Where is God? [Epiphany 5B]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Isaiah 40:21-31
Where is God?
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Have you not been told? Have you not understood? When you understand that the questions are
rhetorical, you get that this is a confrontation.
A prophet confronting his
nation. A believer questioning the doubters. But is it too much? Surely the people have reason to doubt. Just before the confrontational questions,
the prophet made them a promise – God's promise through the prophet's
mouth. But the promise was an
unbelievable promise – with no supporting evidence. Isaiah promised the people that God would
have the last word, that they would experience salvation, that things were
about to be set right.
But they were not alright. Nothing was OK. They were living in exile and had been there
for decades – crushed under the weight of oppression, dominated by an
unstoppable enemy. When the armies of
Babylon stormed their homeland and destroyed their Temple, God did nothing to
stop it. When their brothers and sisters
were slaughtered in the street, where was God?
When they were dragged into their existential wilderness, all around was
just a deafening silence. Their prayers
fell from their lips and shattered on the floor. When they most needed something, there was
nothing.
And so, forgive them if they are
slow to buy-in. Sometimes good news is
the hardest thing to hear. Sometimes
hope seems too risky, too dangerous. It
is better to be surprised than to be disappointed.
Bad things happened to them. And where was God? They decide there must have been a reason:
maybe God did not care or God did not notice or maybe God just wasn't strong
enough to help.
And there in Babylon, living
amongst a foreign people with their foreign gods, they sit down by the rivers
and weep – weep for a past long gone, weep for a home that is no more, weep for
a heart broken, and weep for a missing God.
Bad things happened to them –
really bad things, perpetrated by a ruthless Empire, in a violent world. And they got stuck in that moment – a long
moment but a moment none-the-less. They
could not see beyond their immediate pain.
They could not remember their salvation history. They could not imagine what God had in store
for their future. And without
remembrance and hope, there is only crisis.
And while, one might question the
method, certainly it was not very gentle, Isaiah gets them un-stuck. It is not a gentle wake-up call; this is a
grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-shake moment.
Isaiah acknowledges and answers
every question the people have about God.
Does God care? This is the God
who calls you by name; this is the God who gives power to the faint and
strengthens the powerless. God
cares. Does God notice? This God numbers every creature – never lets
even one go missing. God notices. Is God strong enough? Your God created the ends of the earth; your
God stretches out the heavens like a curtain.
Your God brings the most powerful princes to naught and makes the gods
of the nations as nothing. God is
strong.
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Have you not been told? Have you not understood?
Bad things happen. Human history is marred with tragedy and
injustice. Terrible things happen in
this world. And until the Kingdom of God
is established on this earth, there will still be pain and heartbreak and
sadness. And for some, the presence of
pain means the absence of God.
The Babylonian exiles, to whom
Isaiah wrote, are very much like those who toiled in Egypt before the Exodus,
and those who watched the Temple fall in first century Rome, and those who
experienced the Holocaust last century.
And in a way I suppose they are not unlike the first disciples watching
the hope of the world hang on a cross. And
perhaps not unlike the early Christians who buried their martyred brothers and
sisters.
There is a kind of oppressive
hopelessness that can blind the human spirit to the presence of God. And it lives in impoverished, urban
neighborhoods, where gangs dominate and drugs destroy and children are gunned
down, as much as it lived in Isaiah's community. And it lives in homes where the diagnosis is
terminal. And it lives in nations where
tyrants stalk the vulnerable and warlords terrorize the innocent. It lives in every corner where hope seems
impossible and the future feels like a dead end.
Bad things happen. They do.
And when they do, where is God?
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Have you not been told? Have you not understood?
We live and die in a world that is
saturated with pain and beauty, with kindness and great evil. In those beautiful moments God is easy to
find. But not every moment is
beautiful. It is there, in our pain,
where God suffers silently with us, in us – sometimes so close to us that we
cannot see, “a mist that penetrates the bone.”[1]
God does not shield us from life,
does not shield us from pain, does not shield us from weakness or death. That is not how life works; we know
that. Bad things do happen. But in the pain, there is God. And while there may be moments of doubt, and
while there may be moments of anger, and while there may be moments in which
you cannot feel God or see God or hear God, God is with you.
Ultimately God is more promise than
feeling. God is more faith than
evidence. And so when the pain and terror of the world
threaten to overwhelm you, and you are stuck in that moment, just you and God,
your choice will be both simple and difficult: will you place your trust in an
unseen, silent God or you will not?
It is a choice. It is a choice because you might not feel
like trusting God and you might have your doubts and you might be angry or
heartbroken. That's OK. God does not scare easily. If you have your doubts, God and the Church
will believe for you. And if you decide
you cannot trust, God will stick around.
Until you do, until you are surprised by faith – an unexpected faith
that remembers salvation's story enough to hope for the next chapter.
Bad things happen. They do.
And when they do, where is God?
Scratched into a wall at Auschwitz, into the wall of a Nazi
concentration camp, into the wall of human darkness and evil there were found
three lines of poetry, of prayer, of faith:
I believe in the sun even when it's
not shining.
I believe in love even when I don't
feel it.
I believe in God even when God is
silent.[2]
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Have you not been told? Have you not understood?
God was there – with you – all
along.
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