Are You Looking For God?

Sermon by James W. Crawford

March 16, 1997, Fifth Sunday in Lent

From Job 28

Job sits on his ash heap arguing with his comforters. He tries to understand his devastating condition. They tell him it is his problem. He is getting what he deserves. Cosmic justice makes its way into his life. "You may think you are innocent, Job," they insist, "but somewhere there lies a huge malfeasance triggering the vengeance of God. Review your life," they urge. "Take a closer look at the behavior of your children. Somewhere you will find the crack in your character, the error of your ways."

Job can not believe it. Nothing in his life or in his children's life rings so terribly as to bring him to his present desolate condition. He not only pleads his innocence before what he takes to be a just God, he attacks God for double standards--seeing the logic of a just God breaking down, not only because he is getting the short end of the stick, but because as he looks out on the world he sees some very wicked people, as we suggested last week, some very wicked people getting away with grand larceny, public corruption, and near murder. If anyone deserves to live on a trash heap it is they. "So, why me?" asks Job. "What kind of universe is this? What kind of God would be in charge of such an arbitrary, unjust, chaotic creation?" So Job builds his case against God. He designs a cosmic court. He is going after the perpetrator of his ruination with fierce intensity. He is putting God in the dock.

And then amid all this argument, amid these antagonistic diatribes, these insults delivered to his counselors and verbal assaults on the integrity of God, amid all Job's special pleading, the poet behind this incredible drama takes a time out. The poet steps back. He begins to reflect on the nature of this God with whom Job contends. And for a while the contention dissolves, the fierce antagonism disappears, the angry quarrel melts. Job, rather than screaming at some implacable antagonist, reflects on just who this God of his might be, and where this God might be found. In this unique Wisdom literature of the Hebrews--Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastics--a near equivalent to the God Job seeks is called Wisdom. In Greek, Sophia. And thus, as we read this morning, Job asks the crucial question out of his religious quandary: "But where shall Wisdom be found? Where is the place of understanding? Mortals do not know the way to it, and it is not found in the land of the living."

Job looks for God. Where will God be found? As he begins his search Job compares it with a miner's task, plunging into the darkness of the earth, some of those miners in habitats distant from any civilization, working in strenuous and mind-bending circumstances to extract the precious ore. Searching for God, he suggests, can be like mining for gold.

Job envisions the animals and birds who probe every nook and cranny in the earth's surface, who know of caves and crevices, valleys and wilderness never seen or imagined by the human mind. But the way to God goes far beyond even these haunting depths.

The mechanical genius of human beings to crack even the most impenetrable rock and discover surprising and dazzling elements barely describes the ingenuity and energy necessary to find the unutterable essence. The deeps in the sea, the unfathomable mystery of death know at best a distant echo of the Eternal. "I look for God" says Job. "Where can God be found?"

I

Do you ever ask that question: Where can God be found? Are you searching for the Eternal? Are you looking for God? I suppose each of us may stand at a different place and follow a different route. Surely our approaches can be diverse. I received in the mail the other day, for instance, a little book advertisement including a plug for a small monograph on Job, entitled "Deliver us from Evil." The blurb for the book goes like this: "Whenever anything horrible happens on Earth, we dial Heaven 911 and God answers, because he's there for us." Occasionally it seems the line is busy. But that is one approach.

And children can tell us some fascinating truths about the object of our search. Some of them sound like Job. On my bookshelf you will find a couple of small volumes containing children's letters to God. "Dear God," says one letter, "Dear God, it rained for the whole vacation and my father is mad. He said some things about you that people are not supposed to say, but I hope you will not hurt him anyway. Your friend . . . Oh, I am not going to tell you who I am."

Or another: "Dear God, Do you really mean to do unto others as they do unto you. Because if you do, then I'm going to fix my brother."

Where can God be found? Where do we look for God? I recall conversing with a mentor of mine years ago over this matter: where shall we find God? We agreed we could catch a glimpse of God in Mozart's music or the Brahms Requiem. We shared inspiring moments we had encountered in nature--for me the walk along the Franconia Ridge with my children; Mt. Washington dominating the horizon in the distance; or the waning of a violent storm enabling the summit of Mount McKinley to peek through. I remember my friend spoke of glorious vistas in the Rockies, fishing in a secluded mountain creek. I have thought frequently of our conversation since, and among further paths to the Eternal I am reminded of that 17th century mystical and devotional poet George Herbert; I think of sitting next to Lincoln as he wrestles with the proper timing for the Emancipation Proclamation or brooding over the Second Inaugural. I ponder those blessed moments with our loved ones, the mystery and miracle of our children's births, the love Linda continues to express even after she has found me out during these 35 years.

But thinking about this, there is even more. How do I tell you this? I find the way to God frequently in the worship, the work, the mission of this church. Your return to this room Sunday after Sunday, open to, praying for--maybe even expecting--a glimpse of what Samuel Terrien calls, "the Elusive Presence." I am your brother in this exercise, stumbling, grasping, searching, eager to plumb the beauty, spirit and truth grounding our existence.

