Most casual readers of the Bible seldom notice the world of difference between the way we moderns experience this life we have been given to live, and the way ancient men and women experienced the world into which they had been born.In our post-enlightenment yet still sceintific age, we are driven by the events and forces around us to ask what or how. What are the economic and social and environmental forces which cause famine on the continent of Africa? How is it that the genetic factors and the sociological conditions find one child headed for the presidency of a corporation, while another has only violence and crime ahead? What were the strategic and political reasons this war was won while that one was lost? We have developed ways of analyzing a situation, organizing data, drawing conclusions based on facts and figures that allow us to say, for the following reason, this and not that has occurred in human history.
But for the primitive man, the ancient woman, the question was not what but who. Or as Henri Frankfort put the difference, "For the modern, scientific man, the phenomenal world is primarily and 'It'; for ancient--and also for primitive--man it is a 'Thou,'" For the ancient person, a thunderclap, a sudden shadow, the eerie and unknown clearing in the woods, the stone in the path which causes you to stumble and fall...the details of life's vicissitudes drove the ancient person to ask not what but "Who?"
To wit, where we would study certain atmospheric changes that broke a drought and brought about rain, the Babylonian observed the same facts, but experienced them as the intervention of Imdugud, a gigantic bird who came to their rescue. The bird covered the sky with the black storm clouds of its wings and devoured the Bull of heaven, whose hot breath had scorched the crops. These ancient men and women experienced life--every bit of it--as caught up and held and moved by some personal being--in fact, before biblical times, by many personal beings, colliding and collaborating to make life a blessing or a curse.
Now I am not advocating a return to the worship of giant bird-gods and sun deities and premonitions about every turn in the road or twist of fate. But for two reasons, we would do well to reconsider the truth of the ancient experience of the world. First, it is important for us to try to understand that mind if we are ever to be responsible interpreters of the biblical witness. To grasp and be grasped by the power of these stories, we need know and remember they were written by people who asked not what but who...not how but why.
Which brings us to the second reason we ought explore this ancient mind, and it is for the sake of our own modern souls. We look at the ancient world and think, "How self-deceived": to see the world in terms of gods controlling the winds and waters and whims of the human heart. But I tell you, the ancient surely would look at us--at our belief that knowing how something works or what something is made of--our belief that knowledge somehow grants us a significant degree of control over the universe--the ancient surely would look at us and say "How self deceived," and be more right about us than we are about them!
For the God who walked in the garden in the cool of the day, who accepted Abraham's hospitality one afternoon as he journeyed across the Judean hills, who informed Noah of the coming flood--in short, the God who was so close and approachable that one never knew at what casual moment, coming suddenly around a corner, one might be met: that God is our God too. So on this morning, we do well to look to those people whose question was not what but who.
Unfortunately, what we discover with every turn, is that when life is thus experienced, things do not get easier, but much more complicated. To say that we have to do not with a what but a who is, in the first place, to plunge headlong into the further question, "Who he or who she or who it?" On this day when pulpits are filled with words about the motherhood of God, we would do well to underline the person of this personal God, but to do so in a way that does not resolve God's gender, but holds fast to the paradox of God's personhood in relation to our own.
I think of Alice Walker's Shug, saying to Celie, "You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking or don't know who you looking for....It? Celie ast. Yeah, says Shug, It. God ain't a he or a she but a It."
Biblically speaking, that just isn't so! "It is the very essence of Hebrew thought," writes William Irwin, "that God is a person. The I-Thou relation in which primitive man saw his natural environment was maintained, no, rather was sublimated in Israel's faith: the world was to be understood in terms of personality. Its center and essence was not blind force or some sort of cold, inert reality, but a personal God."
Theologians and preachers alike have done all sorts of contortions with language and with theological concepts in recent decades, to maneuver us around the problem we have when we ask not what but who. Some have ceased using a personal pronoun for God, thus giving us fine prose like "God who gave us God's self in Jesus Christ...God who was reconciling God's self to the world..." and so on. Or some have ceased dealing with God as a noun, as a person, and so talk of God as a verb, as action, activity in the world. The intention is absolutely right in trying to pry our idolatrous minds away from an image of God that is strictly male. But the truth is thus missed. For to remove from God the personal, to exchange the Thou for an It, even a He for a transitive verb, is to sidestep the essential paradox of the biblical faith.
