"Omniscience" in the Sermon on the Mount: Opening our eyes to see God

"God sees everything," and "God knows everything," -- and that fuels our distrust of him. Human experience is that reputations are fenced off with privacy, on managing what people know, on hiding our faults. If hiding is no protection against the Omniscient One, where does that leave us? 

We may start with misguided thoughts about God that can mislead us about God's character. As one theologian has said, everyone thinks about God sometimes so everyone is a theologian; the question is not whether we are theologians but whether we do it well or badly. Do we actually understand God? Consider how Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount:

"Let your alms be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret shall reward you openly." (Matthew 6:4)

"When you pray, enter a closed room and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret shall reward you openly." (Matthew 6:6)

"Your father knows what you need before you ask him." (Matthew 6:8)

"When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face that you do not appear to fast to the people, but to your father who is in secret. And your father, who sees in secret, shall reward you openly." (Matthew 6:17-18)

In each case where Jesus mentions the Father seeing what is done in secret -- alms, prayers, fasting -- he is talking about God seeing even the most hidden and quiet things that are to our credit. He sees our prayers. He sees our alms. He sees when we abstain from self-indulgence. He pays attention. Yes, he watches, and yes, he notices; but he is not our enemy. When Jesus talks about the Father seeing what we are doing behind closed doors, Jesus is talking about the Father seeing everything good thing we have ever done. Even including that poorly-worded, struggling prayer. Does he know us? He knows us better than we know ourselves. Jesus tells us that he chooses to know our needs before we ask, the better to bless our prayers. Jesus shows us another way of seeing omniscience.

God's hospitality

The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. (Matthew 22:2)

God is not what we would expect. Where we expect an Almighty Being to be remote and aloof, instead we see him warm and welcoming -- and specifically, warm and welcoming toward people, real ordinary people.

Jesus claimed that, in looking at him, we have a unique insight to God: "He who has seen me has seen the Father." So what do we see?

Some of the great sages of world religions -- particularly the "Eastern" religions -- have been solitary figures. When a painting or sculpture portrays them and their lives, we typically see them alone. Not so with Jesus. Sure, he had times of solitude and prayer. He observed a lengthy fast after his baptism. But for much of his ministry, we see him in company -- and enjoying the company.

Many of Jesus' conversations, passed down to us, took place when he was a guest at someone's home. There was the time when the woman broke the jar of perfume. And the time that Martha was getting all frustrated with Mary. There was the scandal he caused going to Matthew's home, and his answer about who it is that needs a doctor. There was another round of shock when he went to Zacchaeus' home. And of course there was the Last Supper in the upper room. Though we call that the Last Supper, he did meet them there again a few days later, after he had risen from the dead -- again, at dinner. Of all the times Jesus came to his disciples after the resurrection, I'm combing my memory here -- did all of them involve gathering with them at dinner or a meal? And he asked us to remember him by coming together for bread and wine, in his name.

Sometimes even the miracles took place in someone's home. He healed Simon Peter's mother-in-law after he had already been welcomed into their home.

And while Jesus was often the guest in someone else's home, he never seemed like he wanted to get back home; instead, he seemed to carry that welcome feeling of "home" with him, so that wherever he was, not only did he feel at home, but so did everyone else. Whenever I read the accounts of him in someone else's home, I get the feeling that these were the kinds of days where nobody wanted to leave at the end, where they were wishing it could last. "Home" was wherever Jesus was, and "family" could be anyone. (That's probably the point behind his telling his disciples they would have a hundred homes -- and as many sets of relatives.) Birds have nests and wild beasts have dens, and the Son of Man had no place to lay his head -- but those who traveled with him didn't seem to mind that so much, so long as he was there.

The miracles of feeding the multitudes were also acts of hospitality. And the first miracle -- the very first -- was an act of hospitality in Cana, to bring the wine to a wedding feast. And in the world to come, the gift of following Jesus is fellowship; it is the feast of salvation.

And he said to me: "Write, 'Blessed are they who are called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.'" And he said to me, "These are the true sayings of God." (Revelation 19:9).

There are some things about God that we do not consider as often as we should. God is a warm and generous God, a welcoming host.

The Cross: Challenging how we think about God

One of my Sunday school classes once told me that God was omnipotent, omniscient, and omnivorous. They were teenagers, and the big words confused the less bookish among them; they meant "omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent" like the philosophers of religion have long said. They were telling me, they thought, what I wanted to hear. But where exactly did they get those ideas about God?

