"After settling in Washington, D.C., in 1974, in a new job with the Navy, I found myself continuing the quest that had begun in Coronado with Charlie and Credo. My quest had a goal, but like Jonah, I refused to respond to it and spent three years in the belly of the Pentagon. Like Jonah, I was finally spewed out and continued my journey to Ninevah. I could no longer live within the Navy story, I belonged to the Gospel story. I had surrendered!" (Brad Hall in a 1980 seminary class paper.)
There's a wonderful story about a preacher's young son whose mother called him in from play to join the family for dinner. As he entered the kitchen from the backyard, his mother said to him, "Now, John, please go wash your hands before you eat." John protested, saying, "Why do I always have to wash my hands? The young boy grumbled as he stomped off to the bathroom. "All I hear about in this house is germs and Jesus and I have yet to see either one." (Don Shelby)
Young John's sentiments about Jesus are shared by many of us who yearn to experience, to touch, see or feel the immediate or personal presence of God in Jesus Christ in our lives--yet all too often we sense that presence eludes us.
A few weeks ago a friend was sharing with me a particularly hard and painful time in her life, a time when nothing seemed to be going right. She spoke for every one of us when she said:
"I've always been a good person. I've followed the rules, prayed and gone to church. Now, Brad, where is God when I really need Him most? If He's really here, why doesn't He show himself and why did He allow all this to happen to me?"
My friend echoes the painful cry of all of us, indeed the Psalmists first articulated the plight of a "Missing God." Some three thousand years ago, these were their prayerful words from the Psalms:
"How long will You be angry Lord?" (Ps. 79)
"Will You be displeased with us forever?" (Ps. 85)
"Why do you stand so far off Lord, and hide Yourself in time of trouble?" (Ps. 10)
"How long O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?" (Ps. 13)
My friend's and the Psalmists' struggle with what seems to be a Missing God, or as it is known in ancient theological terms, "Deus Absconditus," is everyone's struggle--including mine.
This morning I would like to share with you some of the ways I've learned to cope with and understand a God in Jesus Christ, who as the young preacher's son puts it--we've yet to "see."
The first step to experience God in our lives is that:
1. We must truly want to see, hear or feel his presence.
There is a copy of a fascinating Victorian painting in the great chapel of Keble College, Oxford, which depicts Jesus standing in a garden outside a door knocking. It's obvious that the door has not been opened for a long time because there are vines growing all around the doorway. Indeed, the whole garden in which he stands is rather overgrown and unused. I studied the painting for a long while last summer before I realized that something was different about that door. It had no doorknob. And the implication was that the door was locked from the inside.
Underneath the painting is written this inscription from The Book of Revelation (3:20):
"Behold I stand at the door and knock, if anyone hears My voice and opens the door I will come in to him."
One theologian calls this desire to experience God the difference between believing in God and believing God. I know that there was a point in my life when I really did want to meet God. Before that time I toyed with the idea of God and I believed in Him. But there came a time, a particularly painful time, when I decided to open the door and believe God. And darned if He didn't come into my life.
Now, given this first and crucial step, what are some of the ways we experience God's presence in our lives?
2. As a rather scientific and often overly-analytical person, I have had to learn the hard way to Let Go and Let God. That's a popular phrase which gets overused and for much of my life I never really understood its true meaning.
A helpful analogy to the process of letting go and letting God is our all-too-human difficulty in remembering a name, word or phrase. We have all had the experience of trying to remember a name in conversation or the answer to a Jeopardy question. We know we know it, it's right there on the tip of our tongue. But the harder we try to focus on finding it the more it eludes us. Finally in utter frustration we drop it and go on to do something else. Then, as if by magic, the answer, the name appears spontaneously.
Most of us have learned that by trying too hard we actually prevent ourselves from finding the word or answer, but by letting go of the problem, by relaxing, and allowing our inner energy to work for us, we allow the answer to come to us. I believe this is true in our struggling relationship with God as well. Let go and Let God.
A writer in the recent Anglican Digest says an individual or even the Church cannot possess or control the presence of God, only God can control his own presence.
I don't mean by this that we should quit praying or trying or seeking. I do mean that there are times when we must relax, turn ourselves or our problem over and allow God to work in His time and in His way. Let Go and Let God!
3. A third way that I have experienced the presence of God in my life is to be aware of and sensitive to the little miracles that happen everyday. I call them icons or windows through which God's spirit or helping hand appears just when we need it most. An example:
In January I concluded a seminary board meeting earlier than expected at 3:45 p.m. in the afternoon. My plane was scheduled to leave San Francisco Airport at 8:30 p.m. that evening. So for about ten minutes I leisurely bid farewell to my friends until it occurred to me that there was a 4:56 p.m. flight I might catch. I looked at my watch. It was 3:55 p.m.,impossible to drive from Berkeley to San Francisco in one hour on a Friday afternoon
Yet, something inside said, "Brad, go!" I jumped into my rental car and started down University Avenue (like Highway 111 at its worst). Every stoplight flashed green as I came to it. I turned onto the most crowded freeway in the bay area (80). It was packed, yet after two minutes, the whole pack moved on at the speed limit. I turned onto the Bay Bridge at 4:15 p.m. There were only five cars in my lane through the tollbooth. No accidents on the bridge...I zipped straight through. At 4:25 p.m. I turned onto the main freeway out of San Francisco down the Peninsula and my car radio said that traffic was dead-stopped at a San Mateo exit near the airport. My heart sank. But I continued on hoping for the best and by now wondering why in the world I was doing this.
As I came to that exit the whole freeway became a great parking lot, but the airport exit was open just one hundred feet before that jam. I zipped over the traffic and rolled up to the car rental booth at 4:45 p.m. The whole counter was empty (Friday afternoon). I dropped off the rental agreement, jumped into the shuttle which was waiting there, door opened. We went all the way around the airport (United is at the far end). I dashed into the terminal, through security, into the gate and at 4:56 p.m. sharp walked into the airplane. The door closed and we were off, on time! I had just accomplished an impossible feat. Boy, was I proud!
As Carol was driving me home from the Palm Springs Regional Airport, I proudly recited my litany of what I called "Good Luck." She said, "There's a reason, Brad." As we walked into the house, the phone rang and the reason rang clear.
I was needed to do an important funeral that next day. The family was desperate and at that very hour they were gathered together waiting for my response. (Indeed, I discovered later that there were compelling reasons why I needed to do that funeral.) After the call I turned to Carol and said, "I think my 'Good Luck' just turned into 'God's Will.'"
I don't try to understand these icons anymore. I just accept them as mini-appearances of the hand of God in my life. And I am learning how to see through good luck and into God's will. How? Well, as one theologian says, it's like the difference between looking at or looking through a window. If we focus on the window itself we see all the streaks and dirt and shimmer of the glass--a very limited view. But if we let our eyes focus through the window we are able to see not just the beautiful landscape outside, but into eternity itself. It's all in your point of view.
Well, we're off to a good start. But with only three modes of experiencing God's presence, we'll have to add to the list in future sermon's.
In closing, this wonderful thought (shared by Bob Chamness):
I don't know what the future holds for me.
But I do know who holds it.
And that makes the difference
between despair and hope.
Amen.
© 1998 - 2008Saint Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Palm Desert CA" All
rights reserved.