The Thick Darkness
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle B
Eric Marshall and Stuart Hample have made a practice of visiting elementary schools and asking children to write letters to God. They've published some of those letters in a book titled, Children's Letters to God. Here's a sampling:
Dear God,
Count me in.
Your friend, Herbie
Dear God,
Are boys better than girls? I know you are one but try to be fair.
Sylvia
Dear God,
Your book has a lot of zip to it. I like science fiction stories. You had some very good ideas and I would like to know where you found them.
Your reader, Jimmy
Dear Mr. God,
How do you feel about people who don't believe in you? Somebody else wants to know.
A friend, Neil
Dear God,
What is it like when you die? Nobody will tell me. I just want to know, I don't want to do it.
Mike
Dear God,
When you wrote the Bible you made up all the words and spelled them the way you like. That is great. Most of the time I do it like that, but I am not doing so good.
Ron
Dear God,
My teacher read us the part where all the Jews went through where the water was and got away. Keep up the good work. I am Jewish.
Love, Paula
Dear God,
We are going on vacation for two weeks Friday so we won't be in church. I hope you will be there when we get back. When do you take your vacation?
Good-bye, Donnie
What makes these letters funny, of course, is that the children have assigned to God more or less human characteristics. I read the other day about a man whose four-year-old son asked him if mosquitoes bite God. How do you answer something like that?
Such questions, of course, are appropriate for children, but let me address this question to the adults here this morning: Has it gotten easier or harder to believe in God since you've grown up? If you are like many people, it has gotten more difficult. One adult I know put it like this:
The older I've gotten, the less certain I've become about almost everything. When I was a child, I understood things in clear-cut terms. God was this great power in the sky, the boss of the universe, who I was told, also cared about me personally. But now that I've been through some rough times, I'm not so sure I believe that. I guess I still believe in God, but I know a lot less about him than I thought I did.
That's an uncomfortable situation.
May I suggest this morning that we in the religious profession have sometimes made God sound as if he is someone we can all know intimately -- that we've made so much of the approachability of God that we've left people with an inadequate image of the Creator. Like the children, we've endowed God with so many human characteristics (only better) that there's not enough "Godness" left in our understanding of him to command an adult faith. In fact, one reason we may have a hard time believing in, let alone trusting God, is that we have never comprehended what God is really like. Instead, we've struggled to believe in a childish shadow of God.
It's true that in the New Testament, Jesus calls God "Father" but this is an analogy, a way to express indirectly what cannot be directly expressed. But we have sometimes inferred from that analogy that God is like a great daddy.
Consider how some of the adults in the Old Testament viewed God, especially those in our scripture reading this morning. Under King Solomon, the people of Israel have finally been able to build a great temple as the house of God. Our reading tells about the day that the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant into the special inner sanctum that had been built for it. After depositing the Ark there, the priests came out, and as they did, a cloud, symbolizing the glory of God, filled the temple. The cloud was so dark that the priests could not see well enough to carry out their duties inside. Solomon, seeing this, says, perhaps quoting Psalm 97:2, "The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness." He may also have been referring to a reference such as Exodus 20:21, where it talks about Moses drawing "near the thick darkness where God was."
Thick darkness to signify God's presence. That seems to me as a way of saying that a primary characteristic of God is mystery.
Isaiah's experience of God was such that he wrote, "Truly, you are a God who hides himself" (Isaiah 45:15). And it was through Isaiah that God said something that emphasized the sharp contrast between the Creator and ourselves:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
-- Isaiah 55:8-9
And the Apostle Paul said that he and his fellow missionaries were "stewards of God's mysteries" (1 Corinthians 4:1).
There are times when we ourselves have encountered the hiddenness of God. Have you ever tried to meditate or pray only to feel that you were reaching out into a void or a profound silence?
A fourteenth-century English monk whose name we do not know wrote about the human attempt to reach God. He said that when we first lift up our hearts to God, we often encounter only a kind of darkness, or what he termed a "cloud of unknowing." He maintained that there exists between us and God a sphere of human ignorance that blocks the path to God. He did not mean we could not connect with God, but that we can never fully penetrate the mystery that, to some degree, conceals God from our sight. This monk concluded that the only way through this cloud of unknowing is not knowledge, but our longing love for God.
To speak of the mystery of God is to say that God is reality apart from human reality. God is not just man with a few superlatives added. God is not the culmination of all that is good in human beings. God is something totally other than we are.
