Several Saturday's ago I was drinking my coffee and reading the newspaper when I read in the religion section of the newspaper that the latest book of the Rev. Lauren Winner, an Episcopal priest, was "Wearing God." After I read the article I went online and bought the book, UPS delivered it and I read it. It was the book I had intended to write.
"Our" idea is simple but not simplistic. She took some of the lesser used metaphors and similes that are Biblical images of God and explored them. Her belief is that each one of them can be a means of enriching our spiritual journey as an important resource during our times of prayer and worship.
Understanding that we can never exhaust all the ways we have of speaking about God, each image has a truth that is evocative and can pull us into the intimate presence of God.
We are all aware of the metaphor of God as the Good Shepherd that is used in both the Old and New Testament. Many of us memorized the 23rd Psalm in Sunday School.
There are also metaphors of God as our clothing, as bread, as a vine, as fire and as a poor man to name a few of the other metaphors.
We read in Genesis 3 how the human beings after that had sinned and were exposed by their sins, attempted to make clothes out of fig leaves.
One of my more memorable days in seminary was the day the Old Testament professor addressed this text. He brought to class leaves from a fig tree and he invited us to touch them.
Instantly I started to itch and the prickly spikes could have drawn blood. He laid them on the table. When the class ended two hours later, the leaves had started to shrivel. He called it another bad choice of Eden's human residents.
Then God intercedes and makes clothing for them out of animal skins. As they exited the Garden after having put on God's clothes for them, all they had to do to remember their compassionate and loving creator was to get dressed.
Paul, Peter and James all wrote to the church to remember our baptism when we "put on Christ." Their Biblical reminder took me on a quick visual trip through my closet. I have all kinds of clothes, including my vocational clothes, fishing and gardening clothes, casual clothes and my comfort clothes. But, as I prepare to make my clothing choice of the day, I must first prayerfully put on Christ.
Life can knock us over and take away our breath. We feel exposed when a death enters into our day such as when we receive a telephone call that someone we loved has died, when we received a shocking diagnosis or a relationship is shattered. We all know those moments.
We also know and use those Biblical metaphors or similes as we "walk through the valley of the shadow of death." What we believe and say about God makes a difference.
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Parks is the former rector of St. Theodore's Episcopal Church in Bella Vista. He can be reached by email to [email protected].
Religion on 05/06/2015