Some of the most impressive imagery for God has entered into our collective consciousness by way of the Hebrew Scriptures. In them, we're treated, if that word can be accurately used, by a shocking and awe-inspiring array of sublime description of the Divine. God is the great creative force that existed before anything else, and merely spoke the universe into existence. He is the booming voice from above that Adam and Eve trembled in fear of after they ate the forbidden fruit that made them aware of their own capacity for alienation from Him, turning their perception of Him from love to judgment. One of the oldest texts of the Hebrew Scriptures is the book of Job, which tells the story of a good man to whom many bad things happen. Throughout the story, both Job and his friends are trying to figure out God and get an answer from Him as to why bad things happen to good people. Finally, God responds in a frightening fiery blast of rhetoric from the mouth of a hurricane: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?" [Job 38] To this, Job could only respond: "I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." [Job 42] (the King James English is so impressive for this, isn't it?)

And it goes on... God is shown raining fire down from the Heavens upon cities, and raising up armies to slaughter whoever lost His indulgence. He is raising up His own troops from the decaying skeletal bodies of fallen soldiers in front of a shocked Ezekiel, knitting sinew and muscle back together in a scene that looks like it could just as easily have been from a horror movie as from the Bible. Prophetic visions record for us the horrifying sights of monsters of the deepest black of the oceans, winged scorpions, stars falling to the earth and water and moon alike turning blood red. And yet somehow I still meet people who wonder how you can dress all in black and watch old black-and-white monster movies and be a Christian!

The lesson today from the Epistle to the Hebrews, a Christian letter to a community who would be most familiar with God through this imagery, alludes to the events of the Exodus in the stark, empty, mountainous desert wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula. Imagine camping there in the blistering heat of the lifeless expanse, towered over by these grand peaks, from the top of which comes powerful flashes of lightning, booms and cracks of thunder and great tongues of fire. The leader of your group, which is itself the whole number and hope of your ancestry, has disappeared into the writhing mass of dark clouds above some days ago, where what sounds like some terrible, tremendous voice can be heard. When all hope seems lost, he returns, and even he is trembling with fear, his own face having taken on some kind of otherworldly glow.

And what he tells of his experiences and what he was taught brings no peace. "If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death"! How horrible! How absolute, how dreadful! If this is the punishment for something so meager as an animal, how shall we humans, imbued with conscience and responsibility yet so tainted by sin, ever hope to survive in the judgment of such an angry God! How can we endure such laws of righteousness and judgment, of everything from dealing with neighbors to observing Sabbaths with solemnity?

This sort of imagery has often proven to be a detriment to Christianity whenever we have concentrated on it for the wrong reasons. So many people, too many, have forsaken the faith because of this dreadful vision of a God of such supreme glory and power and might. They contemplated those questions I posed rhetorically, and decided that they cannot live in this life, let alone the next, in abject fear. The term "fear of God" has become our hinderance rather than our help. Who indeed should wish to follow a God so full of power and judgment that would make Him so willing to use it on us?

We know who... For those who take this view as the only relevant, reasonable and "Biblical" view of God, words betray a religion devoid of joy and inspiration, replaced as it is by the cold, hard, inevitable logic of predetermination, the glory of God as its own purpose, and the damnation of souls. We would become the Pharisees who follow the rules and know the dogmas, who have only been able to endure the words of God by deadening their spirits, complaining indignantly when someone has broken the Sabbath, ready with our stones to fling.

Because of the power of this vision of God, it is very easy for us to let it fill up our consciousness entirely. The horror of the blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice we beg not to hear any longer can blind our senses and numb our thoughts to the point where we may forget that they are not the end unto themselves. Like everything, these images serve a purpose! They have an intended effect that is not to scare us out of our pants and out of the pews.

Recall Job's prayer of repentance: "I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." [Job 42] Instead of obscure prayers from the Hebrew Scriptures in which we ask for more of these or those things, it is prayers like Job's that should be on our lips. "God, You are so much bigger and more powerful than I am, You know all and can do all. I cannot grasp what you are, it is beyond what I can do as a mere human being. Up to now, I have only been repeating what people have told me about You, claiming to understand You through rules and dogmas. But I was wrong. I cannot understand You. I can ask only that You help me to know You."

