A rainbow that shone like an emerald

Which image of God would you meet if you got to choose?

The God who came alive in a bush that was blazing but not consumed?

The God who parted the heavens and spoke in a booming voice over a baptism?

The God who spoke to Elijah in the sound sheer silence on Mount Horeb?

The God who tore through the room as a rushing wind and descended on them as tongues of flame?

The God that hovered over the deep and formless void at the beginning of the first day of creation?

The God who showed up in the locked room to a huddle of frightened apostles and showed off his wounds.

or what about the God who sits in the crystal throne room, who is bowed to by cherubim and flanked by elders, whose appearance is that of gemstone radiance, and who is wrapped in the light of a rainbow.

I dunno about y'all but I think I will take my chances with the bush.

There are so, so many ways that God is described in scripture and ways that God meets us and interacts with us, and some ways feel better than others. Jesus who is the Good Shepherd? Yes, good, easy. God who is our Father, under the right circumstances, strong, comforting. God who sent the whale after Jonah? I dunno! I wouldn't want to get on his bad side. God who sent the rains over Noah and his family, well, I have questions!

And then there are these fringe cases, like in Revelation 4 (and if you know the book of the prophet Ezekiel) where God is presented as this kind of monstrosity- faces and wings and wheels and creature faces but with this iridescent quality about him that makes him hard to take in completely. And among and between and beyond all these depictions of God, is the truth and the fullness of who God is.

The thing that is good, but hard, about a passage like this from Revelation or any of these descriptions of God is that whenever we are tempted to decide how it is we can conceive of God, we are reminded that God is bigger and more complex than any single image or idea we have of God. The idea that Jesus is my personal friend and savior is complicated by the a God who presided over a void before we were all created. The God who in the incarnate person Jesus had the hem of his robe reached for by a woman begging to be healed is complicated by the God who was expressed the desire to smite Nineveh unless they repented! The image of Jesus on the cross asking "Father if you're willing take this cup from me" reflected against the image of a radiant God shrouded in rainbow and light and seated on a crystal throne- God is just so big, so complex, shows up in so many ways, and so many of ways that God shows up are not entirely comprehensible even to us.

We live in a time where it feels like we are playing tug-of-war with God-- one side saying well God believes this! and the other side no God believes that! / the bible says this! / no the bible says that! / God desires this way of being for us! / No God would never desire that for us! and these beliefs about God and God's will for us are playing out in political and economic and social ways, and in ways that have big big stakes. I do believe that God has clear and objective desires and wishes for us, for our lives, for our behaviors, but if the book of Revelation is nothing else to us, it is a reminder that God has ways of being that are incomprehensible to us, knowable only as visions, through metaphors and parables, and the spectrum of God's ways are so vast that we can scarcely wrap our arms or our minds around them entirely.

I say all this not to say that God is unknowable, but rather to say that it is hard to to speak of this big, vast, complex God with a single image or in a single statement. This God who exists in so many ways and in so many incomprehensible ways-- -- to speak of this God with any degree of absolute certainty or clarity feels like the kind of hubris warned against in the bible. There are times when God makes plain clear statements, and there are patterns in God's behavior that span Hebrew scripture into the Gospel, and there are ways that God is knowable, but never entirely, never completely.

As much as ever, this tug-of-war game we are playing with God and with scripture means that our Christian faith is in contention and I wonder who's picture of Christianity wins out on the public stage, who's conception of God takes top billing in public life? As much as ever, from pastors and politicians alike, we hear flat and definitive statements about God's identity and God's will for us that I just don't think we get to make, statements about really high stakes stuff, statements in defense of acts of violence and acts of greed and acts of governance-- statements about who is unworthy and who is fundamentally bad and who deserves to be smited, it just feels kind of reckless to me, in the face of a God who is, at times, a gemlike being of light atop a crystal throne, flanked by elders and cherubim who sing theirs praises unceasingly.

All this to say that I think a little bit of doubt is good, and warranted, and appropriate. Not about God's sovereignty or the Holy Spirit's presence or that the love of God and of neighbor is the first and greatest commandment we get. But the idea that what we know and what we think of God is probably always a little bit wrong, or at the very least incomplete, is probably useful to hold on to in our own faith lives and in our dealings with others' faith lives. We live in a time when a lot of people are trying to speak for God, but God has always called far fewer prophets than people who have claimed to be prophets. The God who spoke from a blazing bush, who whispered creation over the deep, who waited out thunder and wind to speak gently on the mountain, who spoke out of cloud and who became a little baby in this world to meet us in person, body to body, and who was seen in a vision as a rainbow shining through an emerald- this God is still speaking. It is best, maybe, to let that God speak for themselves. Amen.