Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre, Bury & Whitefield service (dated 23rd January 2022), continuing our current series on the Apostles’ Creed. You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel.
SPEAKING OF GOD’S NOSTRILS
I am going to give you some names of personalities (most real, some fictional). As I read them to you, I want you to notice what words jump into your head about them. What descriptions, impressions, emotions and ideas do you associate with them?
Elvis Presley
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Captain Tom Moore
Paddington Bear
Beyoncé Knowles
Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Pinocchio
Lady Gaga
Mother Teresa
William Shakespeare
For some of those names, maybe our minds went instantly to something they have sung? Maybe our heads filled with tunes, and we started singing Jailhouse Rock or Independent Woman, Pt. 1.
It is possible that what jumped into your head was the powerful things they have said or have stood for: ‘I have a dream…’, in the case of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and his fight for equality. Or Mother Teresa’s work within the slums of India, and her words, ‘Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest to you.’
Maybe, in the case of Paddington Bear, his insatiable love for Marmalade sandwiches came to mind. Or, when we heard Lady Gaga, we thought about her eclectic fashion sense.
It could be that the impressions that came to mind were not connected to the names, but the titles: Reverend; Captain; Prime Minister, Mother. It’s possible those titles stirred up positive or negative emotions in us.
Perhaps, with the mention of Shakespeare, we didn’t actually think about Shakespeare, as a person, at all. Instead, our minds drifted back to school, as we recalled something about our English lessons.
In the case of one individual, it is feasible that what popped into your mind revolved around integrity, honesty, and the reputation they have in telling lies. I’m talking about Pinocchio, of course. 😉
Here’s another word to consider: God
Where would you start in your description?
Depending upon our background, our culture, our experiences, and a wide host of other contributors, God is sure to generate a wide and broad spectrum of impressions within us. All of us have ideas about God; we all have something to say on that topic.
We all, in some sense, do this thing called theology, which simply means ‘speaking about God.’
There’s many ways we could speak about God, I suppose. Sometimes, though, how people talk about God can be very clinical and detached.
What I mean by that, is that as modern humans—humans living in a western world impacted by an era of history called the Enlightenment—when we talk about God, when we do theology, we can be tempted to do so in a way that is rationalistic, objective, analytical. Because of the scientific era we find ourselves in, because we are attempting to “prove” or “defend” God, we end up using the language of examination, experimentation and assessment, almost as if we, mere humans, were performing a public autopsy on a specimen called God.[i]
We can be prone to putting God under the knife, so to speak, and our words and descriptions dissect God into philosophical chunks, labelled with technical words:
Omnipotence. Omnipresent. Omniscience. Immutable.
They are some great terms—and they contain important ideas. I’m not anti-science or anti-intellectual—I want to be clear on that.
But, as the Scottish author, poet and minister, George MacDonald, put it, ‘God will not take shelter behind such a jugglery of logic or metaphysics. He is neither schoolman nor theologian, but our Father in heaven.’[ii]
I suspect that when I mentioned God, especially in church, the words and images that filled your mind were nothing like the sterile, surgical language of human analysis.
Which words did come to mind?
Something that is beautiful about the Apostles’ Creed is that it doesn’t get us thinking about God in some analytical way, it doesn’t pull God under a microscope, and suddenly make God an impersonal object to be examined under human scrutiny. The first thing it does is pull us towards God, and into this mystery of God, by using the terms Father and Almighty.
In doing so we recall that knowing God is foundationally about relationship, not human ‘guess work’. Our “scalpels” are not only inadequate in figuring out God, but also unnecessary. God relates. God reveals.
The creed doesn’t start by making up some clever words of its own; it borrows these words. The creed reaches back into the language of the Scriptures, and pulls out these rich, ancient images for us, that are saturated with story and experience.
As pastor and theologian, Ben Myers notes, in his book, The Apostles’ Creed, these words are an echo of revelation.
You may have noticed that the scriptures are quite averse to the detached, technical language of modern human analysis. The scriptures prefer images and idioms: grassroots, street-level, everyday, easy-to-visualise pictures that illustrate something about God.
As an example, the scriptures tell us that God has large nostrils! I assure you, if you’ve been reading the Bible for a long time, you have read about God’s large nostrils on many occasions. We have even sung songs about God’s large nostrils.
If it isn’t ringing any bells for you, that’s because the English translations prefer to remove the poetry and translate it, ‘Slow to anger.’ But the original Hebrew prefers an idiom—a word picture.
You may be thinking how the image of large nostrils fits with being slow to anger.
