Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church 7 April 2019
Genesis 1.26-27, 31
John 14.6-11
Listen to this sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/what-does-your-god-look-like
Listen to this sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/what-does-your-god-look-like
I thought I might start my sermon this week by showing you just
a few holiday photos,
from our
recent trip to Southeast Asia.
To save you from having to sit through the full gamut
of the
4,000 photos that we actually took,
I thought I’d focus in on some photos of gods.
It seemed as if everywhere we went, we met another object of
devotion or worship.
And as I show these photos, I’d like you to consider my
thesis for this morning,
which is
that people construct their gods
either
in their own image,
or
in the image of whatever it is that they think of as powerful
So let’s start with possibly the most imposing object of
worship we saw
- the giant
reclining Buddha of Bangkok
He is, truly, astonishingly large, and very very gold.
I’ve
included myself in this photo to give you a sense of scale,
but
just to give you a firm idea, he’s 15 metres tall and 46 metres long.
In other
words, he wouldn’t fit in this building,
by
some considerable margin.
If people construct their gods either in their own image,
or in the
image of whatever it is that they think of as powerful,
the
reclining Buddha ticks both boxes.
He’s a male human,
and just
about as ostentatiously powerful as it is possible to get.
At the other end of the size scale,
but ramping
up the wealth and value stakes even higher,
we also saw in Bangkok the small statue
that is
known as the Emerald Buddha.
He’s actually made of jade, and his origins are lost in the
mists of history,
but he is
ancient, maybe as much as two thousand years old,
and so valuable that whole wars have been fought over who
gets to own him.
And the temple where the emerald Buddha resides
is
protected by these Demon Guards
and their role is to protect the sanctity of the temple
and ensure
that no-one misbehaves.
They are huge, powerful, and quite terrifying,
even if I
did keep assuring myself that they were only statues.
Further Angels and Demons
support the
base of the various stupas in the Grand Palace
and whilst they are humanoid in form, they are actually
monkeys
and members
of the divine monkey armies,
who role is
to fight out the eternal battle between good and evil.
The ones without shoes are the good ones,
and the
ones with shoes are the evil ones. Of course.
We also met divine beings
in the form
of humans fused with animals
Here is Liz going face to face with a Kinnara,
a kind of
half-human half-bird creature from Hindu mythology.
And whilst Kinnaras are generally benign,
and apparently
write poetry and songs,
we also met various gods of judgment:
Including this rather terrifying scene showing a hideous
demon
with human
corpses coming out of his mouth and ears,
as another many-armed demon looks on hungrily
with knives
and forks in his hands.
But then, in addition to the many, many mythological
creatures,
there is the
widespread practice of venerating saints and ancestors,
This interesting three-woman temple in Vietnam
provides
people with an opportunity to make offerings
of
beer, water, and apples,
which
apparently the revered saintly ancestors
then
get to drink and eat in the afterlife.
They also make offerings of $100 bills,
which are
burned in the little furnaces just outside the temple,
so that the
deceased saints will have money to spend in the afterlife.
Apparently they are fake notes,
but once
they have passed over into the hereafter
they are
good for spending.
The power here his clearly the power of money,
and a
desire to ensure that those in the afterlife are well provided for.
And then in Cambodia, we encountered monumental statues of
the gods
These guys are angels, who are involved in a divine tug of
war with the demons
using the
body of Naga the snake, to churn the ocean of milk
and bring
the universe into being..
And the haunting, giant spectral faces of Angkor Thom tower
over the jungle,
reminding
anyone who sees them
that the gods of that place are huge, powerful, and
ethereal.
So, to return to my thesis:
we make our
gods either in our own image,
or in the
image of what we perceive to be powerful.
And my question for us this morning is this:
What does
your God look like?
What does
God look like to you?
So hold this thought…
or rather,
sit with it for a few minutes and we’ll come back to it.
This sermon is the introduction to our series on what it
means
to be a
truly inclusive church,
which we will be coming back to on the first Sunday of each
month
looking at
how we as a congregation can be more inclusive of those
who
are often excluded and marginalised
both
in society, and in Christian communities.
