Every now and again, it’s good to check in and just be curious about the images that we’re using for God.

In our heart of hearts, in our private prayer, how do we characterize who God is to us, or who we expect God to be?

Are there images that shape this, words, stories, feelings? How has this been shaped by experiences we’ve had of the Divine?

How has this been shaped by expectations about who God is or who we are, that other people have told us we’re supposed to have?

How have the images and words and stories and feelings we have about God been helpful for our relationship with the Divine? Helpful for our relationship with ourselves and with each other?

How have they been harmful?

In what ways are they true and trustworthy? In what ways are they perhaps not true to the reality of God or the reality of ourselves or this world?

Is our understanding of God due for some growth and change?

How we imagine God is very important, because it can shape how open we are to experiencing what God has to offer us, it can direct us and limit us. It can also shape what we value or don’t value and who we value or don’t , including how we value ourselves … or don’t.

We do need to have some images and words for God, to help us grow and evolve in knowledge of God and of ourselves. Central to our faith is that by God’s grace God does communicate and commune with humanity. There can be prophetic revelations, and even through Chris, a human enfleshment of the Divine. God can appear to us in the ways that we need.

But our wisdom tradition is also very clear about the dangers of idolatry, of clinging too tightly to any given image for God as if that image is the end all and be all. The reality is that the reality of the Divine is beyond anything that our puny human minds can conceive – Infinite & Intimate, Being beyond Being, All-knowing, All-loving, All-powerful, All-merciful, Holy Source of All, One & Eternal … it all should be rather mind-blowing.

I think we all could use help in managing our imaginings about God, so we are receiving what is life-giving and soul-restoring, and not getting caught up in the barbs of human limitations. In a caring community of faith, we can help each other out with that.

So, what I’m going to do is share with you a few more of my reflections about all of this, for what it’s worth. But what I’m most interested in is how you respond to these questions:

How has your way of understanding God changed and grown through your life?

What’s been at stake in how you and how we imagine or talk about God?

Are there changes in how you understand God that you’re needing right now?

Several years ago, after a church service a kid came up to me – they were in fifth grade – and said, “Pastor, you told us that we can ask you questions. So, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” I said

“My mom said that God is beyond gender. But in that prayer you have us say in church, it says, ‘Our Father and Mother.’ What’s with that?”

I’ll tell you, I loved everything about what was happening in that moment. I could have wept, in fact. Go mom!

This was not the first time I had been challenged for the “Our Father and Mother” in the version I use of the Lord’s prayer. But up to that point it had been people appalled at me for committing the damnable heresy of suggesting that God may be more than what masculine images can convey, not to mention that it was messing with Jesus’ words.

Instead, here was a young person who had been raised to understand that God is beyond human categories like gender. And they felt safe to challenge a clergy person on it, and to do so in a way that was polite and curious, but also had some pluck.

So, I said, “Yeah, your mom’s absolutely right. Go mom! God doesn’t have a gender. God is infinite. God is eternal. God is the source of everything that is, and beyond all that.

“God is not some dude with a beard on a throne in the sky. Or a woman, for that matter, on a throne in the sky, with a beard or not.

“At the same time,” I said, “People can experience God as being for them like a loving parent, like a father or like a mother, who loves us and supports us and can also challenge us to grow and share our gifts. So that’s why sometimes people say ‘Our Father’ or ‘Our Mother’ when speaking to God. But that’s not all that God can be for us. Your mom’s absolutely right that God is much bigger than any roles that humans play.”

Now, a lot of us have had to deal with ways of understanding God that we were raised into believing that are not so supportive or life-giving or expansive or embracing. Often young folks are taught ways of imagining God that really emphasize fear or guilt or shame. Often these are accompanied with images that are tied to masculine power. God as a king. God as a Lord. When I was a kid I imagined God to be like the School Principle, who was intimidating and distant, whose office you feared getting sent to if you misbehaved.

Many folks have then found it good for their souls to discover and honor images for God and ways of experiencing God that are maternal or feminine.

“I have soothed and quieted my soul,

Like a weaned child with her mother;

My soul is like a weaned child within me” – from Psalm 131

“As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” – Isaiah 66:13

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.” – Isaiah 49:15

Or the powerful feminine figure of Divine Wisdom in the book of Proverbs.

It can also be healing to realize that when Jesus referred to God as “Abba”, this doesn’t mean the formal “Father” it’s usually translated as. Rather it means something more like “Papa” – a sweet and innocent expression of trust and adoration.

This all is true. And it is true that the reality of the Divine is greater than any human conception.  That is Good News. It means God is not limited by the things that people say about God or do in God’s name, thank God. It means we can experience growth and renewal in our souls through changes in how we understand God.

When I was a kid I in fact had two main ways of imagining God. One was, as I already shared, that God was like a stern school principle. But the other was as a Light, a radiant, warm, illumination cascade of light pour down on us from Heaven. This was the image for God that I learned to turn towards, as I learned to turn away from all-too-human images.

The journey of growing and changing our ways of understanding God is something we can help each other with, as a community of faith. So, I want to hear from you, from your wisdom and experience and perspective:

How has your way of understanding God changed and grown through your life?

What’s been at stake in how you imagine or talk about God?

Are there changes in how you understand God that you’re needing right now?

(Delivered Sunday, May 12, 2024 by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge).