“Hide and Seek”
Isaiah 51:1-11
St. John’s East Moline – 10/28/2007 – Reformation Day (observed)
Vicar Lorfeld
There is a T-Shirt that one of my classmates showed to me that has a picture of Jesus with a halo hiding behind a bush. The caption on the T-shirt read “If I have to find Jesus, does that mean He’s hiding?” While this shirt is intended to be a humorous poke at those who say, “I found Jesus,” the shirt points out our desire seek God where he can be found.
The prophet Isaiah declares to us today, “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.” But all too often this does not bring us comfort. In fact for a little known German monk 500 years ago, this was downright terrifying.
For Martin Luther, God’s nearness did not bring him any comfort whatsoever, in fact it kept him up at all hours of the night praying, going to confession multiple times a day. God’s hand was in everything, even the a leaf blown by the wind was a demonstration of God’s omnipotence.
Everywhere young Luther looked he saw God’s all holy and all powerful hand. He once wrote, “There is no corner or hole in all of creation into which a man may creep, not even in hell.” There was no place to hide, not even in a monastery. Luther could not escape from the reality that he was indeed a poor, miserable, sinner who was constantly reminded by everything around him, by all of creation, that God was all holy… and he most certainly was not.
The only comfort the monastery could provide was to keep God at a distance. You see the philosophy that had influenced the monks said that if you can spiritualize God, you can push him away and put him inside a box. Now that you have a manageable God, you can go about pleasing him through your vows, through your studying, and through your ascetic lifestyle.
Today we don’t go running off to the monastery as Luther did in his day. Yet if we really are honest with ourselves, we too have at one point or another pushed God off, so that he is manageable and then set up our own ladders to climb up to the God we have made distant.
Borrowing from an early 20th century theologian, Gene Edward Veith writes about the three ways in which we climb up this ladder in his book The Spirituality of the Cross. Each of these ways ultimately does not end up bringing one close to God, they all fail. But if we look at these three ways of seeking God, we will not only see our own failed attempts of reaching God, but also discover the spirituality of the cross which finds a loving God close at hand.
The first way in which we try to climb the ladder to a far off God is through moralism. The way of moralism seeks to earn God’s favor through moral perfection, always doing what is right and avoiding any wrongdoing, all while doing what we think are good works. Moralism sets up strict guidelines, such as don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t dance, don’t play cards, vote Republican/Democrat/Libertarian, fight global warming, be patriotic… the list can go on and on.
Soon we find that we’ve replaced God’s law with our own lifestyle guidelines, this was the error of the Pharisees. In keeping with their own laws, the Pharisees became proud and self-righteous. Yet it was precisely for their self-righteousness and their pride that Jesus called the Pharisees a brood of vipers. The Pharisees had ignored the spirit of the law and made keeping the law something that one could keep, if one was careful and pious enough. What is harder to keep the 5th commandment by not murdering someone, or rather not to hate your neighbor but to love him?
When confronted with God’s law, we are shown just how miserably we have kept His law. The law will always accuse it, it will always show us our sin. We end up back at square one and instead of getting closer to God, we see just how far He is from us.
The second way in which we try to climb the ladder to a far off God is through speculation. Speculation tells us that knowledge is the key to spiritual fulfillment. If we can just figure things out, find the truth, then we would be content and really understand God. Yet this path leads only down a dead end road. Are we really that confident we can figure out the mysteries of God? Can we absolutely know why some are saved and some are not? Even though enough ink has been spilled trying to explain Christ’s incarnation, there is still a mystery that we find in a simple manger that first Christmas with God incarnate as a little baby.
Time and time again, the greatest minds of the Church have fallen into this trap. Thomas Aquinas went too far in trying to explain the mystery of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper, since then the false doctrine of transubstantiation has corrupted the Roman Church. John Calvin could not fathom Christ’s sacrifice on the cross being wasted on those who were condemned, and so infected the church with the idea that Christ’s atonement was limited to those who were saved. And this despite the clear teaching that “God loved the WORLD in this way, that He gave His only Son.” But the real danger of speculation is not that it reveals us to be fools it is that in pursuing knowledge in order to become closer to God, we refuse to let God be God and to remain as we are, his creation.
The third way in which we try to climb the ladder to a far off God is through mysticism. This way has become increasingly popular in our day with the rise of new-age spirituality, and the Gospel according to Oprah that there are many ways to God, and it only matters that you are sincere about your spirituality.
