What if God was one of us?

What If God was one of us?

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            “What if God was one of us?”  That was the name of a popular song sung by Joan Osborne in this memorable music video.  She sang words that to some were probably sacrilegious.    She sang, “What if God was one of us, just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home?”  Depending on your perspective I suppose you might say that the singer with the ring in her nose was not paying God his due picturing him as everyday people.  Or you might with a bit of a different perspective imagine that her icons of the Christ were as legitimate of windows to the heavens as those of the sacred iconographers.  What if God was one of us, not the icon so unlike anyone you or I have ever seen, but was the least among us?  What if he were the prisoner, the child in deprived circumstances, a confused angry kid from a broken family, a workaholic getting richer in money and poorer day by day?  Did Joan Osborne have the story of Christ wrong or did she have it perfectly right?

            I have to admit that I have this desire to see Joan Osborne make her way to do a concert someday in my hometown of Tulsa.  She can sing a song.  She can own a song.  See what she did with “What becomes of the Brokenhearted?  Watch that last minute and a half especially.  Wow, that is talent worth paying to see.  You hear her wonderful ability to sing in varied ways even in “What if God was one of us” when she opens with the lines from a southern gospel twang and then turns it into something that someone living in New York City might think about God and the Gospel in a world of strangers commuting here and there from all races and societal backgrounds.  She can sing happy too, like this classic Motown hit.  I guess you can tell I’m a bit biased on behalf of this singer.  But there is more to why I like the song “What if God was one of us” than the fact as one African-American put it, “that the girl chile can sang!”

            I like how she starts her song with lyrics from a “southern gospel rapture song”.  She begins singing in a southern twang describing Jesus coming down in a sort of a heavenly airplane for to get his own.  But then she imagines as a modernistic nose-ringed New York City gal wondering what if God really was one of us?  What would he be like?  Would he be in such glory we could not approach, or would he be a slob like us?  What would we ask him if we could ask him something?   Would he be high and lofty or would he dwell in the form of the lowly, the meek, and the humble?  Would He be the one seated on a throne in glory or the slob like us riding a train trying to make his way home?  Would he be that really fat woman, the little boy, or the old man with a distinguished mustache and an Eastern European look?  What would he look like if he was one of us?

            Jesus and the Apostles will not let us choose which Jesus we would see, serve, or love.  He has risen!!!  He has risen indeed!!!  He is seated in the high and lofty places on the throne of grace.  So we can only see him in the prisoner, in the hungry, in the grieving, in the thankful, in the brother of means and of no means.  We see him in our neighbor and in every human face we see.  For how can we love him whom we cannot see unless we love him whom we can see?  How can we love God whom we do not see unless we love men and women and children made in his image, those whom we see constantly?  Perhaps it is a wonderful thing to memorize John 3:16, “for God so loved the world. . .”  But perhaps it is an even more wonderful thing to see a human face and think instinctively, “ah this is what it means that God so loved the world. . .” 

            Perhaps that is why James in writing his epistle boiled the entire law of God into one command and not two.  He spoke of the royal law of loving your neighbor as yourself as fulfilling the entire law.  Why did he do that?  Did he forget that we are supposed to also love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength?  Surely to love our neighbor is not to keep the whole law?  What can James mean?  The Royal law – is the King’s law.  The King has risen!!!  The king has risen indeed!!!  Perhaps it was because he knew who the King was.  He was the elder brother of our human race, and the only begotten Son of God.  We see him when seeing the slob just like us and in seeing the stranger on the bus trying to make his way home.  We see him there for Jesus yearns to be beside the slob on the train trying to make his way home.  We see Jesus through his brothers and sisters in human flesh for he yearns to keep the family together as the true and faithful elder brother who loves his brothers and sisters.  We see God in them, for the Gospel tells us he is with them as long as they will allow him to be there for them.  How can we love our God whom we cannot see unless we love them he loves whom we do see?  If you can’t say John 3:16 word perfectly from memory, it is good enough if when you see a human face you think “this is what it means that God so loved the world.”