Where Are You?

If you go online today and look for answers to life’s questions, sooner rather than later you’ll discover endless websites that show you just how and where the Bible has answers for everything.  They’re divided into categories for you so that you can look them up quickly. You’re given chapter and verse along with cross-references.  You can even buy bibles with answers to pre-designed questions indexed for you. And you can subscribe to services that will research biblical answers for you - not answers about the bible itself, of course, but answers about you and how your life can be straightened out by applying them. It reminds me of the book title I ran across once; it went something like, “5348 Ways to Simplify Your Life.” [I don’t think I remembered the number correctly, but it’s fairly close - you get the meaning here - the whole endeavor itself is preposterous]. The Bible, "used" in this ridiculous fashion yields what the author wants" it to yield.  And the result is that the Bible’s force and power is compromised severely.  

Answers from a book that doesn’t claim answers.  It’s kind of like a joke that Victor Borge used to love to tell about his uncle who was an inventor.  Borge says that his uncle invented the cure for which no disease had yet been discovered. Borge gives it a couple of seconds for the humor to establish itself and then ups the ridicule by announcing, “Unfortunately my uncle eventually caught the cure . . . and died.”

Cure for which there is no disease; answers from a book that doesn’t claim answers.

But the Bible does claim questions.  And it poses them on the lips of its main characters, sometimes even God. Biblical students quickly discover as they read and ponder and discuss, with those of like intent, that this book, the Bible, presses us to find God, find God in Christ (in the New Testament), presses us to read about those who have attempted to do that finding, pour over their tragic and triumphant lives as they have tried to serve God, and putting before us issue after issue about the need to keep on trying, despite millennia of failures in the attempt.

It’s a daunting book, the Bible, not for sissies.  Some of it is hard to understand; some of it looks easier than it really is.

And always, always, there are the questions.  They hang there - on the page - in our minds after we’ve read a little - they come back to haunt us again and again.  One only needs to look at the parable of the Good Samaritan (a colossally misunderstood teaching of Jesus, by the way) [tell it] and hear Jesus ask his hearers at the conclusion of his narration, “Now which of these proved neighbor?” to realize that "we" are expected to answer - not only the original hearers - "we" are being confronted by the questions in the Bible. And little by little we may come, reluctantly, to know that to answer requires us to change our lives, to live differently, to stand with all of those who tried unsuccessfully for centuries to follow God’s way.  The stories that ask questions of that nature are endless; they’re all over the Old and New Testaments alike.

The Bible asks questions.  We" are to provide the answers.

Where Are You? [You’re familiar with the story that Pete read for us a little while ago]. “Where Are You?” says God. [tell it]. The only ones addressed, obviously, are Eve and Adam, particularly in this instance, Adam.  Where Are You?  And they hesitate to answer because they are embarrassed... about their..... nakedness.  “Who told you that you were naked?”

This is an accusatory question.  The intimate searching and concern are gone from God’s voice, I would imagine.  God is keenly aware by Adam’s initial answer that Adam has done something terribly wrong; otherwise there would be no need to hide, hide his nakedness (read: “vulnerability, guilt” here, even if that’s not the original intent. (I suppose that if he had owned a yacht, he would be on it in this scene, hiding from the disaster he was responsible for - remind you of a BP exec?). Adam, as BP exec.  

Or imagine for a moment Adam as Bernie Madoff, cheating millions of their very livelihoods and homes, hiding in his reputation as a good investor.  Or consider Adam as a war profiteer (in World War I or II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq - and, yes even in the Civil and Revolutionary Wars too, hiding in his danger-free mansion and touting his good-citizen image while the young of this country die because of shoddy workmanship in weapons construction.  

Adam as - well you get the idea; these examples suffice.

Adam represents all of us who hide from God because we are keenly aware that even though we can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, we cannot fool all of the people all of the time and it is ludicrous to try to fool God - ever.  That’s the nakedness I am suggesting.  We know our sin and we are ashamed, even though we try to deny it (Adam does a little of that too -“It’s Eve’s fault.”)

Where Are You?

