The Character of God

This message was first delivered at Cove United Methodist Church in Coleman Falls, Virginia on January 11, 2015. It is based on the lectionary texts of Mark 1:4-11, Genesis 1:1-5, Acts 19:1-7 and Psalm 29.

Acts 19:1-7New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, where he found some disciples. He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They replied, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Then he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They answered, “Into John’s baptism.” Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied— altogether there were about twelve of them.

The character of God

Today's scripture lessons illuminate different aspects of the character of God. In the Genesis reading that described the first day of creation – we experience the character of God the builder. In the Psalm we see the glory of a God who is powerful and worthy of our awe and wonder. In Mark, we heard how Jesus was humble enough to be baptized by John. John, who told his own followers that he was unworthy to tie Jesus' shoes. And in Acts, Paul gave witness to the character of the Holy Spirit.

Four scriptures. One God. Many faces.

We are all like that. We have many aspects to our personality that present themselves depending on our mood and situation. You get to experience Good Chris – the one who is upbeat and brings a good message and sometimes even sings pretty. You probably think I'm always smiling and positive and loving. My co-workers sometimes experience Grumpy Chris – the one who feels overwhelmed and frustrated and short of coffee. The kids at Centenary's afterschool program on Thursday nights generally get a blend of those two...with a little extra crazy thrown in. Sometimes it is good crazy, when I amuse them by dancing a little or telling wild stories about my family. But other times they push me a little too far with all the talking and not listening and I'm ashamed to say that they have experienced Angry Chris.

Whether it is Good or Grumpy or Happy or Dopey...it is all Chris.

And whether it is humble Jesus or patient Jesus or creator God or powerful God or the Holy Spirit – it is all part of who God is. Today I want to look a little deeper into some of these aspects of the character of God.

In the beginning, there was God. The earth was a formless void...it was nothing. It was a blank canvas. God decided to get creative. Was God lonely? Was God bored? Why did he start this never-ending project we call Earth? I can't say. But I'm happy that he did. He caused a wind to sweep over the void – or he WAS the wind that swept over the void...regardless...he spoke. He said, “let there be light.” and there was light. And it was good.

But he didn't stop there – God separated light from darkness, he called the light Day and the dark Night. And there was evening and there was morning.

Why not stop with making Light? If light is so good, why not always have light?

In the 1980 movie Oh God! Book II, - George Burns as God is speaking with a young girl who has asked him why there is suffering and darkness in the world: God says, “I know this sounds like a cop-out, Tracy, but there's nothing I can do about pain and suffering. It's built into the system.” Tracy answers, “Which You invented.” He responds, “Right. But my problem was I could never figure out how to build anything with just one side to it.” “One side?” she questions. He says, “You ever see a front without a back? A top without a bottom? An up without a down? OK. Then there can't be good without bad, life without death, pleasure without pain. That's the way it is. If I take sad away, happy has to go with it.

Maybe that is an overly simplistic way to look at it. But without darkness, would we appreciate the light?

In the 1974 Sid and Marty Kroft classic series, Land of the Lost, a father, son and daughter are trapped in a land of dinosaurs, strange plants, odd monkey-men and terrifying lizard people called Sleestak. Perhaps you remember the series? It is available on YouTube and I have revisited my childhood many times watching the series.

There are two episodes in season 2 that pertain to this topic of Light and Dark. One is called The Longest Day and the other is called Blackout. In the longest day, a crystal blows out in the clock pylon (trust me this makes sense if you watch the show) and the sun stops moving. In Blackout, the Sleestak tamper with the clock pylon to keep the sun from rising. In the first instance, the Sleestak are unable to come out of their caves because the sun won't go down and all of the Land is threatened because the unrelenting sun begins to dry up water supplies and wither plants. The consequences of unending night are just as dire. The Sleestak thought unending night would be perfect because they would be able to hunt their food supply all the time. Unfortunately, without the sun, the cold begins to kill off their preferred food source, the Altrusian Moth.

Aren't we guilty of acting like Sleestak sometimes? We are sure that if the world was just like we wanted, there would be eternal happiness. We just forget that what we want may not be the best thing for us – and the world.

