The Coming of Our Hidden God Preached at Wollaston Congregational Church On December 3rd, 2017 Scripture: Isaiah 64:1-9 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down! Isaiah rails against God, in this lament over the desolation of the people of Israel, Their sanctuary is in ruins and their city, Jerusalem, is now a wilderness. The people have got what they thought they wanted. Once Babylon had fallen, Cyrus the Great of Persia took control of Mesopotamia and allowed the Hebrew exiles to return to Jerusalem. They are reunited with the remnant who stayed in Judah over the years of exile. But both groups have experienced terrible trauma. The farmers, shepherds and soldiers who remained in Judea have scratched a living on the land surrounding Jerusalem. They have endured drought and fears of invasion. Meanwhile the returning exiles come with temple gold, reclaimed from the Babylonians. They expect the royal welcome, having traveled 1,00 miles in caravan. But the reality is that even with the riches they have brought there is a long haul ahead of them. The devastation is extreme, those able to work on reconstruction are few. The restoration of Jerusalem is a distant dream. The people become disheartened, conflict arises and they fall into evil practices. And so Isaiah cries out to God, to come down from heaven with full-on wonder and awe. He expects the forests to burst into flame and the mountains to shake and quake at God’s presence. Isaiah knows that he is calling upon the terrifying power of God. And yet it seems that God is hidden from the people, there is no response to their prayers, just a deafening silence. Did God deliberately withdraw Godself from the people because of their unrighteousness. Or is it because God has hidden, that the people are sinning? What about us, in our time, are we also crying out to God? Have we reached that point of asking God to tear open the heavens and come down? Is our planet crying out for intervention from God, the Holy One? Is the desolation of our environment, demonstrated in the thousands of tons of plastic, ingested each year by fish, turtles, birds and ocean mammals, beyond our control? [1] Or is the fair distribution of food and other resources to all the world’s people beyond our capability? Are we overwhelmed and beyond helping the 28 million people in East Africa alone, who need humanitarian assistance. Are we devastated by the news that around 6.9 million children are suffering from right now and that a total of 1 million are in danger of dying by the end of this year? [2] Do we, like Isaiah, hear a deafening silence as we cry out in our need? Is God hidden from our sight, as in the days following the exile in Babylon? What does this hiddenness of God mean for us today? I think there are a couple of options to consider. Those of us who maintain our faith and hope in God may imagine that God is still present, even if hidden. Perhaps God has donned a Harry Potter-type invisibility cloak. In this guise God is able to move in the world unseen, looking in on what we are doing, influencing people and moving objects into the right positions to do the most good. It’s an appealing thought, but it doesn’t really seem to be working for us. How could it be that God, creator and originator of all, even if acting as an adolescent student wizard, is unable to do more good? Would our world still seem to have so many places of desolation, if God was constantly at work manipulating things for the good? A less comforting option is offered to us by German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was imprisoned and then executed by the Nazis for his participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer wrote from the concentration camp in 1944: “God would have us know that we must live as [people] who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us … God lets himself be pushed out of the world on the cross. [God] is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.” [3] Bonhoeffer was indeed writing from a place of desolation. We can imagine that the Nazi’s cruelty reduced Bonhoeffer to a state of depression and brokenness. And yet, even in this condition, he was capable of profound understanding. Bonhoeffer had discovered what the world feels like when God is hidden by the sins of humanity. And I think this get us a little closer to what God’s hiddenness means for us today. And how we might discover God, again, in that hiddenness. In Bonhoeffer’s world, evil was a palpable weighty darkness: the dangers and fears of the plot to assassinate a megalomaniac, the emaciated people of the concentration camp: forced labor, starvation and execution. No wonder God felt absent in that place. But in these Advent days, as we attempt to surround ourselves by with joyful noises and bright lights, we often seem surprised when evil shows up. I was devastated by an investigative report, this week, on slave trade in Northern Africa. This is the work of unscrupulous traders taking advantage of desperate African migrants, who are fleeing famine and trying to reach Europe. By