To be sure, the ancient Hebrews were about a patriarchal as they come. But if we dare to do more than thumb our noses at their culture, and instead plumb the depths of their mind on the question of God's gender, we discover an invaluable paradox: that part and parcel of God being personal was God being invisible, a belief that made the Hebrews an absolute anomaly to all the folks around them. All other religions fashioned images for their gods, but Yahweh was not to be seen, was without image.
A story is told that when Pompey, in 63 B.C., stormed Jerusalem, he forced his way into the Holy of Holies, much to the horror of the Jews, in order to see for himself what was the inmost secret of this strange religion. And there he found--we all know what: nothing but an empty room! The bewilderment of this leader from the image-ridden West, standing in the presence of a mystery that still eluded him, brings us to the heart of our struggle even today. For even as feminists theologian try to strike a balance by recovering the goddess, or exchanging the he for a she, or the father for a mother, the radical, radical nature of the biblical faith is missed: faith in a God who is at once personal and without image. How we grasp that paradox in this age of what and how, I am not sure. But I suspect, at the very least, it requires we ask not what but who, we call upon not an It but a Thou, we bow down not before an image, but a Person whose invisibility is only and always an incredible revelation of intimacy.
The second problem involved in asking not what but who is one that has lingered with us inspite of our scientific age and sophisticated outlook. For on the edges of our existence, when there is no "what" to be had, we are driven to ask "who" in the face of life's sorrows. A cancer that was but a strange little mole and now seems to hold sway over our life; a parent who was, only weeks ago, strong and secure, and now looks to us as parent with a sad, child-like dependence; a friend who was our tennis partner one minute and dropped dead the next. More moments than we dare admit, drive us from the detached control of our "whats" to the desperate cry for a "who." We look for some intention behind the suffering, an intention which would, at least, let us in on the reason or would, at most, give us some object for our anger. Thus to ask not what but who, is to be led, like Job, into a deeper struggle with human suffering than any mere "what" can imagine.
The ancient mind could not conceive of an impersonal, mechanical cause which, when observed, would produce a predictable effect. Cause was a purposeful will committing an act. In the earliest of times, that meant, if the river didn't rise, it was never tied to lack of rain in the mountains, but it was because the river refused to rise: the gods must be angry. Everything was personal. Death, illness, misfortune, defeat, as well as health, happiness, prosperity and long life were purposefully willed.
Which brings us again to the radical nature of the Hebraic faith. For while the Babylonians and Egyptians found the gods to be implicated in every drop of rain or lack thereof, the fate of individuals was a matter of indifference to their gods. They had their own concerns and could only rarely be persuaded to consider the mundane matters of human existence. Into such a world came the revelation of the one God, whose being was turned toward humanity in love, and whose nature was compassion. The "who" whom the Hebrews called upon was the God who said of Ephraim, "I took them in my arms, with human bonds I drew them, with cords of love." This was the God of whom the psalmist sang, "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him," and of whom the prophet said, "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you and ye shall be comforted." To the ancient mind and I daresay to the modern mind, such care is almost beyond belief: that the great God of the universe could care for me, could have me in mind, could have made me to ask not what but who?
Finally, to ask not what but who has its difficulties because it requires that we live as a people not beholden to any thing that comes our way, but as a people claimed by Someone. Or, as John Baillie put it, "I have never been able to see how any being that is not a person could possess a moral and spiritual claim over me. ...A God who is neuter makes no claims; He simply allows Himself to be looked at."
The incredible turn of these ancient minds toward one God, personal and without image, was not only a turn toward monotheism, but toward ethics. That in a terrifying world where heads rolled to the right and to the left with no particular consequence, there was revealed a God who required this people to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with their God. The God of Israel was no neuter God who allowed Himself to be looked at, but a person who made claimes upon their lives, and upon the lives of all peoples. We may not find it easy to discern God's claim upon us in any given moment. But what I do know is, as we wrestle with the dark and difficult matters of our times, we make clear to the world, and maybe even to our own children, that the question on our lips and the claim upon our hearts is no mere "what," but is a "who," an Almighty Thou who pervades every inch and second of our days and will not let us go...will not let us be.
Paul wrote to the Romans long ago that what can be known about God is plain because God has shown it to us...that ever since the creation of the world, God's invisible nature, namely God's eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. You and I are a people who hear no voice in the thunderclap, who do not perceive in the unexpected shadow the presence of God, who would generally not suspect that the stone in our path is a sign from God. But we are a people who know Jesus Christ, and know in him what the ancient had to discover in the clouds and the rains and the mountains and the manna: that this immortal, invisible God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes, is Emmanuel, God with us. Thanks be. Amen.