Many of you will know that we are in the process of
registering with the organisation known as Inclusive Church - the Deacons
considered this at an away day towards the end of last year, and I know at
least one of the home groups has been working through the material that the
organisation provides for churches to reflect on their own journeys of
inclusion.
Our website clearly states that we are:
“Aspiring to be an inclusive and accessible church in the
centre of London,
that holds
and represents a wide variety of people, opinions, and backgrounds.”
And our order of service proclaims:
-
“We are an inclusive church in the heart of
London”
Clearly the desire to include people who face exclusion
elsewhere
is a core
part of our understanding of ourselves,
and it is something
that we say clearly and often.
We have a long history of acting in solidarity with the
vulnerable,
and taking
sometimes controversial stands alongside the marginalised.
Our registration for same sex marriage
is one recent
practical out-working of this core value of inclusion.
But it certainly isn’t the only example,
and the
story of this church’s refusal to welcome slave-owning Baptists
to
the Lord’s Table in Great Exhibition year of 1851
is another
important moment in our history.
However, inclusion is about more than sexuality or
ethnicity,
although it
clearly includes these.
Inclusive Church challenges us to consider other areas of
inclusion alongside these,
to look at
issues such as poverty, gender,
transgender,
disability, and mental health
as
mechanisms of exclusion with society and church life.
And over the next few months we’re going to be considering
ways in
which we, as a congregation, can take practical steps
to be more
inclusive in a wide variety of areas.
To help us in this, we’re going to be hearing, wherever
possible,
from people
who represent the marginalised communities we’re wanting to include.
So it’s not all going to be me speaking.
One of the golden rules of inclusion discourse
is the
mantra ‘nothing about us without us’,
meaning no decisions, however well meaning,
should be
taken without involvement of those affected by them.
And so it is important for us to ensure that our exploration
of inclusion
is not
simply a top down discussion, by those of us already included,
about the
terms on which we will welcome people who are not quite like us.
Here I’d like to offer a word of warning,
which is
that this process of taking inclusion seriously,
can be a
difficult journey for those of us who are already included.
Earlier this year, I spent some time with a workbook
called ‘Me
and White Supremacy’, as recommended by Dawn.
If you’re interested, I recommend downloading it - it’s free
and very good.
Now, we’re not looking in detail at issues of ethnic
inclusion this week,
we’ll come
to that in a couple of months’ time,
but I thought I’d just share the opening phrase from the
website
as an
example of how engaging inclusion as someone with power
can be an
uncomfortable exercise:
“White supremacy is a violent system of oppression
that harms
Black, Indigenous and People of Colour.
“And if you are a person who holds white privilege,
then you
are complicit in upholding that harm, whether you realise it or not.”
The realisation that as a white person, whether I like it or
not,
I am
complicit in a violent system of oppression,
is a very
uncomfortable thing to hear.
But, and here’s the transferrable lesson
that we
need to take across all of our considerations of inclusion.
Where those of us with power are complicit in oppression, we
are diminished.
As long as I am included at the expense of someone else’s
exclusion,
whether
that is on the basis of my ethnicity, my gender,
my
sexuality, my mental health, my wealth, or my ability,
and as long as I accept that privilege without taking action
to address the situation,
I am not
only participating in violence against others,
I am also
diminishing my own self
before
the God who makes all people in God’s own image.
And here we come back to God,
and the
question that I asked a few minutes ago:
What does your God look like?
Have you started to think through what your answer might be?
I suspect
that for many of us, God looks either a bit like us,
or
a bit like what we think power looks like.
For me, my theologically correct answer is of course that
God looks like Jesus,
After all,
Jesus says that if we have seen him, we have seen the Father.
So by this understanding God is male, able bodied,
he
is articulate, a teacher and a preacher,
he is
someone who leads others, and challenges preconceptions…
But can you see what’s happening…?
I’m
constructing my God in my own image.
I’m
emphasising those attributes of Jesus
that
match the things about me that represent power.
And of course, this is entirely the wrong way round,
after all, we
are made in God’s image, not he in ours….