Already, God is becoming saddened; something is up and God suspects it’s not going to be good. And Adam, poor Adam, he’s becoming aware that he’s not worthy to be in God’s presence anymore, that he’s ashamed, even disgusted, with his own behavior.  This is no way to live; he’s learning the hard way.  

And so, the story of humanity begins, the story of attempts to live right and of failing, the attempts to make “good” the way we actually do live and knowing that we’re only kidding ourselves. The attempt to attract God by being nice to him,
the attempts to flatter God by praising him endlessly with our lips and holding beautiful worship and lovely sound, but not
changing our lives - which is what God wants.

“I hate, I despise, all this,” the prophet Amos reports God as saying. “What I require is to do justice and love kindness and to walk humbly with me.”  Adam knew that, he instinctively always had known that, and so much earlier than those who heard Amos in later times, but Adam failed.  

And all God ever really had wanted was an intimate companion, to walk with in the Garden, to love and care for Creation, and to serve his wife (and subsequently all the rest of humanity as well) providing a perfect example of God-centered living.  That’s all God wanted.

But all that is over now in the Genesis story.  The question, “Where Are You?” signals to us that things have changed forever at that point - the adage “you can’t unring the bell” was just as true then as now.

Let’s set aside Adam.  What’s our answer?  Do we do any better than the naive Adam and Eve?

Where Are You?

1. I’m hiding in my reputation because if people really knew what I think or do they wouldn’t like me anymore. And I’m hiding from you too, God.  Please don’t look for me.

2. I’m hiding among my friends, so that everyone will associate me with them and not notice how really rotten I am. They’re my cover, God.  Please don’t look for me.

3. I’m hiding in a breath mint; it covers my addictive consumption, I hope. Don’t come to look for me.  I know that eventually my body will not put up with what I’m doing to it but for now, no one knows.  Don’t come looking for me God.

4. I’m hiding in the church.  Good people are there and I’m hiding among them even though I don’t belong. They tell me over and over again that they’re not good either. But they seem so much more at ease with their honesty. I can’t do that; I need to hide.  Don’t come to look for me.

Yahweh, you examine me and know me, you know if I am standing or sitting, you read my thoughts from far away, whether I walk or lie down, you are watching, you know every detail of my conduct. The word is not even on my tongue, Yahweh, before you know all about it; close behind and close in front you fence me round, shielding me with your hand. Such knowledge is beyond my understanding, a height to which my mind cannot attain.

Where could I go to escape your spirit? Where could I flee from your presence?

If I climb the heavens, you are there, there too, if I lie in Sheol.

If I flew to the point of sunrise, or westward across the sea, your hand would still be guiding me, your right hand holding me.

I asked darkness to cover me, and light to become night around me, that darkness would not be dark to you, night would be as light as day.

God, examine me and know my heart, probe me and know my thoughts; make sure I do not follow pernicious ways, and guide me in the way that is everlasting.      [Verses 1-12, and 23 and 24 of Psalm 139, Jerusalem Bible translation]

Where Are You, asks God?

It is foolish to assume that God is not here, that God has somehow abandoned us, that God no longer speaks, that God doesn’t care, or is uninterested in our welfare.  

Where Is God? we ask.  Where Are you?, God rejoins.

Whenever we attempt to disguise ourselves, with sewn fig leaves made of reputation, the company we keep, or professional expertise, we are only deceiving ourselves.  No one else actually is hurt quite as deeply by our deceptions and hiding as our own selves.  And in that attempt to hide, we begin to project a little.  It’s God who is absent, we say.  It’s God who is at fault, if there is a God at all.

We are lost - like the coin, the sheep, the prodigal.  We are lost by our own deception, our own hiding. In a parable of lostness, like a coin, or a sheep, like a wayward son or even a self-important older brother, we are shown repeatedly that we are placed here on this planet in order to care for each other and the place where we live. Each of us is valued, every one, even the lost, even the deceptive, even those of us who are hiding from God.

God is not gone, or non-existent, God is merely waiting for us to answer the question: Where Are You?   

Our lives, every minute and every action and every intention of them, provide the answer, and along the way we become aware of what we may have forgotten,   that God loves us, and (in the words of several Christian leaders in theology and worship lately) there is nothing we can do about that.  Amen.

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