The Nearness of God
By The Rev. Dr. Paul Scott Wilson
September 2, 2012
Text: Psalm 45:1-2, 6-9; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8
On August 22, the New York Times ran a sad article about Jerry DeWitt, now aged forty-one, a Pentecostal preacher in the small Bible belt town of DeRidder, Louisiana, who began to lose his faith eleven years ago after 9/11 and has now lost it completely. Jerry had begun his ministry when he was seventeen and had been “saved” when his Sunday School teacher took him to hear Jimmy Swaggert in Baton Rouge. Soon he was speaking in tongues, and soon after that his pastor, in the middle of a Sunday service, called on him on the spur of the moment, to preach for the first time. I, myself was given a bit more warning than that before preaching today—I think I was asked for my sermon title back in March. Young Jerry DeWitt prayed, and then put his finger on a page of the Bible, and he preached on the phrase he pointed to, “The seed of David.” He preached for 15 minutes and received much affirmation and he knew right then he was meant to be a preacher. After high school and without theological training he became an itinerant preacher. But 9/11 shook his faith, he did not know how he could believe in a God who allowed that. In 2004 the question of a woman in his congregation further shook him. She asked, “How am I going to believe for salvation when I cannot believe enough to heal?” He preached his last sermon in April, 2011, after he received a phone call from a woman in his congregation whose brother had been in a motorcycle accident and whose life was in the balance. She wanted Jerry to pray over the phone, and he tried to comfort her as much as possible but he felt he could not invoke God's help, he could not pray at all, he no longer believed in God. When he hung up the phone he found himself sobbing because he could not give her what she wanted and needed. Now he speaks at many atheist gatherings, and he has lost his job, and seems to live a lonely life.
Not many people move from fundamentalist evangelist to atheist though back some decades in Canadian memory there was Charles Templeton. But many people have times of doubt, or spiritual dryness, or what St. John of the Cross in the 1500s called the “dark night of the soul,” or even what others call a crisis of faith. Even the psalmist in the Bible often calls out feeling abandoned by God, before coming back to faith again. Most people been disappointed by God at some point, and in that disappointment faith can ebb. A young woman who is unemployed may blame God for not finding her a job; a senior citizen in a nursing home may blame God for all of his physical and material losses; a couple may blame God for the death of their only child. What makes our own hearts harden towards God? What has been your experience when your own faith has waned? I expect that if we were innocent civilians living in war zones in Syria on this day, we all might have our faith severely tested.
The writer of the Letter of James in the New Testament is not often preached, Martin Luther called it a “right strawine epistle” by which he meant it had a lot of straw in it. But that was being unfair to James especially if one looks for what he implies about God. James knew how faith at times can be like the waxing and waning of the moon. Sometimes faith is bright enough to illuminate the darkest night, and at other times it may be hard to find. James has oversight of twelve different churches or as he writes in the first verse: “To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings.” And he must have been well-liked for twelve quite different congregations to choose him as their minister. We do not know much about him, whether he is James, the brother of Jesus, or another James. Nor do we know the specific circumstances of his churches. But from what he says in his handwritten letter, he speaks from a wealth of lived experience. I imagine he was a bit like Oprah or Dr. Phil, able to relate to anyone with compassion and hope. James could relate to couples in love, parents with struggles, prisoners in jail, church members facing persecution for their faith, losing their jobs and sometimes their lives, other folks just facing the normal hardships of life in an ancient society. James was popular because he is so down to earth and practical. He does not go into abstract ideas. He speaks plainly to the needs of his people for faith.
