Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
School Principals, Logan’s Swimsuit, and the Pathos of God with Pastor Ryan Braley
Can the character of God be both wrathful and compassionate? Join us as we navigate this complex question, examining how these seemingly opposing forces might intertwine, particularly through the lens of the Minor Prophets. We invite you on a journey contrasting the God of the Bible with the distant deities of ancient cultures like Zeus and Odin, who remained aloof from human affairs. Our exploration seeks to unravel divine character in a way that resonates with our modern lives, helping listeners understand a God who is not only involved but deeply invested in humanity.
The perception of a distant, judgmental God often mirrors the dynamics of strained human relationships. We tackle the anxiety and despair that arise from this disconnect, likening it to the ancient uncertainties surrounding sacrificial practices aimed at appeasing the gods. Discover how these age-old fears still echo in contemporary spiritual lives, affecting prayer, worship, and our perception of divine guidance. By drawing parallels to distant parental figures and ineffective criticisms on social media, we emphasize the necessity of cultivating meaningful relationships with the divine to truly grasp rebuke and guidance.
Explore the dangers of projecting human traits onto God and the resultant misconceptions that can lead to either rejection of religion or an embrace of rigid legalism. Through the Hebrew scriptures, we present Yahweh as a profoundly compassionate deity, unlike the indifferent gods of ancient times. With insights from Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel and stories from Deuteronomy, we highlight God's passionate pathos—a deep emotional connection with the world. This episode invites you to embrace a more intimate relationship with God, illustrated by personal stories that reveal His empathy, love, and commitment to humanity's journey.
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Lead us and instruct us and guide us. God, help us to have open eyes and open ears this morning. Would you give us creative minds to think about some of these stories and how it relates to us, and would you give us clarity of thought and would you bless our time this morning in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, you can be seated. Good morning everyone. How are we doing? Good Again. My name is Ryan. I'm the pastor here.
Speaker 1:It's great to be with you guys this morning and we are in the middle of the B-sides our Minor Prophets sermon series and we're going through a lot of the Minor Prophets. And Minor Prophets are not just minor because they're less important. That's not why they're called that. They're minor because they're just shorter in their length of their books. So maybe you've seen this as you've been reading them. And today I was supposed to talk about Malachi, but I want to zoom out a bit and talk about what I think is maybe one of the more I don't know, maybe glaring, if you're paying attention issues that's in the prophets and you can read Malachi on your own. And, generally speaking too, the prophets kind of go, they all kind of go follow the same pathway. They all kind of go like this if you're reading them, you guys are being idiots. Stop being idiots. If you don't stop being idiots, there's gonna be trouble. So repent and come back and then let's party. That's kind of the gist of the minor prophets. So there's Malachi for you if you want to go read it, kim.
Speaker 1:This morning, though, I wanted to talk about one of the problems I see in these prophets and you heard, in these two verses. This is like the anger and the wrath of God, and so the anger of God and the wrath of God seem present and even prevalent in the scriptures a lot of the places. And so just a quick show of hands, be honest, raise your hand. If you've ever, or currently do, have an issue reading some of these passages that sort of depict God as, like, angry and vengeful and wrathful. Okay, only about half of you. The other half of you are not being honest with us or yourselves. I would imagine it's okay if you have problems. If the Bible makes you struggle, it's okay, it should make you struggle, and so I want to unpack it and frame it. There were two passages you just heard them read One in the book of Nahum, where there's a vengeance and wrath of God. Then you have Jesus, who has compassion on this mother whose son just died, and we think about compassion over here, and anger and wrath is like mutually exclusive. But maybe they're not. Maybe they're more related than you think, maybe, actually, maybe compassion comes out of anger and wrath, or vice versa. And uh, amen and uh, we'll see, though. Fair enough, so hold those two scriptures in tension.
