GOD HAS MANY NAMES:
II. CREATOR...PROVIDER

_ November 18, 1990.
“John M. Buchanan.”
_ Pourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago. _

Scripture.
Genesis 1:1-5, 26-31
Matthew 6:25-33

--- do not worry about your life, what you will eat
or what you will drink..." -Matthew 6:25 (NSRV)

In his book, Returning, about which I have spoken before and to which
I should like to return, Dan Wakefield, a novelist and screenwriter, tells
the personal story of his unexpected, surprising spiritual awakening in the
middle of his life and his return to religion. After a-major physical and.
emotional breakdown, he changed his lifestyle dramatically; moved from Los
Angeles back. to Boston, which move in itself significantly lowered his pulse
--and blood. pressure;. and on.Christmas Eve did something entirely uncharac-
teristic. An avowed atheist for years with absolutely no interest in
religion, he went to church. A few months later, on Easter Sunday, he went -
back. He reflects: .
"I was both intrigued and apprehensive. My two initial
trips of return had been on major holidays, occasions
when 'regular' people went to church, simply in
observance of tradition. To go back again meant
crossing Boston Commons on a non~holiday Sunday morning —
wearing a suit and tie, a giveaway sign of church-going.
I did it furtively, as if I were engaged in something
that would not be approved of by my peers. I heped they
would all be home deing brunch and the Sunday papers, so
I would not be ‘caught in the act.' I recalled the
remark of William F. Buckley, Jr. in a television
interview that if you mention God more than once at New
York dinner parties, you aren't invited back.'
{p. 14-15]

To his surprise Wakefield discovered once inside that he recognized
neighbors and even a few friends. "Here they were, with intellect intact,
worshipping God."

Wakefield, with a refreshing directness, puts his finger on a major
issue for us. How to worship God unapologetically,.out in the open,. with
our intellects intact? For somewhere deep within us, or most of us, is a
suspicion that you can't do it, that believing in God means shutting down
your intellectual energies, or at least, parking your mind - your critical
and analytical faculties - outside on the sidewalk, before you come to
worship. Somewhere there is a suspicion that belief and trust are

‘incompatible with what we know ‘about ‘the world and history and ourselves...
particularly the world.

"find a place for ourselves in: a’ world wé never made." “And it's true. It |
would be nice to be able to view thé world in the same way they did in 1620 —
or 1776 or 1812, or in. the Same Way our. great—grandparents did,. or even- our
parents, but we cannot. We know too much. We have seen too mach. “We -are
‘tio longer “innocent. ? We know about Auschwitz and Hiroshima; we know about
vain forests shrinking and global warming and starvation and the simple
fact that we are not managing our home on earth very well at all. It is
not a world we made. It is not a worid we intend or mean. And it
confronts us with a religious problem as old as time itself, and yet as

immediate as yesterday's paper.

The poet A. E. Housman once said that our problem is that we have.to

' How to say "God" in the modern worid is the way Dr. Jack Stotts puts
it. How to say God with integrity and with evangelical fervor is the way
theology puts it. How to say God in a way that is faithful to the
traditions of the past, but also honest about the realities of the present.

Some of the old ways of saying God simply don't work anymore. Some
are saying. that.if. the only names we have. for God-are. masculine, ‘they. feel -
left out; if the only image we have of God is a male image, we either
' haven't read the Bible accurately or we are seriously interested in a

system that benefits somehow by God's masculinity.

Some are saying that if the only words we have for God are author-—
itative names, powerful and coercive, or judgmental, stern, demanding
names, they can't connect. Some are saying that if the only names for God
we have are “Almighty Father," "Lord and Master," they don't recognize that
as the God we believe became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth who seemed
intentionally to avoid those very words and concepts and the ideologies
that go along with them.

The oldest of our theological traditions about God's names holds that
God being God is not knowable and therefore unnameable: that every naming
of God limits God; that every name - being a small piece of the truth about
God - when it becomes the only piece, becomes an idol and actually gets in
the way of the true reality.

So the ancient Hebrews didn't ever say the name.- In Hebrew God's
name is a mysterious list of consonants - YHWH, which when you weave ina
few vowels, sounds {like Yahweh.

When God finds Moses in the wilderness tending his father-in-law's
sheep and tells Moses to go back to Egypt and bring the people to the
Promised Land and Moses asks for God's name so that he can tell the people
who has sent him and in whose name he speaks, the only answer Moses gets
is "Yahweh, I am who I am." It's not a name at all. It's nota proper
noun. It's averb. "Tell them 'I am' sent you." And the people who study
the languages teil us you can alse translate it:

"I will be who IT will be, and

I will be present, and
J will create what I will create."

