Sermon: Hidden in Plain View

Texts: Isaiah 64:1-11

Date: November 27, 2005

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

There was a series of billboards appearing by America’s roadways a few years back—I don’t know who was behind them. They were messages “from God.” Things like, “Have you read my #1 best seller? There will be a test;” “Keep using my name in vain and I’ll make rush hour longer;” “Let’s meet at my house Sunday before the game;” and “Tell the kids I love them.” All signed simply, “God.”

One God sign that tickled me was “Don’t make me come down there…God.” Ever hear that from an irritated parent who was responding to some ruckus going on amongst the kids on the floor below? Ever say it to a group of rowdy kids? Do you think that is something God would ever to say to all these unruly children of God on earth?

Do you ever ask yourself if God is angry with us? “Don’t make me come down there!”—that is certainly an angry message. If God is angry, would you want God to stay far away in order to avoid punishment, like a little kid who has just made a stupendous mess and hopes Mom and Dad don’t see it? Would you wish fervently that the Day of Judgment would be delayed forever so you wouldn’t have to face it? Would you take God’s apparent absence on the scene as a good sign that you aren’t about to get whacked, or dispatched to Hell? (Another of the “God” signs says, “You think it’s hot here?”)

The people of faith who made up the third prophet called Isaiah’s community were fairly certain God was angry with them. But they did not think God’s apparent absence was to be read as a sign of God’s patience, or a sign that anger hadn’t yet pushed God over the edge. They interpreted God’s hiddenness as proof of God’s anger. They were longing for God to deliver them from their enemies, and God’s inaction seemed to them evidence that God was really ticked off at them. If there were billboards in their era, the “God” message wouldn’t have been, “Don’t make me come down there,” but more like “Don’t make me stay up here!”

The prophet opens today’s reading with a plea for God to “tear open the heavens and come down!” The people remembered fondly the days when God would make dramatic appearances, causing the mountains to quake, doing mighty deeds that took everyone off guard and made the nations tremble. They would like God to ride in to the rescue again, as in the good ol’ days of the Exodus. But God seems reluctant to do so, for some reason.

So the prophet speculates about the reason. He thinks God’s absence or hiddenness is tied up with God’s anger which is tied up with the people’s sin. Hiddenness, sin, and anger; sin, anger, hiddenness; it’s not quite clear what order they come in. The Hebrew in verse 5 is difficult to translate. The NIV reads, “We continued to sin…you were angry. How then can we be saved?” The NRSV reverses the cause and effect of anger and sin. “But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.” One of the German scholars (Claus Westermann) translates, “Thou wast angry, we sinned, [because of our unfaithfulness we transgressed].” The anger and the sin and the divine hiddenness seem to be a chicken-and-egg sort of question; what came first? It’s hard to say, but the prophet is pretty sure they are all factors in the current situation. Verse 7 states unequivocally, “You have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hands of our iniquity,” while verse 9 begs, “Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord…”

The human need to make sense out what is happening is evident here. The people were still trying to understand why they had been defeated by a foreign military power and sent into exile. The prophet was, as prophets are apt to do, putting the blame on the people’s sinfulness which had disastrous consequences. But was the prophet reading the situation correctly? Was this interpretation of the events of the day accurate? Was God angry before, during, or after the exile? Was God’s reticence to appear unmistakably on the world stage as the savior of the people of Israel a sign of divine rage? What do you think?

What about now? Are the bad things that have happened recently a sign of a gathering storm of God’s anger? At least one (in my opinion, wacko) Christian theologian who thought he saw the shape of a fetus in an aerial view of the floodwaters spread out over New Orleans interpreted Hurricane Katrina as a sign of divine anger over abortion. I wonder if he read this last phrase of Isaiah 64:7 as he drew that conclusion, “You have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.”

Quite a few of the “God” billboards were vaguely threatening. Some people still seem to think God is angry with us, or angry with at least some of us. I think God would have some good reasons to be angry, but I’m not sure whether I would conclude that therefore God is angry. I’m not sure that’s the most helpful or accurate way to look at God. I suspect anger is a human emotion we project onto God to try to make sense of what God does and does not do in the world.

I have a close friend who would caution me not to make God out to be too nice, too tame. He would say that a mild-mannered God is just as much a human projection as I suspect an angry God is. There is too much written in the Bible about God as a righteous judge to ignore. I’m certain my friend would say a non-angry God is just wishful thinking on my part.

I cannot pretend to know the answer to the question of whether God is an angry God or not. There is one thing I definitely disagree with the prophet about, though: I don’t think God’s hiddenness is a sign of God’s anger, as he apparently concluded.

The NRSV’s translation of the last phrase of Isaiah 64:5 is intriguing: “because you hid yourself, we transgressed.” If this is an accurate translation, it has an almost accusatory tone, as if to say that if God had been standing around on stage left, big and obvious, we would not have sinned. It edges close to blaming God for human failings—why did you let us do that? Why didn’t you stop us? You knew we would sin, and yet you made yourself scarce and sure enough, we did our worst.