Now to acknowledge God's mysteriousness is not to say that we cannot know anything about God. Actually we can know whatever God has chosen to reveal to us about himself -- through the Bible, through Jesus Christ, and even through personal religious experiences. We just can't know anything about God without God's help.
Okay, let's say that we accept mystery as a primary part of how we see God. What does that matter?
Well, for one thing, it means that we don't have God all figured out. If we did, what would we have? The French have a saying: "A God defined is a God finished." If my mortal mind could grasp all that God is, then he would be not much more than I am. Fortunately, that is not the case, and therefore God may still have some surprises in store for us.
Once, when I was a teenager, I attended an evangelistic meeting where an invitation to "come forward" was issued. While we sang "Just As I Am" or something similar, a young man came up beside me and said, "I think God wants you to go forward." "How do you know that?" I asked. "Otherwise, God wouldn't have told me to come and talk to you," he said. I thought to myself, "Buddy, if you know the mind of God, then your God is too small for me."
You and I need a God who is bigger than we are, and that's just what this passage from the Bible is telling about God.
Some years ago in Vancouver, British Columbia, a man by the name of Morris Davie was arrested and charged with setting a forest fire. While Davie was in jail awaiting trial, a police officer saw Davie drop to his knees and pray out loud, "Oh God, please let me get away with it, just this once."
Naturally, the police officer's testimony about this became part of the evidence against Davie. His defense attorney tried to have the testimony thrown out, arguing that the prayer was a privileged communication meant to be heard by God, not the police.
The prosecution countered that under the law, communication could only be considered privileged when it is between two people, and that God is not person in the human sense but a spiritual being.
The court agreed, saying the "the word 'person' is used in the statutes of Canada to describe someone to whom rights are granted and upon whom obligations are placed. There is no earthly authority which can grant rights to, or impose duties on, God."2
That's exactly right. God is reality wholly other than we are. He is not bound by our limits or stymied by the barriers that confine us. He's bigger than we are or can even conceive of.
But since God chooses to be present with us, that means that when we trust him we are in touch with one who has power and love beyond anything we can imagine.
That's a God adults can believe in, and that's awfully good news for us!
____________
1.ÊI have added verse 8:12 to the lectionary reading. The sermon can be preached without it, by referring to the cloud in 8:11, but the "thick darkness" reference in verse 12 is especially graphic.
2.Ê"Canadian Court Says Prayers Can Be Used as Evidence," Tribune Chronicle (Warren, Ohio), September 11, 1980, p. 1.
Dear God,
Count me in.
Your friend, Herbie
Dear God,
Are boys better than girls? I know you are one but try to be fair.
Sylvia
Dear God,
Your book has a lot of zip to it. I like science fiction stories. You had some very good ideas and I would like to know where you found them.
Your reader, Jimmy
Dear Mr. God,
How do you feel about people who don't believe in you? Somebody else wants to know.
A friend, Neil
Dear God,
What is it like when you die? Nobody will tell me. I just want to know, I don't want to do it.
Mike
Dear God,
When you wrote the Bible you made up all the words and spelled them the way you like. That is great. Most of the time I do it like that, but I am not doing so good.
Ron
Dear God,
My teacher read us the part where all the Jews went through where the water was and got away. Keep up the good work. I am Jewish.
Love, Paula
Dear God,
We are going on vacation for two weeks Friday so we won't be in church. I hope you will be there when we get back. When do you take your vacation?
Good-bye, Donnie
What makes these letters funny, of course, is that the children have assigned to God more or less human characteristics. I read the other day about a man whose four-year-old son asked him if mosquitoes bite God. How do you answer something like that?
Such questions, of course, are appropriate for children, but let me address this question to the adults here this morning: Has it gotten easier or harder to believe in God since you've grown up? If you are like many people, it has gotten more difficult. One adult I know put it like this:
The older I've gotten, the less certain I've become about almost everything. When I was a child, I understood things in clear-cut terms. God was this great power in the sky, the boss of the universe, who I was told, also cared about me personally. But now that I've been through some rough times, I'm not so sure I believe that. I guess I still believe in God, but I know a lot less about him than I thought I did.
That's an uncomfortable situation.
May I suggest this morning that we in the religious profession have sometimes made God sound as if he is someone we can all know intimately -- that we've made so much of the approachability of God that we've left people with an inadequate image of the Creator. Like the children, we've endowed God with so many human characteristics (only better) that there's not enough "Godness" left in our understanding of him to command an adult faith. In fact, one reason we may have a hard time believing in, let alone trusting God, is that we have never comprehended what God is really like. Instead, we've struggled to believe in a childish shadow of God.