Speaker 1:The title of my sermon this morning is as follows Uh, it's called school principles, logan's swimsuit and the pathos of God. Are you ready? Yeah, buckle up. We're gonna have a good time this morning, I hope. Hopefully, you'll laugh a bit more than the 830. The 830 crowd was a bit stoic this morning, so I left a little bit discouraged. So help me out. If I I'm kidding, you're fine, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:So in these ancient stories of gods and the gods, remember in the ancient world everybody believed in the gods and there were gods who were sort of geographically located In the ancient world. These gods shared very similar characteristics Most of the gods of the ancient world were distant, they were aloof, they were uninterested, uninvolved, and they were just not at all caring about human beings. So if this was the world, you had way over here. These gods, who were unconcerned with human beings, didn't really care, disinterested, and the humans could tell it. So that's what these gods were like they were aloof, disinterested and they didn't really care. I mean, imagine Bill Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots. Bill Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots, but working at the DMV, yeah, yeah, alongside, like the Mona Lisa. Maybe you get the picture, okay, maybe Spock is in there, okay, well, maybe not Fair enough. That joke didn't go as well as I thought it would in the second either. Peter, it's funny. They just don't care, these ancient gods.
Speaker 1:So here's an example the Greek gods. This is one of the Greek gods. You know what god this is? Yeah, all right, who got that one Nice job. This is the Greek god, zeus. Zeus is generally this Greek god who's just disinterested in human affairs, doesn't really care. Maybe he's like a dad of a teenage kid who isn't really emotionally attached but kind of meddles every now and again. That's what Zeus is kind of like and his decisions that he makes are kind of arbitrary, based on his own personal desires.
Speaker 1:Not all about compassion towards human beings. Here's another one for you. This is the God. This is a Babylonian God. Anyone know this God?
Speaker 1:This is the God Marduk, and Marduk was really not at all concerned with human beings. He was like a secondary or tertiary kind of concern of Marduk. Marduk was mostly concerned with his enemies and conquering evil and chaos and sort of distilling this down. Marduk didn't care much at all for human beings. So this god ruled from afar and from a distance and really tried to tame chaos. How about this god? Any Norse god lovers in the room? Yeah, odin is the God. Odin, nice job. Odin. The same thing. Odin really used human beings as pawns in his own schemes. Odin didn't really have any kind of concern or compassion towards human beings at all. And how about this last one here? If you know this one, you get a bonus five points. Yeah, ra, good for you guys. Oh, you guys are great. So the god raw. Same thing. If this is the earth here in the world, that's sort of spinning on its axis.
Speaker 1:These gods were distant, aloof. They had their own things going on. They were doing their own thing all the time. They did not care about human beings and human beings didn't know what these gods wanted from them. It was like this divide between the human beings and the world, the creation and these gods. You can hear it in their prayers.
Speaker 1:This is ancient Babylonian prayer that goes like this oh well, before I get there, let me tell you what these gods are like. They're aloof, as I mentioned, these gods are uninvolved, so they're not really involved in your day-to-day affairs. They're capricious and violent these gods. They're unpredictable. You didn't know what the gods would do you and violent these gods. They're unpredictable. You didn't know what the gods would do. You didn't know what the gods wanted from you. So it was like you were always on edge and a bit unnerved all the time. These gods were also disinterested. The tension was killing you there for a minute. It was waiting for it to pop up. Okay, now here's the Babylonian prayer. This is a great prayer. It's a bit long. Hang with me.
Speaker 1:It says I taught my hand to observe the divine ordinances. Oh, that I only knew what these things are, what things were well pleasing to the gods. In other words, I don't know what pleases the gods. I will offer up my prayers and with a bit of anxiety and maybe despair, I will offer these prayers because I don't know what the gods want. What appears beautiful to man or to me, is maybe abominable to the gods, and what is odious or kind of wrong or smelly or bad to a man's heart is most pleasing to the gods. I don't know, maybe I've got it backwards. I don't know what God wants, or the gods. Who has learned to understand the will of the gods in heaven, the God's plan full of wisdom? Who can ever comprehend it? I have no idea. The gods are way over here, I'm way over there. When have stupid mortals ever understood the ways of the gods? Are you with me still? Here's the problem.
Speaker 1:This generally is how many of us view Yahweh, the God of the Bible. So in Genesis, god creates the world and sort of steps back and just lets it go, and it's more or less disinterested in your life, my life, how things are going, uninvolved, aloof and distant, just kind of standing over here. Which of course brings me to my elementary school principal, mrs White. Maybe you've heard of her. Her legend is known far and wide. Mrs White, I only ever saw Mrs White when I was in trouble, which was really never. Don't ask my mom to evaluate that but I never saw her. We'd see her in the hallways. We'd go there. Goes, mrs White Look out, we'd duck and hide, but we only saw her when we were in trouble, when I got called down to her office, when I was disciplined or had been given attention.
