Daily Images of God--Lent 2022
Day 39
April 10
SIMPLICITY
The basic credo of Judaism, the Shema, repeated each day in morning and evening prayer, quotes the irreducible affirmation of monotheism in Deut. 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: YHWH is our God, YHWH is one" (שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד׃). Though the last phrase of the verse probably had the original sense of “YHWH alone,” the affirmation of the oneness of God has always been understood as an affirmation of the indivisibility and uniqueness of God, an idea often expressed by the phrase, “the simplicity of God.” Despite passages in the Hebrew Bible where God is described in very human terms for narrative purposes, and the Christian Testament’s portrayal of God being fully present in the human person of Jesus, there are dozens of passages in both bodies of Scripture affirming or at least hinting that God is one, simple, unchanging.
The oneness and simplicity of God is found at the start of the historic formulations of the Christian faith, the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ (or Baptismal) Creed: “We believe in One God.” Drawing from Augustine and other early church writers, the Calvinist Westminster Confession of Faith (2.1) expressed it this way: “There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will … most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth…” The refined air of such theological formulation can at times make one gasp, wondering whatever became of the anthropomorphic God of Genesis 3-4 or the God Jesus taught us to call “Abba” or Papa. But the point such theologizing is trying to make is absolutely congruent with the faith of Jesus: God is one; God is simple; God is ever-present and undeflected Love.
Leonard Bernstein expressed the idea of the oneness and simplicity of God in one of the preparatory prayers for his theater piece Mass+” which draws from Psalms 86, 98, and 121.
“Sing God a simple song:
Lauda, Laude …
Make it up as you go along:
Lauda, Laude …
Sing like you like to sing
God loves all simple things
For God is the simplest of all
I will sing the Lord a new song
To praise Him, to bless Him, to bless the Lord
I will sing His praises while I live
All of my days
Blessed is the man who loves the Lord
Blessed is the man who praises Him
Lauda, Lauda, Laude
And walks in His ways
I will lift up my eyes
To the hills from whence comes my help
I will lift up my voice to the Lord
Singing Lauda, Laude
For the Lord is my shade
Is the shadе upon my right hand
And the sun shall not smite me by day
Nor thе moon by night
Blessed is the man who loves the Lord
Lauda, Lauda, Laude
And walks in His ways
Lauda, Lauda, Laude
Lauda, Lauda di da di day …
All of my days
Jesus taught that to enter God’s Reign, we must become helpless and simple as a child. He instructed us to be like God, in Matthew teleios (wholly conforming to our ideal self, often mistranslated “perfect”), understood in Luke as oiktirmon (compassionate). The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, in the 1800s applied the concept the Simplicity of God to the Christian moral teaching of imitating Jesus to become more God-like.
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we will not be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
No comments:
Post a Comment