This is an historical moment for me!  I have never before been given a sermon topic and asked to preach on it - not even in seminary!  And what a topic:  "What Does God Look Like?"

As I began to tackle this last week, it occurred to me that I could answer it very simply - that God is love and wherever you see love expressed and acted out, you can say that you have seen God.  I could stop now and we would all have an extra 20 minutes for socializing in the hall!  Well, I feel this compulsion to make the answer more difficult so I won't do that.  This may be a character flaw in me! 

I have been reflecting on the fact that I am standing in the pulpit of a church unlike any of the other denomination which is rooted in Reform Protestantism.   Yes, you heard me right.  Unitarianism and Universalism both grew out of that, whether we all realize it or not. 

I bet if I were to go to any other Protestant service this morning and ask "Who here believes in God?" - every hand would shoot up.  Don't you think so?  If I were to ask that question at any Unitarian Universalist worship service, though, - well...let's give it a try.  "Who Here Believes in God?"     (Look around - about half raised their hands!)

Maybe you folks who didn't raise your hands came to church by mistake or accident today.  Maybe you didn't get the e-mail.  Or maybe you're just curious.  Are you maybe hoping I'll change your mind about the existence of God?  Wouldn't that be a major coup for me this morning!

You can relax because my goal this morning isn't that lofty.  No - my aim is just to give this sermon topic a fair hearing.  First of all, the worship committee, in giving me this topic, has set me on the path to devising my own lectionary and I thank them for it.  For those of you who don't know what that is - here is a brief description:

For centuries, Jews have had a schedule of scriptures to be read in synagogue for the next year.  The early Christians adopted the practice and refer to it as the lectionary and that continues to this day in many churches.  Typically, the lectionary goes through the scriptures in a logical pattern, taking into consideration various holidays and special occasions. 

So, now, thanks to this topic, I'm taking Step One into my own lectionary.  Because it seems reasonable to start at the beginning and proceed to the end, and because the verse also happens to go with the topic, I'm basing this sermon on Chapter 1 of Genesis.  This verse is taken from the Tanakh (the Hebrew scriptures):

Genesis 1:26   And God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth".

Here's my first question and I never had it answered to my satisfaction in my early days in Baptist Sunday School: 

"Teacher, why did God say "our" likeness?  Why not "my" likeness?  Was someone else there?  No?  Well, was God lonely, and made up a friend, like I made up Rebecca when I was four?  You don't think so?  Well, if God wasn't lonely and there's only one God, why does the Bible say "our."  What do I think?  I don't know!   I'm only seven!........."

Well, I've read and thought quite a lot since I was seven and I have an answer but I'll come back to that later on.       

Right now, I want to make it clear to everyone here today that I do believe in God and I'm going to use that word pretty freely.  Along the way, I might even get around to answering the question of what

God looks like to me.  I have to add those last two words because I just can't visualize God for anyone else.  You're on your own with that.

I don't know about you but I've never been able to relate to terms like "higher power" used in 12-step programs or "universal truth" or "all knowing presence" or any other highly abstract words intended to convey the idea of divinity.   When I think about God, I want to have some visual image.  Something more accessible than an elusive bright light, but less accessible than an angry old man with a beard. 

While I was in seminary I was required to take several World Religion classes and I fell in love with Hinduism.  I think there were two basic reasons for that.  One was my need to hold a specific a vision of the divine in my mind.  I remember a blessing I have heard since I was a child "May God's face shine upon you and be gracious unto you".  I wanted to see God's face.  That reminds me of the fact that I don't especially like to talk on the phone.  Even as a teenager, it didn't appeal to me.  I wanted to discern the other person's feelings and reactions by seeing their expressions.  I didn't really feel like I was in a relationship with that person unless I could see his or her face. 

I don't think it's a stretch to understand that my desire to see God was rooted in the same need for relationship.  Hinduism's emphasis on the visual fits perfectly with that need.  There is a Sanskrit word "Darsana" (Darshan) which means to see with reverence and devotion.  If a worshipper does Darshan correctly, he or she forms a bond with God and God forms a bond with the worshipper. 

Here, for example, is a very visual description of the supreme being, adapted from Chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita:

The supreme divine form has many mouths and eyes, and has (within it) many wonderful sights, many celestial ornaments, many celestial weapons held erect, wore celestial flowers and vestments, has an anointment of celestial perfumes, and is full of every wonder; an infinite deity with faces in all directions. If in the heavens, the lustre of a thousand suns burst forth all at once, that would be like the lustre of that mighty one. In the body of the God was the whole universe (all) in one, and divided into numerous (divisions).  

