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Bow
Before the Almighty Genesis
18:14 July
29, 2007 Sisters
and brothers in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of God the
Father, Son (X) and Holy Spirit. Amen.
At the end of that famous encounter at the oaks of Mamre, we hear
these tough words, “Is anything too hard or wonderful for the Lord”
to do? (Genesis 18:14). These are difficult words for us because they
say that God’s power is unlimited. Revamping Omnipotence God’s
unlimited power bothers us because of the evil that it seems to allow.
For if God is almighty then nothing happens without his say so. Not even
a little bird falls to the ground “without your Father’s will”
(Matthew 10:29). So being all-powerful, or omnipotent, means that God is
in full control of the whole world, for he “determines everything,”
ruling “all things… by His will” (Luther’s
Works 15:121, 65). But since so many bad things happen, omnipotence
gives God a black eye. Therefore we have difficulty, if you will, living
with a God for whom nothing is too difficult! While “this is a most
important article of faith,” it’s “hard to believe and to
translate into life” (LW
21:328).
This point is powerfully made in the popular book by Rabbi Harold
S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen
to Good People (1981). There he tells the horrible story of his
young son’s untimely and painful death. In the throws of his anger and
despair over the loss of his son, he asks why a supremely good and
almighty God would allow this to happen. But Kushner finally concludes
that God couldn’t possibly have done this. So he writes it could only
have happened because it was just “too difficult” for God to stop
(p. 43). The boy’s illness simply overwhelmed even God. On this view
God isn’t omnipotent. Kushner believes we have to bite the bullet and
say this. Otherwise God is a monster and we are bereft of all comfort
and hope in times of painful loss.
Now Rabbi Kushner is not the first to argue for this turn around.
Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) also argued that omnipotence must be
revamped. No longer can we say that God has “the power to do anything
that could be done.” Now that power must be restricted to the “power
to set conditions which are maximally favorable to desirable
decisions” on our part [The
Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (1948) pp. 134-135].
If God’s power determines “every detail of what happens in the
world,” then, Hartshorne insists, we are conferring on God the
“tyrant ideal of power” [Omnipotence
and Other Theological Mistakes (1984) p. 11]. And even though such a
domineering view of divine power may appear in the Bible, Hartshorne
doesn’t waver, since he says that it’s absurd to honor “a book
written, translated, [and] interpreted by people as the very voice of
God” [The Zero Fallacy and Other
Essays in Neoclassical Philosophy (1997) p. 39]. On this view we
must feel free to rise above what the Bible says.
All criticisms like these are not as sophisticated, however. We
also find similar ones to those made by Kushner and Hartshorne in the
popular movies, Bruce Almighty
(2003), starring Jim Carrey, and Evan Almighty (2007), starring Steve Carell. So dissatisfaction with
divine omnipotence is all around us – and in many sundry forms. It
must therefore be addressed head on. Following Isaiah 55:8 Doing
that it must first be noted that these revisions of God’s power
aren’t informed by the foundational insight in Isaiah 55:8, which says
that God’s thoughts and ways are not like ours. So for us to stand in
judgment of God is a category mistake – meaning, that we’re trying
to play in a league we’re not suited for. When making the same
blunder, Job rightly says, “I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3). We
then, like Job, should butt out when beholding matters “too great and
too wonderful” for us to comprehend (Psalm 131:1). We must give up
“rarified speculations and stick to the… simple meaning of
Scripture” (LW 52:95). For
God’s judgments and actions will always look “unprincipled and
unjust by human standards,” even though they are certainly and clearly
“just and true by his own” standards (LW
33:208).