Mysticism is often tied up in experience. You’ve heard me say it before, I really dislike the phrase “spirit-filled worship.” Most often when phrases like this are said an emotional high, like the kind you get at a rock concert are really what one is seeking. This emotional high is not unlike that which the desert monks were seeking. They though if they could cast off their worldly possessions and detach themselves from the distractions of this world, then they would be really ready to hear God.
At its worst, mysticism removes the line between being made in the image of God and the desire to be like God. We’ve heard something like this before. Genesis 3:5, the serpent says to Eve, “when you eat of this fruit… you will be like God.” Even in times when we aren’t this bold as to desire to be like God, we tend to think of our faith or spirituality as some kind of “Super-Jesus power” that will give us health, wealth, success, and overcome all adversities.
But again, mysticism, like moralism and speculation fails to reach God, who we think of as just someone who stands at the sidelines up in the clouds waiting for us to reach Him. We cannot climb up to heaven and in our failure, we fall.
The re-discovery of the Reformation was that of a spirituality of the Cross. This spirituality begins with the admission that our attempts to reach God are futile. So rather than reaching up to God, climbing a spiritual ladder, we fall to our knees as beggars before our God. Along with the tax collector in our parable, we have only one thing left to say: “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner!”
Hermann Sasse was a German pastor right before the break of World War II. He spoke about this and said:
If God the Lord will graciously grant his church today a new great day in her history – and it is our prayer that he will do so – then this day will also begin with repentance. A world which wrestles with death, a humanity that threatens to be drowned in the night of insanity cries out for deliverance. And we stand powerless over against it. We do not know what we should do. There is no program to solve this problem. Evangelization of the world, mission work among the masses, the restoration of destroyed fellowship, unification of Christianity – will we bring all of this about? No, we must recognize that we can do none of it. Only if we first recognize our complete powerlessness and helplessness, only if we first acknowledge before the face of him who is holy and true that we in our sins, can indeed, in no way encounter the world with the claim that it should hear us, only if we first acknowledge that our lips are impure and our hands are stained, only if we first say nothing other than Kyrie eleison – only then can we learn to grasp the mystery of the Church of Christ.
That T-Shirt I mentioned at the beginning was funny because it is absolutely absurd. God is not hiding from us, nor is he a passive by stander. He came to us in Jesus Christ, and still to this day comes to us.
Our God is
near, for Jesus says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am
I among them.” Take a look at our Communion Sunday liturgy once. Go ahead, open the hymnal to page 194. Let’s step through this
once. When pastor says “The Lord be with you,” he isn’t wishing, but declaring
it to you, God’s people gathered in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. When our Lord comes, what else can we do but give thanks! And as we
pray in the proper preface when our Lord comes to us here we join in with the
angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven. Yes, we join in with the
saints who are with the Lord. Saints such as
Then we sing
“Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” These are the words of Palm
Sunday, when our Lord rode into
As He comes to us, we pray the prayer that He taught us to pray and are reminded of all those things that we learned in confirmation class: how His name is hallowed, his kingdom comes, and his will we pray is done among us and finally that we be delivered from all manner of evil. And then our prayer is answered. We hear the Words of our Lord on the night He was betrayed where He gives us His body and Blood to eat and drink for the forgiveness of sins.
Finally as we prepare to eat and drink, we sing, “O Christ, thou Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the World have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, grant us peace.” And you know what, He does! I know it can be easy just to go through the motions of this and not think about what we are doing. In fact some days, it just might take all that we can muster up just to be here to do so. And even when this happens Jesus still comes to you and gives you that life giving meal.
The great re-discovery of the Reformation was that if we want to see God, we need look no further than to Christ crucified for us. Where do you find that? We find Him as He comes to us as we gather around His Word, in His Sacraments. We do not need to climb the ladder of moralism, Christ has lived a perfect life for us. We don’t need to speculate and ponder, in Christ we have the Truth. We don’t need to try to become one with God, we already have been made one with Him in our Baptism!
Jesus says to us, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” That’s the great mystery of the Church. Where Christ is, there the church is. The church’s existence doesn’t rest upon our faithfulness, our living perfect lives, it depends solely on the Word of God. Where the Gospel is plainly and purely preached, where His Sacraments are rightly administered, there He is really and personally present for me and for you. “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.” The beauty of this is that our Lord doesn’t play games of hide and seek with us. He comes right to us, and hears our cry for mercy. He is here right here and right now, as we hear that we are forgiven, we are His.
And now, the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen