Where is God revealed?  Where does God hide…  the joy of children, nature, the cross of Christ?

One of the first lessons that grows out of this parable is the awareness that our God, the true God, the one God who created the universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead; that our true God is a hidden God. 

Our God hides most completely in the faces and places of suffering. The awareness that our God is a hidden God who hides in suffering is a stark contrast to other religions of the world. In all the other religions of the world, they talk about their god who reveals himself in the beauty of the sunset, the birth of babies, and in the bounty of nature. But our God is the only God in the whole wide world who hides under the faces and places of suffering. Let me explain.

 

A number of years ago when our children were young and small, we used to play a game almost every night for a while. My car would come down the driveway and they would hear the car and go and hide. Joel would hide underneath the kitchen table. Anne would hide behind the door in our bedroom. I would come in the front door and shout, “Where are the children?” Then I would look underneath the sofa, the dining room table, the curtains, and all around, still calling out, “Where are the children?” Anne and Joel would make noise, I would find them, they would shout, “boo”. The point is: the children would hide in obvious places. But every once in a while, they would seriously hide and go down into the basement, way down into the utility room, into the storage room, back behind the water tank, back there and they would hide. I would come and I couldn’t find them. I couldn’t find them at all.

By analogy, in all the religions of the world, their gods hide themselves in the obvious places: underneath the kitchen table. underneath the bed, behind the back door. These gods hide themselves in the beauty of the sunsets, the birth of babies, the bounty of nature. But our God, the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, our God does down into the basement. Our God goes down into the basement and hides in a place that people don’t know. God hides in the midst of suffering, hides in the water, wine and wafer, but the primary place is in the cross. No other God in the whole wide world gets crucified. When our God is crucified, our God is the most hidden.

The real lesson of this parable today is an invitation for you and me to seek out this hidden God. Not in the beauty of the sunsets or the birth of babies or the bounty of nature. Not to find God in the obvious places such as the beauty of Mt. Rainier or Yellowstone National Park, and conclude that there is a God. The real lesson of this parable is to seek God in the difficult places, hiding behind the faces and places of suffering people.

What does this mean for us? What does it mean to embrace a suffering world?

First, it means to have the love of Christ inside of you. You cannot be this kind of loving person unless the love of Christ is living in you. It is not you. It is not me. It is the love of God living inside of us. You can’t embrace hurting people unless the love of God lives in you.

It begins at home, in the unconscious acts of generosity to your husband, wife, family. You don’t even realize you are doing it. I can give you hundreds of examples, but I will only give you a few. Gary and Carolyn Spies were down at the hospital for weeks, taking care of their sick child, as were many other parents caring for their child in similar circumstances. You say to these parents, “You are loving your son in a special way.” They reply, “What is wrong with you. We are doing what any loving parent would do.” They don’t even realize the good that they are doing. The same is true as Dorothy Smith cares for her mother at the nursing home, as do Doug and Joan Anderson with their mother and so many of you doing the same. You think nothing of it, except that it is a lot of work and the way that love works. Neil Bender has taken care of his wife, Eva, for decades as she is home as an invalid. He just lovingly does it. Neil didn’t have to go to Bangladesh to find a ministry; he went no further than his own bedroom and kitchen table. If you suggest to him he is a good and loving person, he would laugh and then cry. So would Bill Bentzen as he cares for his wife, Hulda, with Alzheimer’s. What I am suggesting is that this quality of love begins at home with these unconscious acts of generosity.

When Jesus addressed the sheep about going to heaven, the sheep didn’t even realize that they had been generous. They were not even aware. That is the way it is with love, the true love of God. You forget yourself in loving and caring for another person.

This quality of love then spreads from your home, to the neighbor down the street and to the man who had a stroke, to a person who had a car accident and is all crippled up. For some reason, you become involved.

This love spreads. You begin to realize that your brothers and sisters in Africa or Asia or Latin America or in our ghettos are hungry and starving. This quality of love cannot help but reach out to them. We are family. The love of God living inside of us begins to reach out to all kinds of people and we don’t even know it.

You see, the truth about the gospel is that our God is a hidden God. And more than that, we are invited to seek God where God is to be found.

By Rev. Edward Markquart