Seeking God

Texts: Isaiah 55:1-8, Psalm 63
March 11, 2007

The Bible looks like one big book. But it really is a library, a collection of stories told and then written over centuries, and finally assembled into one official version. The writings themselves hardly ever existed as complete works that some scholar could just copy down. Most of the source materials for the books of the Bible are small fragments, sometimes just a few lines. They come from dozens and in some cases hundreds of separate documents. Often they disagree: one document has words in a passage that another leaves out. Scholars try to put all these fragments together to make coherent books, which together make the library, the Bible.

In the process of doing this, these scholars have rules of thumb. For example, one is that if two sources disagree about a verse or passage, the rule of thumb is to choose the “harder” passage. That is, choose the one that is harder to understand. I guess another way to say this is: choose the one that makes the least sense. The rule is based on the notion that a scribe copying a text might change something that seems difficult to understand into something that is easier to understand. But hardly ever would the scribe do the opposite: change something clear into something obscure. So it is more likely that the harder version is more original. This sometimes makes for strange results which make us modern day Bible readers scratch our heads.

Another rule of thumb is that when something appears in a writing it likely appeared because there was a problem brewing or happening among the readers (or listeners, really). So, for example, when Paul writes about how people should share a meal, he is trying to correct their horrible manners. This rule is based on the notion that you don’t write about things that are either ordinary or just going along fine. “Today I brushed my teeth,” that sort of thing. The Bible by and large is a book of writings that came from stories or speeches in which people were trying to change something. A nice way of saying this is that the Bible is a book of transformation.

It is especially so in the prophets, like Isaiah, who provided our first reading today.

This is a great passage. It appears at the beginning of the what people call “Third Isaiah,” which are the last chapters of the very long book of Isaiah. In these chapters, people have occasion to rejoice, because the exile of Israel to Babylon is over, or nearly so. It is full of comforting words. Milk and wine and rich food for everyone. And freedom from oppression and poverty and a return to Israel’s former power and prestige.

On the one hand, the problem—in the Biblical scholar sense—is that times had been bad and people were discouraged. So these words are good news. On the other hand, the problem was also that the people had been tempted by Babylon and its ways. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?” asks God. That Babylonian bread looked pretty sweet. Pretty yummy. But, God says in Isaiah, as sweet as it was, it was not nourishing. Not healthful. It was not suitable food for the children of God. It was good, perhaps, but it was not God.

People had been, in other words, tempted to abandon God. But that’s because, in part, the people suspected that God had abandoned them. And when people feel cut off from God, who knows what might happen?

The gathering hymn today is all about our need for God’s presence. (This hymn has the strangest title [As Pants the Hart]; the Bible scholars would have been proud).

As pants the hart for cooling streams
when heated in the chase,
so longs my soul, O God, for you
and your refreshing grace.

Just as a deer (the hart in the poem), out of breath from being chased by hunters, desperately thirsty, hot, and tired, longs to stop by a stream and be cooled and restored, just that way we humans long for God. When you are exhausted from the demands of work, when you have too much to do and too little time and too little money, when your expectations are dashed, when you feel like nothing is going right, when you feel beleaguered and pressured, when you are confused and lost—then your soul longs for God. To be refreshed by God’s grace. “My soul thirsts for you, it says in the psalm [63], … as in a barren and dry land.”

We need a place to come home to that is bigger and more cosmic than our houses. We need food that is more soulful than a brunch at S&S [local deli]. We have plenty of things—lists and list of things—plenty of things to buy that are not bread, as Isaiah says, plenty of things to work at—lists and lists of chores—plenty of things to work at that do not satisfy. When in this state, I procrastinate and wander about. Maybe you do something similar.

One trouble calls another on
and gathers overhead,
falls splashing down, till round my soul
a rising sea is spread.

Without knowing that we are connected to God, that God is there, that God hears us and that we might hear God—without that we homeless. We are children of God who like the Israelites for Isaiah have become refugees.

God is there, we know. God is here. We know it. So why don’t we hear God? Why can’t we speak to God? Are we ignoring God: too busy, too preoccupied, too self-involved, too anxious? Are we nervous about hearing from God? Is our phone busy? Maybe. But sometimes it seems as if it is God’s phone that is turned off. I can’t come to the phone right now, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

The idea that God might not be around right now is not very modern. We are taught that God is ever present in our lives. I’m sure that’s right. But even so, it doesn’t always feel that way to us. In the chapter in Isaiah just preceding this one, God explains to the Israelites: “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you. … for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you.”

And Psalm 22, which in a few weeks we’ll hear Jesus quote, starts out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.”

Yet we continue to seek God. Why is that?

For you, my God, the living God,
my thirsty spirit pines;
oh, when shall I behold your face,
O Majesty divine?

It is the seeking itself that connects us to God when nothing else seems to. The desire for God is enough to bring God close to us and us close to God. “We hope for things we cannot see,” says Paul. Our desire—our thirsty spirit pining—the desire itself is a clue to us that we continue to turn to God and to depend on God. We look for food that is bread, actions that satisfy, in God. “Seek the Lord while he may be found,” cautions Isaiah, “call upon him when he is near.” Yet it was the seeking and calling in the face of darkness and silence that kept Israel alive during its exile. “You are my God,” says the psalm, “eagerly I seek you.”.

During Friday night Taizé worship here, we’ve been singing a song that goes like this:

Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten, Those who seek God shall never go wanting. God alone fills us.

It is those who seek—not just those who find—who shall never go wanting.

We seek God for rest and peace that is, as the psalm says, better than life itself. There is no other rest so complete. St Augustine wrote in the first chapter of his Confessions, that

“You [that is, God] have prompted humans that they should delight to praise you, for you have made us for yourself, and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in you.”

I used to start my morning prayers with thanks for my existence. That I should exist, be created, a creature to see and know and feel. How great is that? But I’ve started recently to take one step back. I start now with a prayer of thanks that God exists. That’s even greater. And that I should have a chance to seek God. And to step toward God, as the hymn says it:

For now I trust in God for strength,
I trust God to employ
his love for me and change my sighs
to thankful hymns of joy.