Hide and seek
Commentary
Hide and seek may be a child's game, but we adults spend a lot of time playing our own version of it. You know the experience of trying to reach someone on the telephone; sometimes the seeking can go on and on. Possibly, too, you have been on the other end of the process, and you wanted to hide away for a while. You didn't want to be sought or found. Maybe we had so much experience playing hide and seek when we were children that we instinctively continue to play the game at an adult level.
Hiding and seeking has for centuries been part of religious practice and understanding. In some cases, people spend whole lifetimes seeking God. There are biblical stories of the human search for God (e.g., Matthew 13:44-45), and the Psalms are filled with references to God's hiding (e.g., 10:1-11; 13:1; and 30:7). Remember Luther's quest for a gracious God and his conclusion about the hidden God! A few years ago, a bumper sticker could be seen on many cars which said simply, "I Found It!" (We once saw another bumper sticker that read, "We Never Lost It," and the words were followed by the star of David.) On the other hand, we hear a great deal about God's search for humans. The most popular is Jesus' parable of the lost sheep (Matthew 18:10-14 and Luke 15:3-7), but it is found in the Bible as early as Genesis 3:8-10 when God seeks Adam and Eve in the garden.
The lessons for this Sunday have something to say about hiding, what's hidden, and seeking.
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
The most painful part of Job's story is perhaps not all that he lost but the fact that he feels God has hidden from him and he cannot contact God. The large central part of the book of Job (3:1--31:40) is devoted to three cycles of dialogues between Job and his so-called friends (3:1--14:22; 15:1--21:34; and 22:1--27:23) followed by an "interlude" (28:1-18) and Job's concluding speech (29:1--31:40). Chapter 23 is in the middle of the third cycle of dialogues. Eliphaz has, once again, tried to convince Job that he has sinned and brought all his troubles on himself; therefore, he must repent. Chapters 23 and 24 are devoted to Job's efforts to find divine justice. Our reading is a large portion of Job's complaint to God (23:1-9). That section is followed by Job's insistence that he has been faithful (23:10-12), and then his acclamation of God's terror (23:13-17), of which the reading includes only the last two verses. In effect Job makes two statements about God in this reading: first, that God is hidden from him, and, second, that God terrifies him.
God is hidden from Job (vv. 1-9). Job answers Eliphaz's assertion that he is guilty of wickedness with a complaint against God. He will not give in to Eliphaz's haranguing him about his sin! His integrity is everything, and he will not sacrifice it to satisfy his friends. Eliphaz has urged him to pray, repent, and submit to God's justice. Instead, Job demands a trial before God. He will argue his case before God and will surely win. He says that he is "bitter," but the Hebrew word there might be one that translates "defiant," and that certainly describes Job's mood. He feels that he has been dealt with unjustly. Unfortunately, however, he cannot find God so that he could approach the divine dwelling. If he could lay his case before God, he believes that God would have to answer him. Then perhaps Job would understand why he has been tortured (vv. 1-5).
The text implies a certain ambivalence in Job. On the one hand, he is bitter and demands a trial. On the other, he is confident that God will hear his case. God will not overpower him but will listen carefully. In the immediate presence of God, Job is confident that he could "reason" with the Almighty and that he would be "acquitted" by the divine justice. He trusts God to hear him and trusts God's commitment to justice (vv. 6-7).
In verses 8-9 Job turns back to his complaint that God has hidden from him and cannot be found. Commentators have suggested that in these verses the directions ("forward," "backward," "left," and "right") assume that the speaker is facing the rising sun. Hence, "forward" is east, "backward" west, "left" north, and "right" south. No matter which direction Job turns, there is no God there. Or, if God is there, the Lord "hides" from him. So, Job cannot "perceive," "behold," or "see" God anywhere. He feels the way some of us have felt when we could experience only God's absence.
God terrifies Job (vv. 16-17). In verse 15 Job seems suddenly to feel terror at the thought of God's answering his request for a hearing -- to confront God head on. God is absolutely sovereign and does whatever God wishes to do. (This is a feeling he has expressed earlier, e.g., 9:24-35 and 13:21-22.) It is as if Job suddenly stops and cries out, "What have I said? Do I really want to face God?" What Job feels is that mysterium tremendium which results from the experience of confrontation with the Ultimate Reality. And, like any human standing before that possibility, Job wishes he could just hide away.
Hide and seek! Job's struggle involves that terrible sense that God has hidden and discovery is impossible. What must impress us, however, is the honesty with which Job speaks. He is not afraid to challenge God, even though he eventually realizes what a terrifying thing that is. He shakes his fist at the heavens and demands that he be heard. But, for now, the response is only silence. Many of us have known moments of anger with God -- usually in the midst of tragedy -- but, unlike Job, few of us have had the integrity to express our feelings. Job feels seeking God and divine justice is futile, and many have shared Job's feelings. A fruitless search for a hidden God is itself terrifying.
Hebrews 4:12-16
The first reading suggests that there may be times when God seems hidden. The author of Hebrews reverses the game of hide and seek to say, first, that we can't hide from God no matter how hard we may try and, second, that -- thanks to Christ -- we can find God. This passage from Hebrews comes after a discussion of the "rest" God promises believers. The connection with that theme and our passage is found in 4:14-16 -- approaching "the throne of grace." However, verses 14-16 of our reading begin a new theme, namely, Jesus as our high priest. That discussion begins in 4:14 and continues through 5:10. Essentially the lesson assures us of two things.