Well, imagine your response when you walk into a room that has a bad smell, or when you take a drive through the countryside and the smell of natural fertilizer hits you. I guarantee that you instantly react. You may pull a face, or express some sound of disgust. As that bad smell takes up all the space in your tiny, human-sized nostrils, it blocks out even the slightest fragrance of anything pleasant.
When the Scriptures describe God as having large nostrils, it is letting us know that God is not reactionary; God is not explosive or temperamental. God can still detect the beautiful and good in our world, and in our own lives, despites all the foulness.
Hence, God has large nostrils—much larger than ours.
But it’s also worth pointing out the obvious: Saying God has large nostrils does not mean that God has an actual nose, and it’s certainly not saying that God is a giant-sized nose that has arms and legs sticking out of it!
The image has limits.
As scientist and theologian, Alister McGrath, points out, ‘Throughout the Scriptures … God reveals himself … using illustrations which we can handle.’ But even though these images tie in with our everyday world, they are not meant to reduce God to our everyday world. Like all illustrations, they break down at points.[iii]
Worse still, if taken too far, they risk becoming idols.
Understanding this will prove important, this morning.
I want us to read a passage together, it’s in Deuteronomy 32. Even though this passage doesn’t mention God’s large nostrils, it is a passage stocked full of images, including this image of Father. And although it doesn’t use the term explicitly, the passage does speak of God’s almighty-ness.
As you find the passage, here’s some background: It’s known as the Song of Moses. Moses is just about to die, and the people of Israel are about to cross into the ‘Promised Land’. In the chapter prior to this (Deut 31), God is telling Moses that once Moses joins his ancestors in death, the people will abandon God and break the covenant God has made with them. And so, God teaches Moses a song, a song Moses is to pass on to the people of Israel, a song that will serve as a witness against them and a reminder that God knew this would happen.
As we read a part of this song, I wonder how many images, illustrations, and pictures you can spot?
READ: DEUTERONOMY 32:1:18 (NLT)
FATHER
As we read this passage, it’s clear, I think, to see that it’s a song about God making a parental claim. Even though his children have abandoned him, and not acted like his children, God is still making this parental claim and reminding them of the provision and care he has shown to them.
At several points, the Song uses the term Father.
We often make the mistake of thinking that calling God Father is unique to the New Testament, or unique to Christianity. And sure, when Jesus uses this term about himself and God, there is something unique about that.
However, the Old Testament story already used this image of God as Father, and wherever Jesus speaks, beyond his own relationship with God, of God being the Father of Israel and humanity, then he plucks on a chord that was already present. (E.g. Ps 103:9-14; Isaiah 63:16; 64:8; Exodus 4:22; Hosea 11: Jeremiah 3:19-20; 31:9, 20, 22; Hosea 11:1-4; Malachi 2:10; Matthew 6:9; 6:31-33; 7:7-11; Luke 6:35-36; John 14:1-14).
God is Father—of all of us. God is the ultimate source of our existence. As the Apostle Paul puts it, in Ephesians 4:6, ‘There is… one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.’ (NRSV)
But this image is not merely speaking of our source: when the Scriptures use this term, it wants us to understand that God is committed to caring for us, that God nurtures us. God’s inclination towards humanity is tender, compassionate and that which seeks to provide.
In the Song we have read, God is not just saying he’s Father because he is their source—there is much more. God’s claim as Father is also based on the fact that he has provided for them, protected them, taught them, guided them (see verses 10-14). God has guarded them, as he would the pupils of his own eyes (v. 10, or apple of his eye).
There is even this sense within the Song of the ‘father continuing to yearn for, seek, and hope for Israel, even after the child has been insolent.’[iv] Something Jesus echoes, when he tells a famous story about a father and his sons.
God is Father.
Of course, Father may not be a helpful image to us. It is possible that you have negative associations with the word Father. It could be that our earthly fathers were not committed, caring or concerned about us.
There’s so much I would like to say about that—but what I will say is that the analogy of God as Father is meant to speak of what we, human dads, are supposed to be like.
I don’t consider myself to be a bad father, but I come nowhere close to the quality of God’s fatherly example. My nostrils are nowhere near as big. I’ve been prone to use shame and guilt (‘You’ve made me shout, now’) and bribery (‘if you do this, then…’).
There’s another way this term can be unhelpful. Going back to what I said before, we can push these images too far. So it’s worth saying, this image is not stating that God is male.
Actually, there are a number of instances in the Scriptures when the image of Mother is used to describe God (E.g. Numbers 11:11-14; Isaiah 49:15; 66:13; Matthew 23:37).
Even the Hebrew word we translate as compassion or mercy finds it root in the word womb.[v] When God is compassionate, the idiom, the illustration used is a child suspended in their mother’s womb.
