The Fourth Church Pulpit

DEAR GOD, DO SOMETHING QUICK!

December 5, 1993

John M. Buchanan

4 un
m AO
mom
— DW
Pod
Zs

CHURCH

A LIGHT IN THE CITY

126 East Chestnut St. Chicago, IL 60611-2094
Phone: 312.787.4570
John M. Buchanan, Pastor

Scripture: Mark 13:32-37, Isaiah 64:1-2, 11-12

“© that you would tear open the heavens and come down,. . .
Isaiah 64:1 (NRSV)

Several years ago there was a little book published with the engaging title Children’s Letters to God. It is
just what the title says: a compilation of brief messages, written by little children, putting into words whatever
thev wanted to say to God. The letters are full of innocence and hope and trust. Some of them are wise, as only
children can he on occasion

My favorite is printed in the large block letters of a first-grader:

ar God,

Are you real? Some people don’t believe it.
If you are, you better do something quick.

Harriet Ann”

I think that Harriet Ann has said it for you and me, and the whole human race. I believe it is the hum
prayer, prayed on and off through life, but prayed with particular urgency when things happen which assault us
so deeply. Our very faith comes into question; prayed with urgency when things happen which simply don’t
make sense if God is real.

Terry Anderson has written a memoir documenting his experience as a hostage for seven years, Den of
dons. Anderson was a reporter with A. P., living in Beirut. On March 16, 1985, he was abducted and for the
~next seven vears, along with other men whose names we came to know — Terry Waite, Thomas Sutherland, The
Reverend Benjamin Weir, a Presbyterian mission worker who came to Fourth Church to speak about his
experiences, Father Martin Jenko from Joliet, whose sister was here when Ben Weir spoke. For seven years
Anderson wes a hostage, a prisoner, in a blindfold, most of the time chained to a wall in a series of dark, damp,
filthy rooms — transported from hiding place to hiding place underneath the carriage or in the trunk ofa car,
totally bound in packing tape. For one period of three years, he never saw the sun. One of the experiences that
Anderson records in his powerful and engaging book is his spiritual journey. A Christian, a lapsed Roman
Catholic, Ar ndez son found himself thinking a lot ebout God and faith. He asked for a Bible and began to read

1

and reread and when Father Jenko end he shared a call, Anderson made his confession. But throughout there is

a very humen struggle, expressed with a news repcrier’s clarity and divectness:

“T reach so hard to touch God, concentrating, waiting for something, some

acknowledgement fom Him that I exist, that He's liste: ning. I get back only
blankness. “Long nights... mind spinning, thoughts, emotions whirling, anger,
rrustration, pain, guilt.

‘t do this, God. I'm finished. I surrender. There’s nothing I can do to change

Tecan eres i
anything, nothing anvene can do. And it’s just going to go on, and Ican't do it.
Help me. You say vou leve me, so help me.” [p. 75]
A foriy-vear-old man... a six-year-old child... “Dear God, you batter do something quick." Their praver ‘s

the human praver, the prayer every man and woman prays ir some way or another at some time or another.

12/5/93 4

A poet of magnificent art and deep insight wrote his version of the prayer 2,500 vears ago.

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down... to make your name
known to your adversaries.”

Like Terry Anderson, the prophet is writing about captivity. Only he’s writing about his people. Judah is
being held hostage. The kings of Judah have made a series of foolish decisions and have managed to infuriate
Babylon, the most powerful empire in the region. For two years the Babylonian army lays siege to Jerusalem.
Finally, in 587 B.C.E., the city falls. The conquering Babylonians smash the city walls, burn all the major
buildings, level the Temple of Solomon and carry off into exile the royal house, several thousand leading
citizens, military people, politicians, priests, artisans. A generation passes. “How can we sing the Lord’s song
ina foreign land?” the people lament. “Why has this happened to God's chosen people? Why doesn't God do

something? Why are we suffering, persecuted, humiliated? Why doesn't God at least say something?”
Are there more poignant lines anywhere?

“Our holy and beautiful house, where our ancestors praised you,

has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.

After all this, will you restrain yourself, O Lord? Will you keep silent . . .?”
(Isaiah 64:11, 12]

“Dear God, you better do something quick.”
“You say you love me, so help me.”

For 2,500 vears and more human beings have been praying the seme prayer, longing for God to act, to
deliver, to rescue, to say something... anything, to show that the people, we, that is, are not alone. That is
precisely whv the Christian church observes Advent in the way it does, singing hymns about exile and
loneliness, reading about captivity and yearning and longing for God. That is why we are not ready to sing “Joy
to the World,” but instead insist first on reliving ennually our forbeazers’ experience of God’s absence and
silence.

It might be easier to focus our celebrating and worshiping on pleasing motifs: angels and shepherds and

mes ... And yet our deepest need is to know that when life caves in, when the worst happens, we are not
alone. Who hasn't prayed Harriet Ann’s prayer?

“Why? Why has this happened? Why, if there is e God of goodness and love; why,

if there is a God !o ooxing afer me; why, if there is ul:imete justice and compassion?”

The absence of God, the silence of God, the weakness of God, who doesn’t know about it? Who has not
experienced ihe loss of a dear o mand wanted to cry, to shout to heaven, “Why?” Who has not learned about a
natural disasier, a ‘8 plane crasn, nal DS epidemic and wanted to say, “Dear God, is this necessary?” Who hasn't
read ebouta dea ros child cz cau ugh it in the crossfire, dead at age seven, and at least thought if not prayed,

ng

1

One who has and who has written eloquently about itis Nicholes Wolterstorff, a professor of philosophy a:
Yale and formerly Calvin Collegs, a thoughtful Christian. Wolterstc = twenty-five-year-old son, Eric, was
killed in a mountain climbing accident and he writes of his grief and his faith struggle ina little book, Lament
fora Son.

