OK, to be fair, it was a comic book god, but the encounter was pretty thrilling nonetheless.
The summer of '62 was when "funny books" took a turn ---a permanent turn, as it turns out--- for the serious. That was when the company that would eventually become Marvel launched The Incredible Hulk (May), Spider-Man (August), and Thor: The God of Thunder (August). Today, we are surrounded by these Marvel characters (and many, many others) on our televisions, in our movie houses, and, of course, in many printed forms. But, then ...
I was still a "tween," not yet a teenager, but no longer a child; Junior High loomed ahead in the approaching fall. I was a ripe target for the angst-filled storylines of Spider-Man and his alter-ego, high school science nerd, Peter Parker. The Jekyll-Hyde nature of the Incredible Hulk, with his anger management challenges, perfectly resonated with a young male about to explode with not-entirely-welcome testosterone.
But the character who captured me the most that summer was the mild-mannered, partially disabled physician, Don Blake. While vacationing in Norway, he came upon a walking stick in a cave. Blake's limp was pronounced and he needed that walking stick. Eventually, circumstances caused Dr. Blake to strike that stick on a rock ... and in a flash Don Blake was transformed into the Norse God of Thunder, Thor, and the "walking stick" resumed its true form: Mjolnir, the most powerful hammer in existence.
That hammer, forged by dwarves as one of three gifts for the Norse Gods, was enormously powerful; it could level mountains, summon storms. Like a guided missile, it would hit whatever it was thrown toward, and, especially handy, it always returned to the hand of the one who wielded it. Both hammer and god would return to their "lesser" forms whenever Mjolnir was out of Thor's hand for a certain period of time.
Here's what happened in my pre-adolescent brain at the moment of Dr. Blake's transformation: Wow! There's a super hero inside that guy with the limp! And all that day, and for several to follow, and all through the next school year as I read more of Thor's adventures, long after that first adventure had started to fade from short-term memory, my brain still mulled that initial thought:
There was a "god" inside that man.
Thor was one of a pantheon of Norse Gods. The Greeks and Romans had similar pantheons: leader-gods like Odin and trickster gods like Loki. But these were all, actually, god-come-latelies. Long before those cultures rose to the point they could influence even modern day thought, there were other beings designated as gods. In scripture, we come across many cultures that worshiped beings they called gods. Often, these were hand-carved or cast metal forms that occupied space in people's homes or on alters at high places near their cities.
If you've spent nearly any time reading Old Testament scripture, you likely know that God ---the God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who led the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage--- regarded these so-called "gods" as fictitious creations of humans, no more worthy of worship than a rock or block of wood.
And God was angered by any who did worship these pretenders.
And that brings us to Isaiah 44:6-8, one of this week's Lectionary scriptures. After innumerable messages to the worshippers of these idols proclaiming their complete absence of validity, God calls them out:
"Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. Who is like me? Let them proclaim it, let them declare and set it forth before me. Who has announced from of old the things to come? Let them tell us what is yet to be. Do not fear, or be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? You are my witnesses! Is there any god besides me? There is no other rock; I know not one." (NRSV)
With that kind of certainty on display, it may not come as a surprise that when that comic book got me to thinking about the "god" inside the man, it dovetailed perfectly with another such matter that was on my young mind: Immanuel, God-With-Us, the incarnation of Jesus. I was much more interested in the true God, the one who was unafraid to declare Himself to be the one and only, the one so confident of their silence that He was unafraid to challenge those fake gods. The one who entered this existence inside a person ... for real; the one who didn't need a magic hammer to transform him from God to man and back again ... because He could be both at the same time.
That's the God encounter that mattered to me.
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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 11 (16) (July 23, 2017)
Genesis 28:10-19a
Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24
Isaiah 44:6-8
Psalm 86:11-17
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
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Will you be in the Waco area? We would love for you to join us for Lectionary Breakfast Friday morning. Still meeting in the back room of the local "Egg and I" restaurant, we start (almost exactly, but not really) at 8:00 and have a great hour (ish), together. Come for the food and stay for the fellowship ... or just come for the fellowship.
Our time together is transforming.
Blessings,
Steve
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