Proper 5B Where Are We?

 

Where Are We?

Anyone looking for answers in here may be disappointed. For it seems that the Lord God prefers questions.

“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” [Genesis 3:8]

This has always been one of my favorite sentences in all the Bible. One can just imagine the “sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.” It perks up our ears as we listen ourselves to see if we too can hear those footsteps, and feel the breeze as it cools us down after a long, warm day, filled with cicada sounds filling the air, carcasses piling up on the ground, so that now we can relax and spend some quality time with the Lord God.

Suddenly, however, the mood shifts as we learn that the man and his wife are hiding among the trees, naked and afraid. Try to imagine hiding from the Lord God. This is the God of all creation, of all things seen and unseen. Where exactly do we think we can hide from the God whose Spirit and Breath enlivens us; whose mighty wind sweeps over the deep waters of chaos and brings about order, and sense, and calm where once there was nothing but a deep and unruly darkness.

The Good News arrives in the very next sentence. While the man and woman hide, afraid because their actions have been laid bare for all to see, nevertheless the Lord God calls out to them, “Where are you?” Surely, it is not because the Lord God cannot find them, or does not already know about the episode with the serpent and the tree. Yet, like a parent, like a Father as Jesus always addresses him, he just wants to know if they are safe. He loves them with Divine love. He warned them, but like all of us, they don’t listen, and curiosity gets the best of them.

The scene is not unlike Mary, the mother of God and his brothers trying to reach Jesus while he is teaching what some see as evil, as demonic, and think he is out of his mind. [Mark 3:20-35] Her concern is like the Lord God’s concern for the man and the woman. Perhaps Mary feels fear for the first time just like the man and his wife do in the garden. Out of fear, out of utter futility, they try to hide – which in the end only results in hiding from ourselves, doesn’t it? In all likelihood, they have no idea where they are. They find themselves in a new place, a new relationship with their Maker, with one another, and with the world that surrounds them. Lost.

My yoga teacher, Sally Rich, always used to say to us, “Where is your mind?” Very much the same question the Lord God calls out in his love and concern for their safety, “Where are you?”

 “Where are you?” echoes from here throughout the entire remaining narrative of Holy Scripture. It is really the one thing the Lord God asks of all of us out of a deep desire to remain in relationship with us. With us all. Male and female, slave and free, Gentile and Jew, black and white, rich and poor, for better for worse. Whether God’s people are in Jerusalem, or in Exile, or under Roman Occupation, or simply hiding from God and themselves, the question is always the same, “Where are you?”

If we knew Hebrew, we would notice that when God calls out, “Where are you?” that the “you” is second person plural, not singular. His desire is to call out to all of us, to find us, his community of Divine Love, wherever we may be. It is a call not to individuals, but to communities, societies of persons – in this case the very first community of souls on earth.

 As we ponder these stories, the Lord God hopes that we can hear that voice that echoes through the ages hoping to, what? Find us again? Reel us back in from whatever danger and fear we have gotten ourselves into now? That if we answer we might return to God’s household of Divine Love?

 It’s been a challenging 17 months since the Pandemic first broke out. As a Church, life has been disrupted and quite honestly will never be the same. The world continues to be a chaotic brew of violence and beauty as millions struggle to survive not only the Pandemic, but brutal authoritarian governments and outright lawlessness around the world. As a country we have witnessed divisions and dangers that before had seemed unimaginable. As society, as communities and as families, we have had to respond to dangers and adopt new and best practices just to find ourselves still here at all a year later. It is no wonder that like the man and the woman in Genesis 3 we find ourselves trying to hide from it all, all the time keeping ourselves busy as a way of hiding from ourselves.

How astonishing it is that the Word we are given to ponder this second week after Pentecost are among the most ancient words ever spoken in all of human history: Where are you? Where are we?

At Noonday Prayer, our Contemplative Practice of a period of silence is in part meant to help us stop “the carousel of time” and allow ourselves to take a deep look within and see just where we are. For until we do this as individuals, and more importantly as a society, we inevitably just end up going “round and round and round, in the circle game,” as Joni once put it.

It is far beyond time to continue to try and hide from it all, let alone hide from the Lord God of Creation. And we will get nowhere at all if we continue to play the blame-game like the man and woman in the garden: “She made me do it…the serpent made me do it…the devil made us do it!” Until we know where we are, there will be no getting past the fear and the hiding and the magical thinking that somehow it will all just go away. The falseness of this world has been laid bare. Naked for all to see. The Good News is that there is a greater truth that seeks us out and calls to us, “Where are you?” as a starting place for moving into a more hopeful and fruitful future – together, as one people united with the love and purpose of the One God who wants to find us, and help us, and move us to a better place than where we find ourselves right now.

The 13^th century monk, scholar, preacher and mystic Meister Eckhart once observed: God is at home, it is we who have gone out for a walk. So it is that God calls out to us all, “Where are you?” It’s well past time to return home. May God the Holy Spirit help us to that end.