But what about the rest of the week: Our meetings over personnel, program, planning? We discover the presence of God, I believe, as men and women in mutual confidence and trust working with one another to discern the will of God together, knowing the differing perceptions, judgments, interests of a committed pilgrim people can make the way bumpy, troubled, sloppy--but, by heaven, we can return to the table eager to continue slogging through the wilderness to the promised land. I have witnessed in this church for over two decades the creative power of God as men and women after an already long day teaching kids, caring for patients, managing millions, resolving litigation, greasing organizational wheels, making their bosses look good under duress, bailing out the powerless and the poor, nurturing their children, caring for parents--I have seen them spend evenings here because for God's sake--for God's sake--What? Do they want to join with others in making this place a reflection of the grace and radiance of Christ, a community serving as a sign of the future God wants for the world? Perhaps. But for me, whatever the purpose, I see the creativity, the energy, the imagination and tenacity of those who bring to bear their singular gifts bespeaking the presence of the living God.

And yes, I encounter God in the enduring faith and patient hope of those of you who face incredible adversity; painful personal illness, arbitrary job loss, the slipping away of family solidarity, the untimely death of a life partner, the rejection of your outgoing love and yearning--what you do for those of us in the ministry--for me--is incalculable, a never-ending encouragement to my own faith in God and an absolute pillar in the pantheon of my hope. For this, and so much, much more, you receive the gratitude and thanksgiving in the heart of my prayers.

Where can God be found? What paths do we tread in our search for the divine? There are many roads to follow as we search and seek for the mystery we call God.

II

Many roads to follow? Are there really? Has something been given us lighting the way, brightening the path revealing for us the very presence and person of the One we seek? Is our looking for God finally a chaotic and random walk down a thousand roads leading to nowhere? Or is there something or someone who encounters us vividly, face to face, providing a benchmark enabling us to measure everything we claim to represent God, in fact resolving our search for God, reversing the whole matter, and revealing what, in truth, is God's search for us?

Let's look at it this way. Do you know why Jesus Christ is at the heart of our faith and our hope? Do you know why the announcement of his birth in the window behind me and the stories of his life appear in these windows on each side of the nave? Do you know why this Cross of his hangs from the center of this room? It is because, when we look for God, we Christians look to Jesus first. In Jesus Christ we discover as much of God as can be packed into a human life. When we talk about God, when we think about God, when we worship God, when we picture God, we may come up with hundreds of words, or metaphors, or analogies or images, or feelings, or parables, propositions or experiences, but for us in Christian churches the God we seek we find revealed in the life, the death, and the new life we know in Jesus the Christ. In Jesus we see the revelation of the God we are looking for. And tragically, we are so used to it, so inured to the presence of Jesus he no longer comes as the stunning surprise he really is. You see, what we see in Jesus is not at all what we might expect from God. We see a criminal, dying on a Cross, rejected by civil and religious authorities, a peasant, an outsider, a social outcast, a religious heretic, a civil traitor suffering the death penalty. This human saga is not something anyone could dream up, Jesus is not one we would expect, hardly the one we would anticipate as the ineffable enfleshed. Jesus is the reverse, the polar opposite of what we might imagine to be the incarnate God. For much of the world today, for those who first encountered him, no way can the bloody mess on Calvary speak to us of the unutterable mystery out there in the cosmic beyond. But, by God, my friends, that is exactly what we believe. The only way we can understand this Jesus, his radical life and brutal death as the very presence of God, is to risk in faith--in faith--that what and who we see and come to know can be someone only the true God could reveal to us. He is nothing we would invent. In faith, looking for God, through Jesus' life and his death on that Cross, if we look for God, incredibly, we find God there.

And one step more? In Jesus we see the quality of the mystery, the character of the Divine Person--the capital "P" Person--we find the character of God to be an active, saving, healing, redemptive love. The depth beyond words we would humbly call God turns out to possess and exercise a radiant and recreative power and presence restoring broken relationships, transforming wayward lives, forgiving lost souls, reconciling the wounds of a weeping world. Are you looking for God? See God there in the face of Jesus. Know God through the love undergirding our lives--oh, to be sure, love frequently veiled by the cruel or perverse actions of the human heart, love hiding behind the arbitrary calamities of nature--but as we witness this Cross, as we live confident of the power evident at Easter, we rest in the assurance that whatever comes to disturb, to trouble or shake up our lives, the love we see in the face of Jesus Christ spilling across the landscape--that love has the last word and determines the glorious conclusion of the beloved disciple affirming to his own companions, God is love.

So where, asks the poet, shall God be found? I testify to you this morning that if you are looking for God--look at the Cross. For against everything you might expect, there God will be found.

Before we are finished, one crucial closing note. On finding God--on being found by God--we put ourselves at the divine disposal. To discover God in the life of Christ, to find--no, to be found by--the love of Christ, is to say, "Here am I, take me. Here am I, use me. Here am I, let me be your instrument Here am I, let me bear to others what you bear to me."

In the prayer of one of the 20th century's most influential Christian disciples, that little Brother of the Gospel, Charles de Foucauld, working menially among the poor of Algeria, offering his life to his neighbors, dying with a bullet through his head as a consequence of suspicions raised by the horrors of war in Europe--in his prayer we discover, I think, the consequences of our looking and finding God in the face, in the life, in the gift of love we receive from God in Jesus Christ:

My gracious God, I abandon myself to you. Do with me as you will.
Whatever you may do with me, I thank you.
I am prepared for anything. I accept everything.
Provided your will is fulfilled in me and in all
creatures, I ask for nothing more, my God.
I place my soul in your hands.
I give it to you, my God,
with all the love of my heart
because I love you.
And for me it is a necessity of love,
this gift of myself,
this placing of myself in your hands
without reserve,
in boundless confidence,
because you are my mother--because you are my father.

Amen.