FAITH FOR THE DARKNESS

Novender 17, 1985, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

"Hide not thy face from me." --Psalm 27:9a (RSV)
Scriptures

Psalm -27
Job 4121-6
Mark 15:33-39

Analysts of culture sometimes suggest that each age .expresses itself.in one
particular architectural formn.:: . on ‘

In Western Europe, in the Middle Ages -- it was the castle. In the high
renaissance -- the cathedral, its spires pointing to heaven. In the 1930's,
in America, the. confident, aspiring skyscraper symbolized the time... - os

What form characterizes this time?

In his important 1983 book Religion in the’ Secular City, Harvard Theologian
Harvey Cox :suggests that. a major commercial airport is the. virtual incarnation
of the modern era, where all our Brilliant achievements and perverse flaws are
on display. —_ : 7

; “The : sovereign nation-state:is here; as invisible voices announce departures |
’ to the’ great capitals. of the globe--- Caifo, London, Jarkarta.... ~

’ "Science and technology gleam here. Numbers, the favored language in our

quantified era, clain.an equal ‘stature with words. It: is flight four-thirteen,

.. heaving. at. two twenty .from.gate thirty-four on,concourse. three:...: Everywhere . »
the machine shimhers,...sleek, shiny planes,...ingenious devices for moving
people..quietly, mysterious computers... ,

- “Here also is System, Standard Procedure,...uniformed attendants smooth the
transactions without inviting intimacy... Everyone shares the feeling that
this experience should be made as temporary as possible. .

"And money talks. Here at the Big Airport the whole world is literally within
our reach... It is a prospect that would have made Magellan or Marco Polo or .
even Ali Baba giddy. We have only to pay: preferably not with currency notes
but with the little plastic pearl of great price that allows us to plug into a
universal treasury of merit ard enjoy momentary satisfaction at the cost of
some vague future day of reconing.

“And religion? Where is God? At Logan Airport in Boston there is a niche
thought fully set aside for the divine. Squeezad into a side corridor, not
far from where lost luggage can be sought, the footsore traveler can say a
prayer to Our Lady of the Airways. The chapel is modern, almost chic, trying
its best not to look too anachronistic in its improbable setting. There is

a priest assigned to Our Tady of the Airways. Masses occur, occasionally
funerals, sometimes even weddings. Unkind rumor has it that being assigned
there is a kind of mild punishment imposed on a cleric who has come to the
Chancery's attention once too often," (p.384-85)

Harvey Cox, good teacher that he is, motivated me to do some original research.
There is a chapel at O'Hare, in the basement of Terminal 2. Mass is said daily.
Protestant services are held. It is Open 24 hours a day, and I have yet to
‘meet anyone who has. ever been there.

- é cox is not advocating a : higher ‘profile. for. God or religion at. tite ‘airport, nor” 7

am IT. Although ; having missed a flight dt O'Hare, on. one of my numerous trips -
in and out of here this year, due to a train that stopped an agonizing 100 yards
from the terminal and .left us to watching the.minutes tick away, I certainly
“heard God's’name invoked all around me with great conviction. Chapels: at
“O'Hare are not the. point, The point Harvey Cox makes here -- and the point
of departure. for this sermon -- is the practical atheism of the modern city,

_ the modern ethos, modern life, It_is not intentional-nor devious. It just
is, A thousand years ago the village was organized around the Cathedral.
Today, ‘it's the Sports Coniplex, thé Domed ‘Stadiuni, “the- Civic Center, The’

. secularity -- the pragmatic atheism, or at least’ agnosticism /--‘of modernity. .
‘is simply a fact. . .

; Et. is ‘a poignant Yeality of our era. The philosopher. Hegel laid the groundwork
at ‘the beginning of the 19th. ‘Century and eVer since péople have been talking, -
until recently in whispers, about the death or at least the absence of God from
life, -Moderm culture seems to get along very nicely without reference-to God.

_ (See Wolfhart. Pannenberg, Christian Spirituality, p. 71) A distinguished. .
“Italian scholar writes -<-"From the religious point of view, humanity has entered
‘ a-lorig night that will become darker and- darker with. the ‘passing of the “Genera- -
_tions and of which no end can yet be seens".- (soibino Acquavina, The Decline “

ras) of the Sacred i in Industrial Society, in’ Cox - p.11)-

OE think you: and i. ‘Know. that.. _ D-think we. shave. also Learned: in- -the past ‘decade
. or so that the city is: not nearly .as secular - as we thought, nor as secular as.

it appears on the surface of things. The announcement of God's death, like

Mark Twain's obituary which was printed by accident during his life, is .
obviously premature. And yet thoughtful people do not want to minimize the ~

' deep and important theological issue of God's presence or absence. The literature
of the last century and a half reflects how profoundly we have struggled with it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, for instance, wrestled with it all his life, referred to
his years of squirming in a church pew as “the frozen purgatory of my childhood,"
and from college wrote to his mother: "The being a minister is of course out

of the question. I-shall not think that even you could desire me to choosé

‘so dull a way of life." Yet he could not let go of the idea of God, (or better

Said, in terms of Presbyterian theology, God would not let go GF him!) His
friend Heriman Melville shared the struggle. Hawthorne wrote about Melville

that "He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief." And literary
critism still debates the meaning of Melville's great white whale -- is it God,
or a colorless, all-color atheism from which we all shrink?" (John Updike,

Hugging the Shore, p.97)

That inability ta believe, but discomfort, with unbelief, is -- in my judgment --
an accucate description of the modern condition. God does not appear to have
much to do with our life -- particularly the suffering and injustice and the
randomness of evil. And yet, there is something in us that does not want to --
cannot -- let go.