If James were preaching here today, he might say something like, “Dear people of Timothy Eaton Church and beyond, you and I are not so different. In my day we had Julius Caesar's veni, vidi, vici, I came, I saw, I conquered; by contrast you have Steve Job's i-phone, i-cloud, i-pad.” (They had bad jokes even in his day.) And James would continue talking to us with many of the things he says in his first chapter, homespun wisdom, inspired practical truths. He might say: “Such massive cities you have. I do not know all of the struggles you face today, but in my time I have seen much hardship. I do know that God will use your struggles with unemployment, or heath, or relationships, as a means to increase your faith and joy in life, just hang on. Some of you seek wisdom for difficult choices you have to make. Don't try to make those decisions all on your own. Ask God, wait upon God “who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to you.” (1:2-4.) God ”˜tempts no one' (1:14) and empowers you to do good, so do not be thinking your crisis of faith is sent by God.
Can you hear what a lively sense of God James has, and how connected his “generous and ungrudging” God is to the faith of ordinary people in their daily lives? If James had a TV show he would not not talk about cosmetic surgery and face lifts, he would talk about spiritual surgery and faith lifts. If you were to listen to James, you'd believe that God is everywhere. But Jame makes no big argument about it. He doesn't believe in trying to convince others about God by arguing, he simply points to what is evident. This is something of what he says to our lack of faith: “For me faith boils down to where you see God. If you expect to see God always in big events, think small. God is not just in the big events, God is also in the small. ”˜Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow, due to change.' (1:17.) ”˜Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above.'” Think of good things pouring down from heaven in the same way that rain pours down from clouds that water the parched fields and turn the brown grass green. When someone invites you to a meal, or gives you directions when you are lost, or helps you find a home, or welcomes you when you are a stranger, or someone forgives you, goodness is pouring down from heaven—every generous act of giving is from above. When you see justice being done, or hear excellent prayers, or fine music, or good preaching, or when you receive the medical care of nurses and doctors, good things are pouring from heaven—every perfect gift is from above. James offers such simple instructions about where to find God.
Even more important, each of you is a gift of God made perfect in God's love through faith. Oh, I know, we have our imperfections, but in our faith in Jesus Christ, God counts us as perfect, made perfect by his love. You are a perfect gift of God. When you invite someone to a meal, or you give directions to someone who is lost, or you help someone find a home, or you welcome a stranger, or you forgive someone, people have the opportunity to see God in you. God has chosen you to be Christ's representative, the Holy Spirit's ambassador to the world. James says, “Therefore, ”˜Be doers of the word and not merely hearers.' (1:22) ”˜Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.' That way people will see God in you. God has planted God's word in you as a power to help you and others. (1:21.)” James has such beautiful, practical ways of speaking about God, to those who wonder where God is.
What I like about James is that when he encourages faith, he points to God's actions. We can see God in nature, and it is easy to see God in the beauty of a sunset, but if your loved one has just died, the sunset may not seem beautiful, and God may seem remote. But if we speak of God's actions, of God giving us courage or wiping away every tear from our eyes, people may start to see God in the nurse, or niece, or nephew, or stranger, or in the seemingly ordinary events in life.
A woman recently returned from a trip to Malawi with her United Church group in Burlington. As part of the excursion, their entire group went to a men's prison, a trip this woman was dreading. Prisons in Malawi are not like prisons here, and her expectations were correct about the bad conditions. The prison was old and unsanitary, hundreds of people were squeezed into cells and a common courtyard. The toilets were attached to the courtyard walls and the whole place stank. She and her group were led to a crude stage, but they were led right through the crowded courtyard, she was brushing against the prisoner's bodies. She said she was terrified. And when she finally made it to the stage, she climbed up and kept her eyes to the floor. What happened next she was unprepared for. The prisoners began to sing hymns. She looked up and met their eyes and they were all wide eyes and big smiles. In spite of all of their suffering and humiliation, they had such joy that her eyes filled with tears.
We probably cannot argue people into believing in our loving and saving God. But we can probably all do what James does, he points to the many small things and large things in the midst of ordinary life that are signs of the God in whom our hope rests.
Marsha Linehan, a therapist and researcher at the University of Washington who suffered from borderline personality disorder, recalls the religious experience that transformed her as a young woman.
