Watts Street Baptist Church - The Character of God

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The Character of God
Posted on Mon Sep 15 2008

Mel Williams

THE CHARACTER OF GOD
Exodus 14:19-31; Matthew 18: 21-31
a sermon by Mel Williams
Watts Street Baptist Church
September 14, 2008

    The Lord is gracious and merciful,
    slow to anger,
    and abounding in steadfast love. (Psalm 145:8)

At times we will hear our current presidential candidates speak of “the way things are” (more of the same) and “the way things should be” (It’ time for a change.). When we come to worship, we are always shifting our attention toward “the way things should be,” the way God intends things to be. Today’s texts invite us to explore how we can align ourselves with God’s intention, God’s way—“the way it should be.”

In Cecil B. DeMille’s famous old movie, “The Ten Commandments,” the Hebrew slaves, led by Moses, are rushing to freedom. The army of Egyptian slave masters is in hot pursuit. They reach the Red Sea. Moses stretches out his hand over the sea, and the water rolls back. The Hebrew slaves walk on dry ground to freedom. Then the waters close back over the pursuing Egyptians, and they drown in the rushing waters.   It’s a dramatic, even fantastical rendition of what might have happened.

When I got to college and studied Old Testament, I learned that some scholars think this was not the Red Sea, but the Reed Sea—a shallow body of marshy water where the Hebrews could slosh across to the other side, while the Egyptians, with their weapons and heavy armor, were sinking in the muddy marsh, unable to pursue the fleeing slaves.

However we interpret the story, the central theme is that God is on the side of freedom. I’ve heard more than one person say that God comes off rather badly in Old Testament stories such as this one.   Did God send floodwaters to punish the Egyptians? If you’re a member of Pharaoh’s army, drowning in the sea or sinking in the mud, you might conclude that God is vengeful and punitive. But if you’re a Hebrew slave dancing on the far shore of freedom, you’re thanking God for freedom. That’s what happened with Miriam dancing and singing her joy after she and her Hebrew compatriots made it to freedom land. (For the postlude today Tom will play an organ piece that expresses Miriam’s joy over their deliverance from slavery to freedom.)

The story of escape through the Red Sea (or the Reed Sea) expresses an early view of God which puts God on the side of the “good guys” while opposing the “bad guys.” This must have been the view of some writers of the Old Testament narratives. It’s an over-simplified view of God that some people maintain in our day. When Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans five years ago, the evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell said that God sent the hurricane to punish America. From a hardliner’s view, an angry ocean (like Hurricane Ike this week-end) must be a sign of an angry God.   But that’s terrible theology!

The intent of our story is to show that God is a freedom-loving God who sees slavery as unjust and wrong!   God then works through ordinary humans – like Moses and the midwives Puah and Shiphrah and others—to overturn a harmful, hurtful system and free the oppressed Hebrews from the yoke of slavery.

The story has prompted me to reflect on the character of God. During biblical times on up to our day, some people have viewed slavery as ordained by God. Many people justified slavery in the South 150 years ago. In past years some have said that the Bible supports the subjugation of women. Women, they said, are inferior, second class citizens; so they are to be submissive to men. Some found verses in the Bible to support their claim. Likewise, some would say that Bible supports discrimination and rejection of homosexuals. If indeed God is on the side of slavery and oppression in any form, then God’s character must be vengeful and hurtful.

The difficulty with all this thinking centers on the way we view God. Our social attitudes and political views grow out of our view of God. If we take a hard-line, literal view of the Bible, then you can find ways to justify oppression and cruelty. That’s why we need to talk first about God and how we view God. Our political and social attitudes are shaped by our view of God.

I remember Fred Craddock telling the story of his first pastorate in a small town in the hills of Tennessee. This was mountain country where citizens had a strong view of protecting “our kind of people” from any outsiders.
Craddock was the only pastor in the little town. One night he heard a barrage of gun blasts, and soon some of his church members came to get him to help stop a gun battle. He got to the scene, and he found some men who were members of his church, leaning against trees. They had been firing their shotguns into a simple mountain cabin.