The poet’ John Crowe Ransom gave Martin Marty a title for a wonderful book, A Cry -
. of Absence, and also gathered up the sense of our dilemma with these lines?

“Two evils; monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going;
A Cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,.

“And in the world the furious winter blowing. "

Sometimes that can be very. personal; ‘not at all the cold detached speculations _
of the college philosophy seminar in which we had the adolescent luxury of
-debating God's existence, but the intensely personal and immediate ways ‘of the
heart... Sometimes we are sure. - There, are times when God is-as real and fangible,.
as ‘the person sitting next to us. We cherish the experience -- the sense of

“ the holy in majestic mountain or magnificent sunséet,in the miracle of another's
love, and the holiness of beauty in a Bach fugue. And -there come moments when
the whole business seems like wishful thinking, when the poetry doesn't rhyme

_ and..the music is flat, -and passion | has given way to boring routine and, God,

" if he exists at-all, is known more for his. absence than his presence... in
Marty's wivid prose... “Absence can come also, to’ a vast space left when the "
divine is distant, the ‘sacred is remote, when. God is silent." (A Cry of Absence

~ ake saints ‘of the past, we are ) quick to : assume, are saints because they lived.
always with a sénse of God's nearness, God's immediacy and availability. ° We
‘assume they. all, like Brother Lawrence, practice the presence of God while ~

__ Washing’ pots. and, pans in. ‘the, _kitchen.., The. truth, is, God is. silent, and absent

for Saints too. The human experience, in every age, ‘has included “profound lone-
liness and abandonment. And there is a sense in which that experience itself ~-
the empty place where God belongs, the restless agnosticism, the uncomfortable
unbelief, becomes a powerful affirmation of Gad.

I think we can identity with that, most of us. Homesickness is a product of
knowing about a home; and loneliness is a product of having been loved, and
grief a product of intimacy, and this theological silence -~ a product 6f deep
faith, If God doesn't exist, why’ in the world do we miss him so much? It's
precisely the missing, you see. . It's the provocative suggestion of God in the
deeply human need for God. That is an intriguing thought. Langdon Gilkey at
the University of Chicago is very helpful in observing that “we become aware

o¥€ the problem of an ultimate source when at our depths there seems only to

be a painful void." (Naming the Whirlwind, p.309) And in a lecture on homiletics...

“Prederick Buechner told a. group of ‘preachers to pay attention to the God who is

known to many of their people less as a presence much of the time as an absence,
an empty place where grace and peace belong." (Telling the fruth, The Gespel
as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale, p.36)

The trouble is that the most popular styles of modern religion either don't
deal with this experience or else are threatened by it and regard it as
evidence of weak or bad faith on the part of the individual. Marty's book
identifies the "summery spirituality" of much religion as an experience many
people simply cannot claim with integrity. “Not every believer can move easily
into the rhythms of Country and Western Christianity with its foot stomping,
exuberant styles," he wrote. Most of the religion one sees on television or
encounters on the religious shelves at the bookstore seems to promise that if
you believe enough and try hard enough a life of endless cheerfulness and
joyfullness will be yours. God will be immediately and cheerfully present to
make every day and every experience full (of sunshine.

“Some are. excluded by that. Many who are open to the complexities and ambiguities

of modern life are not gathered up by that kind of piety. Many wish they could

.. be, ‘sometimes try to say the words and sing the songs, and then feel guilty

because it doesn't-work. “Almost inevitably thoughtful people wonder about their
spitirual adequacy when they compare themselves to the spiritual athletes for
whom God is available at all times. Sometimes we feel like religious ninety-
eight pound weaklings for whom the light of certainty and joy has not yet tured
on. And who need nothing so much as the theological equivalent of Charles Atlas’

-ol@-crash ‘course ‘in: bodybuilding and. self-esteem.

What a relief, therefore, simply to return to the Bible and discover that in its
Pages are a lot of people like us. What a relief to be reminded of Job and- the
great brooding silence which met his cries of agony. What a relief to be
reminded that the disciples of Jesus can be pretty dull spiritually; they they
don’ t spend all their waking hours in ‘prayerful ecstacy but instead keep missing
the point of Jesus' teaching, failing to see the significance of what he is
doing, and at the end, cower in fear, doubt and darkness -- just like the rest

of us would*-- before the resurrection. And what a blessed relief to read the

Psalms, which is what Dr. Marty did, and to be reminded again that many of them
deal with darkness, doubt, abandonment and even anger.