We can't hide from God (vv. 12-13). In the previous section the author has warned that disobedience prevents our entering God's rest (vv. 6 and 11) and now warns that there is no possibility of faking obedience or pretending belief. "The word of God" penetrates our facades and goes right to our true selves. In this context, the expression, "word of God," probably does not mean Christ but simply God's living and dynamic message. The comparison of God's word with a sword is strange; but the point is that God enters into our selves, and there can lay bare who we truly are. The division of the "soul" (psycha) and "spirit" (pneuma) is far from clear, but it may have to do with sorting out that which is fundamental to life (which is usually what psych means) from our ability to relate to God ("spirit"). The language is metaphorical to say that God's word searches every nook and cranny of our lives; it divides that which is usually indivisible, like bone and marrow. Hence, God finds and judges everything about us (v. 12).
That means that "no creature is hidden" from God. The word translated "laid bare" is literally "neck stretched out," meaning that one becomes entirely vulnerable. The image of God's speech, used in verse 12, is put aside now for that of God's eyes. However, "we must render an account" in the Greek is simply ho logos. Since logos can mean account, the NRSV translation makes perfect sense and fits the passage. Still, this last word of verse 13 (logos) provides the closing bracket for a statement that began with the same word.
The point is that it is futile for us to try to hide from God, whose word slices into our innermost self and whose eyes see us as if we were naked and entirely vulnerable.
We can find God (vv. 14-16). Verse 14 begins another topic but implies a balance with verses 12-13. The author begins the discussion of Jesus' role as the great high priest by inviting readers to "hold fast" to their faith. Christ's passing "through the heavens" is a picturesque way of speaking of his exaltation to God's side. Immediately then the author claims God has elevated our high priest to a heavenly station, implying that he is far superior to any other high priest. While verse 14 emphasizes the exaltation of Christ, in verse 15 the author turns immediately to his incarnation. The priest who knows and has experienced the life of the common people is far better able to represent them to God. Christ has lived our lives, so that he is able to "sympathize (sympatheo -- feel or suffer with) with our weaknesses." So complete is Christ's identification with humans that he even experienced mortal weaknesses. The author thinks of these weaknesses as being vulnerable to testing and temptation (the words are the same in Greek). However, Christ did not suffer the weakness of failing the tests or yielding to temptation. So, the one who represents us before God knows exactly what we go through but is sinless so that he can stand before God. While the logic may be flawed, the point is clear and important.
The result of having this kind of high priest is that we have access to God's presence. We can even approach God with "boldness" and in confidence. The throne is one of "grace" which is at once a circumlocution for the use of the divine name and a declaration that God is the source of grace. There in God's presence we find "mercy" and "grace" that enable us to live with the weaknesses of temptations and testing (v. 16).
Job could not find God, but because of Christ, says the author of Hebrews, we cannot only find but also approach the Almighty One and do so without the terror Job experienced. Christ in effect shows us the way to "the throne of grace" because he himself found his way through the miseries of this life. This one who cried out, asking why God had forsaken him (Mark 15:34) much as Job did, leads us to God. Because Christ has been one of us and has known the agony of the absence of God, he has made a way for us to approach God.
Mark 10:17-31
In the case of our Gospel Lesson, the finding of what is hidden is different. Job started us off on this journey by speaking from the human side of the hide and seek dilemma. Hebrews enables us to see the matter of hiding and seeking from God's side -- God finds us, and we cannot hide from God. Now the rich man in the Gospel Lesson puts us back on the human side again. The passage has to do with "finding eternal life," and that expression introduces (v. 17) and concludes the reading (v. 30).
The lesson follows immediately the one read last Sunday, and Jesus' third passion prediction follows on the heels of his words to the disciples about sacrifice (10:32-34). There are two major parts to the reading, although those two naturally coalesce. The first part (vv. 17-22) is the story of the man in search of eternal life. Upon his departure, Jesus begins to teach the disciples about the search for that life (vv. 23-31), and does so with two related topics: the difficulty of salvation (vv. 23-27) and receiving eternal life (vv. 28-31). Again, let's isolate two important contributions this passage makes to the hide and seek theme.
Finding eternal life is hard (vv. 17-27). The man comes to Jesus with exactly the right question: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" We quickly learn in this passage that eternal life and the kingdom of God are used interchangeably and that gaining eternal life is "entering" the kingdom (v. 23). Jesus' rejection of the title "good" is fascinating, especially in the light of what the author of Hebrews has just said in our Second Lesson. The point seems to be that Jesus does not want to deflect the man's proper understanding of God.
Jesus' response to the man's question is at first rather obvious. Obey the commandments! However, when the man says that he does obey, then Jesus pushes the commandments beyond their limits. Mark only occasionally mentions Jesus' feelings, so that the simple words, "Jesus ... loved him" are striking. (See also Mark 6:34 and 8:2.) What Jesus says to the man is what he must in love say. Simply doing the right thing is not enough -- not even the central issue for entrance into the kingdom. Surrender is! That's the "one thing" the man will not be able to do. He wants eternal life, but tragically not enough to surrender his possessions for the sake of the needy.