So God was wiser and made both Day AND Night. We have Light and Darkness. Because the world needs to have both.

Just like the world needs more than the creator God, the God of power and might – we also need God in the person of Jesus Christ. The one who relates to our human needs and wants and desires...the God who humbled himself to come down to Earth as a tiny baby, to walk among us and die for our sins.

We have just come through the time of celebrating the birth of Jesus and now our gospel scripture talks about the beginning of Jesus' ministry. The church calendar is funny like that! We have Advent in November and Easter in April – which would seem like the beginning and end chapters. But there is so much in between for us to learn.

Today's lectionary scripture shows us Jesus seeking out his cousin, John the Baptist. John has been baptizing in the desert and people are flocking to see him. He is telling people to repent of their sins and be baptized. John is an interesting character and clearly a powerful leader – but he tells his followers that the one to follow him is even more powerful. He tells them that he is unworthy to stoop down and untie the sandals of Jesus. But Jesus seeks him out and is baptized by him in the Jordan River. If JOHN knew that he was not as powerful as Jesus – surely JESUS was aware of that! And yet, he humbled himself and the most amazing thing happened when he was coming up out of the water. John's suspicions are confirmed...a voice came down from heaven and said, “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you, I am well pleased.”

Confirmation. This is the Messiah. The long awaited Savior.

He is not what a lot of people expected. Even among Jesus' closest friends, his disciples – there were those who expected (and desired) a King. A warrior. A power broker.

They did not expect the Messiah to be humble. To be fully human. But he was. We do not have time today to explore all of the wonderful characteristics of Jesus. So I'll focus on the humanity and humility. He started off life in a simple manger, in the town of Bethlehem. It was a humble beginning.

Which reminds me very much of the humble story in John 13. Jesus got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” skipping further into the story: After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

Jesus came into the world in a very humble way and then lived among people who still didn't understand what he came to accomplish and tried very hard to teach his disciples what being his follower truly meant. And 2000 years later we still have a hard time grasping what we as the church are supposed to be doing. We continue to learn even though our Savior returned to heaven for a time.

But thanks be to God, we are not alone. Jesus and God left a presence with us. The Holy Spirit to help guide us. That character of God without body and without thunder – that is so critical to the followers, even today. The part of God that was so important that Paul asked the disciples that he found in Ephesus if they had received it. And when he discovered that they had not experienced the Holy Spirit – he baptized them and laid his hands on them and they received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Ah, the Holy Spirit... perhaps that is the face of God that many people have a hard time relating to. We can get on board with the creator God and the wild fury and passion of the God in Psalm 29...and we can appreciate Jesus, who came down to earth in a very human form to walk among us...but the spirit is something altogether different. Because this is the part of God that is supposed to infest our whole being.

The Book of Acts mentions the Holy Spirit perhaps more than any other book in the Bible. But the Holy Spirit is present long before Jesus appears on the scene. God’s Spirit has always been a part of our story of faith.

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind of God swept over the face of the waters.” The word “wind” — translated into English here from the Hebrew word ruakh (voo aff), which means air, or wind, or breath — later gets translated as “Spirit.” So the Spirit is, in the beginning, associated with the creation.

The Old Testament also portrays the Holy Spirit as a source of inspiration and power. Israel’s leaders—from Moses to Joshua, Judges, David and Solomon, all the way to Isaiah and beyond - all are said to have received their wisdom, courage, and power as gifts resulting from the possession of God’s Spirit. We see this Spirit at work especially in the prophets, who are said to have been possessed by God’s Spirit to such a degree that all that they say and do is attributed to being the words and work of God. It is as if they are completely taken over by God’s Spirit, so that their whole bodies and minds and beings become vehicles for God’s Word to be spoken to human beings.

The Holy Spirit is God’s presence in the community of God’s people. The Spirit is associated with the hope of Israel and God’s plan for them in the unfolding of their history. So we can see that the Holy Spirit was a significant part of our understanding of God even before Jesus came to live upon this earth.

Things get more complicated when we get to the New Testament. Some of the Old Testament sense of the Holy Spirit continues, particularly the idea that the Spirit gives power to human beings.