When the pastor arrived, he asked the men what was going on. They said, “That woman in that house is an outsider, a Roman Catholic. We don’t like her kind here.”

Craddock asked them to stop firing while he walked to the front door of the cabin. He said, “I was scared to death, but I knew I had to do it.” He knocked on the door, and a woman spoke. “Who is it and what do you want?” He said, “I’m the pastor, and I’d like to talk with you.” She eased the door open, and he saw a bedraggled woman. There were gunshot holes all over the walls of the cabin. The furniture was turned upside down; and from behind the furniture peered three frightened little children. The mother invited him in, and he asked, “What is the difficulty here?” She said, “I just moved here two weeks ago from up north. I’m Catholic, and I wanted to start over with a new life. I don’t understand why those men have been shooting at us.”

Trying to be a mediator, Craddock then went out to the men and asked them why they were firing at a woman and three small children. They said, “She’s a Catholic. We don’t want her kind here.” Craddock then decided to stop asking them questions about the woman or their guns. He said, “The question I needed to ask them is ‘What is your view of God?’” Is your God angry, vindictive, violent, and exclusive? He said, “For the remainder of my time in that church and town, I spent my energies talking about the nature and character of God.” (Craddock, “Sermons from Cherry Log”)

We live our lives based on our view of God. If we view God as angry and exclusive, then we can despise anyone who is different from us. If we view God as angry and vindictive, then we’re likely to be angry and vindictive.

What is the character of the God we worship and serve?   The Bible states it over and over: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” (Exodus 34:7; Psalm 145:8)) God is a “lover of justice.” (Psalm 99:1) God says through the prophet Amos, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24)

Once we get clear about God’s character—God is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, committed to justice and freedom, then we read the Bible and interpret the Bible through the lens of the nature and character of God.

Some passages in the Bible portray God as a warrior God who punishes people who are not “our kind of folks.” Women in biblical times were second class citizens; but when we look at Jesus, we know that he treated women with respect and equality. Likewise we have no record of Jesus ever saying anything about homosexuality. His life mirrored the character of God—gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

When we get clear about the character of God, then we are ready to follow Jesus and take up God’s mission. “What does the Lord require of us? Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.”

Our Gospel text today says that we are to forgive not seven times, but seventy-seven times—in other words, unlimited forgiveness. That may sound impossible, but that’s God’s way. And with God, all things are possible.

Some of us remember a visit to Watts Street Baptist Church some years ago by Marietta Jaeger. From this pulpit she told the story of her eight-year old daughter who was murdered by a man who, in the middle of the night, pulled the little girl from a tent where the family was camping. Marietta told us that in the aftermath of her daughter’s death, she struggled with anger and resentment. At first she hated the man; but then after a long and painful struggle, she said “I knew that I needed and wanted to forgive him.” She said, “One day God removed my anger.” She allowed God to remove her anger.

When the man was finally found, she went to him and told him that she forgave him. She requested that no death sentence be given him. She said, “His death would never bring my daughter back. His death would only dishonor my daughter’s memory.” With God’s help, she forgave him.

Now we might say Marietta Jaeger is super-human. But I think she is an ordinary human being. She came to understand that God’s character is forgiveness, not revenge. She obviously spent enough time with God so that God’s character sank into her being. By God’s grace, she saw God as the giver of mercy who makes forgiveness possible.

God will also give us the mercy to forgive someone who has hurt us, or who owes us money—or someone who has wronged us in some terrible way.

When we are dealing with the harsh realities of our life, that’s the time to go back and get clear about the character of God. Then we can view every situation, every dilemma, and every decision through the lens of God’s character. Whether our decisions are personal, social, or political, we view each of them through the lens of God’s character: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”

We are made in God’s image. This means that our job is not to judge, not to condemn, and not to persecute anyone or any group. Our goal is to deepen our life with God, our life of prayer, and then to seek first the character of God— “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”

If we can let God’s character sink into our very being, then we have the light we need for all our decisions and all our actions.

So may it be. Amen.

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