When we make God in our image,
we commit
the sin of idolatry
because we end up worshipping either ourselves
or the
things that we most value and admire.
So, what does your God look like?
Does God
look a bit like you?
If you’re a woman, you may still see God as male,
and a
feminist critique would suggest that is a function of the patriarchy,
normalising
maleness as power, and inviting us to deify and worship it…
If you’re a person of colour, you may still see God as
white,
and a
racial justice critique would suggest that this is a function of white
supremacy,
normalising
whiteness as power, and inviting us to deify and worship it…
If you’re a person with a disability or impairment,
you may
still see God as able bodied and mentally healthy
and a disability rights critique would suggest that this is
a function of ableism,
normalising
ability as power, and inviting us to deify and worship it…
If you’re a person living with economic disadvantage,
you may
still see God as wealthy, with his glittering golden churches
built
by people with gilt complexes…
and a Marxist analysis would suggest
that this
is a function of religion as a mechanism of oppression,
normalising wealth as power, and inviting us to prostrate
ourselves before it…
But here’s a thing: there is a way out of our idolatry!
The
crucified God invites us
to nail all our false images of God
to the cross,
to see
them, and the privilege and power that sustains them, die,
and
in their place is born a new humanity, of equality and justice.
Appropriately, as we approach Good Friday
this can be
for us a Lenten challenge,
something
to consider as we turn our faces to the cross.
Can we give up our deified images of power?
can we
learn to worship God as God is,
rather
than as we have constructed God?
And yes, this will be painful,
because it
invites us to encounter God
in places we
would not expect to find God
It requires us to set aside our preconceptions, and our
investment in what is,
and to
encounter God not in power but in weakness,
in
prejudice, and in the ‘other’…
It means we have to ask the difficult questions,
of what it
might mean if God doesn’t look like me
at all,
what if God
doesn’t look like power?
What if God looks like a refugee,
or a person
with no home and no money,
or a person
with a disability?
What if God is a person of colour?
What if God
is not male, or straight, or in good mental health?
And of course in Jesus, God is all these things.
Jesus was not a white European, he was a dark skinned Jew;
he bears in
his body the marks of the crucifixion,
his
hands and feet maimed for all eternity,
he was the
homeless, penniless Refugee,
whose
childhood was spent on the run
and whose
adult life was spent
as
the one who had nowhere to lay his head.
He was unmarried and childless,
defying the
gender and sexual norms of his day
and known for associating with those
whose own
sexual history was at best ambiguous.
He experienced periods of great psychological trauma
from the
overwhelming pressure of people,
to tears of
grief at the death of a friend,
to the
devastating loneliness of Gethsemane.
His sweat in his mental anguish was like drops of blood,
as his
torment took its toll on his physical wellbeing.
He was tempted in every way just as we are
And Jesus tells his disciples
that if they
have seen him they have seen God.
So what would it be like for us,
this Lent
and, at the start of our journey this year into inclusion,
to give up on our idolatrous images of God,
made either
in our own images,
or cast to
deify strength and power
as
we experience it in our lives, society, and world?
What would it mean for us collectively as the body of Christ
to embody a
more broken, excluded, and reviled image of God?
To put it another way, what would it mean for us to take
seriously
what our
building tells us each time we meet for worship,
which is that we gather around the cross of Christ,
as the
people of Christ broken and humbled.
You see, the starting point for a journey into greater
inclusion
isn’t a
greater understanding of the marginalised and the oppressed,
it is a greater understanding of ourselves
and our own
capacity for sinful idolatry.
It is not for us to tell others that our God is their God
too.
God is
already the God of the person of colour,
and
the person with the physical or mental impairment.
God is
already the God of the woman as well as the man,
as
well as the person of non-binary gender.
God is
already the God of the LGBTQi community,
just
as God is already the God of the homeless
and
the God of the economically disadvantaged
The problem here is not God as revealed in Christ
The problem
is with me, and maybe with you too,
as we uncritically and unthinkingly deify our version
normality,
creating God
in our images of power
The journey to inclusion starts when we realise
that the
image of the black Christ, the female Christ,
the
gay or trans Christ,
the
homeless or disabled Christ
are not idolatrous perversions
but
actually are authentic representations
of the
diversity of the body of Christ.
