Hiding and Seeking
September 10th
Gary Harder
Texts:
Psalm 139: 1-12
Isaiah 58:6-9
Luke 15:3-7
Introduction
The game is universal. Hide and seek. “17, 18, 19, 20. Here I come, ready or not”. If the children are still quite small, the hider might help the seeker. “Is anyone under that desk, the seeker asks”? “Nope”, comes the answer from under that desk. But the point of the game, when you are young, is to be found – and rather soon. You want to be found. You don’t want to hide very long. If you are not found soon enough you might get anxious, even afraid, and call out “are you still looking for me?” Maybe the game should be called “Hiding and being found”, not “Hide and seek”.
As you get a bit older the nature of the game changes a bit. You don’t really want to be found. At least not for a long while, and not till everyone else has been found. So you find more remote hiding places, and stay perfectly still. And sometimes the seeker gets tired of seeking and quits the game.
One of our children changed the game in a different way. She should have called it, “Hide and scare the daylights out of your parents”. Hide in the closet when you see one or other of your parents coming in the door from outside. And when that parent opens the closet door to hang up their coat, yell “Boo” at the top of your lungs. She still loves doing that, by the way, for old times sake. We grayed prematurely.
A few times the game of wandering off out of eyesight of parent got a bit scary. A daughter who got lost in a big mall. A wilful straying it was, which got carried a bit too far. She was genuinely lost, and both mother and daughter started panicking a bit when an hour of searching – both of them searching – didn’t resolve the game. When she is found, there are both tears and celebration. Or, young son taken by dad to Edmonton Northlands Coliseum to watch the Edmonton Oilers play hockey, goes to the washroom and innocently wanders out of the wrong exit. The little tyke gets caught up with the thousands of others wandering the corridors between periods. A simple mistake. But very lost. And the thing has to become very public. I, in some panic, ask for a public address announcement to help find my son. All 17,00 people at the game knew that Kendall Harder was lost. Again there is a sense of great relief, and of celebration, when an usher brings him to me.
Hide and seek becomes a metaphor for life – and for faith – and for a Sunday School program in church.
Robert Fulghum writes about the game of hide and seek in his book, “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten”, P.56-58).
“In the early dry dark of an October’s Saturday evening the neighbourhood children are playing hide-and-seek…Did you have a kid in your neighbourhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn’t keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn’t playing the game the way it was supposed to be played. There’s “hiding” and there’s “finding”, we’d say. And he’d say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-Up,…No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He’s probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.
A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn’t want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn’t need them, didn’t trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn’t say good-bye. He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. “I don’t want anyone to know…I don’t want to bother anyone”.
Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found…”
Hiding
I suppose that most of us play a real life game of hide and seek, in some form, most of our lives. As children we want to be found, need to be found, can’t really survive very long hidden in the laundry basket. And we as parents assure our child that we will of course never stop looking for them, and we will always find them, and we will always love them, no matter how well they hide – whether in the fun game or in the serious business of trying to grow up. And they are reassured. And as Sunday School teachers we will find ways to tell our young students that God is always looking for them, always knows where they are, always loves them even if they are hiding in a fun game. And they re reassured, and feel loved, by teacher and by God.
Maybe the primary task of every Sunday School teacher of children is to let each child know that they will always be found, always be loved – by them and by God.
Luke 15
J
esus told the parables of Luke 15 to Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling about the fact that he didn’t play the game of hide-and-seek according to their rules. He was in fact eating with sinners, seeking them out, when they weren’t supposed to be found. Everything was so clear to the religious leaders. They were the ones close to God. They were “the found”. Everyone else was “lost”. And good thing too. Sinners weren’t worth looking for.
So Jesus tells three stories, parables, of being lost and being found. The first one is about a lost sheep. Just wanders off, not trying to get lost, not playing hide and seek, just suddenly lost. A youthful mistake. And the shepherd leaves the 99 sheep who are still safe and looks and looks until he finds the one who got lost. And after finding that one, calls friends and neighbours to celebrate the finding.
The religious leaders aren’t convinced at all by the parable. “What, risk the safety of the 99 to go after a stray”? That’s not their world view. But they do listen to the next story.
A women loses a coin – one of ten – and she searches diligently, sweeping the whole house, until she finds it. And again, when she does find the coin, she invites her friends and neighbours, and she throws a huge celebration party.
God is like the shepherd, searching for the stray sheep until it is found. God is like the women who searches for the coin until it is found. And when they are found, the party begins.
The religious leaders listen, but are sceptical. That is not their religious world view. “But, go ahead Jesus, tell your far fetched stories of lost sinners being found.
One last story. A young son runs away from home. Deliberately runs a way from his father. Not wanders away by accident. Rebels. Has had enough of dad and of God. But eventually comes to his senses when life – and reality – comes crashing down over his ears. The young son comes back home. He seeks out his dad. Who happens to be waiting for him. Has been waiting and hoping and praying all the time. And then throws a huge, spectacular party.
But then there is an older son. The audience – the pharisees & scribes – becomes more and more uncomfortable, listening as the story continues. The older son gets angry that his father would throw a big party for a younger brother who deliberately ran away and now comes home wanting to be a part of the family again. The religious leaders listening to Jesus know the identity of the older son. His name is “Pharisee”. He is the one who is really lost. The tables have been turned. For him there is no party, no celebration.