This sublime perspective on God serves a purpose, which is to break down the walls of our own rigid perceptions of God, the rules and dogmas that we've come up with so that we can try to fit God into our skulls and subordinate His power to our uses. Because of our alienation from God, we have tried to provide for our own security by controlling what is around us, including God. To gain power over the all-powerful, we try to forge chains of doctrinal propositions, and to take the work of salvation off His hands we develop works that we ourselves can do - whether things we do with our hands or things we accept with our minds - to guarantee our own salvation.

But we cannot do that. Where were we when the universe was created? Were we the ones who set the limits of the oceans or the courses of the stars? We have no ground to stand on when we defiantly approach God from our alienation. God instead approaches us, all His frightening power and majesty and glory breaking through the flimsy fortresses of our egos, inspiring in us repentance and reconciliation, which brings us into the intimacy with God that is Mount Zion, the Heavenly city of Jerusalem.

Through this intimacy we give up trying to understand God, that is, to dissect God and figure out what He is and what makes Him tick. Now, we begin to know God, which is to say that we experience Him, resting and trusting in who He is without necessarily knowing what He is or how it works. That seems so contrary to the messages of our society... "Trust in who God is rather than in figuring out what He is? That's too frivolous, ambiguous, emotional... We need rigid objective facts!"

But when we become open to God, experiencing Him through the proverbial "seeing of mine eye", we learn that the only real security comes through this... This... This Love. Behind everything is Love. Behind the Creation of the universe is Love, through Whom, for Whom, by Whom it was all made. It is Love that knew us before It even formed us in the womb, and consecrates us before we were born. It is by Love and in Love that the innumerable angels are gathered to celebrate the name and work of Love. It is Love that assembles the firstborn and perfects us into righteousness, which is to live for Love. It is Love that acts as God's principle of judgment, for justice is not punitive, punishing us for wrongdoing. Justice is to be just, to be outraged at injustice, and the action which comes from that. Often we are told, as Christians by other well-meaning sisters and brothers in faith, that punitive, legalistic JUSTICE is God's objective defining characteristic and that Love is just the frilly emotion that we cannot base anything on. In reality, it is the other way around: justice is the emotion of outrage and the acting upon it, but Love is the strong and sure foundation of it. Injustice is Love offended, justice is Love satisfied. It was Love that became incarnate as Jesus to teach us Love, to mediate a new covenant in Love, and which speaks hope to us through the sprinkled blood that promises a better world than the blood of Abel.

If we forget Love, or subordinate it to justice or law or anything else that would deaden our soul with a weight we cannot carry and words we cannot bear to hear, then we are nothing. As Paul tells us in the 13th chapter of his 1st letter to the Christians at Corinth: "What if I could speak all languages of humans and of angels? If I did not love others, I would be nothing more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. What if I could prophesy and understand all secrets and all knowledge? And what if I had faith that moved mountains? I would be nothing unless I loved others. What if I gave away all that I owned and let myself be burned alive? I would gain nothing, unless I loved others." [1 Cor. 13] We would trivialize Love as a mere emotion, yet we learn that even if what we say or do is legally right or morally good, if it is not done in Love, it is somehow fundamentally not true. This Love, which is kind and patient, supportive, loyal, hopeful and trusting, which is not jealous, boastful, proud, rude, selfish or quick-tempered, and which does not keep a record of wrongs, is itself the Truth.

So if we forget this Truth, while we may be good at following laws, we forget justice. We may remember that we can feed an ox or water a donkey, because that is what is written in our book of rules and dogmas about God. But we forget that the greater demands of Love calls us to more, even if breaking rules - which have become a source of injustice - is necessary. The blood of Abel, spilled involuntarily in hate, alienated us. The blood of Jesus, shed voluntarily in Love, speaks to the better world of reconciliation, of healing for the crippled and sight for the blind, clothing for the naked and food for the hungry, comfort for the mourning and the Kingdom of God, the Heavenly city, for all.

It is this Truth that is Love which the frightening, powerful, horrifying sublime image of God in the Hebrew Scriptures points us towards. It is not the end unto itself, meant to make us anxious in fear of judgment. It is, instead, to break down the walls that would keep us from intimacy with God and intimacy with each other, and the hosts of Heaven, and all those who have come before us and will come afterwards, in the common family of Creation and the Body of Christ.

Amen.