One of Us?

One of Us?

With whom, then, will you compare God?

To what image will you liken him? (Isaiah 40:18, NIV)

“If God had a name, what would it be?
And would you call it to His face?
If you were faced with Him in all His glory
What would you ask if you had just one question?”

It’s been 24 years since Joan Osborne recorded Ed Bazilian’s song, One of Us. I’ve got it on a CD and played it in the car as we drove through northern New Brunswick. The haunting chorus (“What if God was one of us / Just a slob like one of us / Just a stranger on the bus tryin’ to make his way home”) stays with you; a fantastic backup band helps with that.

Isaiah goes on to answer his own question beginning with what God is not: not a man-made replica of an imagined god by a craftsman in gold or wood. What God is, though, is a creative force in the sky, so far above that the people of the earth appear to him as grasshoppers. Not a “person” who walks to and fro upon the earth either. From his lofty position, nations and kings are insignificant entities which he elevates or brings down at will. A transcendent God.

The movement in scripture writers’ image of God is striking, and overall in one direction: the creator and sustainer of the universe does not live in the metal and wood that limit our imaginations to what our senses can apprehend. That becomes obvious in the ineffectiveness of the idols worshiped by the Children of Israel’s neighbours. 

And in their descriptions of mankind/God encounters, the physical presence and the speaking voice of God fades and returns, fades and disappears (from the visualization of a God of physical presence and conversation in the Creation allegory and in the Job myth, for instance, to David’s repeated cries for God to reveal himself in Psalms 5,6 & 7.)

And then there’s today. Struggling with the limits of our human imagination, we go back and forth on the “God as person, God as spirit” imagery. Some of us claim that God speaks to us personally while others (including Billy Graham and Mother Theresa) claim no such physical or sensory communication.

It’s why the incarnation of Christ is so significant, even though basically misunderstood by our small imaginations. What it was meant to reveal is that God dwells within us, in human consciousness, in our convictions and commitment to follow in Christ’s footprints. The “spirit” Christ left behind for us is manifested in the parable of his life: justice, mercy and the humility borne of our gratitude the gift of life . . . for us and our neighbours.

Perhaps we will never fully comprehend what Jesus said to the woman at the well: “But the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” (John 4: 23 & 24, NIV) (Emphasis mine)

Isn’t it true that the spirit exemplified by Christ is more evident in the embraces in the foyer than in the routines in the sanctuary, in the doing for the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the refugee, the addicted than in the sermons and songs of what we call “worship?”

I don’t think there’s any arguing that when compared to Jesus’ prayer for unity, the church is an obvious mess, a mess of doctrinal introspection and division, of a competitive spirit, of ineffectiveness in its core mandate, i.e. to be salt and light to the world. Maybe, just maybe, our divided focuses stem from the question with which I began, Isaiah’s “With whom, then, will you compare God? To what image will you liken him?” or from Joan Osborne, “What if God was one of us?”

But out of clay pots the spirit of Christ has been known to fashion fine China . . . from time to time.