Actually, the image of a Mother also occurs in the Song of Moses (Deut 32). In verse 11, God makes a comparison with a mother eagle. And in the verse 18, both these images of Father and Mother are used: ‘You neglected the Rock who had fathered you; you forgot the God who had given you birth.’
Last time I checked, Father’s don’t give birth.
Again, to repeat myself, don’t make an idol out of the illustrations! God is not a female. God is not a male. Whilst we’re at it, God is not a literal lump of rock, either.[vi]
Theses images speak of the dependable, steadfast, sustaining, feeding, nurturing, caring, protective character of God. God is parental.
I need to you to understand this when we look quickly at this second term, Almighty. Because, as odd as it sounds, Almighty is also a parental word.
ALMIGHTY
Of course, when we hear the word Almighty we know its talking about power—limitless power. Sadly, though, our heads, understandably, also fill with ideas of tyrants and bullies; possessive, controlling, domineering characters who are unpredictable and capricious.
Humans do not have a good track record when it comes to power, so these connotations naturally come to mind.
But domination and controlling characteristics are not the kinds of power that Almighty is speaking of.
In the Hebrew, it is the word Shaddai. You may recognise it? God, in the Bible, is often referred to as El Shaddai (God Almighty).
Now I need you to remember what I said about taking illustrations to literally!
But in the Hebrew, Shaddai is actually the word breasts—the image is that of a mother breast feeding her child.
This doesn’t mean God has breasts, or that God is female. Just like Father does not mean that God is male.
What this word does is help us understand how God chooses to exercise power. This is not threatening power, which is used to exploit or dominate, or grind us down. This is parental power. God uses his power, like the power of any good parent, to provide for us, guide us, instruct us, and to give us the nourishment we need to grow.
Again, these words are not ascribing a gender to God. They are earthly illustrations, human portraits, things we can understand, that point to this reality that God is parentally caring and loyal. That God seeks to protect and provide for us, sustain and rescue us. God is the one who all mightily nourishes and satisfies, and supplies for us. God’s Almightiness—God as Shaddai—is a picture of bountiful, self-sacrificing parental love, giving and pouring itself out for us.
This isn’t to say that God is a soft touch, or a parent that can be wrapped around our fingers. Certainly not. Like all parents, God desires for us to grow up, mature and learn to behave like children of God.[vii]
However, God does not squeeze us into this mould. God reveals, and God invites.
God’s power is not the tightened fist of a tyrant. It is the welcoming, inviting, securing, empowering embrace of a mum and dad.
God’s power is not the tightened fist of a tyrant. It is the welcoming, inviting, securing, empowering embrace of a mum and dad.
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As Mother Teresa put it, ‘That’s the most beautiful part of God, eh? Being almighty, and yet not forcing himself on anyone.’[viii]
THE PINOCCHIO PROBLEM
God is our Father Almighty, our nurturing, sustaining parent. And God wants us to know that truth, and allow that truth to sink deep within us. So, when we say these words, Father Almighty, it ‘is not just some [cold] theological idea, but a [heartfelt] confession of the defining relationship of our lives.’[ix]
The proof that God want us to know this so deeply, stains the pages of the scriptures with God’s tears, sweat and blood. Because, what stands out, is that whenever this parent-child relationship is referenced in the writings of the Old Testament, ninety percent of the time (to take a conservative guess at percentages), God is the one employing it and appealing to it (just like in the Song of Moses).
Humanity hardly ever appeals to it, in comparison.
Let that sink in!
It is as if God is passionate about this relationship, God cannot stop talking about it, but for us, it’s not really important at all. And so the problem is not with God’s parental claim of us. The problem is our receptivity to that claim.
It reminds me of Disney’s version of Pinocchio.
If you know the story, Pinocchio is desperate to be a real boy. In this desperation, he constantly pursues anything that promises to deliver that. What Pinocchio thinks will make him a real boy actually turns him into more of a puppet, a slave.
What Pinocchio fails to realise is that, in the eyes of his father and maker, Gepetto, he already is a real boy; Gepetto already sees Pinocchio as his child. What made Pinocchio alive in the first place was this passionate desire of his father—a passionate commitment that continues to yearn and seek for Pinocchio whenever he strays away.
Gepetto is so passionate for his child that he is even willing to plunge himself into the abyssal depths of an ocean, and into the belly of a beast, in order to bring his child home.
It is only at the end of the story when Pinocchio, realising the pursuit his father has undertaken, actually begins to behave like a child of Gepetto. He’s always been his child, but it is now that Pinocchio begins to imitate the selfless, seeking, stretching love of his father.