And so some images to close which may help us
as we start
this journey that lies before us.
This is ‘Christa’, a bronze statue by the world-renowned sculptor
and artist Edwina Sandys,
who is the
grand-daughter of Winston Churchill
She first displayed the sculpture in London in 1975,
and it was
very controversial at the time.
Since then, it has been displayed around the world
and now has
a permanent home in the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York.
She says, of her sculpture:
I didn’t make Christa as a campaign for women’s rights or Women’s Lib
as such
but I have always
believed in equality
and I am glad that
Christa is just as relevant today as it was in 1975.
I didn’t make Christa just for women.
Men also suffer and
that is one of the meanings of Jesus on the Cross.
(Over the years I have received many letters from men,
many of them priests
of all denominations.)
In the past there were matriarchs in many societies and religions,
and gender was not
always a factor.
Today women are finding their way to take their place in the Christian
church
and in society in
general.
Most women of my generation have been stamped
with the idea of Man’s
superiority over Woman
which is hard to throw
off without seeming aggressive.
I hope that Christa continues to reveal the journey of suffering
that we all have in
common.[1]
The next image I have for us is one which I find deeply
moving,
having just
been to Cambodia and seen first hand
the
evidence of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Liz and I walked through one of the Killing Fields sites,
and saw the
clothes and bones of those tens of thousands who are buried there,
coming up
from the ground we were treading on.
We saw the tree where children were dashed to death.
We saw the
torture centre in the former high school
where
anyone who was suspected was forced to confess.
We saw adults with limbs missing from having trodden on
landmines,
trying to
earn a living by playing musical instruments and begging for money.
And I wonder what it means for us to see Christ to be a
Cambodian amputee,
with a
Southeast Asian face, nailed to a bamboo pole?
And here is another beautiful image,
a reworking
of Leonardo Da Vinci’s last supper,
portrayed
by models with Downs Syndrome.
What does it mean for us to see Jesus as someone with a
genetic disability,
rather than
as a perfected specimen of humanity?
What does it mean for Jesus to embody weakness and
vulnerability.
What does this say to us, as the body of Christ in this
place,
that in our
embodiment of Christ
we are called to be the living expression of the God
who made
each person in God’s own image.
Another image for us now,
this time,
the image of the ‘Homeless Jesus’
If you look closely, you can see that the person asleep on
the bench,
bears the
marks of the crucifixion on his body.
This is Jesus as someone who sleeps rough…
and is a
very long way from the Jesus
who lives
in the beautiful churches of our cities.
It was originally going to be displayed in Trafalgar Square,
and then
outside of Westminster Central Hall,
but both these were turned down…
Westminster City Council commented in 2016 that:
"the proposed sculpture
would fail to maintain or improve
the
character or appearance of the...
Parliament
Square Conservation Area"[2]
So now, you can visit Homeless Jesus in Farm Street Jesuit
Centre in Mayfair.
And here we have an installation from Pride, Sau Paulo, n
2015,
by a
transgender artist,
of Jesus as someone who embodies the agony experienced
by those
whose experience of their own gender doesn’t match their physical being.
The text above the crown of thorns reads, ‘End Homophobia’
in Portugese.
And finally, we have a white European Jesus,
as depicted
by the pre-Raphaelite artist Holman Hunt.
It is one of the most famous images of Jesus,
and
inspired great devotion through the Victorian era.
It is beautiful, and I love it,
but we need
to recognise that Jesus here is an embodiment of power and privilege.
And if this is our only Jesus,
we run the
risk of excluding those who are made differently in the image of God.
So, to return to my question,
What does
your God look like?
Does God look like you, or like what you think power looks
like?
Or can we
learn to see God in all those
that
have been made in the image of God,
and can we
learn to see each of us,
whoever
we are, in our images of God?
In Christ, God includes all, absolutely,
and as the
people of Christ,
we are
called to be the body of Christ in all its diversity.
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