Speaker 1:And this is sometimes how we view God. The gods sort of show up when we do something wrong and they show up to discipline us. Olivia's, like Ryan, you have to include a picture of this lady Trunchable, trunchable. Okay, I don't know what movie this is, matilda. All right, fair enough. Sonia liked it too. We're going to keep it in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is our view of God. Like Yahweh, is this distant, aloof God who doesn't really care about what I'm doing in my life, is emotionally unvolved, detached, but will show up occasionally as some kind of a cosmic measuring stick to tell me when I'm doing things wrong and then to yell at me and then to kind of take off. By the way, in the 17th and 18th centuries a philosophy arose out of the intellectual movement at that time. It's called deism. Deists were folks who believed there was a creator, god, who created the world and kind of put it into motion and then did just that stepped away, wasn't involved in sustaining it. The creator created it, was a catalyst for it and then let it go and wasn't involved after that.
Speaker 1:Many of the early Christians in this country were actually deists. This is what they thought of God. They saw God as this distant, aloof, disinterested God who kind of shows up every now and again, and that's what he does Now. Here's the problem with this, though. As you can imagine, this is a lonely place to exist without a God who's involved or interested. Are you with me If God is way over here and you're on that lonely little planet hurtling through space at all those miles an hour and there's no God there? There's nobody in your corner to root for you or to show you the way. You're left to fend for yourself. There's no one guiding you or leading you or luring you towards wisdom or goodness. You're left mostly to fend for yourself and you're alone on this world. So it's a lonely place to be.
Speaker 1:Also, if you don't know what the gods want and you have no idea what's good for them or what they think is good or what, you're left with this incredibly deep sense of anxiety and despair. What do the gods want? I have no idea. They've never told me. I don't know what they want. I'll do what I think is good, but we'll see what happens If lightning strikes me dead. I guess I got it wrong kind of a thing.
Speaker 1:You can see why in the ancient world too, when they were sacrificing animals, it got kind of out of hand. Because at first we'll just offer some grains, we'll throw them on the altar. See what happens. Because at first we'll just offer some grains, we'll throw them on the altar. See what happens. I don't know what should we do. Offer some more grains, some more grains? I don't know what should we do. Maybe offer what's more valuable than grains? Maybe offer an animal? Put a chicken up there? You keep going. Eventually you get to what's the most valuable thing in your village Offer a child.
Speaker 1:It's like anxiety. You're always under duress, like what can we do to impress the gods? We don't know. So we have this low-grade or high-grade anxiety just below or right at the surface. Also, if a god is way over here, distant from us, we have no personal connection to the gods or, in our case, to Yahweh.
Speaker 1:It's no wonder many of our prayer lives are suffering. How could you pray to a God like this? What would you even say? You wouldn't even know what to say. And if this God only shows up just to yell at you or to tell you what you did wrong. I don't want to pray to that God. It's no wonder our worship times can be a bit awkward or weird. We don't want to close our eyes or raise our hands or anything like that. What are we doing? It's this lonely anxiety right in place that's disconnected from any kind of personal connection to God, and we end up with this ethical monotheism where God is some kind of a measuring stick, that just sort of like oh yeah, you got it wrong again, sorry, yeah, maybe that's how you think of God or how you relate to God or don't relate to God. Maybe that's how you think of God or how you relate to God or don't relate to God, because how do you relate to a God like that?
Speaker 1:So then take that view of God and then read one of these passages in the prophets that's about anger and wrath of God. By the way, this is a picture that many of us probably have of God in our minds. This is God who's like up in the clouds, doing whatever God does up there. Of course, he's old and white, with a big beard. You know, this is on a Hallmark card, I'm sure down the road, if you go over there and look but okay, this is your view of God. And then now read these passages through this understanding of God, a God who's aloof, distant.
Speaker 1:How about Nahum? The Lord is jealous and avenging. He takes vengeance, is filled with wrath. He, he takes vengeance. He's filled with wrath. He takes vengeance on his foes. He vents his wrath against his enemies. Slow to anger? Yeah, maybe, but he's great in power. So watch out. The Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.
