C Lent 1. 2010                                                                         Christ Church , York

We have lived there for more than 27 years and I love that old farmhouse. Located just south of Dillsburg, the house dates back to the mid 1830’s and is typical of many of such houses constructed at that time with three rooms up and three down, wide pine flooring, windowpanes that are very irregular and a nice old porch on the back. But one thing that our house lacks is closets. Until we built our addition, we were sadly lacking for closet space in every room and my kids, even though they are grown and gone, still complain about it to this day. Of all the rooms in our houses one of the least glamorous, but most essential of spaces is the closet. No home constructed today is without them and some of these closets are huge. Now there are two reasons for having closets – first because we all need a place to hang our clothes and put our shoes and store our stuff; but second we also need a place where we can suddenly throw and cram stuff when company comes on short notice and we don’t want to be embarrassed by having them see our mess. Indeed what it would be like if we didn’t have a place to stuff all of the clutter of our lives and get it out of the way so that we don’t have to look at it.

And just as no home today is constructed without a closet, so no life is lived without one either. We might not see the closets of our lives, for they are not constructed with dry wall and nails and studs and we might even be embarrassed to admit that we have such a closet in our lives. But we know where they are – those closets where we hide away the darkness that lives in the recesses of our minds and our hearts, the places where we can cram all the stuff that clutters up the image of our otherwise neat lives. Sometimes that clutter is the consequence of a bad decision or something messy we got ourselves into by making a bad choice. Sometimes it’s the hurtful things we’ve said or done. Sometimes it’s those things that are the failures of our lives. Sometimes it’s all the “should haves” and “could haves” but the “didn’ts” of our lives. And sometimes it’s just ourselves – our real selves as we know we are but don’t want anybody else to see. We all have that stuff lying around, reminding us of the moments that we would rather forget, and of just how fragile and broken and human we really are. So it’s good to have a place where we can shove all that stuff and not have to look at it all of the time. But it doesn’t end there. For as people of faith, we also have other clutter that is different from our worldly clutter, a clutter that is more embarrassing, a clutter that we want to hide even more. For this clutter is from our lives of faith and it is the knowledge that we have not lived faithful lives, it is all the unanswered questions we have about God, it is the ambiguity and gnawing doubt and the fragility of faith which clutters up our otherwise neat lives that have been touched by God.

And our lives have indeed been touched by grace, as Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans. We hear the word of faith and it grasps us and penetrates us and with that faith we find ourselves confessing with our lips and believing in our hearts that through the power of love, God raised Jesus from the dead. With such faith on our lips we come to understand that we are also being raised from our dead lives, trusting and believing God when He says that our lives will be saved. We even believe the Scripture Paul quotes this morning from Isaiah that no one who believes will be put to shame. We do all of this. We believe all of this. And then it happens. Life happens! Something terrible or without explanation happens to us or someone we love. A vital, promising life is cut short. A terrible, debilitating illness saps a life. A disaster swoops down upon good, caring people. And the result is that faith wavers and sometimes vanishes. We end up with far more questions than answers. We call upon the Lord but don’t seem to get any response. And so we become angry, ashamed, embarrassed about it all and we cry out in desperation that it doesn’t work. We call upon the Lord but we don’t feel saved. What we see is not God’s care for us or for those we love, but heartache, hurt, tragedy and suffering. And rather than enforcing and nurturing our belief, our seeing ends up blocking our believing.

We may be ashamed or embarrassed to admit it, but in our heart of hearts we know that God’s presence is not always apparent to us. Sometimes we look, but we see only our own struggles. All of this faith business, this “God is sustaining you stuff” that you talk about pastor, well it sounds good. But in the face of what we see in our lives, this is the stuff we’d just as soon cram into some closet and not see because it’s really hard to believe. Yet the call to live with authenticity does not begin until we give up the illusion of blind faith. Now it might sound strange coming from someone like me, telling you that you are to give up your blind faith. But authentic faith is not blind faith. Rather authentic faith comes when we give up the illusion that everything is great and wonderful all the time – in spite of what those television preachers such as Joel Olstein go on about – it is simply not. Authentic faith comes when we unpack the closet, take out all of the stuff we’ve hidden there and look at it with all its scary reality. Living in authentic faith calls for us to come to the point where we accept that there is pain and heartache, fear and failure, tragedy and even death in our world and in our lives. Authentic faith calls for us to give up the illusion that life has perfect answers to all our questions, because it doesn’t and instead we come to understand that the challenge of our faith is to see beyond what is – all of the ugliness and hurt and ambiguity that we can see – to look beyond these things and, in the clutter of our lives, come to the point where we will trust in the relationship that God offers us. 

We live that relationship by believing as though God’s love is the most powerful thing in the world…because it is! It may not look like it at times when, in the face of death and illness, disease and affliction, it looks as though the power of evil is winning. We look around us and see a world drowning in its own brutality and violence and injustice and when we see these things it is easy for us to think that God is not there and so be tempted to look for something else. But that’s because what we see blocks our believing. That’s why Paul invites us this morning to look with eyes of faith. And when we do so, what we will see is the absolute victory of God’s love made manifest for us in the resurrection of Jesus. The fact of the resurrection confirms the victory of God’s love. The victory is not complete yet and the world is not perfect and will not be until Christ comes again. In this between time there is and will continue to be hurt and pain and tragedy and all the rest of the bad things in life which remind us that the victory is not yet complete. But just because the victory is not yet complete, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a victory. God’s love is the most powerful thing in the world and when we begin to live like this is true, then we will claim that relationship with God that will give us life as well as the authentic faith for living it.

And we claim this relationship with God when we live as though we are God’s own…for that is what we are. God’s love is not only the most powerful thing in the world, but God has chosen to live in, with and for each and every one of us and nothing can stop or defeat that love. So in the end, it doesn’t matter when hurt and heartaches claim us or when suffering overtakes us or when our questions seem to go begging in the darkness of the night. What matters is that God has claimed us, that God is with us and that God loves us.

So when it is hard to see any victory, any presence of God in our lives or in our world, it is good to remember that sometimes our seeing blocks our believing. But when that happens, look again, this time with eyes of faith and see the only thing that is essential….that God loves us and that He has claimed us as His own, to join with Him forever in a living relationship without end. Living in that love and that assurance, we won’t need closets in which to hide for then we can step out into life filled with faith and hope confident that God’s love goes with us. Amen