But if we plow ahead any way, swimming in waters well over our
heads, our critiques are bound to fail, because “heaven and earth
cannot be commingled. So our thoughts… and rules are… reproved and
driven off by the heavenly” (LW
17:257). Shame, then, will be our only portion. For we will sit like
Job, defeated, loathing ourselves in “dust and ashes,” for what
we’ve said and done, contrary to God’s words and ways (Job 42:6). Twisting Jeremiah 32 But
that prospect doesn’t end the matter. The debate continues anyway –
if you can believe it! Lutherans, for instance, are supposed to confess
that omnipotence is “a property of the divine nature” [The
Book of Concord, ed. T. Tappert (1580; 1959) p. 487]. But when
teaching Jeremiah’s prayer on God’s power, the clear word is
twisted. Jeremiah prays, “Ah Lord God! You have made the heavens and
the earth by your great power…. Nothing is too hard for you.” God
then answers, “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is
anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:17, 27). But
a prominent Lutheran teacher then goes on to say that the premise in
this account of omnipotence is “flawed,” since God is “limited by
the situation” in which he acts [T. Fretheim, Jeremiah (2002) p. 464]. The truth then is that God can’t actually
do whatever he wants to do – contrary to Psalm 115:3. Some things are
just too hard for him to do! This construal proves the point in the
cynical observation that modern Biblical commentators work “to make
the Bible say the opposite of what it seems to say” (Donald H. Juel in
Word & World, Spring 1990,
p. 168). Lord have mercy! God’s Power in Creation Now
it’s clear that Jeremiah 32 is about God’s power in creation –
making the massive mountains, the pounding oceans, the huge redwood
trees, the distant stars and all the various plants, insects and
bacteria – to say nothing of the human being, who with acute mind and
dexterous hands makes not only towering bridges and monumental
buildings, but the finest of paintings and music, as well as books on
subatomic theory and psychoanalysis. It is this Creator for whom nothing
is too difficult. You would think creation would make this as plain as
the nose on your face (Romans 1:18-23) – but for the fancy
intellectual critiques, it’s anything but. No wonder then that Luther
cherished the old German saying, die
Gelehrten, die Verkehrten, or “the learned are daft” (LW
46:232)! And
this same almighty power is also in that famous Jeremiah 18 passage,
which is carried over into Romans 9, where God molds us however he
wishes – just like a potter forms clay into one shape or another at
will. So while we may want to mold God to fit our preconceived notions,
it can only be the other way around. God “regards us all as…
dough,… and does with us as He pleases” (LW
13:214). So if you want to make God laugh, “tell him your plans”
(“John Chancellor, Venerable TV Newsman, Dies at 68,” Los
Angeles Times, June 13, 1996). “Therefore it is useless for us to
kick against the goad (Acts 26:14)” (LW
15:102). Too
bad, then, that it is “the nature of every ungodly man to mold God for
himself and refuse to be molded by God…. They want to whittle God
according to their purpose” (LW
17:16-17). For we are “by nature unable to want God to be God” (LW
31:10). We therefore need to call upon the Lord to enlighten us that we
might have power to dismiss our “own notions of God” (LW
24:63). God alone “pricks the bubble” of our exalted sense of
self-importance and creative theorizing about the divine (LW
21:340). Honoring God’s Power But
God’s almighty power is misunderstood, if it’s deemed a threat. Its
purpose rather is to comfort us when we’re up against insurmountable
odds. His power is there in reserve for us. It’s not there to frighten
us or confound us with puzzles like God creating rocks too big for even
him to lift. No, it’s actually the other way around. For when we start
revising God’s power on the basis of “opinion apart from the Word of
God,” then all that floods back upon us are “endless monsters” (LW
17:140). And
so in addition to the wonders of creation, God’s omnipotence is
manifest in his many miracles. These miracles are for us. They signal
the omnipotence of God (see my “Misconstruing Miracles,” Dialog, Winter 2000). So we’re told that nothing is impossible for
God, when we hear that his only begotten Son will be born of a virgin
– quite contrary to the laws of nature (Luke 1:37). This is similar to
the word in Genesis 18:14, where we’re told that the post-menopausal
Sarah will give birth to Isaac, the child of promise. And we hear the
same when we’re told that it’s finally possible for rich people, who
don’t think they need God (Revelation 3:17), to have faith in Jesus
(Luke 18:27). These miraculous, powerful reports and promises, comfort
us.
Encouragement, then, is the point of divine omnipotence. God is
almighty so he can help us “where no man can” (LW
13:239)! When Bad Things Happen Why
then does God allow so many bad, harmful and destructive things to
happen to us? What shall we say to Rabbi Kushner upon the terrible death
of his little boy? If God is so good and so powerful, and on our side,
shouldn’t the world be a better place than it is – scoured clean of
every sadness, illness and calamity?
First we must be suspicious of such questions – remembering
that God’s ways exceed our ability to understand and assess them.
“Therefore let us crucify this baneful why, and let us say, ‘Glory to God, who alone is wise; but
confusion to us!’ Satan opened our eyes in
1. Inscrutability. So the first thing we need to say is that whatever
good reasons there are for allowing bad things to happen to us, God
keeps them to himself. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any. We
believe there are good reasons because God “is just in all his ways”
(Psalm 145:17). The problem is he just doesn’t share those reasons
with us. He doesn’t help us see how these bad things are actually good
for us. So the advice is sound that “the secret things belong to the
Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 29:29). So we shouldn’t try to pry into
God’s mind to discern what these reasons are, if he has chosen not to
disclose them to us. And these secret things are considerable for “how
unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways” (Romans
11:33).
2. Punishment. But that’s not quite the end of the matter. We are
given more than this basic orientation of inscrutability. We are also
told that sometimes bad things happen to us because we deserve them. We
have “provoked” the Lord God to punish us by disobeying him. We have
“kindled” the fire of his wrath against us (Psalm 106:28-29, 39-40).