The grief-filled departure of the searching man occasions Jesus' observation on how wealth becomes the barrier to true life. However, what we will gradually learn in these teachings is that the problem is even broader than the hindrance of wealth; it is the difficulty any of us have in entering the kingdom. The saying about the camel and the "eye of the needle" has been discussed at great length, seeking to "ease" the radicality of Jesus' words. To be sure, Jesus again employs hyperbole to make his point (see also 9:43-48), but he means what he says. It is most unlikely that anyone, especially the rich, can squeeze through the narrow entrance to the kingdom. His words here are comparable to what he says elsewhere about the "narrow way" (Matthew 7:13-14 and Luke 13:22-30).
The disciples, then, are quite correct when they ask, "Then who can be saved?" The question shows that the issue is not just about the wealthy but about all of us. Jesus' response implies
that salvation is really impossible for us! However, God makes impossibility into possibility. (See Job 42:2 and Genesis 18.) In the words of the searching man, we can't "inherit eternal life." But a gracious God can give it to us. We can't find the kingdom, but the Lord of that kingdom can find us!
There is no "locking in" the kingdom (vv. 28-31). In Mark's story, the disciples seem to have Ph.D.'s in misunderstanding. Peter wants to lay claim to the kingdom by virtue of what he and the others have given up to follow Jesus. He has the message to the rich man right -- surrender is the key -- and he rightly claims that the disciples have done exactly what Jesus had asked of the rich man. However, he's oblivious to what Jesus has just said about salvation being possible only because of who God is. Jesus' answer to Peter is very pastoral. He affirms what Peter has said. Indeed, sacrifice for the sake of the gospel ("the good news") will not go unrewarded, but, in fact, the gains of such sacrifice are abundantly more than the sacrifice itself. Notice the rewards have to do with daily and ordinary life -- family, "houses" and "fields." Serving Christ and the gospel transforms daily life.
However, as pastoral and reassuring as Jesus' words to the disciples are, they include qualifications which suggest that sacrifice is no game. It entails "persecution" (v. 30) and more importantly cannot be programmed like a computer game (v. 31). In verse 31 Jesus seems to say the disciples should not become too comfortable in their assurance. This saying is found in a number of places in the Synoptic Gospels, including Matthew 19:30; 20:16 and Luke 13:30. The reminder is simply that God's values differ from human values, so there may be some surprises awaiting even those who sacrifice so much. One meaning of this saying is that we cannot "lock in" a place in the kingdom. Reserved seats are not available. What Jesus counsels here is that salvation is God's work and therefore God determines who's first and who's last.
Hide and seek. The entrance to the kingdom of God seems to be allusive and hidden. The entrance into the kingdom is hard, and, even if one gains entrance, there is no certainty that the order of things there will be what we expect. Jesus reportedly invited people to "seek the kingdom of God" (e.g., Matthew 6:33 and Luke 12:31) and assured them that those who seek "will find" (e.g., Matthew 7:7 and Luke 11:9). However, he also argued that "those who seek to gain their lives will lose them" (Luke 17:33). The search must be for the right things, and finding depends on what we seek.
The game of hide and seek illumines the passages but is an inadequate metaphor for our Christian lives. Long before we sought God, our Creator found us. All our efforts to hide from God melt away like snow in a Georgia summer. While we experience Job's sense that God has hidden from us, it may be that we don't seek God but wait in faith that God will find us. Like most everything else about life, God turns the hide and seek game upside down.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
The story of Job is presented to us primarily through a series of dialogues that Job carries on with three so-called friends named Bildad, Zophar, and Eliphaz, in chapters 4-27. Those three friends visit Job in order to console and comfort him. But they are so shocked by his condition that for seven days they wisely do not say a word (2:11-13). However, they then -- quite unwisely -- take it upon themselves to give Job advice in order to improve his condition. (A fourth friend named Elihu also offers his counsel in chapters 32-37, but the suffering Job does not even bother to reply to him.)
The advice that the three friends offer stems from popular and somewhat misunderstood Wisdom teaching. They hold the view that God does good to the righteous and brings evil in the form of suffering on the unrighteous -- a view still widely held in our time. The friends are sure, therefore, that Job must have been faithless in some way toward God, and that God is punishing him for it.
In the passage immediately preceding our text for the morning, Eliphaz admonishes Job to confess his sin, to return to the Lord, and thus be at peace with him. "Agree with God, and be at peace," instructs Eliphaz, "thereby good will come to you ... If you return to the Almighty and humble yourself, if you remove unrighteousness far from your tents ... then you will delight yourself in the Almighty ... You will make your prayer to him, and he will hear you" (22:21, 23, 26-27). In such a manner many sufferers in our day have heard someone tell them to return to God and everything will be okay.
In reply to that facile and unfeeling advice, Job cries out, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him!" (v. 3). And that is the problem for many of us too, isn't it? We cannot find God. God is silent. God apparently has withdrawn his presence from us. He hears no pleading prayer, sees no desperate suffering, answers not a word. And we are left staring into a void of an empty heaven. As Job utters at the end of our text, "I am hemmed in by darkness, and thick darkness covers my face" (v. 17). The prophet Amos proclaimed that the problem for Israel was that God had broken out in a roaring against his people (Amos 1:2). The problem for Job, and sometimes for us, is that God is silent.
Why is that the case? Is it that God has withdrawn from us because of our sin? The prophets also preached that such could be possible. Amos said that his compatriots would wander from sea to sea and shore to shore, seeking the word of the Lord, but they would not find it (Amos 8:12). The Third Isaiah (Isaiah 56-66) proclaimed, "Your iniquities have made a separation between you
and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear" (Isaiah 59:2). But that is not Job's problem. He has been faithful to God all his life, and has always served and loved his neighbor. The friends are quite wrong about the reason for Job's suffering, as persons are often wrong about someone's plight in our day. We err grievously when we attribute all problems and suffering to sin.
So why is it that we sometimes cannot find God and think he is absent? A second possibility: Are we looking for him in the wrong places? The Lord God, in his mercy, has provided all of us the "means of grace," as the church calls them, the avenues through which God comes to us and speaks to us and works in our lives. God gives us his word, written in the Scriptures -- but we may never read it or listen to it preached. He promises to be with us in his Spirit through the means of the sacraments, but we may never understand them or open ourselves to the communion with
the Lord that they afford. Maybe God seems silent to us because we seek him in the wrong places. But once again, that is not Job's problem. Job searches desperately for some avenue to God. He even says that he would be willing to enter a courtroom with the Lord and to lay his case before him. Then, Job asserts, God would listen (vv. 4-6).
And yet -- and yet , Job knows the foolishness of that, because he knows who God is, and he realizes that he could not possibly contend with the Lord. God is too awesome, too overwhelming in his glory, too dreadful in his might for anyone to stand up before him (vv. 15-16). Job is not fooling with the sentimental little godlets that we sometimes imagine for ourselves. Job knows the character of God, because he has lived in God's presence all of his life. And maybe too that is our problem, that we think God is silent because we are seeking the wrong kind of God.
But the problem is still there, isn't it? We cannot find God.
I once had a professor in seminary who said, "We should stop talking about 'seeking God.' God isn't lost. We are lost." And the message of our text and of the Scriptures in their entirety, good Christians, is that all of us lost ones have been found. We cannot seek God, but God has sought us and found us. He finds Job, at the end of our story, and comes to him and speaks to him. And he found us in our Lord Jesus Christ, who came in our flesh, and shared our suffering, and heard our pleas, and promised that he would never leave us. Yes, thick darkness may surround us at times. Yes, it may seem as if no prayer is heard, and no divine presence is with us. Yes, we may suffer pain and "outrageous fortune" in this sin-pocked world of ours. But Christ made a promise to us, and he will always keep it. "Lo, I am with you always," he said, "to the close of the age" (Matthew 28:20). Trust that promise. Cling to it. Even when you can't experience it. For it is now, and it will always be true.
Lutheran Option -- Amos 5:6-7, 10-15
These verses actually form a portion of a funerary lament that God utters over his people in northern Israel in the eighth century B.C., through the words of his prophet Amos. The lament begins in verse 1 and ends with the mourning wailing described in verses 16-17. God has determined that he will make an end of his people in the northern kingdom of Israel (8:2; cf. 3:15; 8:10) -- an end that will come in their fall to the armies of the Assyrian Empire, in their subsequent exile, and in their disappearance from history. Our passage details some of the reasons why that end has been determined.
The theme of the whole is set forth in verse 7: Israel turns justice to wormwood, a bitter wood used for medicine, and casts down righteousness to the earth. The reference is to Israel's treatment of its poor peasant farmers in the courts of law which were held in each city at the gates. City elders made up the personnel of the courts. We read in verse 11 that fines were exacted from the poor in the form of some of their grain. The elders then sold the grain and used the proceeds to build fine stone houses, unlike the clay houses of the poor. Or they bought the best vineyards in the best fields. In verse 12, we also learn that the elders accepted bribes to influence their judgments. Moreover, when more honest elders objected and attempted to render just judgments, they were scorned and drowned into silence by the avaricious others (vv. 10, 13). That could remind us of the fate of those who refuse to toe a "politically correct" or hard but truthful line in our own society. Sometimes truth falls victim to distorted public opinion, as it also did in the court of Pontius Pilate on a spring day in Jerusalem.
In the midst of a corrupt society, Amos admonishes his people to "seek the Lord," and to "seek good" (vv. 6, 14), which is a repetition of the same thought, because that which is good, according to the Bible, is not some virtue or ideal lying outside of God, but God himself. "No one is good but God alone," our Lord said (Mark 10:18). If we would know what is good, therefore, we must know it from God -- from his commandments and teachings, from his actions and words, from his presence.
Amos tells his sinful people that if they mend their ways, and turn and seek the Lord, then "it may be" that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to a remnant of them in his judgment on them (v. 15). But God is not coerced, even by our turning, and the grace of God is never earned, but only freely given. In Israel's case, in the days of Amos, she has passed up too many opportunities. God is the one source of her life (v. 6), but she has chosen death. The God who is life, is also a consuming fire (v. 6), and Israel will be consumed. The funeral lament is promised at the end of the chapter (vv. 16-17). In similar manner, our Lord Jesus tells us that "whoever denies me before others, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 10:33). Let those who have ears to hear, hear.
