Sermons

Sun, Feb 20, 2011

In what sense can we still think of God as Creator?

Harvest Thanksgiving
Series:Sermons
“We plough the fields and scatter
The good seed on the land,
But it is fed and watered
By God’s almighty hand;
He sends the snow in winter,
The warmth to swell the grain,
The breezes and the sunshine
And soft refreshing rain.
All good gifts around us
Are sent from heaven above,
Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord,
For all His Love”.
 
I don’t know about you…
but in the tradition from which I come…
it wouldn’t be Harvest Thanksgiving if we didn’t sing that hymn.
And yet…
if we actually pause and ponder the words of that hymn…
it ought to cause a certain sense of disquiet.
Even back in 1782…
when Matthias Claudius penned the German original of those lyrics…
their sentiments and worldview were somewhat reactionary…
positing God’s direct causation…
over and against the developing scientific understandings of the Enlightenment.
But, now, in the twenty-first century…
the hymn’s worldview and it’s theology ought to cause us to squirm.
For, clearly, the image of God that the hymn presents is that of a controlling deity.
God makes the sun shine.
God makes the rains fall.
God is ultimately…
and, indeed, directly responsible for the growth of our plants…
and the provision of our sustenance.
God is in control of the world and of the forces of nature.
But such a theology is inherently dangerous…
because it turns God into a petulant, capricious and fickle monster––
sending what we need to survive or withholding it…
depending on whether we’ve been good and respectful…
or we’ve been bad and disobedient.
And, of course, it’s not a far cry from that sort of theology…
to believing that God causes earthquakes and tidal waves and bushfires.
And yet, experience teaches us that there is no Divine Puppet-master…
pulling the strings of our lives and our world.
God is not some cosmic being––
outside of time and space––
intervening in and controlling a world that God made…
like a child playing with an ant-farm.
Indeed, as scientists continue to unravel the mysteries of our world…
and our cosmos…
such an image for and understanding of God becomes less and less tenable…
and less and less helpful.
 
In what sense, then, can we still use the language or the image of God as “creator”––
even at the level of metaphor or myth?
 
One modern theologian––
Jeffrey Small––
suggests that, in putting aside our traditional and outdated images of God…
we should, rather, think of God as “the essence of the creative process of the universe”…
that “God is the center of being within me and everything around me”…
and it is because of God that there is “existence in the first place, instead of nothing”.
Trying to ground such abstract and nuanced language…
he suggests that, perhaps, we could conceive of God as being like the ocean and we––
the created order––
like a wave.
The ocean provides the essential substance of the wave…
and the ocean also provides the power that creates the “individual existence of the wave”…
but the wave “has its own individuality”…
and its own life, albeit short…
before it returns to its source.
 
Or, perhaps, we need to think of God as Creator more in an artistic sense––
that God is the creative inspiration of the artist…
that which inspires the imagination…
and gives rise to the possibility and potentiality of the creation…
but does not control the artistic process…
or its outcome.
 
All of which brings us back to Harvest Thanksgiving…
and the problem of its celebration in our day and age.
Such a celebration made perfect sense in ancient times…
when God was seen as the direct cause of natural events…
when God was thought to control the weather and nature…
when it was believed that God did cause the crops to grow…
or not to grow.
So that it was only right to give thanks to God for God’s care and provision.
But, perhaps subtly, it was also something of an insurance policy…
a means of ensuring that God’s gracious providence might continue.
And yet, in a world come of age…
where we’ve rightly put aside such a primitive image of God…
such an outmoded theology…
what’s the point of celebrating “Harvest Thanksgiving”?
To whom are we giving thanks and why––
if God is not directly involved in our world or our lives in that sort of way?
And, to be quite honest, it’s not something that I celebrate with any sense of enthusiasm…
let alone any sense of conviction.
Frankly, it sits rather uncomfortably with my theology…
and, in many ways, I find the whole thing more than a little embarrassing.
 
So…
is there any way that we might reinterpret and reappropriate “Harvest Thanksgiving”?
Is there any way that we might reclaim it in the modern world?
 
Ironically––
given its very antiquity––
perhaps this morning’s reading from Leviticus offers a few building blocks.
First of all, the author suggest that we ought to be “holy” because God is “holy”.
In other words…
if God is “the center of being within me and everything around me”…
if God is the “ground of our being”––
to borrow an expression from the theologian, Paul Tillich––
then being fully human is to reflect the nature of God…
and it is to live rightly in relation to God.
But that also means living rightly in relation to the rest of the created order…
and, not least, with each other.
Rather than seeing God as the direct cause of our prosperity…
which can, so often, breed superiority and self-centredness…
if we understand God’s creativity as forming the essential ground of our being…
as the imaginative origin of all existence and life…
then it changes our relationship to the rest of the created order.
In that respect, the instructions in our reading from Leviticus––
about not reaping to the very edges of the field…
nor gathering the produce that falls to the ground…
but leaving them for the poor and the disadvantaged…
the foreigner and the refugee––
are, ultimately, calling upon us to treat every other person…
who reflects the nature of God…
and in whose essential being God is to be found…
with dignity and respect.
In other words, in caring for each other, we are, fundamentally, caring for God…
we are showing respect and dignity to God.
And, in so doing…
are we not demonstrating our thankfulness to the God who is the creative source and origin of us all?
Perhaps, then, Harvest Thanksgiving is not so much a time or opportunity to thank God––
as if God were directly responsible for the bounty we enjoy.
Instead, perhaps Harvest Thanksgiving is a time to recognise that the bounty we enjoy––
thanks to nature, science and, dare I say, good fortune—
continually offers us the opportunity and the challenge…
to cooperate with God’s creative purposes…
to be, if you like, co-creators of the world that God imagines into being––
a world where all God’s creatures might have enough…
and, together, can enjoy a harvest of thankfulness.
Powered by: truthengaged