Lutherans go even further and say that “as a rule” suffering is
punishment for sin, and since we are sinful “from head to foot,” we
“deserve nothing but punishment” (BC, pp. 206, 309, 347). So if we do not “repent,” we shall
“perish” for our sins (Luke 13:3). Therefore God doesn’t want to
tear us down with his punishment. He rather wants his punishment to turn
us from our wickedness and bless us. Indeed, “he disciplines us for
our good, that we may share his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10).
But the punishment isn’t always obvious. Sometimes we suffer
and we don’t know why. Discernment in these matters is a tricky
business. It is certainly so for ourselves, and even more so for others.
No wonder then that “discernment” is something to be prayed for
(Philippians 1:9). We don’t have it naturally or automatically. At one
point Jesus even sidesteps the cause of suffering altogether – putting
the stress on resolving the suffering rather than explaining where it
came from (John 9:3).
3. Chastisement. But these two considerations – inscrutability and
punishment – don’t cover everything. There’s also the matter of
chastisement and discipline. Sometimes we suffer so we can build our
“character” (Romans 5:2-5). Job suffered even though he was
“blameless…. and the greatest of all the people of the east” (Job
1:1-3). So he suffered for reasons other than punishment. Job suffered
so he could “come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). For “iron sharpens
iron” (Proverbs 27:17) – and in his case it was suffering that
sharpened or built the character of Job. Suffering enabled him to
“see” what he had missed before (Job 42:5). And similarly, Jesus
learned obedience “through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8).
Obedience, then, was the gold that came forth from his suffering.
The day before Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) was
assassinated, he preached at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple in Memphis,
Tennessee, that “only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars”
[A Testament of Hope: The
Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. J. M. Washington
(1986) p. 280]. That is the same point being made about chastisement.
And so we have come to learn that God chastises “those whom he
loves” (Revelation 3:19). Suffering is indeed loving, precisely
because it is eye-opening. Nothing else will do this wonderful thing for
us. Our Paschal Lamb With
all these words of explanation in hand, can we now truly bow down before
the almighty power of God? Or will we still balk in the presence of the
omnipotent One?
Struggle though we may, we will not be able to settle this on our
own. So we’re told in Luke 10:42 that only one thing is needful or
necessary. The Old Latin Bible translates it unum
est necessarium. Yes, unum est
necessarium! Now why is that? What makes Jesus all we need? 1
Corinthians 5:7 says that “Christ our paschal lamb, has been
sacrificed.” Here is the necessity! Only Christ has been sacrificed
for us, to cover our sins that we might not be punished for them. No one
else has done this for us. He alone is our paschal lamb.
In Exodus 12 we learn about the first paschal lamb. This was the
best of the flock, an Ovis dalli. If the enslaved people of God were to kill this sheep
and smear its blood on their front doors, God’s angel of death would
“passover” their homes and not kill their children along with all of
the first born of In
the same way Jesus’ blood also saves us from the wrath of God. When
his blood is smeared on us through faith in him and baptism in his name,
we are saved (1 Corinthians 15:3; Mark 16:16; BC, p. 437). God’s wrath will no longer rest on us for our
disobedience (John 3:36; Romans 5:9). This is because what we had coming
God levels against Jesus in our place. He is our substitute. Our sins
are pounded into him instead (1 Peter 2:24). Drawn to Jesus In
this suffering and dying and bleeding, Jesus draws us to himself
mysteriously (John 12:32). Here is a power we find nowhere else. For
here is a death unlike the one offered from that flock in
And then also receive Christ this day at the altar. You who have
heard his word and believe (Romans 10:17), come this day to the altar.
Bow down before the throne of the Lamb. Eat and drink of the Lord’s
Supper. Do so that Christ may abide in you, and you in him (John 6:56).
It’s a gift for you that your faith and love may grow and become
strong and make you new (2 Corinthians 5:17). Make God’s Word Fully Known And
when you leave this holy house, go on your way doing good works in
Jesus’ name – knowing that faith without works is dead (James 2:26).
Colossians 1:25-28 says we should make the word of God “fully
known,” that we may become “mature in Christ.” So there’s much
at stake here. There will be no maturity but only half-hearted
Christians if the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27) is not fully and
carefully known among us. Having one’s favorite Bible verses will not
do. Instead we need it all, in its depth and breadth. We need the hard
Word with the easy. We need the Law with the Gospel. So pray for help
that this gets done. Do it yourself as much as you can. Pray for those
in leadership roles that they may get it done throughout the church. And
pray for this “to the glory of God,” and to him alone (1 Corinthians
10:31). Amen. (printed as preached, but with some changes) |