Hiding and seeking has for centuries been part of religious practice and understanding. In some cases, people spend whole lifetimes seeking God. There are biblical stories of the human search for God (e.g., Matthew 13:44-45), and the Psalms are filled with references to God's hiding (e.g., 10:1-11; 13:1; and 30:7). Remember Luther's quest for a gracious God and his conclusion about the hidden God! A few years ago, a bumper sticker could be seen on many cars which said simply, "I Found It!" (We once saw another bumper sticker that read, "We Never Lost It," and the words were followed by the star of David.) On the other hand, we hear a great deal about God's search for humans. The most popular is Jesus' parable of the lost sheep (Matthew 18:10-14 and Luke 15:3-7), but it is found in the Bible as early as Genesis 3:8-10 when God seeks Adam and Eve in the garden.
The lessons for this Sunday have something to say about hiding, what's hidden, and seeking.
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
The most painful part of Job's story is perhaps not all that he lost but the fact that he feels God has hidden from him and he cannot contact God. The large central part of the book of Job (3:1--31:40) is devoted to three cycles of dialogues between Job and his so-called friends (3:1--14:22; 15:1--21:34; and 22:1--27:23) followed by an "interlude" (28:1-18) and Job's concluding speech (29:1--31:40). Chapter 23 is in the middle of the third cycle of dialogues. Eliphaz has, once again, tried to convince Job that he has sinned and brought all his troubles on himself; therefore, he must repent. Chapters 23 and 24 are devoted to Job's efforts to find divine justice. Our reading is a large portion of Job's complaint to God (23:1-9). That section is followed by Job's insistence that he has been faithful (23:10-12), and then his acclamation of God's terror (23:13-17), of which the reading includes only the last two verses. In effect Job makes two statements about God in this reading: first, that God is hidden from him, and, second, that God terrifies him.
God is hidden from Job (vv. 1-9). Job answers Eliphaz's assertion that he is guilty of wickedness with a complaint against God. He will not give in to Eliphaz's haranguing him about his sin! His integrity is everything, and he will not sacrifice it to satisfy his friends. Eliphaz has urged him to pray, repent, and submit to God's justice. Instead, Job demands a trial before God. He will argue his case before God and will surely win. He says that he is "bitter," but the Hebrew word there might be one that translates "defiant," and that certainly describes Job's mood. He feels that he has been dealt with unjustly. Unfortunately, however, he cannot find God so that he could approach the divine dwelling. If he could lay his case before God, he believes that God would have to answer him. Then perhaps Job would understand why he has been tortured (vv. 1-5).
The text implies a certain ambivalence in Job. On the one hand, he is bitter and demands a trial. On the other, he is confident that God will hear his case. God will not overpower him but will listen carefully. In the immediate presence of God, Job is confident that he could "reason" with the Almighty and that he would be "acquitted" by the divine justice. He trusts God to hear him and trusts God's commitment to justice (vv. 6-7).
In verses 8-9 Job turns back to his complaint that God has hidden from him and cannot be found. Commentators have suggested that in these verses the directions ("forward," "backward," "left," and "right") assume that the speaker is facing the rising sun. Hence, "forward" is east, "backward" west, "left" north, and "right" south. No matter which direction Job turns, there is no God there. Or, if God is there, the Lord "hides" from him. So, Job cannot "perceive," "behold," or "see" God anywhere. He feels the way some of us have felt when we could experience only God's absence.
God terrifies Job (vv. 16-17). In verse 15 Job seems suddenly to feel terror at the thought of God's answering his request for a hearing -- to confront God head on. God is absolutely sovereign and does whatever God wishes to do. (This is a feeling he has expressed earlier, e.g., 9:24-35 and 13:21-22.) It is as if Job suddenly stops and cries out, "What have I said? Do I really want to face God?" What Job feels is that mysterium tremendium which results from the experience of confrontation with the Ultimate Reality. And, like any human standing before that possibility, Job wishes he could just hide away.
Hide and seek! Job's struggle involves that terrible sense that God has hidden and discovery is impossible. What must impress us, however, is the honesty with which Job speaks. He is not afraid to challenge God, even though he eventually realizes what a terrifying thing that is. He shakes his fist at the heavens and demands that he be heard. But, for now, the response is only silence. Many of us have known moments of anger with God -- usually in the midst of tragedy -- but, unlike Job, few of us have had the integrity to express our feelings. Job feels seeking God and divine justice is futile, and many have shared Job's feelings. A fruitless search for a hidden God is itself terrifying.
Hebrews 4:12-16
The first reading suggests that there may be times when God seems hidden. The author of Hebrews reverses the game of hide and seek to say, first, that we can't hide from God no matter how hard we may try and, second, that -- thanks to Christ -- we can find God. This passage from Hebrews comes after a discussion of the "rest" God promises believers. The connection with that theme and our passage is found in 4:14-16 -- approaching "the throne of grace." However, verses 14-16 of our reading begin a new theme, namely, Jesus as our high priest. That discussion begins in 4:14 and continues through 5:10. Essentially the lesson assures us of two things.