The logic behind such a statement is that if God were breathing down our necks all the time, we wouldn’t dare break the rules. Picture God as some kind of hulking secret service agent following your every move, ready to intervene if you even think about committing a sin. Or the obsessive father of an attractive teenage daughter who sits in the desk behind her in every class and insists on going along on every one of her dates to make sure no hanky-panky is going on. (There’s a cell phone company trying to sell its services this month with an ad featuring just such a father and daughter.)

This is not the God we are in relationship with. While we may believe that God has a full awareness of our actions, thoughts and feelings, most of us do not experience God as a Being in our faces constantly telling us what to do and what not to do. Sometimes, frankly, we wish God would be a little more directive with us when we are in a quandary about a decision. But that’s not the way God operates in the world. God’s face is often hidden from us; we can’t read a look of dismay or pleasure in the divine countenance whenever we might wish.

But this is not a sign of God’s displeasure, as if God can’t stand the sight of humanity for one minute longer and has removed herself to the next galaxy until we settle down. This is a sign that God wants us to be moral agents. I believe God wants us to be free to make choices about what we do and what we refrain from doing. Therefore, God did not create us to be puppets on a divine string. And God does not reveal himself so constantly or obviously that the privilege of puzzling out our moral choices is robbed from us.

Michael Bradley, the main speaker at the parenting forum last weekend talked a bit about parenting styles. He described one end of the spectrum as the fear based, controlling model of parenting. This type of parent, genuinely fearful about all the ways a kid could get hurt, tries to parent by having control over their kid’s behavior. This method of parenting involves many rules, a lot of surveillance, and a fair amount of punishment if a kid steps out of line. A kid in this kind of household might not get drunk because, as he will be quick to tell you, “My dad would kill me if he found out.” Fear of punishment keeps the kid toeing the line or makes the kid really, really sneaky.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is what Dr. Bradley described as “respect-based parenting.” In this style, which Bradley was advocating, the focus is not on the rules but on the relationship. The parent’s goal is to earn and keep the respect of their kids by in turn treating them with respect. He says that our goal as parents should not be to control our children but to raise children who have self control. The parent’s job is to model and teach good values and independent decision-making skills that will go with the kids into the difficult situations they face outside the home, outside the realm of parental control. A kid in this kind of household might decide against getting drunk because they don’t want to violate the trust their parents put in them, and more importantly, they don’t want to put their own health and safety in jeopardy with risky behavior.

You see the difference. If we were to conjecture what kind of parent God is to us, which end of the scale do you think God is on? It makes me sad that so many Christians seem to think God is a controlling Father who keeps us rebellious children in line with the threat of punishment. My experience and understanding of God is way at the other end. God is not constantly telling us what to do and not to do because that would be too controlling. I believe God is in a respect-based relationship with us. God has put trust in us as moral agents who are capable of making good decisions. Taking us by the hand and leading us through every moment of our lives would permanently infantilize us.

There is a good reason why God has hidden God’s face from us. It’s true that as often as not, the result is that we are “delivered into the hand of our iniquity”—that is, we make these beds that we have to lie in. But this shouldn’t be an occasion to blame God for letting us stumble; it should be an occasion to thank God for giving us freedom, for giving us the opportunity to grow into the likeness of Christ.

Saying that God is not constantly giving us guidance does not mean that God gives no guidance. Saying that God is partially hidden does not mean that God is never revealed. God appears in the world. The 65th chapter of Isaiah has God’s answer to the prophet’s musings and questions. Verse one says, “I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a nation that did not call on my name.” In other words, God was ready and willing to be found if anyone would have bothered to seek. (One of the confessions the prophet made in the 64th chapter was that no one calls on God’s name or attempts to take hold of God.)

It’s mysterious, the way God reveals godself in the world. God does not appear on demand, exactly; you can’t demand a sign and expect that God will prove up. On the other hand, God really is in our everyday world saying “Here I am, here I am!” The signs are subtle but they are everywhere. God appears in the sudden insight that solves a problem. In the healing words spoken by a friend in a crisis. In the beauty that moves one to tears and gives one the strength to go on. In the feeling of peace that steals into the troubled heart. “Here I am, here I am!” God is hidden in plain view. This glimpsing of a mysterious Divine that is delicately veiled from us leads to what preacher and theologian Rodney Romney calls “the astonishing gift of salvation lived in joyous uncertainty.”[1]

Uncertainty is not a joyous experience at all times. But I am convinced that it is one of the blessings of being a human being in a green and growing relationship with God. God is not absent but just hidden enough to let us be moral decision makers, hopefully being molded like Jesus Christ whom we follow. We can trust God to reveal godself to us if we attune our spirits to seek the signs hidden in plain view. Keep alert, keep awake, as Mark’s gospel urges.

Listen to this poem addressing God from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours:

In deep nights I dig for you like treasure.

For all I have seen

that clutters the surface of my world

is poor and paltry substitute

for the beauty of you

that has not happened yet.

My hands are bloody from digging.

I lift them, hold them open in the wind,

so they can branch like a tree.

Reaching, these hands would pull you out of the sky

as if you had shattered there,

dashed yourself to pieces in some wild impatience.

What is this I feel falling now,

falling on this parched earth,

softly,

like a spring rain?

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[1] Romney, Rodney Wilderness Spirituality: Finding Your Way in an Unsettled World Boston: Element Books, 1999, p. 178