Speaker 1:How about this one? This is from Hosea. The princes of Judah have become like those who move boundary stones. I will pour out my wrath on them like a flood. Ephraim is oppressed, trampled in judgment, intent on pursuing idols. I'm coming for you. How about this one? This is Malachi.
Speaker 1:This is the book I'm preaching on this morning. Surely, the day is coming. It'll burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and evildoers will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire, says the Lord Almighty. Not a root or a branch will be left to them. I'm coming with my fire, my vengeance, my anger. I got one more. Just make you sweat a tiny bit more. It's from Amos. It says, for this is the Lord says for the three sins of Damascus, even four. God says I will not relent. Gilead was sledged, or? Yeah, because she threshed Gilead with sledges having iron teeth. I will send fire on the house of Hazael. That will consume the fortresses of Ben-Hadad. In other words, god's mad and he's coming to tell you about it.
Speaker 1:This is our view and our image of God and many of us hold this view of God because we've ingested this understanding of God and maybe, just maybe, some of you in this room had a parent like this. That parent would show up on occasion, emotionally detached from you or your life, didn't care a ton about you, that you knew or experienced, and they only dropped in to tell you when you did things wrong. Nobody looking around, young people, okay, if you're done, mom, that's you. No, I'm kidding. If you had a parent like that, it makes it ten times worse Because it only solidifies your view and your understanding of who God is and what God is like, and the thing is rebuke. Then without relationship, as they say, it oftentimes leads to rebellion. So if you have a God who's way over here, doesn't know you, care about you, is disinterested, uninvolved, aloof, but then shows up to rebuke you, you're like who the heck are you man? Don't tell me what to do, I don't even know you. This is why, by the way, rebukes on social media don't work. Okay, write that down and just so we're all clear. They don't work because you don't even know those people. You fly in there and drop in some rebuke on social media. They're like I don't know who you are, you know. This is also why, conversely, if you have a parent who knows their child, like intimately, and the child knows the parent, all it takes when they're being a knucklehead is the look you know what I'm talking about Like you know better than that, and that kid will snap too, because there's relationship there.
Speaker 1:Because relationship without rebuke, without relationship, oftentimes leads to rebellion. Now here's what happens with us, with God. In a world where the world is spinning and God is sort of distant, many of us are like you know what? Forget it, no thanks. I don't want that. Some God who shows up just to yell at me or tell me I've done wrong, some cosmic measuring stick or a bunch of laws or rules. Doesn't know me or doesn't care about me. Forget, I'm out, no thanks. And I'm telling you what many of your friends have opted for that because, yeah, yeah, who wants that?
Speaker 1:Here's the other option, though many folks, especially us, really like really faithful religious folks. We will double down and say something like you know what, if that's what God is like, that's what I will be like, and we become these legalistic measuring sticks. We walk around and we measure everybody else against our own sort of idea of goodness. Oh, you don't measure up, sorry. And we become some kind of a fundamentalist or you know legal book, and generally those folks are not too fun to hang around with on Friday nights. Well, what else is there? Here's one last problem, too.
Speaker 1:When we see these images of God, sort of you know way out here, dropping in to yell at us and tell us how angry he is, we generally understand God as though God were acting like a human being. Human beings generally react in what we call passionate ways, with the passions right. So I always tell my kids I'm like, hey, passions are great, right, they're good, but your passions cannot and should not drive the bus, because they will crash the bus. You know what I'm saying. So the passions can sit, they can ride shotgun, but for many of us, our passions drive our life, and we think of God as a God who's passionate and this way he'll just come in and throw down lightning and thunder and burn everything up, as though God were a human being Like that. God is some kind of a being who's drunk of the mind or agitated of the soul, devoid of reason to purpose, operating blindly. This is what God is like. Oh God's going to show up and just strike people dead or down, because that's how we act.
Speaker 1:When we get angry, we sort of like respond, we fly off the handle and get crazy. When I was a kid, we played this game. In middle school we called it butt ball, I think you yeah, we patented that name, by the way, so you can't use it unless you pay. I think you guys call it wall ball, where you throw a ball off the wall, yeah, okay. Well, one day, this kid I was in seventh grade, I don't know what even happened Comes up behind me and instead of hitting the wall, he throws the ball off my back. I was mad, so, as like any 12, 13 year old kid would do, I turned around and I just punched him. Joke was on me, though, because I punched him in the hip and I broke my hand. Yeah, true story. So young people don't punch each other. It hurts, but is that what God is like? Just flippantly flying off the handle? He's angry and reacts by just striking people down or dead.