We can't hide from God (vv. 12-13). In the previous section the author has warned that disobedience prevents our entering God's rest (vv. 6 and 11) and now warns that there is no possibility of faking obedience or pretending belief. "The word of God" penetrates our facades and goes right to our true selves. In this context, the expression, "word of God," probably does not mean Christ but simply God's living and dynamic message. The comparison of God's word with a sword is strange; but the point is that God enters into our selves, and there can lay bare who we truly are. The division of the "soul" (psycha) and "spirit" (pneuma) is far from clear, but it may have to do with sorting out that which is fundamental to life (which is usually what psych means) from our ability to relate to God ("spirit"). The language is metaphorical to say that God's word searches every nook and cranny of our lives; it divides that which is usually indivisible, like bone and marrow. Hence, God finds and judges everything about us (v. 12).
That means that "no creature is hidden" from God. The word translated "laid bare" is literally "neck stretched out," meaning that one becomes entirely vulnerable. The image of God's speech, used in verse 12, is put aside now for that of God's eyes. However, "we must render an account" in the Greek is simply ho logos. Since logos can mean account, the NRSV translation makes perfect sense and fits the passage. Still, this last word of verse 13 (logos) provides the closing bracket for a statement that began with the same word.
The point is that it is futile for us to try to hide from God, whose word slices into our innermost self and whose eyes see us as if we were naked and entirely vulnerable.
We can find God (vv. 14-16). Verse 14 begins another topic but implies a balance with verses 12-13. The author begins the discussion of Jesus' role as the great high priest by inviting readers to "hold fast" to their faith. Christ's passing "through the heavens" is a picturesque way of speaking of his exaltation to God's side. Immediately then the author claims God has elevated our high priest to a heavenly station, implying that he is far superior to any other high priest. While verse 14 emphasizes the exaltation of Christ, in verse 15 the author turns immediately to his incarnation. The priest who knows and has experienced the life of the common people is far better able to represent them to God. Christ has lived our lives, so that he is able to "sympathize (sympatheo -- feel or suffer with) with our weaknesses." So complete is Christ's identification with humans that he even experienced mortal weaknesses. The author thinks of these weaknesses as being vulnerable to testing and temptation (the words are the same in Greek). However, Christ did not suffer the weakness of failing the tests or yielding to temptation. So, the one who represents us before God knows exactly what we go through but is sinless so that he can stand before God. While the logic may be flawed, the point is clear and important.
The result of having this kind of high priest is that we have access to God's presence. We can even approach God with "boldness" and in confidence. The throne is one of "grace" which is at once a circumlocution for the use of the divine name and a declaration that God is the source of grace. There in God's presence we find "mercy" and "grace" that enable us to live with the weaknesses of temptations and testing (v. 16).
Job could not find God, but because of Christ, says the author of Hebrews, we cannot only find but also approach the Almighty One and do so without the terror Job experienced. Christ in effect shows us the way to "the throne of grace" because he himself found his way through the miseries of this life. This one who cried out, asking why God had forsaken him (Mark 15:34) much as Job did, leads us to God. Because Christ has been one of us and has known the agony of the absence of God, he has made a way for us to approach God.
Mark 10:17-31
In the case of our Gospel Lesson, the finding of what is hidden is different. Job started us off on this journey by speaking from the human side of the hide and seek dilemma. Hebrews enables us to see the matter of hiding and seeking from God's side -- God finds us, and we cannot hide from God. Now the rich man in the Gospel Lesson puts us back on the human side again. The passage has to do with "finding eternal life," and that expression introduces (v. 17) and concludes the reading (v. 30).
The lesson follows immediately the one read last Sunday, and Jesus' third passion prediction follows on the heels of his words to the disciples about sacrifice (10:32-34). There are two major parts to the reading, although those two naturally coalesce. The first part (vv. 17-22) is the story of the man in search of eternal life. Upon his departure, Jesus begins to teach the disciples about the search for that life (vv. 23-31), and does so with two related topics: the difficulty of salvation (vv. 23-27) and receiving eternal life (vv. 28-31). Again, let's isolate two important contributions this passage makes to the hide and seek theme.
Finding eternal life is hard (vv. 17-27). The man comes to Jesus with exactly the right question: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" We quickly learn in this passage that eternal life and the kingdom of God are used interchangeably and that gaining eternal life is "entering" the kingdom (v. 23). Jesus' rejection of the title "good" is fascinating, especially in the light of what the author of Hebrews has just said in our Second Lesson. The point seems to be that Jesus does not want to deflect the man's proper understanding of God.
Jesus' response to the man's question is at first rather obvious. Obey the commandments! However, when the man says that he does obey, then Jesus pushes the commandments beyond their limits. Mark only occasionally mentions Jesus' feelings, so that the simple words, "Jesus ... loved him" are striking. (See also Mark 6:34 and 8:2.) What Jesus says to the man is what he must in love say. Simply doing the right thing is not enough -- not even the central issue for entrance into the kingdom. Surrender is! That's the "one thing" the man will not be able to do. He wants eternal life, but tragically not enough to surrender his possessions for the sake of the needy.
