The title of today’s sermon is “Playing God.” What do you think of when you hear that? What do you think of when you hear the phrase, “playing God?”
Perhaps you think of someone who judges people, someone who is judgmental, someone who is too eager to decide who’s in and who’s out, who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s saved and who is eternally damned.
Maybe you think of someone who makes life and death decisions: doctors debating when to pull the plug on a brain-dead patient; legislators debating the legality of abortion; scientists making new discoveries in stem-cell research.
Or, maybe you think of someone who is a control freak, someone who always has to be in charge, someone to whom you want to run up and say, “Hey! Who made you God?”
I think that something along these lines is what most people think of when they hear the phrase, “playing God.” These are, of course, mostly negative images, especially when we think of people as being judgmental or control freaks. We accuse such people of playing God, and the implication, of course, is that we should not do so; we should not try to play God. “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord. God, not people, is the judge of right and wrong. Leave the judging, the deciding, the dictating to God.
However, when I read scripture – and especially when I read the gospels – I find that the most significant and primary ways of describing God do not describe God as a judge, a decider, or a dictator; and terms like these are used to describe God, there is often an ironic twist to the description: a compassionate judge, for example; a judge who is willing to show mercy; a judge who is not judgmental.
The way God is described in scripture, the most significant attributes of God are not judge, decider, or dictator; the most significant attributes of God are compassion, reconciliation, and love.
This means that those who “play God” by being judgmental or by being control freaks really aren’t playing God at all. They’re playing … something else. What they’re playing isn’t God, because God isn’t like that.
I’ve told you before about a young man who once told me that he didn’t think anyone could ever love him, or that God could ever love him. He truly believed that he was unlovable. And because of this, he often cried himself to sleep at night.
Well, who told him that he was unlovable? God didn’t tell him that. People who thought they were playing God told him that. Too bad they didn’t understand the God they thought they were playing.
God is the God of compassion, the God of love, the God of reconciliation. If we really do want to play God – and I believe that we should – then we need to show compassion. We need to show love.
Yes, I do believe that we are supposed to play God. In fact, I believe that we are called to be God. We are called to be God, to represent God, to one another and to the world. People should be able to look at us, and see God. They should be able to see God’s light shining through us.
But that’s not going to happen if we are judgmental. It’s not going to happen if we hold on to our prejudices. It’s not going to happen if we hold on to our grudges. It’s not going to happen if we insist on making all the decisions.
To truly play God in the best possible way, in the way that we are called to, we need to let go of our prejudices and our grudges. We need to offer forgiveness and seek reconciliation. We need to show love and compassion. We need to not tear down our brothers and sisters in Christ, but instead affirm them for who they are: beloved children of God.
All people are precious in God’s sight. Problem is, most live in a world that keeps this a secret from them. Bosses, family members, advertisers, and even complete strangers all give the message that you are not good enough. You’re a fool, you’re a “raca,” the word which actually appears in the original Greek of today’s scripture, a word which my seminary professor said is roughly translated as “airhead.”
Names like these are what we hear most often. And sometimes, the names we get called are even worse. I was at Target the other day, and as I walked out of the store I heard some intense yelling. A woman in a car with the window rolled down was yelling at the driver of another car: “You’re going the wrong way!” except that her language and volume I dare not replicate here. I mean, she was screaming viciously! It was a brutal verbal lashing.
As I left the parking lot and walked home, I kept thinking about the scene I had just … seen. I had, just a few hours earlier, finished reading (for the second time) Father Greg Boyle’s book, and in the last chapter he refers to the line in the song “O Holy Night” that goes, “Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ‘til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.”
It seemed to me that the soul of the driver who got yelled at probably was not feeling its worth that day. In fact, my own soul was struggling to feel its worth, and I wasn’t even the one to whom all that vitriol was directed.
Yes, the driver was going the wrong way in the parking lot. I don’t know why. Maybe he could not or did not see the faded painted arrows on the asphalt. Maybe the way he should have gone was blocked by a car backing out of a parking spot. Or, maybe he was just in a hurry. I don’t know. But I do know that being yelled at like that kills the soul a little bit every time it happens.
