Is there any inherent problem with accepting the Bible’s presentation of God who both storms and submits?
Psalm Reading: Psalm 29
For Sunday, Jan. 9, 2011: Year A - Baptism of Our Lord
Not all water cleanses. Some waters kill. On the very same Sunday that we celebrate God’s incarnation submitting himself to a man for the baptism of the forgiveness of sin − God’s very own creation plunging God in Christ into the waters of the Jordan and raising him back up, clean[?] − we have a Psalm that praises the power of God as shown in a destructive flash flood in the desert.
The God Who Submits to Water
I am sure the lectionary-ers chose this Psalm as juxtaposition to the God who submits to the water, is submerged in the water. Of course they could have just of cross referenced the words “Lord” and “water” and landed on Psalm 29, but I'm guessing that they are thinking a little harder than that.
For whatever their reason these text are paired together, I think it is a brilliant and helpful dialectic for struggling with the witness to the dynamic Word of God and coming to some terms with the Word, God's living, breathing, growing, moving, changing self.
God Doesn’t Change
Faith development, the spiritual maturing process, is given short shrift when it comes to human development. In every other area of basic human being growth, maturity, change is all to be expected. Much attention is paid to intellectual development, emotional development, and physical development, but, somehow, there is this notion among some people − I’m not saying you, but among some people − that our understanding of God is just sort of handed to us. We are taught that this is just how God is, that God doesn’t change. This is who our people believe God is. This is what our people believe God is like.
Are there things that an utterly immutable God does or doesn’t do? How can an unchangeable God speak the world into being, allow Pharaoh to exist, let alone beat the Pharaoh into submission, or even, as the Psalm suggests, storm forth from the mountains as a raging flood, snapping trees and hurling boulders on God’s way to the desert floor? How about God becoming completely vulnerable, putting himself in the hands of a man who would submerge him in the waters of the Jordon, or putting himself in the hands of men who would mock him and execute him? Do such things speak of more of God's immutibility or of God's capacity to change?
Not One Way or the Other
We know, of course, God is not one way or the other. We know that either/or can’t be the way it works. Adults don’t all think the best way to get across the kitchen floor is by crawling, when we are hungry we don’t cry until someone comes and puts food in our mouths. We are capable of abstract thought; we can hold opposing ideas in tension. We can have feelings we don’t act on. We can read multisyllabic words. We can learn new things; we develop new capacities and understandings. Certainly our understanding of God develops. But can we see that the God of the Psalms and the God who is submerged in the Jordan is indeed God, our God.
The Hardest Question
Is there any inherent problem with accepting the Bible’s presentation of God who both storms and submits?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
