The Hidden God: Psalm 10
THE SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
The Hidden God
It's good to be with you all on this 17th Sunday after Trinitytide:
· Longest season of the year.
· 1st half reveals the Gospel of God in Christ.
· 2nd half, Trinitytide, calls us to live this Gospel.
· Trinitytide is mainly concerned with our spiritual formation and growth in Christ, to become little Christ's.
We have turned to the Psalms through these past seventeen weeks, seeking Christ and listening for his voice; you see, Christ is the voice of the Psalms, and we, his sheep, need his word planted within our souls that we might bear Christian fruit and walk as children of light amidst the darkness and shadows of this age. You see, we must diligently tend to the garden of our soul, protecting it with God's word and nurturing it with sacramental grace. The ordered and hospitable soul is a most happy place for the Holy Spirit to reside as we abide in Him and he in us.
Jesus Christ is our first concern in the spiritual life, loving him above all things because a love rightly oriented to Christ precedes our capacity to rightly love everything else: ourselves, others, creation, and everything. The Christian life is the grand story of Divine grace teaching us to love God and others. It is the soul's pursuit of attaining rest, knowing that it is learning to love like Christ and, as importantly, is deeply loved by him. Loving God and being loved by Him, we call this Sabbath the supernatural rest attained by mutual, unimpeded, and unsullied Love between you and God: we call this communion.
But if we've learned anything from the Psalms, it is this: our imperfect Love in an imperfect world makes this Christian life exceptionally troublesome. Psalm 10 (353, BCP), appointed for this seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, begins with a question that every Christian has asked or, in time, will most surely ask: "WHY standest thou so far off, O LORD, and hidest thy face in the needful time of trouble?" Where are You? Why have you abandoned me? Why are you hiding from me? More often than not, we think of Jesus as the one who comes to us, who makes himself known as he does in today's Gospel.
Taking the initiative, he goes to the "house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath day." He shows up, walks in, and acts within just a few minutes; he miraculously reaches out to a poor man suffering from dropsy and heals him right before their eyes. Because when Jesus comes and reveals himself, healing and goodness follow. But what about when he stands afar and hides from us?
We are not the first to cross this threshold of inquiry; the hiddenness of God has engaged many of the best theological minds down through the ages— St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Karl Barth. Deus absconditus, "the hidden God," is a part of our spiritual and theological lexicon because Holy Scripture speaks of God as hidden. Therefore, we, like those many saints through the centuries, should seek to understand this Divine reality because, like the Psalmist, we experience the Divine absence: "WHY standest thou so far off, O LORD, and hidest thy face in the needful time of trouble?" (Ps 10:1).
I first want to say that any pursuit into the deep things of God will quickly bring us into the realm of Divine mystery; even our sanctified minds can reach so far into the vast reality of the Triune God. In the words of Evelyn Underhill, "If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped." I don't know why God hides, but Scripture, reason, and experience reveal that he does.
Why is God so often silent, so often hidden? This question, frequently voiced in cries of anguish and despair, has been uttered by numerous believers through the centuries. It was recorded in the oldest book in the Bible— it was the heart cry of Job as he sat on his ash heap. "Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him;9on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him; he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him" (Job 23:8-9).
In the forty-fifth chapter of his prophecy, Isaiah also speaks of God as powerful and provident, yet sometimes hidden, writing, "Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior" (Isa 45:15, c.f. 64:7). The Lord withdraws himself from his covenant people, when and how he chooses. The Scriptures speak of God shrouding Himself in the darkness, the God who has "clouds and darkness surrounding Him" (Ps 97:2), "He makes darkness His secret place" (Ps 18:11). He revealed to Solomon that "The Lord said He would dwell in a dark cloud (1 Kings 8:12)." He surrounds Himself in His cloud of glory, and He alone determines who may enter in to see him.
Hiddenness is not a Divine attribute but A Divine reality. Martin Luther is helpful here. Luther doesn't think of God's hiddenness as one of God's many attributes. God is Love, omnipotent; God is good; these are ontological realities of God's being and nature. God isn't hidden in the same way. Luther's point is that "hiddenness" isn't an attribute of God but a Divine right and choice: the God of Holy Scripture is a God who actually and actively hides.