Like Pinocchio, like Israel in this Song of Moses, we too pursue other things to nourish us—we’re searching for life and meaning beyond this relationship. And yet, God, in his almightiness, is continually yearning for us, and using his power to rescue us from the lies that have enslaved us and the messes we get ensnared within.
God is seeking us, his children, and calling us back into this parental relationship where real life is found. God is so passionate, so committed to us as a parent, that God too was willing to plunge into our suffering, into our lives—God was even willing to descend into the bowels of death and hell (as this creed will go on to state), in order to bring us home.
You may feel like God has abandoned you, forgotten you. But, I assure you, God claims you as his child, as has gone to great lengths to bring you home.
‘Can a woman forget her baby who nurses at her breast? / Can she withhold compassion from the child she has borne? / Even if mothers were to forget / I could never forget you! / Look, I have inscribed your name on my palms.’
Isaiah 49:15-16
The header image for this series comes from the The Saint John’s Bible (saintjohnsbible.org), illustration taken from the book of Genesis.
[i] This is especially evident in what we now call Systematic Theology—itself a product of the enlightenment, or should I say, an enlightenment-aligned reaction to the rational of the enlightenment. In contrast to the ancient creeds or the literature style of the scriptures (both of which were, it could be said, a form of apologetics), Systematic Theology leans more towards an analysis of the story than it does plotting out the story. Admittedly, that is a crude and overly simplistic comparison—Systematic Theology (ST) does find itself responding to a different culture than the creeds. However, you only need to open the contents page of some famous tomes of ST (e.g. Wayne Grudem, Louis Berkhof, and Charles Hodge) to realise that their priorities differ from that of the ancient creeds.
[ii] This quote comes from one of George MacDonald’s Unspoken Sermons, called It Shall Not be Forgiven, commenting on Luke 12:10. The full context of the quote is as follows: ‘To return to Luke 12:10: is the refusal of forgiveness contained in it a condemnation to irrecoverable impenitence? Strange righteousness would be the decree that because a man has done wrong, he shall forever remain wrong! Do not tell me the condemnation is merely a leaving of the man to the consequences of his own will. God will not take shelter behind such a jugglery of logic or metaphysics. He is neither schoolman nor theologian, but our Father in heaven. He knows that that in him would be the same unforgiveness for which he refuses to forgive man. This would be to say that Satan has overcome, and that Jesus has been less strong than the adversary, the destroyer. What then shall I say of such a doctrine of devils as that even if a man did repent, God would not or could not forgive him?
‘All sin is unpardonable. There is no compromise to be made with it. We shall not come out except clean, except having paid the uttermost farthing. But the special unpardonableness of the sins we are considering lies in their shutting out God. The man who denies truth, who resists duty, who says that which is good is of Satan, or that which is bad is of God, denies the Spirit, shuts out the Spirit; and without the Spirit to witness with his spirit, no man could know himself forgiven, even if God appeared to him and said so. The full forgiveness is when a man feels that God is forgiving him, and this cannot be while he opposes himself to the very essence of God’s will.’
[iii] Alister McGrath, ‘I believe’: Exploring the Apostles’ Creed, p. 29-30.
[iv] Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, p. 246.
[v] For more on this, see Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, p.258-259. Also see Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, p.31-71. Alister McGrath, in his book, ‘I Believe’, also makes reference to the comparison of God to Mother (p. 31).
[vi] As Ben Myers points out (The Apostles’ Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism, pp. 20-21), early Christian teachers went to great extents to spell out that the word Father had no connotation of gender. Myers notes, ‘this was one of the things that distinguished Christian belief from ancient pagan ideas about the gods.’ Greek and Roman beliefs contained a ‘colorful cast [sic]’ of male and female gods, whereas the Christian/Jewish God transcended gender. Quoting Gregory of Nazianzus, Myers states, ‘”Do you take it that our God is male because of the masculine nouns ‘God’ and ‘Father’? Is the ‘Godhead’ a female because of in Greek the word is feminine?” Such crude biological thinking would be pagan, not Christian.’
[vii] As Tom Wright puts it, ‘He wants us to grow up and take responsibility, to think it through, to be learners, disciples, not just mute followers. But…he offers and provides the strength and courage that enable us to believe, to learn, and to join (participate) in his project of healing and hope. And love.’ Surprised by Scripture, concluding words to his essay entitled Idolatry 2.0.
[viii] Mother Teresa, as quoted in Come Be My Light, edited by Brian Kolodiejchuk, MC, p. 269.
[ix] To quote Ben Myers [brackets mine].
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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