But the very close relationship of Jesus to God begins to change and transform the Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit. For Christians, the Holy Spirit comes to represent both the presence and activity of God and the continuing presence of Jesus Christ in the church and in the world. The Gospel of John describes the Holy Spirit as the “Counselor” who represents both divine presence and ongoing guidance for the disciples.

The Book of Acts, which is a record of the early church, shows the development of a close and personal connection to the Holy Spirit. In today’s Scripture lesson Paul starts to draw a distinction between the kind of baptism practiced by John the Baptist, who proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and baptism in the Lord Jesus Christ, which has to do with the laying on of hands and the coming of the Holy Spirit to those who believe in him and follow him.

In some denominations, before a person can be recognized as a believer and follower of Jesus Christ, he or she must show clear evidence of having been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Witnesses look for signs that this has happened. Those signs usually include things like having an ecstatic experience such as being slain in the Spirit (falling on the floor and convulsing) or speaking in tongues, or dancing, or physical healing.

United Methodists have a somewhat less dramatic, but equally important, understanding of what it means to be baptized in the Holy Spirit of Christ Jesus. United Methodists don’t believe that there must be certain kinds of evidence of the Holy Spirit, such as ecstatic experiences or speaking in tongues.

United Methodists focus their understanding of the Holy Spirit primarily on grace. The undeserved, unmerited, and loving action of God through the ever-present Holy Spirit.

Methodists believe that the grace of God is with us even before we know it. We are born with this grace. It is in us while we are still being knitted together in the womb. As we grow and learn more about Jesus Christ, we become more and more filled with this grace—this undeserved, unmerited, loving action of God—until at some point in our lives, we come to this incredible realization that God’s love really is for us. God loves us even though we sin. God loves us even though we make lots of mistakes and hurt one another and hurt ourselves. God still loves us, just as we are, no matter what. John Wesley called this experience “justifying grace,” and he characterized it as a feeling of deep and abiding assurance.

When we come to that realization, it really changes the way we feel about ourselves. In response, we work harder to know Jesus Christ, by praying and studying God’s Holy Word. Through these disciplines, we start to feel his presence in our lives, and we see his face in the faces of people who show us his grace. We enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is the point in which we start to have a faith of our own.We begin to feel God’s love for us in a very personal and intimate way, and that feeling changes the way that we feel about ourselves and about our value and place in the world.

And when that Spirit infects our being – this assurance is the work of the Holy Spirit. It isn’t a body or a form or a shape. It is a breath, a wind, a knowing, a feeling that rushes through us and draws us to others. It fills us with an assurance that there is something underneath it all, something beyond what we can know from science or from intellectual pursuit or from thinking. It is the wind that swept over the dark and formless void and gave it life. It is the breath of God that enters each one of us, giving meaning and shape to our dark and formless lives. It is the voice that spoke the word of God through the prophets. It is the hope that gave the nation of Israel the strength to leave Egypt and head out to the Promised Land. It is the Word of God that came to dwell in Jesus Christ and lives among us. It is the tongues of fire and the mighty rush of wind that fell upon the followers of Christ gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost. It is the force that enabled them to understand one another, even though many different languages were being spoken. It is the power of God’s grace that lives in and through the followers of Jesus Christ. It is our hope, our center, the very ground of our being, into which we were baptized into the faith through the laying on of hands in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. It is the Spirit of Christ, the light that has come into the world, and that the darkness can never put out.

In 2007 William P. Young published a book called The Shack. This modern day parable described the Trinity in a way that shook up a lot of people. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to do so, simply because it forces you to look at an old mystery (the Trinity) from a different perspective. It may be a perspective that resonates with you – or it may not. The important thing is that every Christian needs to examine their relationship with God – and find that connection for themselves.

God wants to be in relationship with every single one of us. And he (or she) wants that relationship to change the way we relate to each other. Because when we honor the power of God the Father, relate to the humanity of God in Jesus and allow God the Holy Spirit to fill us completely – it will affect us in ways we can barely imagine. And then the church can truly be a part of the transformation of the world around us.