Where is God?
I Advent
November 30, 2008
David Brubacher
Texts: Isaiah 64:1-9
Mark 13:24-37
When our children were young, the Where is Waldo? books were popular with children, and adults. In a busy landscape of people and social activity the idea was to see how many times you could locate Waldo. Turning the book at different angles helped.
Today is I Advent. Our Advent theme, Let your face shine, invites us to ponder where and how in all of life we encounter God. Each week we will explore a different face of God as we move through Advent toward Christmas. Today we begin with The Hidden face of God. Each week watch as the banner crafted by Deb K. and Carolyn L. (and others??) moves toward its full artistic expression of the mystery of God being revealed among us.
So, on Monday I put up our Christmas lights. I’ve asked myself, “Where is it that I see God in that?” Given that I hang the lights from on the roof, I see God’s hand in not falling off the roof. Over the years I would often leave the lights on Christmas Eve as a sign of welcome to Christ-child. Now that I am more energy conscious, I don’t do that anymore. But I always had a special feeling of God’s presence as I turned off all the other lights before going to bed.
As much as I like the tradition of Christmas decorating, theologically, for me it only represents a thin veneer of happiness and joy that we string over layers of human reality. The economic downturn with the gripping fear of job loss is very real for many. As we sing the Advent and Christmas songs of peace and good will to all, our country is at war and we participate in many layers of hidden and not so hidden structural violence. Many family gatherings have layers of tension. Others sit alone in tiny apartments mystified at all the talk of joy and good will. The feelings are similar for those living with various degrees of anxiety and depression. Where, indeed, in all the multi-layered realities of life, will we find God during Advent and Christmas?
Lest you doubt, I do believe Advent and Christmas is a time for Christian celebration. The promise of God coming into our lives in the birth of Jesus is a source of hope and joy. One might expect, however, for the first Sunday of Advent to begin with the echoes of Handel’s Messiah from Isaiah 40, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God!” Or perhaps, I John 1:5, “God is light, and in God there is no darkness at all.”
Instead, the first biblical note we hear comes from Isaiah 64, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence.” Dripping with raw emotions of distress and anxiety, the question is, “Where are you, God?” The prophet’s voice then, and now, calls for a longing after God not rooted in sentimentality but in repentance and expectation. How might we turn the picture to gain broader perspectives on the places where God is present in our lives?
Isaiah 64 represents a dark period in the life of God’s people. There had been so much hope and optimism. The Persian King Cyrus had released them from their exile in Babylon so they could return to Jerusalem. While in exile the people grappled with the question, “Where are you God?” They felt abandoned by God in Babylon, a foreign city far away from the land God had promised as their home. Slowly they became aware of how they had sinned against God in following after other god’s. Their sin had cut them off from the future they desired. When King Cyrus released them they were anticipating a second chance.
Upon returning to Jerusalem their hopes were dashed. Their beloved Holy City with its Temple lay in ruin. Wild animals and foreign people had overrun the holy place. The people were poor. The devastation quickly uncovered old conflicts. There was conflict with those who had come to live in the land. Where the people had believed God was leading them to a renewed future, it felt more like God had turned on them. It even felt like God had never been their God.
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence,” the people cried. Our Advent theme is taken from a similar cry of God’s people in a refrain repeated three times in Psalm 80, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.”
Both cries represent a turning of the picture to find God. Isaiah 64 and Psalm 80 belong to a genre of biblical literature known as communal lament. Laments were a plea for God to intervene in history in a decisive manner to save the people from devastation. As a community the people broke from their normal routine to gather at a local sanctuary to offer sacrifices and lament their distress.
Individually or collectively we become distressed when our primary values are violated. Israel had always understood itself to be God’s people. As we find them in Isaiah 64 they felt God was against them. Their distress was raw. Their anguish was paralyzing.
And so they gathered to lament. The Isaiah text read this morning is actually part of a larger prayer from Isaiah 63:7-64:12. The prayer has four distinguishable movements. It begins with a recollection of God’s mercy in the past, “I will recall the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that t
he Lord has done for us,….” Even with an indescribable sense of alienation, the prayer begins with an expression of trust in God.
From trust the prayer voices the immediate complaint. The primary complaint was the seeming absence of God. “Where are your zeal and your might? The yearning of your heart and your compassion? They are withheld from me.” Within the question is also the sense that their distress and their sin was all God’s fault.
After the complaint was issued the people confessed their sin and cried for God’s help. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” they cried. They confessed, “There is no one who calls upon your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.” With this it feels like the people have utterly emptied themselves before God. Now they are ready to receive from God.
In a final movement there is a reaffirmation of trust in God, “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever.” In the middle of pain and anxiety this turning of the picture helped to find God’s presence.
We moderns have lost the art of lament as a profound act of worship. We offer our individual rants to all who would listen, even those who would not listen. We believe we are entitled to having things go our way. When they don’t we take matters into our hands. Our society offers examples of all manner of dysfunction as a result of grasping for joy and happiness in our own way.
C.S. Lewis says, “The Christian faith is a thing of unspeakable joy, but it does not begin with joy, rather in despair. And it is no good trying to reach the joy without first going through the despair.”
Now we might understand why I Advent begins on the note of despair. I have long believed the church should do more to recognize the despair among us in preparing to celebrate Christmas. For that reason I was eager to work on a Blue Christmas Service as suggested to me when I arrived at TUMC a year ago today. I will say more about that service next week. But for now simply know that it is open to one and all. Come alone or bring your friends.
Mark 13 speaks out of a similar setting as Isaiah 64. The beloved Temple in Jerusalem, the sign of God’s presence, is again in ruin. After a Jewish revolt in 70 C.E. the Romans totally leveled the holy site. Today the stones remain where they fell on the west side of the Temple Mount. Mark chapter 13 addresses the situation in typical apocalyptic language anticipating the end of time. There was again deep despair among the people. There was political and religious persecution. The revolt left families torn with divided loyalties. False messiahs laid bear all manner of confusion. Mark encouraged the faithful not to give themselves up to despair or grasp at any flicker of hope.
Mark’s encouragement gives direction for our preparation this Advent and Christmas Season. Essentially Mark says, “Don’t panic. Stay awake. Be alert.” Advent is a preparation for Christ’s coming into the world, both the coming we observe in Christmas and the second coming in which we anticipate God’s final judgment and redemption of the world.
How will we prepare to receive the Christ-child? Where will we see God? Put up your Christmas decorations as is your custom. I love the tradition. But know they are not the true essence of Christian joy celebrated in Christmas. That joy only comes in moving beyond our human realities. We lift our eyes to God in trust. Watching and waiting for Christ’s coming we continue in God’s mission to the entire world. We will respond with love to those around us.
In a few moments we will move into a service of Communion. May the bread we break and the cup we drink be a sign of Jesus coming to light for us a path through the realities of life. Where Christ’s light meets our reality, there we find God. AMEN.