sermon transcript preached November 3, 2019 at Monroe Free Methodist on the 21st Sunday after Pentecost
How have you seen God?
This is the question I’m inviting you to answer. Maybe you have a quick response, or maybe that question makes you feel very uneasy. Or maybe, like Zacchaeus, it’s a little of both. You’ve perched yourself dangerously high on a tree branch because you’ve heard of this Jesus, and as you catch a glimpse of him in the crowd, you second-guess whether you are actually prepared to see Jesus for yourself.
I can imagine the anxiety that might have gripped Zacchaeus in the moment when Jesus looked up and locked eyes with him. “Oh my gosh. Don’t look, don’t look. I’m a detestable sinner. I don’t even want you to acknowledge my existence.” But after hearing Jesus say, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today” something deep in his spirit filled with joy. Zacchaeus had seen Jesus and Jesus had seen him, and in those moments he encountered the healing and wholeness Jesus came to bring. A thrill of hope stirred within him, and next thing you know, Zacchaeus is happily hosting Jesus for dinner, and eagerly committing to change everything about his lifestyle in order to live like Jesus.
It’s funny, isn’t it?…Jesus didn’t tell Zacchaeus to give half of his possessions to the poor or to pay back everyone he had defrauded four times over. Jesus didn’t have to say anything. Zacchaeus’s spirit had seen God and he was changed on the spot. Salvation had come to his house.
This self-initiated confession and repentance reminds me of the story Rachel told me earlier this week when I went to pick up my girls at the end of the day. Rachel had been in the other room when she heard Junia start crying. She walked in to see what was going on, and Kirsten came over to her and immediately confessed, “I pushed Junia.” Before Rachel could reply, Kirsten went on to say,”I’m going to go sit on the couch.” A few minutes after putting herself in time-out, Kirsten got down and walked over to her sister, saying, “I’m sorry for pushing you, June.” And gave her a big, repentant hug.
I think this is what it looks like to see Jesus – we want to live like Jesus and we’re filled with an eagerness to confess and repent.
But there are times in our lives when we feel more like the prophet Habakkuk, appalled by the devastation all around us and desperate for God to answer our prayers. What then? What about the dark times when we can’t see Jesus? When we wonder where God’s Spirit has disappeared to?
1:2 O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?
1:3 Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.
2:1 I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1
Habakkuk wasn’t seeing God at the moment. There was horrendous wrong-doing and destruction and violence going on and Habakkuk had no answer for the question,
“Where is God, in this?”
Can you relate? Pause for a moment. Consider the darkness you’re facing. Consider how you would answer, “Where is God?”
During the dark times of life, when wars seems to rage within us or around us, how are we to carry on?
It’s in these seasons of desolation when we can take our cues from the prophet. We can climb up onto that rampart-wall and wait and watch for God. When our lips cry, “Where are you, God, in this?” our consolation is the vision we have caught of God before. And we cling to that recollection, that proof that God is with us and God loves us and God sees us, even as we position ourselves to wait to catch a glimpse of God once again.
Pamela Cooper-White, Columbia Theological Seminary wrote this excellent commentary on this passage from Habakkuk,
“What if we, like Habakkuk, would just station ourselves at a watchpost – a quiet room in our home, outdoors in nature, somewhere at work, a formal place of worship, or even more metaphorically, a ‘place’ inside ourselves, a ‘rampart’ within our hearts – and demand that God clear a way for us, send us a glimpse of healing or wholeness for ourselves and our world…What if we were even to yell at God a little bit about the devastation and the grief we see? What if we refused to turn away, and waited with determination for God’s reply?”
This type of fierce commitment to see God, waiting determinedly for hope, for an answer, reminded me of Dog Monday, a surprisingly important character in the Anne of Green Gables series I just finished a few months ago. Lucy Maud Montgomery’s book Rilla of Ingleside chronicles the life of Anne of Green Gables’ grown children during the devastation of World War I.
In 1914 as the war breaks out, Anne’s oldest son, Jem enlists. The whole family, including Jem’s beloved ‘Dog Monday’ watch as he boards the train and rides off to join the battle.
Montgomery writes,
“Nobody missed Dog Monday at first. When they did Shirley went back for him. He found Dog Monday curled up in one of the shipping sheds and tried to coax him home. Dog Monday would not move. He wagged his tail to show he had no hard feelings but no blandishments availed to budge him.”
“Guess Monday has made up his mind to wait there till Jem comes back,” Shirley reported.
“This was exactly what Dog Monday had done. His dear master had gone – he, Monday, had been deliberately and of malice of forethought prevented from going with him by a demon disguised as a Methodist minister. Wherefore, he, Monday, would wait there until the smoking, snorting monster, which had carried his hero off, carried him back.
“Ay, wait there, little faithful dog with soft, wistful, puzzled eyes. But it will be many a long bitter day before your boyish comrade comes back to you.”
The Blythe family built a shed for Dog Monday at the train station and there he stayed for four years, watching hundreds of trains come and go, boys in khaki boarding and returning home. But he would not lose hope. He would not take his eyes off of that train. He would wait for his master.
“Dog Monday met and never had the boy he waited and watched for returned. Yet still Dog Monday watched on with eyes that never quite lost hope.”
L.M. Montgomery
The story continues for thirty-some chapters until four horribly long years had passed. It’s 1918 and the war’s victory had been declared, and still Jem had not returned.
At long last (spoiler alert), Jem returned and Dog Monday greeted him with all the enthusiasm and grief and love and lament as you might expect. And that dog never left Jem’s side.
This is how it is with us, I think. When we have experienced the nearness of God, the love of Jesus, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, we cannot forget.
During times when the best part of our life seems to be riding away on a train called Cancer or Divorce or Death or Addiction, it might feel like desertion. Has God left? Where is God in this?
And so, like Dog Monday, we set up shop on the platform. We eat and sleep and wait and watch, trusting, hoping, knowing we will see God again.
The metaphor isn’t perfect. Jesus isn’t the one who’s left us, riding away on a train. But the good parts of our life may take a turn for the worse. We experience loss and grief. We wonder if we’ll ever be healed and made whole. But God will never leave us nor forsake us. Jesus himself told his disciples in John 14,
“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth…You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you…The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”
“Once our heart’s eyes has seen God,” Pamela Cooper-White writes, “if only for a moment, we are drawn to seek God forever.”
So how have you seen God?
This is one of the reasons I believe it is essential to be a Christian in community with other Christ followers. Some of us have no idea what it is like to see God, but when we listen in as someone else tells how they’re seeing God, we begin to learn what to look for. It is essential to tell our stories, friends. Our encounters with God need to be declared with joy, telling the glory of God.
When we catch a glimpse of Jesus in our midst, we must share this with others, because to hear how someone has seen the Divine can be a lifeline of hope for others and it will put words to the hope we have for our own ears to hear.
If you haven’t seen God or you have forgotten what that looks like, pray earnestly. Stand on the rampart around the war within you and shout to God to show God’s self to you. And remember you are not alone. You are surrounded by people who are following Jesus, who have seen the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their lives, who have seen the mercy and generosity of God, who have witnessed their prayers answered.
And so we are in this together, reminding one another, bringing food to the ones waiting by the train tracks, joining them in their lament, sitting beside them as they watch and wait and weep.
How have you seen God? Remember these visions in the dark times. And pray and cry and yell for God to be seen once again.
