How Do You Imagine God?
First Reading
A READING FROM THE BOOK OF EXODUS
The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued, and went into the sea after them, all of Pharaoh's horses, chariots, and chariot drivers. At the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and cloud looked down upon the Egyptian army, and threw the Egyptian army into panic. He clogged their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty. The Egyptians said, "Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt." Then the Lord said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers." So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.
EXODUS 14:19-31
Sermon: The Rev. Dr. Maryann Amor
How do you imagine God? If you picture God in your mind right now, what are the top five qualities you would give to God? Loving? Compassionate? Just? Awesome?
Most of the time, we probably don't think too much about where our image of God comes from. We have been shaped by Scripture, worship, hymns and prayers, our families and our churches, and our own experiences of God.
But every so often, we come across a story in Scripture that doesn't fit the God we think we know. And our reading from Exodus is one of those stories.
I am sure many of you have seen Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments...here is a clip from that film of our first reading....
There is a simple way to understand what we just saw. There are the good guys and the bad guys. God kills the bad guys, the Egyptians. They get what they deserve. God saves the good guys, the Israelites. They win.
But there is so much more to this story, and it becomes uncomfortable when we look at it closely. Notice how God saves the Israelites. God pulls the water over Pharaoh's army, and they all die. There is no offer of forgiveness. God doesn't choose to spare them or appear to them and change their hearts...instead, God kills them all.
Listen again to the final verse of our reading: “Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.”
In this story, the greatness of God comes through death. Yes, it is the death of those opposing Israel. But it is still death. And this is where the story begins to challenge the image of God we may carry with us.
Because if God is the same throughout history, then God doesn't change. The God of our Exodus reading — the God who causes the Egyptians to die — is the same God of Jesus. The same God we turn to today.
But how can this be true when most of us agree that God doesn’t kill as punishment? How do we move forward with this God who likely doesn’t fit how we imagine God to be?
The way to deal with these challenges is not to throw passages out of the Bible. We can't simply say, “I don't like what God does here, so I won't read this part.”
Instead, we need to shift how we understand what Scripture is...what if we think about the the Bible as a collection of stories told by human beings about how they understand God?
Millennia ago, when these stories were taking shape, people lived in a world where war and violence were a daily reality. They lived in a world where gods were understood to fight one another, and where the power of a god was often demonstrated through victory and destruction.
For the Israelites, the ultimate way to show the power of their God is for God to take the waters of the Red Sea and drown the powerful Egyptian army, with all its horses and chariots.
The story is not necessarily telling us exactly who God is. It is telling us how the ancient Israelites understood God.
And when we begin to think about Scripture and its many images of God in this way, it opens up something really important for us. Because we can ask: What would we say about God? How would we show God's power to others if we were writing our own Scripture today?
None of us are sitting down to write books of the Bible. But we are still writing the story that began thousands of years ago. We are constantly telling people who we believe God is. We tell them by what we say, by how we treat people, by who we forgive and condemn, and by what we believe God wants for this world. People may never learn about the God we believe in by reading the books we leave behind. But they will learn something about our God by watching how we live.
So, when people look at our lives, what kind of God do they see? Do they see a God who is merciful, just, compassionate? Or do they see a God who condemns those who are different, who sets up boundaries, who cannot love or welcome because of what someone did in their past?
The God who kills the Egyptians reflects how the ancient Israelites understood God's power. It made sense within their world. It was their way of saying: our God is more powerful than Pharaoh, more powerful than the gods of Egypt, and our God will save us.
But that doesn't mean we have to make this image of God our final word about who God is.
Because Scripture doesn't give us just one image of God. It gives us many. And as Christians, we don't encounter these images of God in isolation. We read them in light of the whole story of Scripture, and ultimately in light of Jesus.
So when we read a text like our first reading, the question isn't simply, “Do I believe God really drowned the Egyptians?” But the deeper question is: What does this story tell us about how human beings have understood God — and what does it invite us to ask about who God is for us today?
If we don't believe that God's power is ultimately shown through killing and destruction, then how do we understand God's power? If we don't believe that God responds to our enemies with vengeance, then what does God's justice look like? If we believe that God's love extends even to those we might call our enemies, then what kind of God are we proclaiming?
And this brings us back to where we began: How do you imagine God?
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