A Sermon from First Church, Scarborough…
A sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship of the First Congregational Church of Scarborough, Maine on Sunday, August 19, 2007. The principal reading was Matthew 25:1-13.
“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour” (25:13).
“Looking in the Wrong Places”
The Church uses many words, words spoken and shared at times of joy and times of sadness. They all have their place within our worship life. There is a Prayer for the Grieving. It is spoken at or near the Time of Death. Among the words are: “You (God) are nearer to us than we know, closer than we can imagine. If we cannot find you, it is because we search in far places.”
Every last one of us can relate to a search like that: Maybe brought on by a personal, health crisis; maybe a world crisis like the unending agony in Iraq and Afghanistan; maybe as a result of the wearing down by the years when prayer becomes talking into an empty barrel.
Some will say that we are simply growing up, outgrowing the superstition of years past and all that talk of “God” is foolish talk. Some thinkers have declared God to be “dead.” Some good men and women simply throw up their educated hands in bewilderment at any and all God-talk.
The absence of God is not a new phenomenon. In the never-never land of the Bible, when it seems that God was so obviously present, God’s voice so clear, God or God’s emissaries forever showing up in dreams and visions, speaking through the mouths of patriarchs and prophets and, of course, in the speech and deeds of the man, Jesus – the overriding truth and normal, daily experience of God was not of God present, but of God absent and visibly not seen!
In the Old (Hebrew) Testament, the psalmist sang, again and again: “How long O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”
To be sure there were visions and voices and believers who spoke eloquently of God as the living God, “breaking in” to history; but these were the occasional experiences.
In the New (Christian) Testament, too, the same experience is reflected. Today’s parable seems to be a story of the end of time and God absent, God delayed, God (in the person of the Bridegroom) finally showing up.
The last line of this morning’s text, which experts say was added later, emphasizes this interpretation: “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”
All the virgins (bridesmaids) fell asleep. There apparently was nothing wrong in taking a nap. (And remember, in the Palestine of the first century, weddings were held on a week night after a long day of work.) The bridegroom, where was he? He was coming, but he was delayed. The wise and the foolish women were prepared for his arrival. The foolish were not prepared for any delay.
The parable was originally a word of warning to the early church, to cool it! Be ready for God’s arrival. But, be equally ready for God’s delay or continued absence. The wise were ready for the bridegroom’s absence and for his arrival because they carried extra flasks of lamp oil in the event of the long wait.
If we fail to take into account the necessity of waiting or believe that somehow we have control over God’s itinerary, chances are we start looking for God in all the wrong places.
The late Sam Miller, a Baptist preacher and seminary Dean, delighted in telling the story of the German comedian Karl Valentin:
…the curtain goes up and reveals darkness; and in this darkness is a solitary circle of light thrown by a street lamp. Valentin, with his long-drawn and deeply worried face, walks round and round this circle of light, desperately looking for something. “What have you lost?” a policeman asks who has entered the scene. “The key to my house!” Upon which the policeman joins him in the search; they find nothing; and after a while he inquires: “Are you sure you lost it here?” “No,” says Valentin, and pointing to a dark corner of the stage: “Over there.” “Then why on earth are you looking for it there?” “There is no light over there,” says Valentin.
So, we, too, look for God in all the wrong places, not in the dark places but in the “light.” Chances are we look for God’s presence in the Bible, in the worship, in the places of “light” in our religion. But just maybe God is to be found not in “light” at all; but in the dark places, the dark times, and the dark events of human life. As Sam Miller told his students, “We never see him (God) directly; He (God) is always mediated by the very things that seem to deny Him (God).”
In Roman Palestine, many persons missed him entirely and finally decided to rid the world of an obvious impostor. “Give us Barabbas!” Just imagine! God born of peasant stock walking around incognito as Mary’s son, and later as an untrained Rabbi, spending his time with ladies and gentlemen of questionable repute. Just imagine! That was too, too dark a spot to look for and find a lost God. If God was around at all, God would be in the Temple or in the synagogue or with the learned and pious believers, not hiding out in the hill country of Galilee, in the social, cultural and political “backwater” of the day.
And maybe, just maybe, that is why God still seems to be “absent” and “silent” for us, too. Ouch!
As we struggle with the “absence” and the “silence,” we must confess that deep within in our hearts we really could not handle it if God was here. To be known fully and completely in the depths, to have the evasions and excuses and hypocrisies, laid out bare for God and the entire world to see, would be more than most of us could bear ourselves.
Who wants a God who will never leave you alone, a companion from whom you can never be separated, who haunts us from this morning until the next morning, who in the fury of love terrifies as well as heals us? Small wonder we find that God absent for many are the times when we want that God absent.
But suppose, we do desire this God’s “presence,” where would you like to live, and when, just to be certain of God? In the Garden, after the snake and apple episode, when God came looking for Adam and Eve? In Pilate’s court on that memorable Friday? With Jesus Himself in the wilderness? With Paul being stoned and beaten with whips? With Peter in the courtyard late Thursday night, taunted by a servant girl? Where and when would you be and know that God was alive and well?
There was no time when God’s presence was as plain as the nose on your face. When you come down to it, this is what faith is all about. If God was forever whispering in your ear, tapping you on the shoulder, nugging you from behind, and tripping you up just to let you know “I am around,” oh, what a world it would be. It would be a world we would not recognize. “Leave me alone,” would soon be our common chant.
There have been times when men and women of faith very much like our selves struggled with God’s absence as well as with God’s presence and the record of that struggle you will find in the Bible, in Church history, in centuries of worship, and in the living of your days, too.
It may be that God speaks to us most clearly and is closest to us in the awareness of God’s absence. To Paul, God said, “My grace is sufficient for you.” The only time we can know God’s grace is sufficient is precisely when God is not at our beck and call. If we in the church are going to be heard by those outside the church, we had better confess and make it crystal clear that our faith includes our experiences of God absent as well as present; that we know, as they do, what it means to live in a world that often gives little evidence of the presence of God. May be then others will listen to us for a change.
Can we wait? I am certain that we really do not have a choice. We do not control the Divine will nor do we set the itinerary for God’s arrival and departure. If we who are here are here because we are disturbed by silence, by absence, by delay, then I suspect we are in better shape spiritually than those who are not prepared. Or so this parable seems to say.