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the God of the philosophers. - Blaise Pascal

I have heard it taught that if God ever stopped being omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent, he would not truly be God. I have heard it said that God is the being such that it is impossible to imagine a greater being. Who knows; that may be true, but the Bible does not say that. The Bible teaches us of a God who creates, a God who adopts a people, a God who acts to save humanity from our own wretchedness. The philosophers are interested in "omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent"; the Bible is not too interested in that. To construct that God, someone had to be looking for those attributes and chase down texts from which they could be deduced. The Bible is interested in God's faithfulness, his mercy, his compassion, and his love. If we're looking at what the Bible teaches about God, those are the plainer things.

This brings us to the cross. This week, Holy Week, we who follow Jesus face the heart of our faith: Jesus' radical challenge to our man-made ideas about God's glory. If God is defined as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent -- and immortal, while we're on the subject -- then that guy dying on the cross can have nothing to do with our ideas about God. And the philosophers who follow Christ often hurry to protect their glorious hypothetical idols from the threat of the reality of Jesus' cross.

What is essential to God's being? What is God's real nature? Is it "omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent" -- or is it his overwhelming love for his people? Which is the real nature of God, and which is just accidental and could have been otherwise? If Jesus' birth did not answer the question clearly enough, his execution does. The cross says that the essential part of being God is not being omnimax -- power without limit, knowledge without limit, presence without limit. The cross says that the essential part of being God is love without limit. Even to the extent of giving up the power, and the immortality, to reach a weak and dying world.

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For those who are interested in philosophy: Yes, without getting into technical jargon in the main post, I am questioning whether the essence of God involves his omnimax characteristics, or whether those are what the philosophers would call "accidents" -- non-essential traits that might have been otherwise, that can be lost without really altering the nature of things. Or to be more exact, I think the cross -- the necessary end of the incarnation -- challenges whether the omnimax characteristics are really essential to what it means to be God. If God intends to reveal himself to the world through Jesus, then God means that who he really is can be revealed better in the cross than in another way. And if we look elsewhere for the glory of God, we do it at the expense of what God wanted to show us.

What do we want from orthodoxy? Does that tell us anything about the true identity of orthodoxy?

We look to our ideas of "orthodoxy" time and again; we have given "orthodoxy" a number of jobs.

We want orthodoxy to keep out falsehood, to keep us from being led down a wrong path. We want orthodoxy to help us understand the Bible, to show us the big picture, to give us the true and deeper meaning. We want orthodoxy to help us evaluate what various people proclaim as being from God. We want orthodoxy to be trustworthy, solidly grounded. So far it is a fence, a shield, a criterion ... but that's not quite enough.

We want orthodoxy to form our virtues, we want it to inform our morals. We want it to teach us right from wrong. It is where we look for knowledge and wisdom. That's still not quite enough.

We want orthodoxy to help us understand God himself. When it shows us that deeper meaning of Scripture, we expect to see the true picture of God. We want our thoughts to approach God in his holiness, to see him as he is. Orthodoxy is where we look for the incomprehensible richness of the mind of God. It is where we look to know the heart of God. And there we expect to find life, and the renewal of all things.

When I started a post on "What do we want from orthodoxy?", I wasn't quite sure where it would end up. But the more I looked at what I wanted from orthodoxy, what I expected from orthodoxy, the more that pointed me towards one end.

Consider this: We want orthodoxy to be the truth. We want it to keep us from being led around by all the people going down different paths. That jarred a memory: "I am the way. I am the truth." We want orthodoxy to help us understand Scripture. And it jogged a memory: "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you have life. These are they that testify of me, yet you refuse to come to me and have life." We want orthodoxy to show us God. By now I was no longer surprised that thinking of orthodoxy triggered a memory: "He who has seen me has seen the Father."

Those memories are quotes of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John. Here we see Jesus claiming to personally fulfill the roles we assign to orthodoxy. If we want to see God, we should look at Jesus.

Orthodoxy, then, holds fast to Jesus -- the one who walked this world, the one the apostles knew. It follows him wherever he goes, does what he asks, seeks to understand God by listening to him and watching him. If our orthodoxies and systematic theologies hold forth Jesus as the way to know God, as the truth about God, then they are serving their purpose.

God's singing and music

When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. (Matthew 26:30, Mark 14:26)

If we view God through Jesus, if Jesus can do nothing apart from the Father as he says, then here we see an occasion on which God was singing.