Do we not see a glimpse of this in the Gospels when Jesus would withdraw and stand afar. Or intentionally hide truth by teaching in parables. Sometimes, he disappeared in the midst of a crowd, as he did when, after preaching a controversial sermon in Nazareth, the synagogue attendees tried to kill him by throwing him off a cliff! (Lk 4:16-30). The question before us then isn't "Does God hide?" The appropriate question is, "Why does he choose to do so?” Why does God hide at a time of great trouble?
Let me draw a few implications from today's Psalm. The first is this: God often withdraws during the most tumultuous and turbulent times so that we will earnestly seek him. Our Psalmist spends nearly ten verses lamenting the terribleness of the wicked, who persecute the poor, proudly defy God, lurk in the shadows murdering and ravishing the vulnerable; they even mock God! This means they mock God's people because He is seemingly nowhere to be found; he has forsaken his people; He is hiding afar off. And this drives the Psalmist to seek the hidden God, so he cries out to him in prayer (v. 13), "Arise, O LORD God, and lift up thine hand!"
Sometimes, the Lord hides because He wants us to desire him, to call on him, to seek his face. He often hides His face from us and postpones His help so that we may pray more earnestly for him to return because whether we are calling out from a foxhole on the battlefield of life or enjoying the goodness of life, God wants us to desire Him above all things. He takes delight in our longing for Him. Divine absence, then, teaches us the value of God's presence.
St. Paul prayed for the Ephesians that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened to know God. He's praying for Christians. He's praying for Christians because the brightness and the light of God's preciousness are not always as clear as they should be or as we want them to be. God hides to fan the flame of Love. The Divine absence of Love increases our desire for Him, "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God." The Hidden God wants us to seek him and do so with faith. "Surely thou hast seen it (the Psalmist says) for thou beholdest ungodliness and wrong, that thou mayest take the matter into thy hand" (v. 15).
Though God has hidden his face, the Psalmist still believes that God sees his plight. He may not see God, but God sees him. Even in a sea of trouble, he believes that the Lord is there and, as importantly, will take matters into his own hands. So, from time to time, he lets us dwell in the darkness of his absence so that we will return to His word, unto prayer and sacrament, and lay hold of God in a renewed way and love him more than we did before the storm.
David's anguish in Psalm 22 is the perplexity of one who has been abandoned of God,
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer and by night, but I find no rest (Ps 22: 1, 2).
These very same words were repeated in the desolate voice of Jesus from the cross as darkness enveloped the day,
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mat 27:46).
Surely, God the Father stood afar from his son who hung upon Calvary’s cross. The Father hid his face in darkness from his only beloved Son, abandoned by the hidden God. And yet, the greatest good ever accomplished in the history of the world took place through Divine Abandonment: The Father forsook The Son, allowing him to die, but by that precious death, Jesus broke death's chains and reconciled a sinful world back to the Father. To put it a bit more plainly, the abandonment of Christ brought you into the light and life of God. In other words, God the Father stood afar from Calvary’s cross so that you and I might be brought near.
My friends, God often does his most significant work in our lives when he seems to be the furthest from us, hiding his face in the darkness. Therefore, we must press into those times of Divine abandonment, knowing that God is most likely forging a greater depth of Love and faith within; He is doing good and desires our good, but he also wants us to desire Him to seek Him. So when Jesus hides, we must, without delay, go and seek him.
Seeking the Lord always begins with a turn from isolation and despair in times of abandonment to prayer. And we mustn't remove ourselves from the means of his presence given to us by Holy Mother church: hearing His most comfortable word and His real presence in the sacrament of Holy Communion. Though hidden, remember, dear Christian, that Jesus said he "will never leave you nor forsake you" (Heb 13:5). Therefore, Jesus is always present in absence, just as he is in the eucharistic bread and wine, present yet veiled.
Jesus often is the hidden God; therefore, we must seek him when he is hiding and standing afar in times of trouble because he longs to be found,
Seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened (Mt 7:7-8).
Thus promises the Lord Jesus Christ, who knows what it is to be abandoned by a hidden God but also trusts in the covenant Love of his Father. Amen+