.."Phou- turnest man back to the dust", the Psalmist. wrote. .."all_our days pass...
away. ‘under. thy, wrath... Return, O-Lord!: How long? . Have pity-.on thy servants." --”

(Psalm 90) The man who wrote that and the community which. read it knew some-
thing about God's silences and absences, it would appear.

The Psaiter is full of eloquent praise. And it is full of eloquent humanness:

"OQ Lord, my God, I call for help by day;
EI cry out in the night before thee...
For my soul is full of troubles.

E am reckoned among those who go

down to the pit." (Psalm 88}

Now that is not very cheerful. But it is there. It is there in the Bible,
deeply and honestly and humanly. Religion that is unfailingly cheerful will
simply not be meaningful to everyone. I do not mean that religion must be

We Presbyterians are grim enough. I'm reading a little book by Eudora Welty
in which she used "Presbytecian" as a virtual synonym For straight-laced,
joyless religiosity. Quite to the contrary, true and honest joy are gifts
which are given to those who are true and honest human beings. And the very
good news of the whole Bible is that there is room even for the human sense
of abandonment and aloneness and God's absence.

Honest and saving religion is going to take into account our occasional sense
of emptiness, our occasional self-pity, our occasional depression. It will
accommodate and include our occasional disbelief. I think my own sense of
salvation was enormously enhanced when I finally understood that God believes
in us even when we do not believe in God: that God searches for us even when
we give up searching for him: that God loves us even when we don't love him:
and that his grace surrounds us even and particularly when we have rather
" intentionally tried to isolate ourselves from him.

“Honest, religion isn't upset by honest doubt. It will even accommodate our.

sense of injustice, cur righteous indignation, our anger. I love a vignette

Hans Kung preserves about an elderly man (Heinrich Heine) critically ill who,
after yedrs of skepticism; returned to God. "He needed _a God" ‘he said, “against
whom, like Job, I could filing my complaint, my despair, “my anger. God be praised
that I have a God once more, since in my excessive pain I can permit myself a
few curses and blasphemies; this sort of relief is not granted to the atheist,"
(Eternal Life, P201) :

‘It is a ‘Yelief to rediscover that Biblical faith exists . in the midst of some
very real darkness. And it is the saving power of the Gospel to know that the -
supreme revelation of God's reality, God's love, is in an event that could be
seen as the most God-forsaken thing that ever happened to anybody ~- and was --
_£or the one to. whom it happened.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Abandoned me? Left me here alone?
My God, where are you when I need you?" ; , :

. “That? s not original with you. You! ve ‘said it -- or ‘thought. it -- or’ will: ---

. but someone else said it first. His name is Jesus. That is the magnificance
of. it. all. The God who is incarnate in Jesus.is most real at just those times

- when he seems radically absent. The crucifixion, the utter God-forsakeness of .
‘that man. on his cross ‘becomes’ for usy God's: ‘complete ” love. and complete’ ‘involve-

“ment in ony world, “>

It is, for me at least, the greatest mystery of faith and the deepest comfort,
that out of human abandonment, our cries for God become affirmations of God:
our doubts are strong testimony, our spiritual restlessness points to a resting
place, our homesickness directs us toward home, and the darkness in which we
live on occasion is eloquent testimony to the light of the world which. Jesus
Christ is. When we cry out about God's absence, God is no longer absent, and
in our laments about God's silences, God has already begun to speak.

Dr. Marty noted, and every pastor has experienced, that "Hardened urbanites,
far removed from nomadic or agrarian experience, turn in crisis to those who

‘" minister to them and ask for a Psalm about the Lord as shepherd. Why? Because
they resonate to a passage about walking through “the valley of the shadow of
death." (Op Cit P34)

The Gospel of Jesus Christ addresses our life in its depth and at its edges,

our humanity at its most human, and our needs at their most intense. The

Gospel is saving precisely because it is not intimidated, threatened, nor

' repelled particularly by the darkness. The one who could cry ouk of his

own abandonment is there for us when we feel abandoned. The God whose son was
crucified will be for us and with us, when someone as dear and close as our

own life dies; in times of profound disappointment when, with terrible clarity,
we know that our lives are not going to turn out the way we planned them. The
God and Father of Jesus will be there in sickness and pain: when life's unfair-
ness weighs heavily, and when we are not being rewarded for our fidelity. The __
God whose son died on 4 cross -- a son, who in profound grief, could himself cry
out, "Why have you forsaken me?" That God is no stranger. to the depths of our
humanity, nor the darkness in which we must occasionally do our living.

“It is the most profound mystery ‘of our faith tnat God is - present in what feels
like his absence. It is: ‘the best of news ," which we “cannot explain, but- to
which others point and which we too will know =- that - in’ the’ deepest darkness,
there is light, and in the most profound silence -- a Thou, .
. . . Amen .

+

‘Lord God’ for the depth of your commitment to us; we give you thanks. We confess,
that we live --.much of the time -- without’ any sense of your presencé. We con-
fess, that in disappointment and pain and g¥ief -- we wonder where you are. We
‘praise -you, ‘great God.of light, that- -even. in our aloneness., you find us: that _
within our own crying for you, you are -loving us: that even in our ‘impatience,
you are healing and.saving. Thank you Lord God for that strong and ‘creative
love. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. —

Amen