11/18/90

So God doesn't have a real name because a name can become an idol, a
distortion which is exactly what you have if you only have ane name for
‘God. God's only name is, "I am... I wild. be" and that name- invites us to 4
complete it.. _ God has “many 3 Tames.

I am your father. ce
7 “am ‘your mother... |

I am your creator is one name of God many people have used for
thousands of years.

‘Provider is a similar one. They are among the oldest names of God
and in this world, at this time, they are among the most difficult for us.
That is, they are the names that tempt us to park our intellects outside
before coming in here and singing, reading and praying to God our creator
and our provider.

For me, John Updike keeps identifying, struggling with and writing
about the big religious issues. His most recent book is the fourth and
final. novel about.Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. . Updike's readers have’ been
| following Rabbit through a modern American life for thirty years. Now

. Rabbit is fifty- ‘five, semi- ~retired. from his Toyota. agency:-in Reading, .
Pennsylvania, lives in Florida in the winter, is worried about his son,
' overweight, has trouble with his digestive system and his heart, and thinks
a lot about dying. And although he does not use religious language, and
‘although Rabbit is not traditionally: religious, Updike keeps slipping
theology into the story.

Rabbit is in the hospital after a heart attack, trying to watch the
NFC playoff game in Soldier Field, when the fog blew in off the lake and
reflects, “The announcers seem indignant that God could do this; mess with
CBS and blot out a TV show the sponsors are paying a million dollars a
minute for and millions are watching." [p. 163]

But it's his own mortality documented by his own aging that he can't
seem to forget. And it is here that Updike frames the theological dilemma
which occurs if you call God creator and provider and at the same time keep
your intellect functioning. He can't seem to escape reminders of
mortality. Taking his grandchildren on an outing in Florida, a guide is
droning on and on about a Banyan tree... how they “spread by dangling down
roots and making new trunks that become like crutches as they spread out
and out - those creeping trees will go for miles if nobody stops them.

‘How do they die?'"

That God is creator is little consolation when the story always ends‘
the same way. The philosophers have always known that. In fact, it casts
a pall over all of life... The guide is now talking. about an amazing variety:
of exotic tropical trees.

“Why did God bother," Harry wonders, “to do all these tricks by
Himself in the Amazon Jungle." The guide goes on... “The leaves are
chocolate brown on one side and white on the other and because of their
unusual shapes and lasting qualities are in great demand for dried floral

“arrangements: - You can purchase these leaves in our gift shop." - Rabbit ~-
thinks, "So God did it so people would have something to buy in gift
shops." [p. 93-94]

"In the beginning when God created," the ancient: text announces. And |”

we Know now that the ancient writer was not preparing a science lesson. |

. Rather he was addressing. a community. of Jewish-exiles in Babylon -who. were -.
‘wondering what was going to happen to them and where their God was. It was
“nota world they: made. They had been vielently dragged from their home —.
the land God gave them — were dislocated, living apart from everything: that
was solid and good and hopeful. That is, their situation was not so
terribly different from our own. Things, for them, seemed out of control.

The theological affirmation that God is creator, that in the
beginning God created, is first of all good news to people who need to know
all is not lost. Notice that it is not intended as an explanation of how
we got here. That, of course, is the big stumbling block in Biblical
interpretation. If Genesis 1 is scientific information, then either modern
science must be all wrong, or else the. Bible is completely off base. If
you are a literalist about the creation story, you must deny the credibility
of all reputable modern biological science. That is, you.must park
‘ your intellect outside. Se a a

. .But if. it is not science, if it is Good News about God's relationship
to the world, then you are free, encouraged in fact, to pursue scientific
inquiry. into the nature of the world and its mysterious processes, while at.
the same time holding tightly to your belief in, faith and trust in the one
who is creator. -Stephen -Hawking, the brilliant British astrophysicist, -
whose book, A Brief History of Time, is still on -the best seller lists, set
out to explain how we got here - "from the Big Bang ta Black Holes." In
the introduction, Carl Sagan says, “This is a book about God." And that
opens up a whole spectrum of possibilities.

In the first place it allows us to take seriously the proclamation in
the Genesis story... that the world and all that is in it - because it is
God's creation - is intrinsically and fundamentally good. After each stage
of creation in the ancient stery God looks at it and declares that it is
good. Walter Bruggemann points out that the word “good" which is used here
is not ethical quality but an aesthetic. "Lovely" is a better translation,
And God biessed them, saying “be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters
in the seas, and let the birds muitiply... And Ged saw that it was lovely."

