Faith Between Chaos and Lulls
Exodus 32:1-18; Matthew 14:22-33
A Sermon Delivered by Thomas J. Boone, Ph.D.
Central Presbyterian Church, Mobile AL, February 17, 2008

The closer Carrie gets to leaving for college the more memories keep surfacing about her younger days. This week I was remembering being the student dad at the park with a book in one hand and an attentive eye on the horizon as Carrie played with other girls and boys. I also remember trying in vain to get her attention amid the screams and shouts of other children. I remember having to do what I see other parents do at the park; to get Carrie’s attention I had to stop the yelling and practically get into her face. She was so focused on the playing and fun, she had no idea what I was trying to say.

Since that time the Holy Spirit has journeyed with me through much more than a few playgrounds, and in my sixteen years as a pastor I’ve had the privilege of sharing in many moments of trial. And I’ve come to believe even more the simple truth that if we could only but listen for God, and watch for His work, we would both hear and see Him even if there were nothing to see nor hear. God simply is, whether we perceive Him or not. And on this point I agree with a controversial Lutheran minister of the 1920’s named Frank Buchman, who stated, “The lesson the world most needs is the art of listening to God.”

If we were to step outside our religious garb for a moment, and remove our Sunday’s finest, the things we’d see on our sleeves would wake us up to some uncomfortable truths. It’s easy to dawn makeup, clothes, and dare I say even a smile, and walk into a church to say everything in the right order, to stand on cue, and sing hymns that bring fond memories. What’s hidden behind all that though?

Behind all of our masks are pains, joys, sorrows, triumphs, fears, temptations fended off or surrendered to, love, compassion, loss, and hope. And from the vast panoply of human experience I see before me, two questions bring it all together. Where did God go when we most needed Him, and what can God possibly do for us when life gets too messy?

Even though we’re God’s children we can experience vast silences from God that cause us to wonder where He went despite His promises otherwise. And we can experience so much uncertainty and chaos that even though we know God’s right there with us we still cling to false securities. Fear has a way of reducing us to our basest nature.

This week I received an email from friends I knew in Chicago telling me that their 31 year old daughter, Kim, died suddenly and unexpectedly. I know the family, I knew Kim, I knew her fiancé Dave, and I know that their church of nearly 1,500 members was praying with one voice: ‘God let her live, please’. Some of you have faced the type of fear that only the imminent death of a son or daughter can bring, so perhaps you, too, have asked the obvious question. Where is God in this?

We experience faith between fearful moments that make us wonder how we’ll survive and lulls of silence from a God who promised us He’d be with us. We’ve all had them, but so have God’s people for ages. One night when the disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee a storm hit them hard, and they were alone. They weren’t afraid until they saw a figure walking along the waves whose image radiated off the lightning flashes. The storm they could ride out, but add the appearance of a ghost coming after them and that was just a bit too much. I don’t know why they were so afraid at that sight, but Matthew’s point is that without Jesus they were afraid.

Jesus had set them out on the sea at the end of the previous day. He had a plan for getting across to the other side, which was over four miles away, but he didn’t tell his disciples just what his plan was. Had Jesus told them how he was going to cross the sea, by walking across it, I can imagine that they’d have bought into the idea. After all he had just finished feeding 5,000 plus people with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. But, rather than tell them his plan, he wanted them to learn a lesson. Our experience of fear doesn’t mean that God is absent, it means we can’t perceive Him.

This was the same lesson that God wanted the Israelites to learn because faith isn’t solid until it has lived during chaos and the lulls of God’s silence. Moses didn’t just ascend on Mt. Sinai one morning and return later than night. Moses had no idea how long he’d be in God’s presence, and no one told the Israelites that he’d be gone for as long as he was, but by the time a week passed I’m sure some of them wondered if he was ever coming back. After another week probably more people wondered. After five weeks most everyone was convinced Moses had fallen off a precipice and died. Now, remember who Moses was to them. He was God incarnate to them and the voice through whom God spoke. He was the one who simply needed to keep his hands uplifted to heaven in order for them to win battles. Without Moses around the people were lost, or so they thought. So, finally, after forty days, which is the biblical way of saying “one heckuva long time,” the people managed to convince Aaron, Moses’ right hand man, that they needed some sort of security, even if it was an image of God in the form of an animal.

