Knowing God Through Images

Kristen L. Hawley, Seminarian (The Virginia Theological Seminary)

          In today’s reading of Jonah some of you may have noticed that we skipped a few verses.  Unfortunately, those who make the decisions on our lectionary texts saw fit to cut out one of my favorite stories in all of scripture.  If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to read the four dropped verses. For a bit of background, remember that Jonah has been called to be a prophet to the Godless city of Nineveh – sworn enemy of Israel.  Not digging the call, Jonah fled by boat in the other direction, found himself in one heck of a storm at sea being chased by God, was thrown overboard and swallowed by a giant fish in whose belly he spent 3 days and 3 nights.  We meet up with him again this morning, having been regurgitated back onto dry land, when God comes to him a second time and repeats his command that Jonah go to Nineveh and proclaim the city’s imminent demise.  Jonah begrudgingly goes into Nineveh and utters quite possibly the most lack-luster and feeble prophecy in scripture.  Miraculously we hear that the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.  Now for our missing verses:

          When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. ⁷Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. ⁸Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. ⁹Who knows?God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’

          And then we end with verse 10 - When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

          There are two reasons why this story in Jonah has become a favorite of mine.  The first is the imagery.  While the whole book of Jonah is a fabulous parody – and at 4 short chapters a quick and easy read that I commend to all of you – the imagery here is particularly wonderful.  I imagine a pissed off and irritable Jonah showing up in the city of his enemies murmuring in hopes that no one really pays attention – Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown – and then does an about face to get out of dodge and back to his life when… all of the sudden the entire city around him converts.  I picture a king dressed in a burlap sack, sitting in a pile of ashes, gaunt from fasting and praying to a God he does not know, while outside the castle walls the donkeys, cows and sheep are also sporting burlap and braying and bellowing from hunger.  It is a wonderfully rich banquet of imagery of ridiculous proportions that puts Jonah’s petulance in even greater relief.  Images are powerful.

          The second reason for my infatuation with this text is the King’s question, Who Knows?  As often happens in Scripture – it takes an outsider, to state the obvious.  Who does know God?  Did the King?  Did the King know God?  Jonah says later that he ran from God because he knew God.  He knew that his God was a God of steadfast love and would relent.  Jonah wanted his enemies to suffer and he ran because he knew that God would use him as an agent to save his enemies.  Do you think that Jonah and the King had the same knowledge or understanding of God?  Is it possible that the God to whom the Ninevites prostrated themselves was the same God that harassed Jonah into the role of liberator of Nineveh?  Next question – Did they know the same God that Andrew, James & John knew who walked along the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, fishing for disciples? 

          Three very different images of God – all found in scripture, all found in this morning’s readings.  I would assert that they are also three very different understandings or three different ways to know God.  None of them wrong and all three found in our sacred texts. 

          Last fall I had the privilege of attending a lecture entitled Biblical Imagination – God in the 21^st Century by Dr. Lauren Winner, a young and exciting author and professor at Duke Divinity School.  Dr. Winner is smitten with the treasure of God imagery throughout Scripture that never quite caught on in the Western Church.  She spoke to us with great excitement of the images of God as clothing or garment, God as mid-wife, God as nursing mother and one or two others.  While her insight was itself thought provoking and illuminating, what I found most thrilling was the response she got during the question and answer period.  In a room full of a couple of hundred clergy, clergy spouses and seminarians there began a procession of women – women of let’s say a certain age, who thanked her with gratitude and tears for introducing them to an image of God that touched them and validated them in a way that they had never known before.  All of them mothers who had birthed and nursed their babes, these women – many whom had taken the vow to minister the Word of God, none of them had ever imagined that same God as a nursing mother.  Just like them.  They wept. 