It's true that in the New Testament, Jesus calls God "Father" but this is an analogy, a way to express indirectly what cannot be directly expressed. But we have sometimes inferred from that analogy that God is like a great daddy.
Consider how some of the adults in the Old Testament viewed God, especially those in our scripture reading this morning. Under King Solomon, the people of Israel have finally been able to build a great temple as the house of God. Our reading tells about the day that the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant into the special inner sanctum that had been built for it. After depositing the Ark there, the priests came out, and as they did, a cloud, symbolizing the glory of God, filled the temple. The cloud was so dark that the priests could not see well enough to carry out their duties inside. Solomon, seeing this, says, perhaps quoting Psalm 97:2, "The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness." He may also have been referring to a reference such as Exodus 20:21, where it talks about Moses drawing "near the thick darkness where God was."
Thick darkness to signify God's presence. That seems to me as a way of saying that a primary characteristic of God is mystery.
Isaiah's experience of God was such that he wrote, "Truly, you are a God who hides himself" (Isaiah 45:15). And it was through Isaiah that God said something that emphasized the sharp contrast between the Creator and ourselves:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
-- Isaiah 55:8-9
And the Apostle Paul said that he and his fellow missionaries were "stewards of God's mysteries" (1 Corinthians 4:1).
There are times when we ourselves have encountered the hiddenness of God. Have you ever tried to meditate or pray only to feel that you were reaching out into a void or a profound silence?
A fourteenth-century English monk whose name we do not know wrote about the human attempt to reach God. He said that when we first lift up our hearts to God, we often encounter only a kind of darkness, or what he termed a "cloud of unknowing." He maintained that there exists between us and God a sphere of human ignorance that blocks the path to God. He did not mean we could not connect with God, but that we can never fully penetrate the mystery that, to some degree, conceals God from our sight. This monk concluded that the only way through this cloud of unknowing is not knowledge, but our longing love for God.
To speak of the mystery of God is to say that God is reality apart from human reality. God is not just man with a few superlatives added. God is not the culmination of all that is good in human beings. God is something totally other than we are.
Now to acknowledge God's mysteriousness is not to say that we cannot know anything about God. Actually we can know whatever God has chosen to reveal to us about himself -- through the Bible, through Jesus Christ, and even through personal religious experiences. We just can't know anything about God without God's help.
Okay, let's say that we accept mystery as a primary part of how we see God. What does that matter?
Well, for one thing, it means that we don't have God all figured out. If we did, what would we have? The French have a saying: "A God defined is a God finished." If my mortal mind could grasp all that God is, then he would be not much more than I am. Fortunately, that is not the case, and therefore God may still have some surprises in store for us.
Once, when I was a teenager, I attended an evangelistic meeting where an invitation to "come forward" was issued. While we sang "Just As I Am" or something similar, a young man came up beside me and said, "I think God wants you to go forward." "How do you know that?" I asked. "Otherwise, God wouldn't have told me to come and talk to you," he said. I thought to myself, "Buddy, if you know the mind of God, then your God is too small for me."
You and I need a God who is bigger than we are, and that's just what this passage from the Bible is telling about God.
Some years ago in Vancouver, British Columbia, a man by the name of Morris Davie was arrested and charged with setting a forest fire. While Davie was in jail awaiting trial, a police officer saw Davie drop to his knees and pray out loud, "Oh God, please let me get away with it, just this once."
Naturally, the police officer's testimony about this became part of the evidence against Davie. His defense attorney tried to have the testimony thrown out, arguing that the prayer was a privileged communication meant to be heard by God, not the police.
The prosecution countered that under the law, communication could only be considered privileged when it is between two people, and that God is not person in the human sense but a spiritual being.
The court agreed, saying the "the word 'person' is used in the statutes of Canada to describe someone to whom rights are granted and upon whom obligations are placed. There is no earthly authority which can grant rights to, or impose duties on, God."2
That's exactly right. God is reality wholly other than we are. He is not bound by our limits or stymied by the barriers that confine us. He's bigger than we are or can even conceive of.
But since God chooses to be present with us, that means that when we trust him we are in touch with one who has power and love beyond anything we can imagine.
That's a God adults can believe in, and that's awfully good news for us!
____________
1.ÊI have added verse 8:12 to the lectionary reading. The sermon can be preached without it, by referring to the cloud in 8:11, but the "thick darkness" reference in verse 12 is especially graphic.
2.Ê"Canadian Court Says Prayers Can Be Used as Evidence," Tribune Chronicle (Warren, Ohio), September 11, 1980, p. 1.