A more serious hiding
As we grow up, reach adolescence, most of us – and most of our children – will identify, at least somewhat, with the younger brother in the parable. Hiding tends to become a more earnest thing as we grow up. And it’s no longer just a fun game. Hiding from parents. Hiding from ourselves. Hiding from God. Trying to become independent persons. Trying to “find ourselves”. Strange that trying to find ourselves so often involves “hiding.”, or running away. Sometimes very serious hiding, and very serious running away. But we all do it, in one form or another.
Like the Doctor in Fulghums story who wanted to hide his cancer from his loved ones. Wanted to be brave. Didn’t want his family to suffer. And deprived them all of saying a good good-by to each other.
One of the things I hid from myself during my early adulthood was my anger. I felt so good about the fact that I didn’t have a temper, didn’t really get angry. Especially that I didn’t ever get angry at my wife. Mark of a good husband – never get angry. I was very self-deceived. I did get angry. I just hid it from myself. And tried to hide it from others, including my wife, but didn’t succeed with that. Others saw my anger even if I didn’t, and bore the consequences when I acted it out in hurtful but indirect ways. What a relief, finally, in my internship year in London, Ontario, to be able to look my anger in the eyes, to name it, and to try to find more healthy ways of dealing with it. And what a relief to Lydia.
We all know about hiding, don’t we? Some of you us, some of you, have been forced to hide from very real terror – from people and from forces clearly seeking you to harm, or even destroy, you. In abuse. In war. In Russia. In Uganda. In Zimbabwe. Even in Toronto. And then you have hidden in great fear, and then have fled to a safer place. After such hiding, it must be difficult to renew trust.
Psalm 139
Psalm 139 is a powerful claim that all our hiding – whether from ourselves or from parents or from God or from real enemies – doesn’t escape the loving eye of our seeking God.
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me…
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.”
We can’t flee from God. We can be the neighbourhood kid who refuses to be found. God will respect our hiding. God wi
ll not drag us out of the pile of leaves if we refuse to let ourselves be found. But God will not stop calling out “I love you. Why don’t you let yourself be found, kid”.
And each parent, and each Sunday School teacher, echos that calling out, no matter where their child, their student, is hiding. “I will respect your hiding. But I love you. Why don’t you let yourself be found.”
Seeking
But, even if most of us are good at the hiding game, most of us are also seekers. That’s the other side of who we are. The game is hide and seek. Sometimes we are hiders. But sometimes we are seekers. We do seek to find our true selves. We do seek relationships and community. We do seek a healthy intimacy. We do seek friendships. We do look for a true home. We do look for a deep sense of meaning for our lives. And we do seek for God.
Sometimes it seems so easy to find God. We experience the divine in the awesome beauty of nature, or in a close conversation with a friend, or in an answered prayer, or in an answer that comes form reading the Bible, or in a piece of music that touches our soul, or in a simple act of kindness experienced, or in a time of public worship, or in a moment of deep self-awareness, or in a real escape from real enemies. It is as if we said “Where are you God”, and the answer was immediate. “Here I am”.
But it is not always this way. Sometimes our seeking becomes more desperate, and God cannot seem to be found, and we despair, become frightened.
I drove my Sunday School teachers to despair, I’m afraid, in my adolescents. I couldn’t stop asking questions that they couldn’t easily answer. And I kept giving answers to their questions which they didn’t want to hear. I don’t know if I was fully aware of it then, but I think that was my way of seeking God. But it may not have looked that way to my teachers. It may just have looked to them that I was obnoxious and acting out. To their credit they didn’t panic, or kick me out, though I’m sure many times they were tempted to do so.
Maybe that is why it is so important to me that Sunday School, and church, be a place where it is totally safe to seek, to ask questions, even absurd questions, and even to act out sometimes. And for S.S. teachers to welcome the asking, and to not be too big a hurry to answer every question, and to let each student know that this is a safe, loving place for them to explore, to seek.
“Where are you God?” Sometimes there is not an immediate answer – especially when it’s dark, or when we are in pain, or when we are feeling especially lost, or depressed, or fearful. Or just trying to grow up.
Isaiah 58
Isaiah 58 gives a rather startling answer to the question, “Where are you God?” As the Bible so often does. Its not really where we expect the answer, or perhaps even want the answer. We would like the answer to me more direct, more immediate, more “holy”.
Vs. 9 does seem very comforting and very reassuring. “Then you shall call , and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, ‘Here I am.'”.
But there are 8 verses that lead up to this conclusion. And those 8 verses basically say “You are looking for me in the wrong place. You gladly come to worship in the temple. You keep your fasts. You even humble yourselves before me. Everything on the surface looks good.
But, you oppress your workers. You quarrel and fight with each other. You strike out with a fist. I won’t be found in worship when you do those things.
But, if you work to let the oppressed go free, if you share your bread with the hungry, if you bring the homeless poor into your house, if you cover the naked, and if you do not hide yourself form your own kin,
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and I will say, ‘Here I am’‘.
These are the places where we search for God. For ourselves and for our own children and for our students. We challenge them to look for God by feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, by having strong family relationships, by living compassionately and justly, by proclaiming and working for peace in our world. And that is our Anabaptist heritage. That is central to our Mennonite understanding of faith.
And so on the one hand we keep telling every person, every child, every student, “God loves you, and will always find you. And on the other hand we say “God also loves the world, and the best way to find God is to become involved in caring for this world God loves and in caring for the people whom God loves. Move outside of your own needs and your own search and you will hear the answer from God, “Here I am”.
Conclusion
The game goes on, Hide and Seek. Life goes on, hiding and seeking. Lets make it the game of Sardines. Allow yourself to be found. And then everybody piles in together and giggles and laughs and throws a party.