The worshipper described it this way, "O God of the universe! O you of all forms! I do not see your end or middle or beginning. I see you bearing a coronet and a mace and a discus - a mass of glory, brilliant on all sides, difficult to look at, having on all sides the effulgence of a blazing fire or sun, and indefinable. You are indestructible, the supreme one to be known. You are the highest support of this universe. You are the inexhaustible protector of everlasting piety."

What a vision!  No wonder God said to Moses, "Man may not see Me and live."

Although that description is frightening to me, I so appreciate the immensity of it.  Still, not many of us could embrace such a fierce, overwhelming apparition.  Most Hindus cannot either and that, I think, is the reason there are so many gods AND goddesses in Hinduism.  That brings me to the second reason Hinduism appeals to me:  It celebrates and worships both male and female aspects of God.   

Our Western tradition, of course, accepts only One God as valid and rejects what it views as the over-abundance of God (and Goddess) image found in Hinduism.  Many Westerners do not understand that those simply represent various functions of one Supreme deity, Brahman.

I grew up in a Baptist church, with one image of God - an exclusively male one.  Even though my seminary professors required that we refer to God using both masculine and feminine pronouns, we were still operating from a Bible translation that was stubbornly and exclusively male.  It's very pervasive.  Did you hear the answer of one little girl earlier today when I asked what God was?  She said "God is a man."

Well, "so what?"  So - I, for one, didn't believe that the God of the Bible was my God.  I couldn't relate to him.  I wasn't made in "his" image because I wasn't a "he."   Therefore, I must be less than the males around me – less worthy, less intelligent, less capable, less creative, less divine.

I know at least one person out there will argue that the Judeo/Christian God includes both male and female.  Well, I ask any of those people to try an experiment for me.  For a day, a week, a month - as long as it takes - I want you to read passages from the Bible and whenever you see a masculine reference to God, substitute a feminine one.

Here's an example, taken from Exodus Chapter 15, after God has parted the seas to allow the Israelites to continue toward the promised land (with substitutions):

Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LADY, for she hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath she thrown into the sea. The LADY is my strength and song, and she is become my salvation: she is my God...

If you're a man, ask yourself, honestly, if you feel included when you read that passage with a feminine emphasis on God.  It's not a perfect experiment, because you can always go back to that safe, manly God, but it might give you an idea of my feelings on the subject.

The first goddess image I encountered in Hinduism is named Lakshmi.  She is depicted as a beautiful woman with four arms, standing on a full-bloomed lotus and holding a lotus bud, which symbolizes beauty, purity and fertility.  Her four hands represent the four ends of human life:  righteousness, prosperity, desire, and liberation from the cycle of life and death.   She is a mother goddess and embodies generosity, grace and charm.

I felt the charm right away.  I went on to read many descriptions of her and the other commonly worshipped Hindu feminine forms of the divine, such as Kali, Durga, Sarasvati.  I even visited a Hindu temple in Massachusetts and entered their sacred space which was filled with statuary of several Gods and Goddesses.  I befriended a Hindu woman there and learned much more than I could ever have found in books.  "We must have more than one feminine and one masculine image," she told me.  "How could Kali and Sarasvati, or Ganesha and Shiva exist in the same image and all be properly honored?"   (Kali is a warrior in feminine form; Sarasvati the feminine creative form; Ganesha the male aspect of success, education and wisdom, and Shiva, a destructive male force.)   

She told me, however, that the masculine and feminine images must both be present as distinct female and male aspects of the one supreme God.  "That is absolutely essential," she told me, because no image of God can be complete, universal and whole without both. Proper honor must be given to both genders in equal measure."  YES!!!  That so reflected the feelings I had held for so long that it brought tears to my eyes.   I had been validated and that was all I needed in order to visualize God's face in my own way.

Paradoxically, the specific God aspects I hold in my mind from Hinduism have left me free to imagine God in ways that have nothing to do with the human form.  When I feel a need to visualize a specific God form in prayer, I have several to choose from, depending on my intention.  When I don't feel that need, the presence of God shows itself to me in other ways.

To return to an earlier question, why did God say that humans were made in "our likeness" anyway?  I have a guess. 

You see, according to Genesis, God created a lot of things before humans came along.  Heaven and earth, day and night, sea and land, stars and planets, sunshine and rain, mountains and valleys, trees and grasses, reptiles, birds, fish and animals that run, crawl, climb, hop and gallop.  They were all included in that phrase "our likeness."  We humans, then, are made in the image of nature and nature lives in us.   So, when I look in wonder and awe over the rim of the Grand Canyon, I say "thank you" to the God I see.  And when I look into the soft, brown eyes of my eternally loving and forgiving dog I say "I love you" to the God I see.  I agree with Kahlil Gibran when he wrote:

And if you would know God be not

therefore a solver of riddles.

Rather look about you and you shall see

Him playing with your children.

And look into space; you shall see God

walking in the cloud, outstretching Her arms

in the lightning and descending in rain.

Amen