The grief-filled departure of the searching man occasions Jesus' observation on how wealth becomes the barrier to true life. However, what we will gradually learn in these teachings is that the problem is even broader than the hindrance of wealth; it is the difficulty any of us have in entering the kingdom. The saying about the camel and the "eye of the needle" has been discussed at great length, seeking to "ease" the radicality of Jesus' words. To be sure, Jesus again employs hyperbole to make his point (see also 9:43-48), but he means what he says. It is most unlikely that anyone, especially the rich, can squeeze through the narrow entrance to the kingdom. His words here are comparable to what he says elsewhere about the "narrow way" (Matthew 7:13-14 and Luke 13:22-30).
The disciples, then, are quite correct when they ask, "Then who can be saved?" The question shows that the issue is not just about the wealthy but about all of us. Jesus' response implies
that salvation is really impossible for us! However, God makes impossibility into possibility. (See Job 42:2 and Genesis 18.) In the words of the searching man, we can't "inherit eternal life." But a gracious God can give it to us. We can't find the kingdom, but the Lord of that kingdom can find us!
There is no "locking in" the kingdom (vv. 28-31). In Mark's story, the disciples seem to have Ph.D.'s in misunderstanding. Peter wants to lay claim to the kingdom by virtue of what he and the others have given up to follow Jesus. He has the message to the rich man right -- surrender is the key -- and he rightly claims that the disciples have done exactly what Jesus had asked of the rich man. However, he's oblivious to what Jesus has just said about salvation being possible only because of who God is. Jesus' answer to Peter is very pastoral. He affirms what Peter has said. Indeed, sacrifice for the sake of the gospel ("the good news") will not go unrewarded, but, in fact, the gains of such sacrifice are abundantly more than the sacrifice itself. Notice the rewards have to do with daily and ordinary life -- family, "houses" and "fields." Serving Christ and the gospel transforms daily life.
However, as pastoral and reassuring as Jesus' words to the disciples are, they include qualifications which suggest that sacrifice is no game. It entails "persecution" (v. 30) and more importantly cannot be programmed like a computer game (v. 31). In verse 31 Jesus seems to say the disciples should not become too comfortable in their assurance. This saying is found in a number of places in the Synoptic Gospels, including Matthew 19:30; 20:16 and Luke 13:30. The reminder is simply that God's values differ from human values, so there may be some surprises awaiting even those who sacrifice so much. One meaning of this saying is that we cannot "lock in" a place in the kingdom. Reserved seats are not available. What Jesus counsels here is that salvation is God's work and therefore God determines who's first and who's last.
Hide and seek. The entrance to the kingdom of God seems to be allusive and hidden. The entrance into the kingdom is hard, and, even if one gains entrance, there is no certainty that the order of things there will be what we expect. Jesus reportedly invited people to "seek the kingdom of God" (e.g., Matthew 6:33 and Luke 12:31) and assured them that those who seek "will find" (e.g., Matthew 7:7 and Luke 11:9). However, he also argued that "those who seek to gain their lives will lose them" (Luke 17:33). The search must be for the right things, and finding depends on what we seek.
The game of hide and seek illumines the passages but is an inadequate metaphor for our Christian lives. Long before we sought God, our Creator found us. All our efforts to hide from God melt away like snow in a Georgia summer. While we experience Job's sense that God has hidden from us, it may be that we don't seek God but wait in faith that God will find us. Like most everything else about life, God turns the hide and seek game upside down.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
The story of Job is presented to us primarily through a series of dialogues that Job carries on with three so-called friends named Bildad, Zophar, and Eliphaz, in chapters 4-27. Those three friends visit Job in order to console and comfort him. But they are so shocked by his condition that for seven days they wisely do not say a word (2:11-13). However, they then -- quite unwisely -- take it upon themselves to give Job advice in order to improve his condition. (A fourth friend named Elihu also offers his counsel in chapters 32-37, but the suffering Job does not even bother to reply to him.)
The advice that the three friends offer stems from popular and somewhat misunderstood Wisdom teaching. They hold the view that God does good to the righteous and brings evil in the form of suffering on the unrighteous -- a view still widely held in our time. The friends are sure, therefore, that Job must have been faithless in some way toward God, and that God is punishing him for it.
In the passage immediately preceding our text for the morning, Eliphaz admonishes Job to confess his sin, to return to the Lord, and thus be at peace with him. "Agree with God, and be at peace," instructs Eliphaz, "thereby good will come to you ... If you return to the Almighty and humble yourself, if you remove unrighteousness far from your tents ... then you will delight yourself in the Almighty ... You will make your prayer to him, and he will hear you" (22:21, 23, 26-27). In such a manner many sufferers in our day have heard someone tell them to return to God and everything will be okay.
In reply to that facile and unfeeling advice, Job cries out, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him!" (v. 3). And that is the problem for many of us too, isn't it? We cannot find God. God is silent. God apparently has withdrawn his presence from us. He hears no pleading prayer, sees no desperate suffering, answers not a word. And we are left staring into a void of an empty heaven. As Job utters at the end of our text, "I am hemmed in by darkness, and thick darkness covers my face" (v. 17). The prophet Amos proclaimed that the problem for Israel was that God had broken out in a roaring against his people (Amos 1:2). The problem for Job, and sometimes for us, is that God is silent.
