2nd Sunday after Pentecost Sermon

We Seek Your Face O God

“I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask,

To be found by those who did not seek me.”

I said, ‘Here I am, here I am!’”

These words of Isaiah have come back to me over and over throughout the week, as I pondered the texts for this week.

Here we are now, in what we call Ordinary Time. It’s the twenty-nine weeks give or take, following Pentecost and Trinity Sunday that takes us all the way to Thanksgiving and the First Sunday of Advent. Ordinary time, the everyday time, summertime and into the fall. No High Holy Days. Just another Sunday in the life of the church.

And I’m struck by the everyday-ness of God saying: “I’m here.”  “Here I am!  Are you praying? Are you seeking me? My ways? My wisdom? My comfort and love? My unity, and wholeness, and well, my open arms?”

I have an image of a child running around frantically in the playground with a skinned knee, not able to find their parent…  and mother, or father, saying “I’m here… here I am.”

But we’re adults, are we not, most of us? We can take care of our own wounds. Until we can’t. Until things really are out of our control, or beyond our strength, or even our understanding.

“I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask. To be found by those who did not seek me.”

In light of our current realities in this country, in our world, I’m holding these thoughts very closely. And I ask myself if we, as people of God, as followers of Jesus Christ, are really seeking the Trinitarian wholeness of the Creator, of God-with-us in Christ, of the enlightening all-encompassing wisdom of the Spirit of God. Are we asking? Are we seeking? Or, are we going about our lives hoping against hope that everything will turn out ok? Or are we just doomed?

The Old Testament, the First Testament, can seem a little scary when you read the details of the rise and fall of nations and peoples fighting against each other; but remember that it’s a narrative of our faith ancestors and their relationship with God as they tried and failed, and wandered, and rationalized behaviors that were or were not in line with the call and plan of God as they understood it.  And it’s not really that different from what we are doing, or not doing, as we attempt to live and love as Jesus taught us to. Remember, too, that they, so long ago, did not have the experience of the very real presence of “God-with-us,” Immanuel, God-in-Christ, walking and talking along the road, in a Roman occupied territory.

But even in the Psalm of David, which we prayed this morning, and which is, at least in earlier part, considered to be a description of the crucifixion of Christ: “I am poured out like water, all my bones are out of joint, they cast lots for my clothing,” even here we see David, and Christ, calling out to God in the midst of trouble. The Psalms are like that, over and over. Clearly really bad things happen to really good people.

And so, we can be like Job, kicking and screaming, blaming and trying to figure out what’s going on, and what to do about it with our limited human reasoning, all of which is understandable. Or we can, in the middle of the confusion, despair or anticipated hopelessness, truly, call out to God, who says: “I am here. I am here even for those who are not seeking me or calling out to me.”

And now I want to turn to the Gospel passage, because I suspect it’s on your mind. The Gerasene Demoniac.

Considering that in life, bad things happen to all of us, whether we are good and just trying to get on with life, or whether we are bad, and making a very real mess of our lives,’ there are things beyond our control, or our understanding, and outside our ability to fix or change.

Now whether this poor man was demon possessed, or whether he had a serious mental illness, like schizophrenia, I can’t say. But I can say that in his own way, he knew who he was in the company of as Jesus came by; and he asked, as I have been asked working with people in altered mental and emotional states, “what does God have to do with me, or this, or anything. “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”

You know, we are allowed to ask such a question when we are in dire straights. And this man did. And Jesus met him, right then, right there, just as he was, with the question I imagine the man shouted at him, with perhaps not a little contempt. ‘What do you have to do with me, God?!’

I have not witnessed an exorcism, nor have I witnessed demon possession as this text infers. And I’m not going to speculate on the method or the details of this narrative.  But what I will look to is the fact that Jesus met him with compassion, and with a desire to ease his pain in the way only God can.

This man’s illness or situation was beyond the townsfolks ability to help, or to change or to even contain. But God-in-Christ, with lovingkindness healed him, and he was once again in his right mind, to the astonishment of the whole village.

I can’t explain the pigs, or the miracle, but I can, like the man, attest to what God has done, both in my own life as well as in the narrative of this man’s life. And he wanted to go with Jesus and his disciples. He wanted to cling to the one who’d healed him. Just follow him around for the rest of his life. But, perhaps with a little sadness, he was told is new life, his new purpose, was to go home and proclaim what Jesus had done for him.

If we return to the lesson in Isaiah, and the last little bit of the text after we are told of all the judgement and destruction, I find myself surprised by this seemingly disjointed image:

“As the wine is found in the cluster, and they say, ‘Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it,’” I realize that time and time again, we find hope. Some call it the silver lining in the cloud, some say all good things come to those who wait, others look to Romans and encourage people who are in distress that “all things work together for good to those who love God.” But cliches don’t always land very well when someone is in pain. And yet, in God, we are not left without some promise of blessing. Somehow, somewhere.

So, let us not fail in our hope that no matter how hard things get, God is available, present in the here and now, and will bring forth the blessing. But it rarely seems to happen out of the blue. Jesus charged us to go, tell, show, in our lives, our words, our actions, that God is still God and still present, calling out: Here I am. Are you seeking me? Not all will be destroyed.

And as we pray, let us remember our Collect this week: that with our love and reverence, God will never fail to help and govern us, as we call upon him with our hearts set upon the sure foundation of God’s lovingkindness.

I do believe that.  I hope, and pray, you do too.

Amen.