Speaker 1:It goes the other way too, where you have like a positive, passionate response that isn't quite reasoned. You know what I'm saying. You might have a person I know a few of my friends who went on one date with a girl and they come up Ryan, she's the best, I'm going to marry her. Oh hey, slow down, man, let's just give it a couple of days. Right, give it a second date, maybe a third date or not, to pour salt in the wound. But last year you had a quarterback named Josh Dobbs and I had a guy after two games come up and right here he goes, ryan, I think we found our Brett Favre, our Aaron Rodgers. Give it a couple of weeks. Let's just see what we're passionate beings. You can't blame us. We love passion.
Speaker 1:But is god like that? Is god like a human being, drunk of the mind, agitated of the soul, devoid of reason and purpose and operating blindly? Is that what god is like? Is god like us here? I'll tell you this, though it's actually one of the one of the biggest mistakes when we read the scripture through the lens of human eyes and treat God as a God or another human, or like an ancient God. Because here's the beauty of the Hebrew scriptures Yahweh is nothing like ancient gods. He's not. The dissimilarities are striking and shocking From the jump.
Speaker 1:God is intimately involved with the human beings, with Adam and Eve, and it's the picture of the whole of creation. He's in the garden with them. He doesn't just set it going and then walk over here. He's there the whole time. He's in the garden looking, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, for collaborators for partners. He's with the Israelites looking, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, for collaborators for partners. He's with the Israelites when they're wandering through the desert. He's a pillar of fire and a cloud of smoke. He's with them throughout the whole of the scriptures.
Speaker 1:By the way, in Deuteronomy I love this passage. This is what it says about God. So it says behold this, or? Deuteronomy is early on the second time they're given the law in the Hebrew Bible. So it's early on in the Old Testament. So it says behold to the Lord, your God, belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that's in it. So all these things belong to God and he's intimately involved. He says this, yet the Lord set his heart and love upon your fathers. So, of all the things that God has and has created and made, he set his heart and his love upon your fathers and you, you bag of bones. His heart is set upon you and as it was then, it is to this day. That's what he says, how it ends, as it is today. So God is not somehow way over here, not really caring about you and your life. No, god has set his heart upon you. He sees you on your fathers and mothers, on you and your kids. That's how God is. God is intimately involved, as it was back then and it is today. This is what God is like. God is personally involved, he's invested, he's stirred by our conduct. He watches this whole thing closely because what happens here affects him. The decisions we make, the things that we do, how we treat each other. It matters to God, it bothers him, for, positively or negatively, the fate of human beings is deeply on his mind, intimately. That's how it was in the beginning. It's how it is now. How it goes, affects God.
Speaker 1:The great thinker and writer Abraham Joshua Heschel. He's a great Jewish writer and scholar and author. Read anything you can by him. He's awesome. That's him. He says this.
Speaker 1:I love this about what he says about God and how involved God is with human beings. He says the God of Israel is a God who loves, a God who's known to and concerned with humanity. He doesn't judge people's deeds impassively or with aloofness, way over here, yelling at you from afar with a cosmic measuring stick. No, his judgment is imbued with the attitude of one to whom these actions are the most intimate and profound concern. He's deeply concerned with you and your life and your decisions and whether you stay on the path or go off the path, it involves him, it affects him in every single way. God doesn't stand outside of the range of human suffering and sorrow. Hey, sorry, suckers. No, it's not God at all. Perhaps that's the God of the ancient Greeks or the Aztecs or the Mesopotamians or the Romans, but not Yahweh. No, he's personally involved in, even stirred by Did you know that your actions and how you live your life? And when he watches you, it stirs something in God and stirred by the conduct and the fate of humanity. I love it.