She sensed the power of another principle while praying in a small chapel in Chicago.
It was 1967, several years after she left the institute as a desperate 20-year-old whom doctors gave little chance of surviving outside the hospital. Survive she did, barely: there was at least one suicide attempt in Tulsa, when she first arrived home; and another episode after she moved to a Y.M.C.A. in Chicago to start over.
She was hospitalized again and emerged confused, lonely and more committed than ever to her Catholic faith. She moved into another Y, found a job as a clerk in an insurance company, started taking night classes at Loyola University — and prayed, often, at a chapel in the Cenacle Retreat Center.
“One night I was kneeling in there, looking up at the cross, and the whole place became gold — and suddenly I felt something coming toward me,” she said. “It was this shimmering experience, and I just ran back to my room and said, ”˜I love myself.' It was the first time I remember talking to myself in the first person. I felt transformed.”
The high lasted about a year, before the feelings of devastation returned in the wake of a romance that ended. But something was different. She could now weather her emotional storms without cutting or harming herself.
What had changed?
It took years of study in psychology— she earned a Ph.D. at Loyola in 1971 — before she found an answer. On the surface, it seemed obvious: She had accepted herself as she was. She had tried to kill herself so many times because the gulf between the person she wanted to be and the person she was left her desperate, hopeless, deeply homesick for a life she would never know. That gulf was real, and unbridgeable.
That basic idea — radical acceptance, she now calls it — became increasingly important as she began working with patients, first at a suicide clinic in Buffalo and later as a researcher. Yes, real change was possible. The emerging discipline of behaviorism taught that people could learn new behaviors — and that acting differently can in time alter underlying emotions from the top down.
But deeply suicidal people have tried to change a million times and failed. The only way to get through to them was to acknowledge that their behavior made sense: Thoughts of death were sweet release given what they were suffering.
I suppose any of us can say, “I will only believe in God if I get this job, or if my marriage doesn't fail, or if events like 9/11 don't happen. Do you really think that God is distant from you?
I do not know what struggles you are facing in your own lives at this time, or what your family members and friends might be facing. So many people are hurting. Instead of giving in to hopelessness, it is especially important now that we remember that God is who God has said God will be.
Martin Luther wrote, “If there is anything in is, it is not our own; it is a gift of God. But if it is a gift of God, then it is entirely a debt one owes to love, that is, the law of Christ. And if it is a debt owed to love, then I must serve others with it, not myself. “ (Lectures on Galatians 1519, cited in Charles B. cousar, Galatians, in the series Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1982, 145).
Healthy faith is a faith open to questions and doubt. Faith that admits no questions is hard to relate to.
Dark night of the soul:
When I am tempted to listen to hot, egotistic voices within my own heart; when it seems that love can never win but always loses; when it seems as though humility is ruthlessly trodden down by those who pass over it on their way to their own selfish ambitions; when it seems as though God cannot possibly triumph; when pity and love and mercy and kindness and tenderness are weakness; when it seems as though greatness is only possessed by those who know how to grab, and have the power to snatch at it, no matter what the cost to others—ah, yes, when the voices sound in my own heart which say you must play for your own hand, you must think of number one, you must not let yourself be trodden down—when I am thus tempted, my God! May I hear in imagination the tinkling of water, poured into a basin, and see, as in a vision, the Son of God washing the disciple's feet. Leslie D. Weatherhead, Eternal Voice (New York: Abingdon Press, 1940), pp. 81-82.]
God gives every generous act.
SO GOD IS ALL AROUND.
The Father of lights knows no change or shadows.
We are born by the word of truth come down above.
We are the first fruits of God's creatures
(living as we were intended to live).
Be slow to anger and quick to listen.
Anger does not produce God's righteousness.
Rid yourselves of wickedness.
Welcome the implanted word.*
It has the power to save your souls.*
Be doers of the Word, not mere hearers.
Look in a mirror and you see only what is.
Look in the law and see how you were and be blessed in acting.