The Infinite Metaphor

Creation Care Series 2
sermon by Torin Eikler
Deuteronomy 32:4-18

I think most of you are aware that members of this congregation discerned two priorities to serve as guides for our ministry as a faithful community following God’s call to discipleship.  To refresh your memories they are Congregational Community and Creation Care, and as part of our on-going commitment to these guiding themes, Carrie and I will be preaching a series on each during the next three or four months.

Our first series on God’s Good Creation actually began last week and I want to say a special thank you to Dave, Cindy, and Linda for giving us a good start with a worship focused on “God’s Promise to Creation” and the reading by Lillian Daniel about God’s promise of steadfast care and the continuation of life.  Over the next several weeks, we will be engaging the themes of Celebrating Creation, The Steadfast Care of God for all, God’s Covenant, God’s Nurture of the Animals, Our Place in Nature, God the Creator, and What We are Like.  But today we are exploring what “God is Like…”.

 

Sebastian loves jokes.  He has always loved jokes from the time he first fell in love with knock-knock jokes at two years old.  Now, as he nears the age of seven, he has begun to move into the more subtle humor that involves puns, and his most recent discoveries include the ones that go “When is a _____ like a ______?”  A couple of weeks ago now he proudly came up to me and asked, “When is a man like a dog?”  To which I responded with the required “I don’t know.”  And he answered with glee, “When he’s a boxer.”  He followed that one up with “When is a chair like fabric?  When it is “sat-in.”  (When is a fish a bargain?  When it’s a “sail-fish.”)

I am thrilled that Sebastian has finally made it to this point … and not just because these jokes are a whole lot more fun for me.  Understanding metaphors and similes well enough to have fun with them is a big developmental step because it means that he can use those tools to explore and understand the connections in the world around him.  That means that he can begin to look more deeply into life as well as the world around him and … ultimately … God.  

 

That’s what we do after all … when we think about God.  We play around with similes and metaphors.  We almost have to use them because the nature of the Divine is so far beyond our understanding in so many ways.  If we want to have any hope of understanding anything about that Infinite Being, we have to grab hold of the tiny pieces that we can grasp and use them to wiggle our way more deeply in – to find our way toward a more complete picture of what God is like.

I don’t know about you, but it seems strange to me that a service exploring images of God would have a scripture from a book of law.  I would have thought first of the prophets with their imaginative imagery.  They are full of vivid descriptions like Elijah’s sheer silence and chariot of flames to Ezekiel’s dry bones, but they are a bit thin on actual images of God.  The Psalms offer a lot of poetic variety too, but they spend most of their energy on humanity.  So, as it turns out, we are left to look in the books of history like Exodus and Deuteronomy for the best metaphors (although there are quite a few juicy bits in the Song of Solomon, too).

 

A little bit about Deuteronomy….  Tradition has it that this text was a speech given by Moses on the eve of the Israelites entry into the Promised Land – a sort of final sermon that he used to retell and reinforce everything that had happened over the past 40 years.  Much more likely is the theory that Deuteronomy was compiled from previous writings and oral histories hundreds of years later when religious leaders were trying to hold together the Jewish community during their exile in Babylon and maintain a unity of belief and practice in the face of the multitude of gods present in Babylonian society.

To accomplish that task, the compliers of the book took two major collections of the law that governed the lives of the chosen people and imbedded them in a retelling of the story of Moses and the Israelites.  So, even though the title Deuteronomy means “second law” (since it follows Leviticus), it is actually much more than a book of law.  It is a history of the years wondering in the wilderness with the law of the covenant set in that context, and its primary purpose is to outline what the chosen people’s special relationship with God implied by defining proper patterns of conduct that conformed to the covenant.  Alongside that is a secondary goal of persuading readers of the rightness and necessity of living according to the law which it does by relating many stories of how the people were blessed when they followed the law and suffered when they turned away. 

In order to do that, the authors included images of God that the people could grab hold of – metaphors that spoke to the spiritual needs of a people who had just suffered a defeat that uprooted them from their homes and scattered them across a foreign land.  And so, toward the end of the book – in the section where Moses says goodbye to the people and expresses his longing for the people to hear, understand, and remember all that he has taught them about living according to the covenant so that they will continue to be blessed – we find three powerful images for God: the Rock, the sheltering Mother Hen, and the Eagle. 

These three are familiar metaphors – images that we use in church fairly often as we talk about God.  The rock is a solid foundation on which we can build our lives.  It becomes the strong shield that protects us not just from our enemies, but also from the un-looked-for danger of floods and fires.  It is an unchanging, enduring anchor holding fast in the midst of every storm and providing security for all who put their trust in it.

The eagle is the powerful, daring ruler of the skies who fears no foe.  His wings are swift and strong enough to catch hatchlings who fail in their first flights and lift them back into the safety of the high aerie.  His far-sighted eyes search out food and danger and safe passage to provide for its young.

The hen is the nurturing mother who scratches in the dirt with her chicks as she teaches them how to find what they need to live.  She leads her little flock through the world with an eye toward their safety until they grow large enough to care for themselves.  She gathers them under her wings at night and at times of danger so that they can snuggle into the warm, feathery caress of her love and feel safe.  She will even stay there – crouched between them and a predator – offering her own life to protect them.

Every one of those images would speak to a people who feel vulnerable.  Yet standing alone, each metaphor is less complete. 

Adrift and threatened in an unknown territory, it would feel wonderful to have a stable rock to anchor to, but rocks are cold, unfeeling, and unmoving.  They can never understand, commiserate, or actually do anything to help. 

Spiraling out of control, it would be breathtaking to be caught on the back of a majestic eagle who could lift you up and away, but eagles can be fierce and unpredictable creatures who leave the injured or suffering for dead or, sometimes, help them along so as to feed their own hunger.  

Newly come to a new and threatening culture, it would be comforting to have a hen walking beside you to teach you how to survive and to enfold you in the secure warmth of her love, but a hen is weak and near-sighted.  She cannot carve out and defend a space for her family nor stand as firm and enduring protection in a harsh and threatening territory.

BUT, if you ask the question, “When is a rock like a mother hen and like an eagle,” pulling all three images together, then you find yourself considering God:  God who is an unchanging, enduring protector; God who is a fierce foe and strong support; God who is a protective, nurturing parent.  That reliable, tough, protective, living God is exactly what the people of Israel needed in the midst of their exile.

 

Our congregation also finds itself in a challenging situation as do every individual and every congregation from time to time.  Perhaps the rock and the eagle and the hen speak to you or to us or perhaps not.  Either way, that’s okay.  The wonderful and challenging thing about our infinite God is that there are an infinite number of metaphors that can describe her.  So, I offer you another set that you are already familiar with:  a gardener, a shepherd, and a creator.

God the gardener readying the soil and planting seeds in preparation for new growth when the season is right.  God the shepherd leading the flock down paths that will bring them safely to the fields and folds that will nourish and protect.  And God the creator whose wisdom and foresight knows the needs of every person she has made and so provides for them not just to survive but to thrive.

Each of these images is powerful for me (largely because of my own life experience), and when I hold them together, I discover a God who not only knows what I need, but has made ready to meet those needs before I even knew what they were.  I discover a God who knows what I could become and cares enough to lead me in a way that will help me reach that potential.  I discover a God who will uproot the weeds that threaten me and carefully and gently prune away the wayward growth that steals vitality from my living spirit.  I discover a God who will do all of that – who is all of that for each one of us and for all of us together.

That gives me both hope and confidence in the future and it frees me to feel and appreciate joy in the present.  Even when things seem dark and desperate, I feel hope and joy, and I am at peace and content to live and act in the trust that God is at work, guiding and caring for me and for those I care about.