Speaker 1:Abraham Heschel calls this the pathos of God. Pathos is this idea of like living care. He's intimately connected with you and your life and how things are going. He cares about it. And his reactions, they're measured, but they're like reactions that are like he's being stirred, something's going on and he's affected by the fate of human beings. It's this dynamic relationship God, the creator of the whole thing, genuinely experiences, like love and grief and sorrow and longing and anger and mercy. And again, these aren't unreasoned, just capricious, arbitrary yelling from afar, striking with lightning bolts. It's not that kind of a reaction. He's not some kind of a God who's prone to just flying off the handle. No, they're actions formed with intention. God is at least a bit nicer than we are and more controlled than we are. So he experiences, but not like us. He experiences like a passionate summons of humanity. Heschel says this as well the predicament of God is a predicament of God, who has a stake in the human situation. So where God finds himself, he's attached because he's got a stake in this whole thing. He's invested, he's deeply invested. I love this.
Speaker 1:My son is a junior. He's a junior at Gustavus College in St Peter. When he was a junior in high school. He swam for the high school team here and he was cut from the freshman basketball team and we talked him to going out for swimming. I knew he'd be good at it because he's got this, he's long, he's a long dude and had a swimmer's belt. So we talked him to going out for swimming and he ended up being good at it and he got better every year. So we were like, oh, his mom and I were like we're so happy because you know, you get cut from one thing, you know. So it worked out. So he's swimming. Junior year he made the section championship team and we were like, yes, and it was based on your times. We were so excited for him.
Speaker 1:He's our firstborn son, our oldest, and was cut from basketball when I was a swimmer, and this was during COVID though, and so remember, during COVID they had those contact traces where, if you were next to a kid who they thought had COVID, they would impact you. So he makes a section championship team and he's so excited. He's thrilled, we're thrilled. He's like could you guys buy me a tech suit? They have these swimsuits that make you like 20 miles an hour faster in the water. Is that right? They're skin tight. You have to like use Vaseline to get them on. I don't know. They're something, though they make you faster and they're like 300 bucks. We're like we'll get you one buddy. He was so thrilled so we buy him this tech suit.
Speaker 1:He comes home for one day. He's like I'm gonna put it on and try it on. I'm like great. So he goes to the bathroom. He's trying it on. He's like trying to get it on, you know. And we're out to the door waiting for him in the basement and, no joke, we get a phone call and it's his coach and she's like hey, ryan, I've got terrible news.
Speaker 1:I was like what? She's like? He can't swim tomorrow. I'm like what are you talking about? She's like well, he was contact traced. One of his classmates has COVID and he can't swim tomorrow. And I took that phone, I threw it against the wall and at the same moment he comes walking out of the bathroom. Look, they fit. They're skin tight. What do you do you know? Now, if I was a God out here? Now, if I was a God out here, I don't care. Sorry, pal, what do I care? So his mom and I did the only thing we knew. She just started crying and so I started crying and Logan was like what happened and we told him and he started crying and then all the kids kind of gathered around and started crying. It was COVID. It was a hard time. He loved swimming, he was good, and the whole thing just fell apart. The bottom fell out.
Speaker 1:Because we're deeply invested in his life, how things go for him impacts me. I'm his father, of course I care, and the emotions he was feeling. I wasn't swimming, but the emotions he felt are the emotions I felt. That's the pathos. I'm deeply invested. I called the AED. I'm like listen, man, what do I need to do? Nothing, he couldn't swim. It was an incredible learning experience for Logan, but I'll never forget it. I'll never forget how I felt because I'm his father.
Speaker 1:This is what God is like. When God watches us, he's deeply invested and involved. The things we do matter. When you cry, when you hurt, he cries, he hurts.
Speaker 1:So Hosea, the book of Hosea, the prophet is told go marry an unfaithful spouse. Why? Because the prophets become a voice of this divine pathos. The prophets feel the things that God is feeling. So God watches creation. He's deeply invested and involved and these prophets also begin to feel the same thing God feels deeply inside of their being and that's why they're so weird and strange, these men, and they do strange things, because they're now deeply invested. They're like the voice, they're the embodiment of God's divine pathos. So Hosea now knows what it's like to be married to an unfaithful partner, like God is to Israel. Hosea knows what betrayal is like, what it feels like To watch the gifts that you gave to your wife, watch her give those to another lover. That's what Israel does to God and Hosea embodies this.