“To the most agonized question I have ever asked, I do not know the answer. Ido
not know why God would watch him fall”...

12/05/93 —2—

And then comes a praver... his prayer... the prayer...

“Tam at an impasse, and you, O God, brought me here. From my earliest days I
heard of you... believed in you. On me your presence smiled. Where are you in
the darkness? I learned to spy you in the light. Here in the darkness I cannot find
vou.” [p. 68, 69]

Sooner or i

m

ter life brings us to such a place and brings such a praver to our lips. If we know anything, you
and J. itis that there i is No easy answer. While Harriet Ann’s prayer is eloquently simple, it raises a question
that does not submit to superficial, simple piet

As the ancient prophet struggles with the issue, two thoughts begin to emerge and they are perhaps the two
mast important * theolopicel ideas in the history of human thought.

that God doesn’t cause human suffering, or prevent it, or for that matter, explain it. God shares
Cod, this poet suggested nearly 600 years before Christ, enters so deeply into the human
Situation, that what happens to human beings has an effect on God. God assumes the burden of suffering
God's representative is a “suffering servant.” It was, and is, aremarkable thought: a God who is vulnerable; a
God who for love becomes vulnerable; a God who accepts, and experiences, the same suffering and loss and
grief which effiict human beings; a God whose prominent characteristics, therefore, can no longer be described
exclusively as power, might, judgment, strength, but now compassion, kindness, mercy and love; a God,
therefore, who does not banish suffering, but stands shoulder to shoulder with us in its midst, and holds us up
and tins us when we begin to fall and strengthens us to live through it.

And the second idea is that even in the midst of the most distressing circumstances, there are signs of hope.
vulnerable, is also alwavs present to create the possibility of new life and redemption. The
_-propnet could s ee things the captives could not see: liberation was coming, freedom, restoration, a highway in

the desert. No matter what happens to us, God’s power and love can create newness and goodness and hove in
its midst. Bex -atchful, the Gospel of Mark urges. You don’t know when or where he will come. But watch for
signs of hope. Expect, anticipate, watch for God’s hope.

The late Abraham Heschel, distinguished Jewish philosopher and theologian, said that Isaiah's image of God
t to give birth is the boldest and most hopeful divine representation in all of religious

ain and promise... pain and hope... pain and new Uie. The faith issue in Advent is alwavs
nm the midst of f despair, | ight shining in darkness. The faith issue is not “Do you believe Jens us Was
em?” (There is a sense in which evervbody is captivated by that part of the sterv.) but d
=

signs of hope and restoration ino our world, ints cur darkness?

The most moving thing about There Are No Caiicren Here, both Alec Kotlowitz’s fine bock and Oprah
Wintrev's television dapat ion, is the presence of indomitable hope in a mother and her sons, living in the
most cesperate of circumsta

I

5
a
a
ay)
ae)
Ss.
oO
c
e.
fe)
ry
ro)
wt

aa
99)

mn mea

rodably not,” she said. “People will say, ‘Someone should do something about
that’ and then go about their business.”

12/5/93 3

Well, mavbe not. It's Advent, afer all. Maybe there are enough people who believe in God and therefore
know that God is always planting seeds and bearing children of hope and who therefore not only watch and
wait but expect and anticipate and go to work in the name of hope and love — people who will not rest unti!
we establish sanity on the streets of this city and something resembling peace and hope in our schools and
compassion in our economic system.

The truth is God did not rip open the sky and reach down and lift Judah from its ghetto in Babylon. God
invites the people, in the fullness of hope, to lift up their heads and hearts and start a journey of faith full of
risk, danger and demand; a journey through a desert. God promises not to fix everything, but to be with them;
to give them strength and courage for the journey. God, in fact, doesn’t rip open the walls of Terry Anderson's
cell and loosen his chains.

“T just can’t do it,” Anderson wrote. But he did it... survived intact, kept sanity
and humanity. How? “But ai the botiom, in surrender so complete there is no
coherent thoughi, no real pain, no feeling, just exhaustion, just waiting, there is
something else. Warmth/light/sofiness. After a while, some strensth. Enough for
now,

“It happens once, twice. A few hours later, it fades, end the anger and frustration
and longing are back. But the memory is there, the sense of presence.” fp. 75]

And Nicholas Wolterstorff survives the most devastating loss he can imagine. “Eric should have buried me”
he says, es every parent savs when a child dies. How did he survive? He writes near the end of the book:

“God is not only the Gad of the sufferers but the God who suffers. The pain and
fallenness of humanity have entered into his heart. Through the prism of my tear

s |
have seen a suffering God. [p.81] We're in it together, God and we, together in the

history of our world.” [p. $0]
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”
“Dear God, you better do something quick.”

God hears those prayers. God hears you when you pray those prayers. God comes to you and me when we
find those pravers on our lips.

3

rae)

How can fsay that? How can vou believe that? Because God has come in a stable, behind a crowded inn, i

Mi€nem OD yu a ng tne

Because God chose to answer the ancient praver quietly, silently, in human birth.

+ 1

flected God's love end power and grece in a way we have never been able to
1

Because the child grew and:

forget, living our life, walking our roads, loving with our love, weeping our tears... and finally. knowing what
i 2 beloved child dis.
Because ha invites us to rust him, which means to entrust to him our lives, the lives of our dear ones.

Because it is this Christ who invites us to eat and drink with him, and promises to be with us... . forever.
Wait. Watch for him. All praise to him. Amen.

12/5/93 —i—