Now that is an important word because the truth is that religion
often comes to the opposite conclusion; namely that the world is not so
good. "Worldiy" has come to mean something negative, something.
unreligious. God, religion often concludes, is hostile to the world. But
here, at the foundation, is a religion that calls the world good and
describes God ‘as delighting in, enjoying the creation.

So the Psalmist describes all of ‘creation singing its praise to a
creator who obviously has thoroughly enjoyed the results. "Praise Him sun. - -
and moon, praise Him all you shining stars, fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind."

11/18/90

‘And poets~stretch’ for words big enough... ~~

"OQ World, TF cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide pray Skies!

Thy mists that rol] and rise!.
Lord, I do fear

. Thous't made the world too
‘beautiful this year." © °°
‘[Ged's World, Edna St. Vincent Millay]: ~

and

“thank you God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenhly spirits of
trees and a blue true dream of sky;

and for everything which is natural which
is infinite which is yes."

[e.e. cummings]

Episcopal theologian, Robert Farrar Capon, in a witty fable about an
oyster who is lamenting its lowly estate on the evolutionary ladder and
wondering what in the: worid.God had in mind, -whining in Job-like_
complaints, God finally responds:

"All right already. There are things you never dreamed
of. All kinds of stuff. -And with moves you couldn't
imagine if you tried. As a matter of fact that's your

. problem. There you sit -with a rock on one side ‘and‘a
starfish on the other. My apologies. It's a limited
‘field of vision, I admit, but in the evolutionary scale
business, you've got to put a lot of things near the
bottom. Spoils the effect if you don't.

“Anyway the moves. I'll tell you a few. Basketball.
The best ones are so flashy, they make you laugh for
not being able to believe the guy made the shot. And
squirrels going through trees. One of my best effects.
You know the last time a squirrel missed his footing?

I keep track of these things. It was May 3, 1438.

“And it's not all slapdash, either. I've got creatures
so graceful, they almost break your heart... a prima
ballerina. Talk about moves."

[Hunting the Divine Fox, p. 3]

The oldest of our traditions is a joyous, lusty affirmation of the
creation. God, it turns out, is the ultimate materialist. God loves the
creation. The human body was God's idea. Human sexuality is God's plan.
Human beings contain God's image.

That's first. The second part is equally important. God the creator
is not finished yet. Death happens. Things come to an end. But the
process of creation continues. God is also provider... in spite of the
limits of the creation or the part of the creation we can see. The oyster
never saw a squirrel, or Michael Jordan, or Margot Fonteyn.

se i

Those Pilgrims at the Massachusetts Bay Colony with their backs to
the wilderness and just enough food for one winter had a deep trust that
_ they would not be abandoned. It was not a superficial matter with then.
God as provider did not. mean that they would be delivered from ail the .
dangers and challenges which confronted them. I am always moved by the
reminder that every single family in that colony had buried one of its own
that terrible first winter; day after day digging graves in the frozen
-earth to bury their children.” Theirs. was. no sunny and superficial - :
spirituality. What they believed, apparently, was that the God who created
the world and everything in it, would give them the resources they needed:
courage and strength, grace, love and above all, the ability to trust that
they were not alone, that regardless.of what happens to them they move in
Some way - some ultimate way -— safe in God's providence.

There is about us, apparently because we are made in God's own image,
a hunger that is not satisfied by food. So Jesus one day, teaching his
disciples said:

"Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or
what you will drink, or about your body, what you will
wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more
than clothing?"

Ged the creator and provider does more than place us in a world which
ois capable of feeding ‘and clothing us. God comes to be with us. and-to love
us and to stand with us - even when there is not enough food, or clothing,
even when we are not well, even when we know in a personal way our own
mortality. ;

Before he was arrested and imprisoned and executed by the Ss. S.,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

"If we are in communion with God, nought can harm us." At a time
when representatives of the government were dragging peaple from their
homes to be summarily executed, he wrote: “We shall always be assured that
he can feed his children and will not suffer them to hunger. God will help
us in our hour of need." [The Cost of Discipleship, p. 161]

That is the final issue: in every season, every circumstance, when
the table is laden with food and when there is no food, when we are
surrounded by our families and when we are alone, when we are in the full
blossom of health and when we are sick and weak, in good times and bad, in
life and in death ~ we belong to God - our creator - our provider.

So -
"Let all things, now living
.A song of thanksgiving
To God our Creator
triumphantly raise."

Amen,

11/18/90