Why is that the case? Is it that God has withdrawn from us because of our sin? The prophets also preached that such could be possible. Amos said that his compatriots would wander from sea to sea and shore to shore, seeking the word of the Lord, but they would not find it (Amos 8:12). The Third Isaiah (Isaiah 56-66) proclaimed, "Your iniquities have made a separation between you
and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear" (Isaiah 59:2). But that is not Job's problem. He has been faithful to God all his life, and has always served and loved his neighbor. The friends are quite wrong about the reason for Job's suffering, as persons are often wrong about someone's plight in our day. We err grievously when we attribute all problems and suffering to sin.
So why is it that we sometimes cannot find God and think he is absent? A second possibility: Are we looking for him in the wrong places? The Lord God, in his mercy, has provided all of us the "means of grace," as the church calls them, the avenues through which God comes to us and speaks to us and works in our lives. God gives us his word, written in the Scriptures -- but we may never read it or listen to it preached. He promises to be with us in his Spirit through the means of the sacraments, but we may never understand them or open ourselves to the communion with
the Lord that they afford. Maybe God seems silent to us because we seek him in the wrong places. But once again, that is not Job's problem. Job searches desperately for some avenue to God. He even says that he would be willing to enter a courtroom with the Lord and to lay his case before him. Then, Job asserts, God would listen (vv. 4-6).
And yet -- and yet , Job knows the foolishness of that, because he knows who God is, and he realizes that he could not possibly contend with the Lord. God is too awesome, too overwhelming in his glory, too dreadful in his might for anyone to stand up before him (vv. 15-16). Job is not fooling with the sentimental little godlets that we sometimes imagine for ourselves. Job knows the character of God, because he has lived in God's presence all of his life. And maybe too that is our problem, that we think God is silent because we are seeking the wrong kind of God.
But the problem is still there, isn't it? We cannot find God.
I once had a professor in seminary who said, "We should stop talking about 'seeking God.' God isn't lost. We are lost." And the message of our text and of the Scriptures in their entirety, good Christians, is that all of us lost ones have been found. We cannot seek God, but God has sought us and found us. He finds Job, at the end of our story, and comes to him and speaks to him. And he found us in our Lord Jesus Christ, who came in our flesh, and shared our suffering, and heard our pleas, and promised that he would never leave us. Yes, thick darkness may surround us at times. Yes, it may seem as if no prayer is heard, and no divine presence is with us. Yes, we may suffer pain and "outrageous fortune" in this sin-pocked world of ours. But Christ made a promise to us, and he will always keep it. "Lo, I am with you always," he said, "to the close of the age" (Matthew 28:20). Trust that promise. Cling to it. Even when you can't experience it. For it is now, and it will always be true.
Lutheran Option -- Amos 5:6-7, 10-15
These verses actually form a portion of a funerary lament that God utters over his people in northern Israel in the eighth century B.C., through the words of his prophet Amos. The lament begins in verse 1 and ends with the mourning wailing described in verses 16-17. God has determined that he will make an end of his people in the northern kingdom of Israel (8:2; cf. 3:15; 8:10) -- an end that will come in their fall to the armies of the Assyrian Empire, in their subsequent exile, and in their disappearance from history. Our passage details some of the reasons why that end has been determined.
The theme of the whole is set forth in verse 7: Israel turns justice to wormwood, a bitter wood used for medicine, and casts down righteousness to the earth. The reference is to Israel's treatment of its poor peasant farmers in the courts of law which were held in each city at the gates. City elders made up the personnel of the courts. We read in verse 11 that fines were exacted from the poor in the form of some of their grain. The elders then sold the grain and used the proceeds to build fine stone houses, unlike the clay houses of the poor. Or they bought the best vineyards in the best fields. In verse 12, we also learn that the elders accepted bribes to influence their judgments. Moreover, when more honest elders objected and attempted to render just judgments, they were scorned and drowned into silence by the avaricious others (vv. 10, 13). That could remind us of the fate of those who refuse to toe a "politically correct" or hard but truthful line in our own society. Sometimes truth falls victim to distorted public opinion, as it also did in the court of Pontius Pilate on a spring day in Jerusalem.
In the midst of a corrupt society, Amos admonishes his people to "seek the Lord," and to "seek good" (vv. 6, 14), which is a repetition of the same thought, because that which is good, according to the Bible, is not some virtue or ideal lying outside of God, but God himself. "No one is good but God alone," our Lord said (Mark 10:18). If we would know what is good, therefore, we must know it from God -- from his commandments and teachings, from his actions and words, from his presence.
Amos tells his sinful people that if they mend their ways, and turn and seek the Lord, then "it may be" that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to a remnant of them in his judgment on them (v. 15). But God is not coerced, even by our turning, and the grace of God is never earned, but only freely given. In Israel's case, in the days of Amos, she has passed up too many opportunities. God is the one source of her life (v. 6), but she has chosen death. The God who is life, is also a consuming fire (v. 6), and Israel will be consumed. The funeral lament is promised at the end of the chapter (vv. 16-17). In similar manner, our Lord Jesus tells us that "whoever denies me before others, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 10:33). Let those who have ears to hear, hear.
