WHEN GOD SEEMS TO TURN AWAY

Psalm 13

There are people who have stayed home from church today, in fact, stayed home from church for several years, because events in their lives have made them think there is no God. There are also people in our world who have set aside the Sunday morning ritual of church because of events in the world that make them either think that God doesn’t care, that God isn’t here, or that God has turned away. Events that stir such thoughts include human caused evil—such as the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansing that went on by the Serbian Christians on the Bosnian Muslims from 1992 – 1995; the 9/11 attacks, and ruthless regimes that brutalize citizens. “Where is God?” the cry goes out in the midst of such atrocities. It even happens, though to a lesser degree, during disasters such as the Katrina hurricane and flooding, the Japanese Tsunami, and the recent Tornadoes all over our country. Do you also wonder where God was when believers or non-believers look at you to defend the apparent absence of God? Today we are going to look at a short book of the Bible—Psalm 13—and deal with the classic treatment of the problem called “The Divine Hiddenness.”

Three years ago Dr. James I. Packer of Oxford University described a very holy woman who had a very human problem. He described divine hiddenness as “the problem of felt abandonment by God within the frame of full commitment to God: in other words, the desolation and seeming desertion of the deeply devoted.” [Crux, Vol. 44, No. 3, p.31] Who are the deeply devoted? Could it include Hannah in the Old Testament who was inconsolable for years at not being able to have a child? Could it include Jeremiah, whose laments to God are so famous that he is sometimes called

“The Weeping Prophet?” The list would certainly include our own Lord Jesus, who implored his Heavenly Father with all his human will to change his fate. In the Garden that terrible night, even Jesus, who had a Father who loved him, still had silence as his response for mercy. Yet Jesus never stopped advocating for God: “Believe in God” he said, “Believe also in me.” Today we will hear from David in Psalm 13 where he struggled with “Divine Hiddenness.” In the 20^th century there are also examples of such struggles. Mother Teresa never wanted her journals published, but instead they have come to light, revealing a person so dedicated to God as to be married to Him, yet there were times, many of them, when she felt abandoned by God. A Baptist professor, E. Glenn Hinson, has said this: “To be quite honest with you I find Mother Teresa’s confession, like the cries of absence of Job and the Psalms and Jesus and myriad saints, reassuring for someone who has experienced times of desolation, abandonment, and cosmic loneliness and knows experientially the uncertainties of faith…. When you feel the tug of God down deep in the center of your being, and pledge your troth to God, and discern yourself growing into an ever more intimate relationship—like or even closer than the friendship you cultivate for another human being—you can feel entitled to expect God to be there for you. Then come happenings—protracted illness, death of a loved one, job loss, financial collapse, diminishment of vital faculties, natural disaster, and myriad other misfortunes—that cause you to wail in agony; yet you not only do not get the answer you want to an earnest plea, but you also get no answer at all. God seems to have gone AWOL. You feel like Teresa of Avila [who prayed] ‘Lord, if this is the way you treat friends, no wonder you have so few of them.’”[WEAVINGS: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life” Vol. XXV, No. 1, p.8-9]

In verses 1 and 2, the overburdened pray-er, said to be David, is almost at the breaking point. The phrase “How Long, O Lord?” is a longstanding petition by Jews to God when results are slow in coming or the only answer is silence. If Jews were not near the Temple where they believe God lived, they would erect Standing Stones or create an altar to God set apart for holiness so God would feel invited to be nearby when the prayers were uttered. Judging by the many scenes in films where Christians go to chapels, cathedrals, and other holy sights for prayer, our theology—that God is omnipresent—seems to have been trumped by our instinctive draw toward what we deem as sacred space. I have done the same thing, finding it easier to pray in our sanctuary or in our chapel than by my desk. But I can pray equally well in other places away from distraction. David, by habit and theology, likely prayed Psalm 13 in a place he deemed holy. Then he let go, praying from his soul and from his toes to God, not holding back! God is not so fragile, and does not need so much protection from us, that we can only question God under our breath; or to a priest, or to a minister, or to a counselor, only turning to God with praise and good things. Our forebears never took God out of the equations of their lives even when they felt let down or angry. It is good relationship advice: to speak directly with the one with whom you have an issue, and not triangle the relationship by complaining solely to someone else. Psalm 13, then, exhibits not only the healthy theology of taking issues to the Lord in prayer, it exhibits good psychology as well. In verse 3 we find that David likely went to a sacred space where he believed God was present as he said conversationally: “Consider and answer me!” People do not implore dead air space; the way this is phrased presumes not only the existence of God, but also the nearness of God; the argument is just with God’s inaction. If you turn from a partner with whom you are estranged and talk continuously with someone else about that partner without re-engaging with that partner, that relationship grows cold. In the case of the Hiddenness of God, rather than presuming God’s absence, many over the years have chosen to implore God—even angrily—to answer! Or they have prayed, as David did, or as our Lord Jesus did, until Jesus’ blood vessels burst from his prayerful agony so that blood and sweat poured down his face. The example is clear; don’t write God off! Keep calling out to God! To simply write God off as unloving or nonexistent leaves you in your miserable darkness and without a spiritual destiny.

A woman I know had spent years taking care of her ailing mother and father. Even though the work was exhausting, they were grateful people and when they both finally died, the woman’s stamina, energy, and faith had all been exhausted and tested. Right on the heals of their deaths, she was called on to be the main caregiver for her husband’s mother as well. This woman was difficult, uncooperative, and bitter. As little trouble as her parents had been in spite of the strain of their illnesses, this mother-in-law was at the other end of the spectrum, trouble incarnate. One night this caregiver could take it no more; she had talked with her husband about his mother, not so much to burden him as to look for options to deal with her misery. The caregiver thought about talking with a counselor she was so at the end of her rope, but in desperation one night, she walked out onto her back porch, looked up at the stars, and cried out to God. “God” she said with a heaving constrained voice while her nose and eyes running, “How could you saddle me with this woman after I’ve just lost my own parents? Why don’t you take her? She keeps saying that all she wants to do is die?” And then, the prayerful caregiver said she heard God’s voice in God’s amazing brevity of words. In the darkness of the night she heard, “She isn’t ready yet.” It was true. As the caregiver watched her mother in law until death, she saw her bitterness soften, reconciliation with others begin to happen, and finally the hands of the Gardener, Jesus himself, pulled the thorny branches from around her heart and welcomed her to heaven.

David, even before he could get results in Psalm 13, affirmed God’s presence in words “I trusted in your steadfast love” and then witnessed to himself, and perhaps others, by declaring “I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.” Is he hoping—hoping that God will respond in days to come? Or is he remembering—remembering that God has responded before—albeit in God’s own perfect time—and believing that God will respond again? YES. It is yes to both questions. What will you do with the silence you may get from God in the dangling conversations of your prayers? Through the ages, some exhausted people have talked themselves into atheism or agnosticism, living in the abyss or on the fence of faith for some time, perhaps even a lifetime. But there are others who stayed in relationship with their God, in spite of yawning silence; either crying out to God in bitter sorrow and confusion, or reaffirming God’s presence even in the midst of God’s hiddenness. Even David had his confidence restored in God’s goodness with his famous declaration in Psalm 27:

“The Lord is my light and my salvation! Whom then shall I fear?

The Lord is the strength of my life: of whom shall I be afraid?”

Is God really, in your heart of hearts, NOWHERE?

Or instead, by faith, can you say that God is NOW HERE?

Jeffrey A. Sumner June 26, 2011