UCC Church of Charlotte

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Presence and Absence
Psalm 22:1-15
Mark 10:17-31

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.
   
So here comes a man who has been practicing his faith, following the
rules, doing what is right, and yet it is not enough.  Something is
missing.  So he comes to Jesus, asking

"What must I do to inherit eternal life?"

And he goes away disheartened.  Jesus has asked of him too much for
him to bear: go with your wealth, and sell it off, giving to the poor,
then come and follow.

He yearned for that which his own righteousness did not give him.  He
comes to Jesus for the answer, but it is not the answer he wants or
likes.  The one who so often speaks forgiveness or healing or peace
here speaks a word that feels like rebuke.

(How often is what we most need to hear the very word we fear the most?)

One can imagine that he feels like God has abandoned him.  He has
followed the rules, and yet he is not saved.  He has lived rightly,
but does not feel right.

We know something of this feeling, don't we?

We hurt, we grieve, we see our world is not what we thought.

We did everything the parenting book says, and we still have trouble
with our children.

We were good workers, but still find our job outsourced or downsized.

We weren't in a high risk group, but we still got the diagnosis that
shattered our world.

Like this man, we could sing the words of the psalm:

        My God, my God,
                Why have you forsaken me?
   
We so much more prefer the words of a few moments ago.

        Emmanuel, Emmanuel,
                His name is called Emmanuel.
                God with us, revealed in us,
                His name is called Emmanuel.

I often think of Christmas, when we re-read the words of Isaiah to
tell the story of what God is doing in our midst in the coming of
Christ.  Emmanuel - one of the few Hebrew words we know, even if we
don't know it is Hebrew.  God-with-us.

But what of those moments when God is absent?  This thought may seem
blasphemous to us.  It goes against those pithy church signs and
bumper stickers: "If God seems distant, who moved?"

The thought of God's absence offends our theology.  It goes against
the "omni's."  Medieval theology came up with the formulation that God
was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent.  In other
words, God is all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present, and
all-good.

While these ideas speak of God's majesty and worthiness and might, we
soon run into problems both Biblical and practical.
In the Bible, God is free to be present or absent.  In creation, God
walks to and fro in the garden, not tethered to the creation or to the
creatures, including human beings.

In the Bible, God changes God's mind.  When God is fed up and wanting
to do some smiting, Abraham and Moses argue with God.

"And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people."

In the Bible, one of the Ten Commandments is to keep the Sabbath.  In
Exodus, because God rested at creation.  In Deuteronomy, for the
people to remember their slavery in Egypt, in Pharaoh's brickyard, and
to relive their deliverance into freedom each week.
But later in Exodus we find a fascinating retelling of the commandment.

It is a sign for ever between me and the people of Israel
that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,
and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed. (Exodus 31:17)

Two weeks ago, I spoke of the word Nephesh, the Hebrew word meaning
our whole self, comprehensive but undivided.  In Hebrew, to change a
noun into a verb, one simply changes the vowels.  The Hebrew word,
here translated as refreshed, is the verb form of the noun Nephesh.
So when God had finished speaking the world into existence, God rested
and God's Nephesh was restored.

God was "re-Nepheshed."

God's wholeness of being was restored.

Which means God was somehow diminished by the act of creation.

We know that when we create something, when we build something,
whether a piece of art or a business, and we pour ourselves into it,
we are exhausted.

Exodus dares to imagine that God poured God's self into the act of
creating, then rested, and God's wholeness was restored.

On the practical side, if we only picture God as all-powerful,
all-knowing, all-good and everywhere, then when bad things happen, we
wind up stuck with one of two choices:

Give up on ourselves and leave it all up to God,

or

Give up on God and leave it all up to us.

These choices leave little room for a life-giving, life-affirming,
saving faith, one that calls us into being partners with God in God's
work.
   
As a friend once said, "When I was in deep pain or turmoil, knowing
God loves everybody isn't what I needed to hear.  I needed to hear
that he loved ME."
   
A God of the "omni's" we cannot argue with.  And the God of the Bible
not only gets argued with, but invites argument.

It is one of the difficulties of Christianity: we try to protect God
from argument or scandal or difficulties.  We prefer safe theologies
to the Biblical God whose relationship sometimes requires us to
wrestle – to plead our case, to demand justice, to lay bare our souls
and say "Lord have mercy."

Biblical faith means that our relationship with God is strengthened
not by protecting God from our pain and anger, but by their expression
to God who hears, who is big enough to take our pain and our anger and
our disappointment and our uncertainty and our crying out
"My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?"

So if the "omni's" don't work, what can we say about God?.

The Lord hears.  The cries of the Hebrew slaves in Pharaoh's
brickyards, and Hagar's cries in the wilderness, and our cries.

The Lord remembers.  Where Pharaoh feared and oppressed the Israelites
because he did not remember Joseph, the Lord remembered them.  The
Lord remembers us.

The Lord is faithful.  We have the promises of God, who is sovereign
and free, but also who promises to us a relationship not by our
worthiness, but simply by God's grace.  Or as Karl Barth put it:

He is not deaf, he listens; more than that, he acts.  He does not act
in the same way whether we pray or not.  Prayer exerts an influence
upon God's action, even upon his existence.  That is what the word
'answer' means. ... The fact that God yields to man's petitions,
changing his intentions in response to man's prayer, is not a sign of
weakness.  He himself, in the glory of his majesty and power, has so
willed it.

So when we feel God's presence, let us rejoice, give thanks and sing.

And when we feel God's absence, it is time for prayers of invocation.
Let us call out, let us cry our laments, let us hold one another, and
let us pray.

And let us remember to have the integrity to cry out to God when
crying out is called for.  For God can take it.  The Lord is faithful.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.