God is like…

I learned a new term the other day ‘aphantasia’. It means the inability to draw a picture in your mind’s eye, or see an image in your head.
Only a very small percentage of the population have it, but for those who do, they find it impossible to ‘see’ the image of something which they are not looking directly at in that moment. So, I might say ‘think of a horse’ and most people will be able to picture one and describe its qualities. But people with aphantasia will not.
This capacity to conceive of something between what we sense as creatures and what we think was the rough basis of Aristotle’s description of the phenomena he termed ‘phantasia’, typically (though not necessarily faithfully) interpreted today as ‘imagination’. 
It appears that the prophet Ezekiel did not suffer from aphantasia. His world of holy imagination is rich in images with detailed description, but he is also cautious - or perhaps I should say, humble, in his account of the vision he received.
Ezekiel likely should have been beginning his priestly service around the time he received the vision, but in the midst of exile, God instead gives him a prophetic ministry which he shares with us here. 
Visions are never without purpose. They are there to tell us something – about ourselves, or God, or the way the world could or should be – they are not simply constructions of our imagination, though they certainly draw on our imagination to help put the otherwise inexplicable into words and pictures which we can work with.
The prophet does not say, ‘I imagined God and this is what he looked like’. The vision the prophet receives is the gift of an image from God to be explored and interpreted with and in and by the Church. However, we can also say that our experience of God and the world is, necessarily, shaped by our own life experiences and the lenses we look through. We hear this particularly throughout Revelation as it mirrors some of Ezekiel’s earlier imagery and bringing it into conversation with political and temporal themes of the first hearers would recognise. 
Does this human or recognisably temporal involvement then discredit the vision? 
Or does it instead help us to understand that the Holy is so often mediated through tangible things; things we can conceive of or see in our minds-eye, because we otherwise have no other frame of reference for the glory, majesty, or overwhelming splendour of the Divine. God is ineffable…. But also, curiously reveals himself to us. 
This is why Ezekiel is cautious. Because to describe God and the heavenly realm he inhabits, even to project his image within the culture of the exiled people, is to risk idolatry. Ezekiel may or may not profess to have been spiritually transported to the heavenly realm, but his picture of it is vivid and awesome, detailing colour and shape and movement and likeness… but stopping just short of declaring ‘God is’…X 
Instead, he has the humility to offer what God is like…. And what the heavenly realm and its creatures are in the likeness of. Thus, allowing us to discern for ourselves what is the purpose and application of this vision and what it means for our relationship with God. 
And on this Trinity Sunday, what better time to contemplate the mystery of the Triune God made known in and through relationship? Because, however wonderful or indeed accurate our holy imagination may be, whatever images we are gifted in our life of faith or search for God … they themselves are not God. Just as imagining our future is not the same as living it out. 
Prophesies like this are about giving us a vision of the future that helps us know more-fully what God is like. But it is not until we take the risk of relationship with the God they point towards, that we will truly know the One in whose image, we were made. 
Amen.