The Gift of Presence

Sermon

“And certainly and easily I can see 
how God might be one rose bud,
one white feather in the heron’s enormous slowly opening wing.
It’s after that
it gets difficult.”

So wrote Mary Oliver in her poem “Evening Star” but I would hazard a guess that most of us can agree with that last line, that seeing God can get pretty difficult. Yet believing in the presence of God is at the core of faith, today and twenty-five hundred years ago.

On this third Sunday of Advent, we continue along with the prophet Isaiah, and this morning we hear a rather positive snippet that’s plucked out of a chapter that’s really more about doom and gloom.

We’re in the third and last part of Isaiah, the part that describes the relationship between God and the people of Israel after they have returned from exile to their homeland. The land that once flowed with milk and honey is now a wasteland; the temple in Jerusalem lies in ruins, and there is no structure in the community, just grief and resentment and hopelessness.

God has been an angry warrior, punishing the people for their infidelity. They have received that punishment, but now that they are home, God feels not angry, but absent. Where is the God who made such great promises? Where is the God who was going to lift the valleys and flatten the mountains, and clear the debris from the highway so that the homecoming would be smooth sailing?

That God is nowhere to be found, or so the people think. That God has abandoned them to the ruins and left them to their own devices. 

It feels that way sometimes, doesn’t it? As though God has abandoned us, gone for a walk never to return, on vacation in some new Eden that we’re not invited to.

We might experience some kind of setback – a health crisis, a job loss, the end of a relationship, a bad grade – and we’re not sure if we’re being punished for some unknown sin or if God is simply indifferent to our suffering.

The world doesn’t give us much help in that regard. The world offers all sorts of remedies for what ails us – miracle cures that take the form of the hot new talk-show host, or the cleanse that will get toxins out of body and soul, or an investment that will start paying dividends on day one and will never stop. Or the world points us to a version of God who doesn’t really appear in our holy scripture. It’s a god who loves wealth and rich people, a god who has no room for the outsider, a god without grace or mercy.

So people come to church to look for God, and they may or may not see God here. It’s difficult, seeing God, believing not only that God exists but also that God cares, cares for us and cares for all.

Does the refugee living year after year in the tent camp wonder about God? Does the mother who grieves being separated from her child at a detention center at the border think God has abandoned them both? Does the gentleman who slept in the alcove of the oak door a few weeks ago think that God is indifferent to his plight?

The world does not make it easy to believe in the benevolence of a merciful God. Living – just living our lives – can throw a pretty big wrench into the whole faith thing too. It is a question for the ages: does God care about us? Will God help us? Will God heal us?

Some twenty-five hundred years ago, the prophet Isaiah gave a resounding answer to those questions: Yes! 

God does care about us – remember how God led the people through the sea, through the desert, out of slavery and into freedom in the promised land? Remember that God?

Do you remember how God sent manna from heaven and caused water to spring from a rock so that the people would not perish in the Sinai wilderness? Remember that God? 

Do you remember that God is not only a vengeful warrior but also a loving parent? Do you remember when God lifted you and carried you as a parent would carry the newborn child?

That God is still present. God didn’t send some lesser being – God didn’t send an angel to save the people, but God Himself showed up, God Herself showed up, a pillar of fire at night and a pillar of cloud during the day to lead the people on. That is what God does, the prophet reminded those woebegone people of Israel. 

God is present even now, Isaiah said. God is present amid the rubble of the temple. God is present in fields that have lain fallow for decades. God is present in the hearts of the people trying to find their old house, or the grave of their ancestor, in the hearts of the people trying to find hope to carry on.

There is a power in remembering their story, to remember that because God showed up in the past, when the people were beloved and flawed, so would God show up in the present, when the people are still beloved and flawed.

Do you believe that, that God still shows up for us even as we are beloved and flawed? I do.

Maybe you, like me, have received the gift of presence from someone. My parents had some friends that they made when they moved to California in their retirement. This couple was likewise retired. In some respects, Ruth and Vance were just ordinary people. Not particularly successful, or rich, or worry free. I was with them only a few times, but whenever I was with them, I felt the entirety of their presence. They were there, with me, interested, listening, maybe even delighted in those few minutes. When Vance died, I cried and cried and felt such a deep sense of loss. We know so few people who are present to us in that way, and that makes me wonder two things.

First, it makes me wonder how we are present to others. Every class I’ve ever taken in pastoral care or conflict management or how do be a pastor starts with learning how to listen, which is really learning how to be present – not to be thinking of what you’ll say when the other person stops talking but simply hearing the other. It’s about not being distracted when you’re with someone else – not worrying that the cat might have thrown up a hairball on the new rug; not worrying about what the stock market is doing and if you should sell, sell, sell or buy, buy, buy; silencing the phone or even turning the dang thing off so as to be fully present to someone else. So I wonder about that.

And second, it makes me wonder how we experience the presence of God in our lives, in both mountaintop and the valley of the shadows. I know it’s been troped to death, but there is some truth in that Footprints poem, when a person imagines talking to God, and dreaming of walking with God along the beach, only to see one set of footprints. My child, God replies, that is when I carried you.

Often we recognize the presence of God only in hindsight. In the midst of chaos, and in the midst of joy, we just don’t have room to acknowledge the divine. But when we go back and think about a thing, or journal about it, or even pray about it, we realize that we were not alone in the event, in that time – God was with us, carrying us, being present with us.

Like the people in Isaiah’s time, we need to remember our own story about God, especially the Jesus part. We need to remember that God wanted to be present with the people in a new way, and so God chose to become human, to know all the limitations and glories of our mortal existence, to be physically present for a while, and to leave us with peace and hope.

That is what we celebrate this season: the presence of God made known to us in the person of Jesus, in the way he lived, in what he taught, in his choice of dying so that he might rise. Unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given. Emmanuel – God with us – is come. 

We are not alone.

Thanks be to God. Amen.