means of secret cameras, CNN reporters exposed a slave auction in Nigeria. Libyans were selling people taken as slaves for the equivalent of $800. One of my colleagues responded to this news story that included a photograph of a line of shackled men. She lamented “how can we say that Christ has come to the world, when we see scenes like this?” And yet, we know that slavery has existed in the world, in one form or another, even in supposedly civilized cultures, since the time of Jesus of Nazareth. Closer to home, in recent weeks we have also heard of women, and others, coming forward and naming instances of sexual assault, harassment, and abuse in the workplace. These acts have been hidden in plain sight and silently tolerated for generations. And they take place in every kind of organization ranging from the entertainment industry, education, and government, to religious institutions. We may lament, with Isaiah, asking “what is our world coming to?” But actually we are simply discovering some of the powers in the world that have been active throughout the ages. What is new, is the visibility of these particular powers. So, how are we to prepare for what we hope is the coming of Christ to the world, yet again this Advent? Are we to avoid the depressing “bad news” cycle, by focusing on “the positive”? Are we to sing our hearts out, with the comforting and familiar carols, as if we can amp-up God’s coming by drowning out the cries of despair? Are we to crank up the power in our homes, like Chevy Chase in that old favorite movie “Christmas Vacation”, covering every square inch of our roofs and windows with twinkling Christmas lights, to usher in the light of Christ? Of course, we can and we probably will do these things and more, for the sake of our own sanity. But in order to prepare for the coming of Christ, perhaps Isaiah is suggesting something different. Joyful music brings cheer, but it may also drown out the silence of our God in Christ who is coming. Bright lights overpower darkness, but too much light will hide the tiny spark, the dimmest glow, of the holy One who is to be found in the darkness. Fortunately, I didn’t spend my entire week in desolation. Another media story that captured my attention this week was Tom Ashbrook’s On Point program called “The Benefits of Silence.” In this show, Ashbrook interviewed Norwegian explorer and publisher Erling Kagge, author of the book “Silence In an Age of Noise.” [4] Kagge talked about his own discovery of the benefits of silence, beginning with the silence he encountered on a solo trek in Antartica to the South Pole. He reminded listeners that “the age of noise” has increased dramatically over the last 10 years, as smart phones have changed our world. In our world today, we are assaulted by noise, and also by continual distractions and interruptions. You don’t need a smart phone to experience this. I have sat with parishioners in nursing homes and seen the TV shows that blast out entertainment, advertisements, and a scrolling banner of breaking news across the bottom of the screen. Kagge sees people in our culture as “running away from themselves” through the interruptions and distractions of their electronic devices. He sees silence as an opportunity to spend time with oneself, something we do very little in modern living. Spending time with ourselves is something many of us wish to avoid, but sadly if we run from ourselves we also run from God. I have to believe that the noise and distractions of modern living are the things that hide God from us in these times. Of course, not everyone can embark on a trek to the South Pole, but Kagge recommends creating one’s own silence:
I was attracted to this interview, because I discover my times of deepest spiritual connection in silence. Once each month, I visit my spiritual director, Susie, who does what she describes as “holding the silence” for me. We sit in the room she has set aside for the purpose, on the small table between our chairs Susie lights a candle and we set down our glasses or water or cups of tea. Following a brief prayer we sit. There are the sounds of traffic passing, birds calling, our bodies settling. And still the silence washes over. The heavens are not torn open. God does not appear in full glory. Christ does not, to my knowledge, descend on the clouds. And yet deep in that time of silence, in the single candle light, we remember God is present. We are settled and strengthened to go on. And so, this first Sunday in Advent, as we meditate the coming of our hidden God, we light just one candle. It is enough, as we wait for God in the almost-darkness. So let us sit, in the dark and the silence, and first let us wait … for our hidden God to enter the world. Amen [1] http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics/ [2] https://www.worldvision.org/hunger-news-stories/africa-hunger-famine-facts-faqs-help [3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 360 [4] http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/11/26/the-benefits-of-silence
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