Speaker 1:You have Jeremiah the weeping prophet. He wanders around weeping and crying and mourning and folks are like what's wrong with that guy? Because he understands the grief and the sorrow and the anguish of God. He's embodying this. He's the weeping prophet. Ezekiel carries the weight of Israel. He feels the heaviness of the weight of their sin. He lays on his side for 390 days, feeling the physical weight of their sin, of the pressure and the brokenness of their decisions that God felt, because God isn't back here, god's right in there and Ezekiel feels it. And then Amos you hear Amos talking. Ben mentioned him last week.
Speaker 1:He's like a roaring lion, angry at the injustice being done to his people? Of course he is. Can you imagine if one of your closest friends was being treated unfairly? Might be a reason to go in your circle of friends. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, god was angry at the injustice. He was deeply moved by it, troubled by it, grieving over it. That's God, the pathos of God.
Speaker 1:Heschel says this to the prophets God doesn't reveal himself in abstract absoluteness, but in a personal, intimate relationship to the world. He doesn't simply command and expect obedience. He's not just some yardstick Are you good enough? Are you good enough? Nope, you're out. No, he's moved and affected by what happens in the world. He reacts accordingly. Events and human actions arouse him in joy and sorrow, pleasure, wrath. He reacts in an intimate and subjective manner. This is who God is. God's anger and his wrath is an expression of his pathos.
Speaker 1:If my son was walking close like my little kid, if he was a little boy back when he was a boy, if he was walking too close to an edge like a cliff and there's like a 100-foot drop on the backside, as a father, if I was back here, I wouldn't say, hey, buddy, scoot away from the ledge. I would say get away from the ledge. I was get away from the ledge, watch out, no, stop, right. This is the pathos of God. God is deeply invested and involved in your decisions and when you and I come close to the edge, yeah, stop, turn around, come back home. And these are not irrational, unpredictable, capricious, spontaneous reactions of God. These are measured responses of God, who loves us and cares for us and is intimately involved in us. And you see it beautifully embodied in Jesus. And you see it beautifully embodied in Jesus Jesus, god in the flesh, passionately, in terms of divine pathos coming after us to find us. You see his pathos In Luke, chapter 7, you see his compassion when he's moved over this mother who loses her son.
Speaker 1:It impacts him and affects him deeply. He has compassion. Compassion means to suffer alongside with her. In Luke 19, he weeps over Jerusalem and the choices they've made. In Mark 3, he's angry at injustice. He heals a man and the religious folks as sometimes religious folks do, they get mad because he's not obeying the rules. Are you kidding me? That guy needed to be healed. He's angry at them for not feeling that same kind of thing. In John 11, he weeps over his dear friend Lazarus. Because he's a human being, he loves his friend Lazarus, central Lutheran church. May you know deeply the pathos of God, may you have a picture of God who's not out here, doesn't care about you. And if you have this view of God today, may you embrace a bit of a different view of God, a God who's deeply invested in your life, in my life, passionately summoning you to come home, to get off the cliff, to come back, because he loves you and cares for you.
Speaker 1:I found one more video that I thought really embodied this idea of divine pathos. It's this video of a woman who works at a I think a social worker is what she is and a little girl in her office was waiting to be adopted. And you can tell they go back a long way, as they have this friendship and the little girl is going to be adopted. The woman gets a phone call this is a security cam. The woman, the adult gets a phone call that the young girl is being adopted and watch their reactions. The woman in the video, by the way, interestingly enough, and not to put too fine a point on it, but Paul says that you and I have been adopted into Christ, that he's chosen us and adopted us.
Speaker 1:Also, by the way. Every parent has to adopt their child. Did you know this? Whether they're your biological kid or not, you have to adopt them. What makes you their parent is that you love them and care for them and raise them and feed them and treat them right. You have to adopt them. What makes you their parent is that you love them and care for them and raise them and feed them and treat them right.
Speaker 1:I'm going to adopt them as my own, whether you gave birth to them or not biologically it doesn't really. I mean, it does matter. But what makes you their parent is you adopt them. And this is what God does for us, because God is intimately involved. So watch the reaction of the mother and even the young girl, and so watch the reaction of the mother and even the young girl, and may this hopefully give us a clearer picture of what God is like. May you know the pathos of God. May you know that he is stirred in his soul when he watches you and he experiences all sorrow, grief, anger, indignation, righteousness, joy, peace. May you feel his embrace of you and may you hear his summon to come home, his call to come home once again, amen.
