The Pinch-Hitter God
It has been said that even atheists become believers in a foxhole. Confronted with their powerlessness and the prospect of death, they suddenly find themselves praying for help. I imagine we can all identify with the experience—albeit in less surreal circumstances. It is common for us to turn to God when we run up against our own limits. Maybe a loved one has received a difficult diagnosis, and the doctors are doubtful. So, we turn to God. Maybe finances have dried up more than we anticipated, and we’re faced with the prospect of serious loss. So, we turn to God. Maybe we hit a rock bottom and realize we cannot manage our lives the way we thought we could. So, we turn to God. In each case, we turn to God as a sort of trump card, as a pinch hitter who will get us out of a jam.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who resisted the
nationalism that overtook his nation in World War II, observed that this way of
thinking—calling upon God only when we get in a jam—is actually symptomatic of
society at large. In other words, society turns to God only when it reaches its
own limits. When science runs up against a contradiction or a mystery, suddenly
people start whispering about God. When the Twin Towers were inconceivably
destroyed on 9/11, churches were suddenly packed and people were asking, “Where
is God?” When people’s health deteriorates and they face the certainty of
death, which is certainly a mystery, suddenly they start talking about God. The
common thread is that when human knowledge or power comes up short, we start
looking for God. We do not look for God at the center of life, where we feel
quite capable and in control. Only at
the outer limits, where we are uncertain or helpless, do we begin to ask, “Where
is God?”
Forgetting God When Things
Are Good
The people of ancient Judah were like us, apparently. They did not ask, “Where is God?” when their lives were untroubled and they felt in control.
To recap, last week we read from the beginning of Jeremiah. We discovered that the big surprise in Jeremiah’s prophecy was not that Babylon would surely destroy Judah. Certainly, that would have caught people’s attention, but it would not have been a strange or unexpected take on events. Babylon was a growing empire, and its military was enjoying success after success. The big surprise was the claim that God, not Babylon, would accomplish Judah’s destruction. The big surprise was the claim that Judah’s battle would not be lost in the future on the battlefield, but rather that it had already been lost in the past in their hearts.
How had it been lost? In today’s passage, God twice attributes Judah’s downfall to the simple fact that the people had stopped asking, “Where is the Lord?” (Jer 2:6, 8). They will ask that question a lot in the days to come (cf. 2:27), when the Babylonian army destroys their land and takes them away into exile. Like us, they will turn to God when things get bad. The problem, God says, is that we don’t ask this question when things are good. We don’t look for God in our everyday lives, we don’t see or respond to God’s frequent gestures of love. We may enjoy the gifts, but we forget the Giver and mistake life as the work of our own hands.
God says in today’s scripture that God had brought the people into a land filled with good things. Life, in other words, was good. But the priests, the lawyers, the rulers—all of them stop asking, “Where is God?” (2:8). They forget that life is God’s gift to be shared, and instead compete for it as a prize to be won. Thus begins the people’s quiet departure from God and the subtle disintegration of society. People begin to live for themselves instead of for one another. The seeds of selfishness grow inconspicuously into struggle, conflict, and injustice. Society becomes divided against itself. I think Abraham Lincoln gave eloquent expression to this process when he declared in 1838, over twenty years before the Civil War, “If destruction be our lot, we ourselves [will] be its author and finisher.” What destroys us is not other people. What destroys us is what’s in our heart.
The irony is that, if we stop asking, “Where is God?” when things are good, then when things get bad and we do ask that question, God may already be far away. Not because God left us, but because we long ago left God (cf. 2:27). We are in such a poor spiritual condition, that we cannot recognize or receive or respond to God’s presence.
Divine Hide-and-Seek
Throughout the centuries, Jewish and Christian mystics have talked about life as though it were a game of divine hide-and-seek, in which we should always be looking for God in the hidden things. Meister Eckhart, a German theologian and mystic of the thirteenth century, says, “God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away.” God wants to be found.
The question is, are we looking for God? Will we hear God clear his throat? Or is our attention turned in other directions? It’s like Jesus said: where our treasure is, there our heart will be. When I cast my gaze over our national landscape, I see many hearts that dwell on Wall Street, or in the capital, or in Hollywood. I see people asking, “Where is the money? Where is power? Where is acceptance and popularity?” These questions, Jeremiah says, are like trying to draw water from cracked containers when we have a fountain of living water right beside us. Money, power, status—they all promise us so much but deliver so little. We never quite find what we’re looking for. We’re left striving, struggling, exhausted, and alone.
What will we find if instead we ask, “Where is God?”? Well, this may be obvious, but it’s certainly good news worth repeating. Jesus promised us that if we seek, we will find God’s Spirit (Luke 11:9-13). I imagine that we each encounter God differently. But however we encounter God, the effect is the same: we are drawn out of ourselves and into a deeper relationship with others and all the world. Our society prizes upward mobility, which often results in competition and isolation. But many spiritual leaders have remarked that looking for God will lead us downward, as it did for Christ. We may discover that looking for God draws us to the needs of others and also to acknowledge our own needs as well (cf. Luke 14:7-14).
The Examen Prayer
Jeremiah’s prophecy suggests that asking, “Where is the Lord?” should be a daily practice. When we ask this question, we find ourselves drawn into a better way of life. For this reason, I would like to share with you a particular practice of prayer that asks just this question, “Where is God in my world?” Popularized by the 16th century Spanish priest Ignatius of Loyola, this practice is often referred to as the examen prayer because it is a prayerful examination of God’s activity in our life. There’s an insert in your bulletin that outlines this way of prayer. (You could also google it and discover much more.) I’ll invite us to practice an abbreviated form of it right now, but I’d also encourage you to try it out a few times on your own. If you find it helpful, you might add it to your spiritual toolkit.
I’ll invite you to keep your eyes closed throughout the guided prayer, if you feel comfortable, as it may be easier to focus without visual distraction.
We begin with an opening prayer:
To see beyond the limits
Of our own immediate interests.
Help us to see our lives and world
As you see our lives and world.
…
2. Now, allow your heart to open up.
Allow your heart to be thankful…
For anything that is good and has drawn you into the fullness of life and closer to God.
…
3. Now, allow the events of this past week to arise in your mind.
They may be events that include others, or events that happened in solitude.
They may be events that made you happy, or events that made you upset.
Do not analyze the events that rise from your heart to your mind.
Simply observe them.
…
4. For now, select the two or three events that seem most significant to you.
Review each one and ask,
“Where was God?
Was I drawn closer to God?
Or led further away?”
…
5. Now, listen for how God may be teaching you.
What is God’s lesson for you in these events?
Can you live more closely to God in similar future events?
How might you live faithfully?
…
We end now with a closing prayer:
Loving God,
Fountain of living water—
We thirst for you,
Yet turn frequently to cracked cisterns
That will not satisfy.
Help us to ask regularly,
“Where are you?”
That we might know your love
And share it with the world.
In Christ, who humbled himself: Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment