A Fourth Church Sermon by Adam H. Fronczek

October 11, 2009 | 4:00 p.m.

Feeling Like You’re Being Followed . . .

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 42
Job 23:1–17

One of the things about childhood that is pretty much universal is that every child has a place to hide. Under the bed, in the closet, behind your big brother. When I was a kid, there was a huge evergreen bush outside my bedroom window. It was actually two bushes, separated by their roots at the bottom, but they came together at the top and formed a kind of canopy, and when I was small enough, I could scramble underneath the branches next to the bricks and get back to that place where no one could find me. It was the perfect place to go when I was in trouble. Or so I thought. Yet inevitably, whether it was a fight with a friend or a cookie snatched before dinner or that chore that I forgot or chose not to do, as soon as I emerged from that hiding place behind that bush, Mom and Dad knew where I had been and what was wrong.

Adults have hiding places of their own when things are not going well. When something bad happens at work, we hope our boss doesn’t find out; when relationships are difficult, we hide from our husbands and wives, our girlfriends and boyfriends. Sometimes it’s not even clear to us that we’re hiding. We hide from the stress in our lives by drinking too much; we hide from dealing with our own problems by lashing out at friends who don’t deserve it. We hide from people we don’t want to help by pretending that we don’t know that there’s a problem.

For people of faith, the trick about hiding from our problems is that even when no one else knows about our problems, God knows. And that’s a funny relationship for us; it’s a strange place to be, because we have a sense that God can see what is going on, but God, who is supposed to love us, often doesn’t seem to do anything to help us. And what good does it do for God to know it all if God isn’t going to help?

Job struggles with this same question. According to the story, Job is a man who has it all: good health, a great family, all the money and stuff any man could want. And in this story, he loses it all. First his riches disappear, and then his whole family dies, and then he gets sick, very sick. And he starts to wonder why God has allowed this to happen. And where is God now? It’s a question I’ve heard a lot lately, because it’s a realistic pattern these days. “I lost my job, and then I couldn’t pay my mortgage, and my wife left me, and now the stress of it all is making me physically and emotionally ill. How can God allow this to happen?”

The really distinctive think about Job’s story, I’ve always thought, is that from this place, Job somehow makes a choice that I don’t think many of us make. Rather than just thinking about it, he actually asks God his questions—and few of us do that. Let me explain to you what I mean.

I have a spiritual director. Many of us ministers do. A spiritual director is a person who talks with you about your spiritual life, and though many people might have spiritual directors, pastors often have them because when going to worship and leading people in prayer and teaching other people about God is your job, sometimes you have to make time in other ways to think about your own relationship with God, because it’s hard to do it right when you’re “on the clock.”

I talk to my spiritual director about a lot of things. He’s really a very patient man, because much of what I say to him, I admit, probably amounts to complaining. But I’ve noticed an interesting pattern in my talks with my spiritual director, now that we’ve been meeting for a number of months. I’ll be talking through a difficulty in my life or in my job, and I’ll say something like, “I just don’t know where God is in that. I don’t really get a sense of God’s presence in it, and I’m not sure what to do about that,” and invariably my spiritual director listens patiently and then says, “Well, have you told that to God?” Not exactly.

I find, when I get up the courage to talk with God about my problems, that it’s hard. When you actually ask God about something, it’s scary what the answer might be, because just like when I hid in that bush as a child, I know that God is aware of what’s going on, but I don’t get to hear back from God about it. I don’t get to argue it through with God. And isn’t this scary? What if I tell God my problems and God actually does something about it, something that I can’t control. If I have a bad habit and I actually tell God about it, will I have to stop it? If I’ve been having money problems and I pray to God about it, might I find out that I’ve been caring too much about money for a long time? If I pray to God to help me with my troubled relationship, might God respond that I’m the one who has to take the first step to fix it? And worst of all, what if it’s not your fault, but God doesn’t say anything back because God isn’t there?

Listen again to some of the words Job speaks in today’s lesson:

Then Job answered:
“Today also my complaint is bitter;
his hand is heavy despite my groaning.
O that I knew where I might find him,
that I might come even to his dwelling!
I would lay my case before him,
and fill my mouth with arguments.
I would learn what he would answer me,
and understand what he would say to me.
Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?
No; but he would give heed to me.
There an upright person could reason with him,
and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.

“If I go forward, he is not there;
or backward, I cannot perceive him;
on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;
I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.
But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tested me, I shall come out like gold.
My foot has held fast to his steps;
I have kept his way and have not turned aside.
I have not departed from the commandment of his lips;
I have treasured in my bosom the words of his mouth.
But he stands alone and who can dissuade him?
What he desires, that he does.
For he will complete what he appoints for me;
and many such things are in his mind.
Therefore I am terrified at his presence;
when I consider, I am in dread of him.
God has made my heart faint;
the Almighty has terrified me;
If only I could vanish in darkness,
and thick darkness would cover my face!”

Do you hear what Job is doing here? Job is getting himself ready to actually ask God his questions. Job thinks he is innocent; he believes he’s done nothing wrong, and things have finally become desperate enough that he is about to tell God about it directly. And he is afraid to do that, because he doesn’t know what God will think; he doesn’t know what the outcome will be. And being bold enough to really ask the question opens Job up to the terrifying possibility that God won’t be there to help. Job is having thoughts about God that he never had when things were good.

There’s a philosopher named Martin Heidegger who wrote a story about what’s going on here. A carpenter walks into a shop; it’s a beautiful wood shop. There are tools and buckets of nails, workbenches, and wood of all shapes and sizes. Everything is prepared, and he goes about his work. He works steadily; he doesn’t think much about the beautiful workspace that has been prepared for him. And then as he is working, the handle on the hammer breaks in two. And now all else that surrounds him—the wood, the nails, the beautiful benches—seems to fall away, because how can he work without a hammer? And when his anger subsides and he starts to pull himself together, he realizes that he never really spent much time thinking about the presence of that hammer until it was broken.

And so it is with so much of life—that we learn more about something when it is absent than we did when it was present; only when we experience the something that is broken do we acknowledge the value of what it had been when it worked.

Now what I’m about to say is important, so please don’t let me lose you here. I am not saying that God wants us to be broken so that we can be better people. What I’m saying is that every one of us, in our own way, is broken. That’s a fact. Every one of us has problems and concerns; every one of us has troubles to deal with and reasons to want to run away and hide. But you don’t ever need to hide from God, and here’s why:

God came into the world in this person named Jesus. And Jesus was amazing. If there’s one person who lived life the way it is supposed to be lived, Jesus got it done. But it didn’t end well for Jesus; people didn’t seem to like the way he dealt with the problems he saw around him. He probably had more enemies than friends, and for the most part people didn’t listen to his good teachings and did not follow him. And for reasons we may never exactly figure out, Jesus suffered and died.

But just before he died, he told something to a few of his followers; he told them the most memorable thing he ever said: Jesus took bread and broke it and gave it to them and said, “Take and eat, this is my body, broken for you.” Just like that hammer, which was so helpful when it was all put together, in a paradoxical way, we did not take Jesus seriously enough when he was teaching, but we take Jesus the most carefully once we know that he is broken. It’s a paradox that we seek help from one who is broken.

It is my hunch that this paradox works for this reason: once we know that Jesus, God’s own Son, is broken, we don’t have to hide from God anymore. Once we know that in Jesus Christ, God knows what it feels like when we are broken, suddenly it is OK to tell God whatever you have to say. God is no longer the angry parent waiting for us to come out of our hiding place and be punished. God is the loving parent who already knows our troubles and simply wants us to come out of our hiding place and say what’s wrong so that we can be wrapped up in God’s arms and together with God we can find a way forward.

Tonight I invite you to this table with me to pray and to eat together. Each of us is broken. And the table is prepared by Jesus, who is broken too. It is safe here in this place. You have nothing from which to hide. You can come here even if you’re not quite ready to talk to God. But if there is something you need to talk to God about, you can do that too. It is safe here in this place. You have nothing from which to hide.

Amen.