The woman who did the yelling: she was in the right, technically. She was going the right way. No doubt this made her feel self-righteous. And so she felt justified in playing God and berating this man, pointing out in such a harsh manner this man’s sin.
But even though we might say she was playing God,… God is not like that.
Jesus once told a story of two people who went to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee. Like the woman in the parking lot, the Pharisee went the right way.
The other person in the temple was a tax collector. The tax collector went the wrong way in life.
The Pharisee, when he prayed, he stood where everyone could see him, and he prayed in such a way that everyone could hear him; and he said: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people, people who go the wrong way: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I go the right way. I fast twice a week, and I give a tenth of my income.”
How many times had the tax collector heard such things? How many times had he heard others boast about their right-way status, and how he was stuck going the wrong way? How many times had he been bullied like that?
Certainly, his soul was not feeling its worth, because he stood far off, hidden in the corner, and would not even raise his head. He beat his breast, and he prayed: “God, be merciful to me, a wrong-way sinner.”
Now, it may seem that the right-way Pharisee was the one playing God, the one closest to God, the one most like God; but Jesus says that it is the wrong-way tax collector who was justified that day before God. It was the tax collector who understood God to be a God of mercy, compassion, and love. The Pharisee, even though he went the right way in life, only knew God as a judge, a decider, a dictator; but he was way off, because that’s not what God is like.
As I continued walking home from Target, I wondered what caused that woman to get so angry. I mean, her anger seemed disproportionate to the situation. I wondered if she just carried around her anger, anger from any number of grievances, anger that she couldn’t let go of, anger that had become internalized, and which could be set off by any little thing.
What causes any of us to act that way, to hold on to our anger, our grudges, and to treat each other in such ways? What leads any of us to play God in ways that don’t reflect who God really is? Well, maybe it’s because we just don’t understand God all that well. Maybe we think we need to compete with one another for God’s love, or that we need to prove ourselves in order to receive God’s love. Maybe we think it’s hard to break in to God’s inner circle, that we have to outwit, outplay, outlast everyone else in order to get there, and so we do what we can to make ourselves look good, and to make it harder for others to break into the inner circle of our admiration and approval.
So we hold on to our grudges. We refuse to forgive. We humble others, bringing them down in an attempt to lift ourselves up. And we play God by judging and bullying others.
Perhaps the woman in the parking lot herself had been the recipient of much anger, the recipient of insults, name-calling and bullying. Perhaps the lack of love and compassion toward her made it very hard for her to show love and compassion to others, and very hard for her to forgive others for their shortcomings.
I wondered about her relationships in life. Did she always have to insist that she was right? I’ve heard that those who insist on taking the right stand are not as close to God as those who stand in the right place, and I think there’s truth in that. Certainly, it must be hard for people who always insist on being right to seek reconciliation and offer forgiveness.
But that is exactly what Jesus says to do. If you come to worship, and you remember that there is some tension, some anger, some animosity between you and another member of God’s family, then you are to go and be reconciled with your brother or sister before you worship God. God is not honored by gifts offered in worship if the ones offering those gifts are in conflict, are filled with anger, or are not speaking with one another. God is not honored by bickering or grudges.
It is for this reason that the liturgy of worship has, through the centuries, included what we call the passing of the peace. The passing of the peace is that opportunity – before you come to worship, before you come to the Lord’s Table – to be reconciled with your brother or your sister. It is an opportunity to play God in a more genuine way, by expressing compassion, mercy, and love.
Because our worship reflects who God is. Our lives are to reflect who God is. And God is love. Unconditional love. The love your mother had for you the day you were born. The love that allows your soul to feel its worth. The love that will do anything to bring you and keep you in God’s inner circle of friendship.
Yes, you’ve made mistakes. You’ve gone the wrong way. Everyone has. And, yes, God is saddened by this. But God will not cast you aside. God will never stop loving you. God is always ready to forgive and embrace, and to let you know that you are a beloved child of God.
That’s what it really means to play God.
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