          Dame Julian of Norwich, imagining herself as an unruly toddler, wrote, “My kind mother, my gracious mother, my beloved mother, have mercy on me.  I have made myself filthy and unlike you, and I may not and cannot make it right without your grace and help.” (Guenther, 26)

          I have the opposite experience of these women on the occasions that my family and I attend mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine here in DC.  It is a glorious church, the Basilica – which I also commend to all who have not gone.  The problem that I have lies in one image, and it happens to be the image that virtually bursts out from the North Apse right above the main alter and hovers over you as you worship.  The mosaic – a truly spectacular work of art – depicts Jesus in what I would call… full Chuck Norris glory.  Actually entitled Christ in Majesty, the mosaic is of a fierce looking Jesus in a Red Roman toga with bare chest and arms, rippling with muscles.  There are three large bursts of flames shooting out of his halo and the look on his face should have a “censored” strip over it for the way it makes me feel.  The first time I sat down I front of this Jesus I had the uncontrollable urge to hide behind the pew in front of me.  This Jesus is a warrior, and quite frankly – warriors frighten me.  Instead of bringing me closer to God, this image of God makes me uneasy at best.

          When I asked my children at dinner last night what image they thought of when I said God, the answers were quite revealing.  We had the old and kind man with a weathered face and white or gray beard, a void with only a clear voice, and interestingly – a small child.  A small child.

          So, why do images matter?  Do they matter?  

          Has anyone here read or listened to the news this week?  What is Mitt Romney’s tax rate please?  15%, yes.   Mitt Romney, the 15% man read one title.  Yes – images matter.  What are election years but a race to create the most appealing and winning image?  Images have power.  They have the power to empower or impede.  What person wants to put their trust in or votes for someone whose image is completely foreign to them, or worse – is offensive to them?  It is difficult to relate to someone or something that has no relation or connection to our own lives, or lived experiences.  How can we know the unknown?

          So, God created humankind^*in his image, in the image of God he created them;^* male and female he created them…  And it was very good.

          Made in the image of God.  All of us.  Not just the shepherds, gardeners, fishermen, Kings or Judges; not just the prophets, saints or the early church fathers; not just fathers, men or young boys.  All of us.  Black, white, gay, straight, doctor, janitor, immigrant, refugee, mother, father, athlete and disabled – All of us.  Yet, when asked about how we imagine God, we often get variations on the same image… male, old, beard, strong, male, father, son, male.  Take a moment to look around this sanctuary and what do you see?  I see God.  God the Priest, God the child, God the mother, God the musician, God the teacher, God the friend and yes, God the father and God the son. 

          Feminine, queer & liberation theologies are picking up steam in the most unlikely of places because people are starting to let themselves imagine a God in whose image, those so long stranded on the margins, were made.  Chains are being broken, tears are being shed in gratitude and centuries of oppression are loosening their grip because God’s own are relearning what it means to be made in the image of God. 

          To be clear – this is not an exercise in refashioning God in our own image.  When imagining God, we must understand ourselves not as masters but as mirrors.  We are reflections of perfection, each one of us – though flawed each in our own way.  But if we allow ourselves to engage with healing images of God in which we can recognize bits and pieces of ourselves, we will begin journeying in the right direction – towards God.  “We were made for God,” Martin Luther King Jr. preached in 1967, “and we will be restless until we find rest in him.” (Long, 7)  King knew God through dreams, scripture, experience and imagination and he knew the power that images hold.  If you read or listen to any of his sermons, speeches or letters – you will hear the master at work.

          So, our human imaginings do not define God, but rather point to and mediate how we connect with God.  And… It is through those connections, that we come to know God.  Chuck Norris Jesus may freak me out, but to some – I am sure he represents a safety or security that they might need.  The image found in scripture of God as nursing mother might make some of you really uncomfortable, but I find it obvious and comforting – much like the mother-hen image that Jesus gives of himself before entering Jerusalem.  Others here might resonate with the fishing imagery and language of today’s gospel, or with Jonah’s irritation with God.  None of these images are wrong, nor can any one on its own adequately describe God.  Yet each one has the power to bring some of us that much closer – where Dr. King reminds us we are all called to be.

          God will continue to call each of us closer – maybe (hopefully) not in the same manner that he called Jonah, but maybe instead like a mother hen calling her chicks, a general calling his troops, a midwife calling out the babe, a lover reaching out in embrace or a child calling out to friend.  All of us - made in God’s image, called by our Creator to answer the King’s question.  Who Knows?