Mt. Sinai with the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments, he finds the Israelites, led by Aaron—Moses’ brother who also served as their high priest--worshiping a golden calf. This calf was not some representation of ANOTHER god but rather it was meant to be a representation of Jehovah HIMSELF, the one TRUE God; it was intended to HONOR him. But their reason for creating it in the FIRST place was because they wanted a god like all the OTHER nations of the world- one which they could see with their eyes and touch with their hands, a god who would be far less fearful and mysterious to them. They regarded Jehovah--who had no form but was pure spirit--as far too DISTANT, far too AWE-FILLED, and much too MYSTERIOUS for them and so they thought they could offer God BETTER worship if they CREATED a form for him to inhabit. Well Moses became SO incensed, he threw the stone tablets to the ground, breaking them! Then he threw the calf into the fire, ground it to powder, mixed it with their water, and then had the people of Israel DRINK it.

As we can see, the progress of idolatry is a downward movement- one that leads to a continual degrading of God into something God is NOT and which is not even WORTHY of God. With idols, a sense of the pure spirituality of God and the glory of his Divine Nature are eventually obscured until they are lost ALTOGETHER. The inward reverence and wonder that once characterized our relation to God slowly fades so that God NOW becomes something rather familiar to us instead of mysterious and awe-filled.

But the process doesn’t end THERE. As time goes on, we begin to project upon God those same qualities that are reflected in our OWN lives so that humanity, instead of having been “created in the image of God” as it says in Genesis 1, now re-creates God in its OWN image with God now bearing all the same qualities and deficiencies that lie within humanity itself. God winds up becoming little more than a glorified human being, like the numerous gods of Greece and Rome who not only possessed human form but demonstrated the same kind of selfish, arrogant, vengeful and proud temperament that we humans have. 

JEHOVAH, on the other hand, declared HIMSELF to be the ONE AND ONLY TRUE GOD, one whose ways were NOT man's ways, nor whose thoughts, man's thoughts. Once God could be contained within an image or idol, then God was no longer God but a HUMAN CONSTRUCTION, subject to man's own whims and desires, manipulated for whatever ends he wanted. But it no less affects those who worship for those who bow their hearts to inanimate idols will eventually BECOME like them THEMSELVES, that is, unseeing, unfeeling, unable to hear the truth that God would communicate to them. This is why idolatry was so pernicious to the Hebrews and why God commanded them to never make any graven images of him. No places of worship, no representation, no symbol, no sacrament could contain God. God’s beauty could not be captured in any beauty of humanity- not in architecture, not in art. No creed can define him nor can any denomination possess him. When, with our limited minds, we think we can, then we have become idolaters.

Over the years, I’ve grown convinced that the GREATEST enemy that religion in general and Christianity in particular has to face is not ATHEISM but IDOLATRY- the willingness to embrace the over-abundance of gods that not only SURROUND us but are IN us. Rather than a CRISIS of faith, never has there been MORE faith and STRONGER faith as there is today; never have people believed as much and as fervently- in EVERYTHING and in NOTHING. The fact is that human beings are incurably religious. There are a multiplicity of religions all around us and they go by such names as reason or science or technology, or such systems as communism, capitalism, and nationalism; of materialism and moralism and hedonism to name just a few- each of them a religious attitude. The question isn't one of whether we believe in God or not, but rather in which of the Gods do we choose to place our faith in? John Calvin summed it up best when he described the fallen heart as nothing less than “an idol factory.”

We Christians are not immune from falling into such error. Our commitment can be more to systems and buildings and liturgies and forms of government and Books of Order and whether something is “Reformed” enough or not than to ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS which, in GOD’S eyes, are INFINITELY more important than all these PUT TOGETHER! Christianity itself contains truth but it is not to be equated WITH truth; Christianity points to God but to the degree that it is a system devised by human beings, we must acknowledge that God is always BEYOND our human systems. It was perhaps best expressed in a favorite quote I have from the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge which I inscribed many years ago in the flyleaf of my Bible: “He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.” What Coleridge was saying is that even CHRISTIANITY ITSELF can become an idol when our love and commitment is to a system or way of doing things than to the TRUTH HIMSELF, to JESUS CHRIST PERSONALLY, and to the needs of actual human beings- a priority which CHRIST demonstrated again and again. 

In fact, we can even turn JESUS into an idol. Warner Salman’s “Head of Christ” has sold over 500 million copies since it was painted in 1941 and that is the image most persons associate with him. Ask any American what Jesus looks like and they will tell you he is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white man. Yet, Jesus was a Middle Eastern Semite which means that he most likely possessed dark olive features with kinky black hair. Once again, it is easier to turn God into OUR image than for US to be conformed into HIS.

Or take the cross. Millions upon millions of crosses and crucifixes are sold each year, and where you’d think they might serve as reminders of the LOVE that inspired the REAL cross, the truth is otherwise. It has evolved instead into an expensive piece of jewelry worn solely as a fashion statement, a stylish ornament because it is the “cool thing” to do when it was originally meant to remind us of the “cost of discipleship,” that those who take the cross SERIOUSLY just might find THEMSELVES being hung from one someday.

For the early Church, the ULTIMATE revelation of this transcendent God was revealed in and through his SON, Jesus Christ. With his birth, life, death and resurrection, God at last became visible and his undepictable majesty was now expressed in human form. What Jesus did and said, God was doing and saying through Him; when people came face-to-face with Christ, they came face-to-face with God. As the "image of the invisible God," Jesus Christ the Son is the ultimate manifestation of the living God; he alone becomes the bearer of the might and majesty of God, the revealer and mediator of the creating and sustaining power of the Godhead. 

Friends, what is YOUR image of God this morning? If your image is that of a stern Law-giver such as Moses encountered at Mt. Sinai, then think of him who welcomed children and healed the sick, who comforted the poor and anyone ELSE who was lost and lonely. If your image of God is of one so majestic and holy that he could never love someone as lowly as yourself, then think again of him who received lepers and demoniacs, prostitutes and tax-collectors. If you think that God may love you today but not tomorrow, that his emotions are just as fickle as our own, then remember how God refused to reject or abandon his people—the Jews--EVER, even after the Israelites gave up on HIM time and time again. Or if you think of yourself as too great a sinner, as one whose actions are SO unpardonable that you can’t even forgive YOURSELF, then remember who it was that went to that cross like a lamb led to the slaughter, who allowed the world to drive nails into his broken body and a crown of thorns into his blood-stained brow- ALL FOR YOU; remember how he pardoned his executioners as well as promised the thief beside him that he would be with him that same day in paradise. Allow THAT image of God—that picture of Christ ALONE who has vowed that NOTHING will ever separate you from either his presence or his love--win over your heart and dominate your mind. Let it command your imagination and rule your conscience and soon you will find THAT to be the ONLY portrait, the ONLY image of God you will ever need. Let us pray...

Gracious God, thank you for drawing near to us that you might reveal yourself to us instead of residing afar off in the heavenlies. And though we are told that no one has seen God and lived, you have shown yourself to us most perfectly in and through Jesus, your blessed Son. May we learn to trust the image we have of him in your Word as your will for our lives and may that life become more perfectly demonstrated in and through our own. In his name we pray. Amen.