Article 1: God - a relational being

As we begin this new series on the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective this Sunday, I am faced with a daunting task. Article 1 is about God. It attempts to boil down all that God is into a little over one page plus scripture references and a few footnotes. Yet even in that one page, there is so much that is said about God. Now I must further boil down that one article into one sermon about God... it simply can't be done. One simply can't say all there is to be said about God in one sermon!

Instead, I must focus in on some central component of who God is and know that the rest of it will all flow from there. One of the references in article 1 takes me to Job 37, a masterful, poetic passage on the vastness of whom God is. God is so much more than anyone of us can really fathom. Yet as I read that passage, I am struck by the fact that it is part of an extended dialogue among Job and his friends in which the ways of God are challenged. Yet God who is so mighty and beyond us does not ignore these challenges or dismiss the folly of humanity; but rather chooses to respond to these charges, to act in a relational way.

We see this relational part of God from the very beginning with Adam and Eve in which God was "walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze" (Gen 3:8b NRSV). We notice this in God's calling of Abraham to be the father of a nation that will be in relationship with God and that will offer God's blessings to the world through them (God working through humanity, rather than simply in spite of humanity). We marvel at this in the coming of God incarnate (God in the flesh walking among humanity) in the being of Jesus Christ. And we experience this in our call to faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The God of the universe is many things and so much more than we can imagine, and yet the God that created us also desires to be in relationship with us!