Sometimes we turn to the craziest things for security when God seems to have vanished, because without God around it’s easy to be overcome with fear. For the Israelites their fear of being without God too long caused them to create golden gods, false securities in a dry desert. The disciples didn’t turn to idols in their moment of fear, but fear caused them to turn to superstition until Jesus was in the boat and he had calmed the storm. To what things do you turn other than God when life gets too fearful, or when God seems to pull Himself away from you for too long?

God allows us to go through these times not to punish us, but to make our faith stronger. I can’t explain all the bad things that happen in life other than to say what many other theologians and others more spiritually wise than I have said for years. We live in a broken world and we don’t have a God that normally will step in to fix it all because His perspective is eternal whereas our perspective, just like media-glorified hurricane predictions, seldom gets us beyond tomorrow. But, just because God doesn’t necessarily fix it all for us so that we can live in complete comfort, that doesn’t mean He’s not walking right along with us or as the author of “Footprints” wrote, “carrying us.”

The human experience of God isn’t all mountaintop joy. It can mean struggling against fear and doubt as we go through moments where God’s silence is as radical as it is palpable. It can mean losing a child, but not surrendering to the temptations that our anxieties and anger make seem so welcome. Experiencing God in this life can mean walking into our worst fears and clinging only to the promise that God will eventually use even this to His glory, and yours. I’ve learned that God allows us to go through some very dark moments in life, and through some exasperatingly long periods of God-silence, only because the faith that comes out of those times is a faith that changes the world.

Think about it. Israel had to learn that God wasn’t always going to take the shape of a pillar of fire and clouds, or speak through a voice like Moses. The disciples had to learn that Jesus wasn’t always going to be physically present. In each case, God needed His people to have strong faith because God wants to change hearts of sin into hearts of glory in all people whom He calls His own. The only kind of faith that survives and transforms this world is the kind of faith that shines even through God-lulls and fearful chaos. So the challenge that God issues us through these passages today is to possess a faith He can use to change the world’s addiction to sin into a passion for Jesus.

And here’s where I return to the point I made at the beginning. If we could only but listen to God we’d have such faith because I doubt seriously that if anyone heard God we’d suffer Him the dishonor of not heeding His bidding. So, how do we hear the perpetual Voice of the universe powerful enough to create time itself, yet slight enough to be born in a lowly manger in a po-dunk town?

I’m not sure if you realized this but the Latin genesis of the verb “listen” is abaudire, our word for “obey.” There can be no hearing God without obedience. We know we’re listening to God when our priority to please God above others. And while God will speak to us individually, it will always find a home in scripture. To say we’ve heard from God contrary to scripture is to make ourselves leaders of a new religious movement. And what is it that God calls us to do chiefly? In all things, we are to love both God and others. Our faith boils down to a grand ethic, which in turn influences all our action, thought, and behavior. We cannot love our way into heaven, but we will not be in heaven unless we love.

Whether we experience much chaos in life, or whether we’re seeking God as one might extract water from the desert, God’s word remains and we are called not to be satiated followers, but obedient children. So we commit ourselves to listening to God through love, whether we hear His voice or not. We serve through love whether we’re mired in physical problems or wiped out from an onslaught of evil. We strive forward in love courageously even when all emotional roads lead out of us, and nothing seems to be feeding us. This is what Jesus did, and it’s the meaning of bearing crosses for the sake of following Him. To experience faith between chaos and lulls of God-silence is to love, and it’s as we love that we’ll discover God’s depths. Amen.