We have the words "God Is Love" placed on the wall, as do many other Christian congregations, but do we really believe it? The problem is that all of us have feared at times that God could be angry at us - I know that I have and I can tell you that God had the right to be angry. The only problem is that it is a contradiction to the nature of who God is. Yet throughout scripture and the writings and sayings of its interpreters the wrath of God is still mentioned and makes its appearance frequently, in both the Old and New Testaments . What I will attempt to do here is to trace the history of the idea of an angry God and to try to find a way to the grace of God, where all of us need to be.

The times of the Old Testament bring with them a history of violence and retribution - the civilization of that time was drenched in it. Here is one such account , an assault against Israel at the hand of the Assyrians, around 746 BC:

It is logical to assume that such an environment would include a conception of a God of anger, for humans tend to project onto God the contents of their own culture. Is it no wonder, then, that instances of violence are recounted again and again throughout Jewish scripture, that animal sacrifice was an integral part of religious practice, and that the ultimate projection of that was the sacrifice of the Messiah as atonement for the sins of the people? All of this was to satisfy the wrath of an angry God.

Back in confirmation class we learned about the composition of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. It was important, we were told, to see them not as a uniform , unbroken series of writings but as a mixture of four schools of thought , a kind of patchwork . These viewpoints are intertwined throughout each of the books in greater or lesser degrees of each. Knowing this makes our reading more accurate and gives a context for greater understanding , especially the passages which contradict one another , much as do the gospels . In a similar way, I would suggest to you that Biblical literature can be read in two other, very important, layers of interpretation. On one hand there is the God of retribution, anger and punishment. On the other hand is the God of grace. This is easily illustrated by comparing the concluding verses of the Old Testament and the New, one a curse and one a blessing. Listen:

And from the concluding words of Revelation:

It is not as easy as to say that the first half of the Bible is full of anger and retribution and the second half is full of grace. Like the schools of thought in the Pentateuch, they are present in varying degrees. While the revelation of our Lord is the fulfillment of grace, it existed before, and not only in Judaism but in almost every other world religion. After a survey of nine or ten major religions in his book The Christian Doctrine of Grace , H.D. Gray exclaims, "Grace is everywhere!" ²

Humans have wrestled with this problem since the dawn of religion. If grace were not freely abundant and unlimited, it would not be grace, yet there are those who insist that it must be earned. Who is right? The most probing analysis of the problem is Harold Ditmanson's 1977 work, Grace in Experience and Theology . After its publication it was criticized for its "radical" assertion that God's grace may be equally accessed by all. His thesis was that God's grace was exactly that, free of limitations, with a universal availability to all regardless of their station in life, their degree of civilization, or their spiritual growth, that all that was necessary was that it be tapped and called upon. Yes, it is a radical concept, but one that I believe, because grace is radical, probably the most radical idea in the universe. It shows that, in the end, all that is really good comes from God. This, of course, flew in the face of those who could not accept grace apart from their own doctrinal concerns. It was so influential that it actually precipitated the split between two synods of the Lutheran church, the Lutheran Church in America and the Missouri Synod. On a personal note I recall that after reading this book for the first time I was energized with the notion of a vast underlying support of the universe for all beings in their spiritual development, an ally, a firm foundation, a constant presence. Many books can be said to offer life-changing experiences, and this was one of them.

I would also like to suggest that grace is intimately tied up with monotheism and the concept of a universal God and this , like grace, is not limited to Judaism and Christianity alone . Before Abraham there was Akhnaten, the "Rebel Pharaoh." On this day when we celebrate the Sun at its zenith, it is fitting to consider the imagery of the sun. Aten (from which Akhnaten took his name) was a common Egyptian word which meant the visible disk of the sun. It never had any religious connotation , only the sun as the sun, as from this hymn of praise carved on the temple wall at Luxor: "Thou shootest up at sunrise without fail . . . Thy radiance is in thy face, thou Hidden One. Shining metal doth not resemble thy splendors." But as time went on the concept changed to that of the spiritual radiance which shines on all. Akhnaten's god was abstract and immaterial , ³and with it lovingness, universality and deity. Akhnaten declare d that, although the tongues of men are diverse, as are their forms and their skins, all are welcome in Aten's temple. ⁴ For it is true, like the physical sun, Aten shines on all, including the just and the unjust, full of its graciousness to all life.

It is no coincidence that the Aten Hymn of Akhnaten resembles Psalm 104 - there can be no doubt . The Hebrew psalmist must have known it well, for several passages are quoted outright. In 1905, James Henry Breasted made a line-by-line comparison. We will not do that here, but later, if you wish, turn to Psalm 104 in your Bible and see if this, from the Aten Hymn, sounds familiar:

And so the gracious, loving, universal God was originally an Egyptian idea, not a Hebrew one. And it is here that the story gets interesting, for it gives us some clues as to how the God of anger and retribution arose in opposition to the God of grace. Sigmund Freud in his book Moses and Monotheism makes the amazing assertion that there were two Moseses, an Egyptian one and a later Hebrew one. He cited Biblical research by Ernst Sellin in 1922 using the book of Hosea that uncovered a tradition that the Egyptian Moses was killed by the Jews, and the religion he instituted (Aten) was replaced by Jahve , and the Jahvistic school is one of the four schools of thought running through the Pentateuch. Unfortunately, I don't have the reference, but I was able to find this in Hosea 6:9: "Like so many robbers in Israel, a band of priests commits murder on the road to Shechem. Appalling behavior, indeed!" The notes to the Jerusalem Bible state that the event referred to is unclear, so this at least leaves open the possibility.

Who is this Jahve? Jahve is a volcano god of the Midianites, common to all tribes in the area, which the Hebrews adopted during the exodus. ⁶ Freud, quoting the historian Eduard Meyer, states:

And so the mediator of the new religion was called Moses, but this Moses was the son-in-law of the Midianite priest Jethro. Freud describes th e transformation:

Pretty amazing, if you ask me, but essential if we are to understand the two contradictions which are at the root of the religion into which Jesus was born. The benevolent, gracious God was still there, like the rays of the summer sun which warm the land, but there too is the volcano god in all his wrath and fury. And in passing through the texts of scripture we can feel very clearly at times the opposition of the forces of loving kindness and of anger and vengeance, pulling at each other and confusing us in the process. This is why it is important to know where this angry god came from and to find some of the clues as to why he arose. We can also see that this angry god can have no participation in the life of grace, or in the person of Jesus. Ditmanson writes:

How can that be, that Jesus is God's grace? How can the operation of grace be understood? Well, to begin with, it is like those late-night commercials where the miraculous cleaning cloth, the Sham-Wow, absorbs the stain and restores the object to its original cleanness. The reason that Jesus is the Savior is that he himself takes on our negative tendencies, and this is a real process, not just some doctrinal statement. It is very difficult to understand how this takes place, but it is a living process which can be duplicated, as Jesus said it would when he said in John 14:12, "I tell you most solemnly whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself. He will perform even greater works." We have a glimpse of the healing process of grace in the writings of one that many consider to be a modern-day avatar, Adi Da Samraj, who dealt with his devotees much in the way that Jesus may have dealt with his, or now deals with us. Listen to his description:

And so it is that in saying farewell to our negative tendencies we also say farewell to this angry god. And it is more than a product of meditation alone, for as Albert Schweitzer says, "mysticism is not the friend of ethics but the foe. Nor is thought ethical when it has no tendency toward deeds." The Buddhists get it right by making "right action", a life of no harm to all sentient beings, a living meditation. A meditation which ends only in self-absorption is an empty practice which bears no fruit. Walter Rauschenbusch, who wrote the meditation in our bulletin, says:

But the devotees of the old volcano god still walk among us, and they are not confined to one religion alone. I can still recall, in the days following the 9/11 attack, the statements of both Rev. Falwell and Osama Bin Laden that the tragedy was God's judgment on America. Only when we can let go of this foolish idea that the lives of people must be sacrificed to meet some divine end, will we live the life of grace and peace that is our birthright, and the birthright of all humanity. And, in doing so, we must no longer ask if God is on our side, but if we are on God's.