After considering God's joyfulness recently, this week's lectionary reading from the prophets seemed well-timed:

The LORD your God is with you,
  he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
  he will quiet you with his love,
  he will rejoice over you with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)

Here we see that not only does God take delight and rejoice; he also sings. I wonder if someone trying to defend God's honor will rush to say this is a figure of speech or some such. But if we say that God "spoke" and speak of his "word" in a meaningful sense, then by the same path we can just as meaningfully consider his song.

Depending on how you view the Bible, you may even consider it telling that the word of God contains a couple of books of poetry. At least one book (Psalms) contains poems that were meant to be sung. If these songs of the Bible are God-breathed in any sense, then God may be more conscious of music than we have allowed ourselves to seriously consider.

Our human leaning toward music and song may be another way in which we are in the image of God.

The joyful God

Previous in this series: The humility of God

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Another attribute of God that we often miss is his joyfulness. When we take Jesus' words to heart, "He who has seen me has seen the father," that opens us up to different ways of understanding the mind of God.

When the Bible shows us Jesus, we usually see him in the company of his friends. Time and time again, the Bible portrays him joining in festive occasions such as dinners where guests are invited. He surprised his disciples by taking small children into his arms. When he was asked why his disciples did not fast, Jesus invoked the Jewish custom of not fasting during times of celebration; he said that being with him was like being with the bridegroom at a wedding. Being with him was a festive occasion. Jesus describes the kingdom of God as being like a wedding feast. And he performed his first public miracle by providing wine for a wedding feast. Jesus was joyful, time and again he was joyful. If seeing Jesus is seeing God, then we might need to rethink how we see God.

In the parable of the prodigal son, he portrays a father - that is, God - celebrating gladly when his lost son came home.

So a sour, dour approach to life is actually ungodly. The God who has called us and welcomes us home is a joyful God.

The humility of God

"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." -- Jesus (Matt 11:28)

God has revealed himself in Christ; whoever sees Jesus sees the Father. As the Father is, so Jesus is, accurately reflecting the image of God. When the Word of God poured himself out and became man, God's own nature and self were revealed. Since that day when the Word of God took on human flesh, God is no longer an unknown God. We live in a world where we have seen God, where we have known God -- and he was not what we expected.

He has often shown how he values humility. He chose Abraham as an old man to become a father and Sarah to become a mother. He chose David the shepherd-boy, youngest of his brothers, to become king. He chose Mary the peasant girl to bring the Messiah into the world. He has asked us to be humble; he has proclaimed blessings on the meek. And for the mother of Christ,

He has regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden; from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. -- Mary (Luke 1:48)

When we know God through Christ, we see that God's desire for us to be humble is not because he wishes to exalt himself. It is because God himself is humble. When we take up humility, we do not separate ourselves from God, but join him. When we look at Christ and understand that we are seeing the character of God, we understand about God: He is "humble in heart", or "lowly in heart" (AV), giving rest to our souls. It is mind-boggling to me, but we see it in Christ: God is humble.

Christ's Humility (2)

Please pardon the light posting schedule lately. Mom was in the hospital (it worked out fine though it gave us a scare at the time) and I lost a day of work. I have been scrambling to catch up at work. I hope to have caught up soon.

Christ, who poured himself out, made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant ...

What have I ever set aside so that I could help someone else, reach someone else? Can I even imagine setting aside my abilities or achievements? Don't I hang on to the things that make me feel special -- that is, the things that separate me -- precisely because they separate me? What backwards kind of enjoyment is that, to enjoy the things that separate me from others?

How opposite Christ. How much he was willing to set aside. He gave up those things that put him above all else, when he truly was above all else, unlike us. He set aside the things that made him above us, and took up those things that made him lowly like us.

When we meet him in the gospel, he seems joyful. Humility rejoices in all good things. Christ in his humility is essentially generous and warm-hearted.

Pride rejoices primarily in praise. It's greedy, never having its fill, and discontent with what it has. How opposite, opposite is Christ, who was discontent with what he had when he was above us and separate from us, and who was glad to set aside all things to rejoin us.

Christ's Humility (1)

Pride hoards all recognition for itself. In contrast to us and our human ways of thinking, Jesus did not demand recognition or acknowledgment. He even asked that some of his miracles be kept quiet. This was nothing unusual for him, to heal someone in private and ask for no recognition. In his dealings with the officials at his trial, he did not demand an acknowledgment of his accomplishments. He did not become peevish when his achievements went unnoticed by his enemies. He was truly here for us, and had no secret agenda or secondary agenda for his own aggrandizement. The only praise he delighted in was his Father's, the only glory he would accept was from Him.