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Sunday February 6, 2005 - Epiphany Last, 2005

On Wednesday night
I went to see a play
called "The Squeegee Man."
It was part of a festival for new writers, people hoping to win a prize
that would see them have their play produced
by a professional theater company.
It was set in New York;
a journalist looked out of her window
and saw a squeegee man, one of those guys
who stand at the traffic light
and offer to wash your windscreen
for a buck or so.
And every time
she looked out of her window,
every time
over a period of months,
she came up with a great idea
for a newspaper story. Her career had taken off
inspired by the squeegee man. And her stories
transformed other people's lives.

And then one day, she's looking out the window
and the idea that comes to her
the idea for her next story,
si that she should go interview
the squeegee man
himself.

And so she goes downstairs, and begins to talk to him. And as she talks — and he tries to avoid answering her questions — it emerges
that she has seen him do something, or at least she thinks she has, that seems kind of weird.
There was a mother with a baby on the sidewalk one day, and a guy pulled up in a car, pulled out a gun, and shot at them. Close range, no chance of missing.
But the squeegee man
put out his hand
between the gun and the mother,
and somehow
stopped the bullets.
Or at least,
there was no blood, no screaming,
the car pulled away again
and the mother and baby
went on their way.
The journalist
tries to ask the squeegee man about it. He say's he's not Superman,
so what is he?

And as the play continues
it emerges, somehow,
that the squeegee man is in fact
God,
and for whatever reason
he's decided to come spend some time on the streets of New York
washing windscreens.

And of course
the journalist
finds it all a little hard to take.
God, here, on her street?
Washing windscreens?

Because like many of us,
she's spent her life kind of believing that God is real,
but not entirely sure, not entirely convinced.
Yes, she believes in God,
but not the kind of God
you would actually meet.
And so, when she does actually meet God,
her whole framework of faith
is thrown into chaos. Does she believe
or doesn't she?
Is this God
or just a hallucination?
Is belief
a matter of seeing, of proof, or something else?
And just because this guy says he's God, and stopped a couple of bullets,
is it really true?

And then she asks the questions that are even harder. If this is God,
why
did he only just show up now? What about the other times
when she prayed with all her heart and soul and mind and strength,
and there was no answer, what about then?
Why does God show up now, when her life is pretty much okay, why now, and not when she was five years old and her father left, and she thought it was all her fault; why not
when she was eleven
and her mother swallowed a bottle of pills
and she was left, alone, totally alone.
Where was God when she needed him?

It's a question
that we all ask
one time or another. When things are tough, why doesn't God just show up,
there on the sidewalk like the squeegee man,
or even better, intervening in our lives to stop the things that go wrong?

Scripture doesn't give any easy answers to this. What it does give us, though,
is some stories about time
when God did show up. And when God show's up in Scripture, it's usually just as unexpected
as the squeegee man.
But the similarity ends there. Because when God shows up
in Scripture
it's not just a friendly cross between Superman and Touched by an Angel.
When God shows up,
it's usually an event
that has the participants
ducking for cover.

We heard in our readings today
about two times
when God showed up.
The first was with Moses.

Moses
and the Israelites
were wandering around in the wilderness. They'd escaped from Egypt
but hadn't yet made it
to the promised land.
And then one day, Moses received a summons, a summons from God
to go up Mount Sinai
where God would give him the law.
So Moses did what he was told — because a summons from God
is one thing
you don't miss. This meeting was so crucial, so dangerous, that he gathered the leaders of the people around him, the elders, and gave them instructions. And then went up, with just his protege Joshua, and even he as left behind near the peak, so that just Moses went alone
to meet with God.
And when he reached the top, a cloud covered the mountain. And Moses waited there six days, and only on the seventh
did God speak with him. And to the people watching down below
it looked like Moses
had been consumed by a devouring fire.
That was the closest they could get
to describing what this meeting with God
was like.
And Moses stayed there forty days and nights
before he came down.

And when Jesus went up the mountain to meet with God
it was more like it had been for Moses
than for the journalist meeting the squeegee man.
It was time, time for Jesus to begin
his final journey
towards Jerusalem.
And so he took three of his closest friends,
and they went up
onto a high mountain. And there, suddenly, everything
was dazzling white, and Jesus seemed to be speaking with two extra people, and then a cloud dropped over it all
and the voice of God spoke:
"This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased."
The disciples were terrified: the glory of God
was a terrifying thing to see.
And when they came down,
Jesus told them
to tell no one.
Moses on the mountain; the disciples on the mountain - both time
they knew for certain
beyond any shade of doubt
that God was real. That God was powerful. That God could intervene
in this world of ours.

It's still something we yearn for, deep down inside. To meet God, literally, physically,
in a way
that we will have proof, finally,
that all this faith thing is worth it, that it's actually true.

But for most of us
all we get
is the answer
that the journalist got
in the play.
When she asked that final question, when all the rage and anger and disappointment and abandonment had spilled out of her,
"God, where were you???"
what the squeegee man said was,
"I was with you. I was with you
all the time."

I was with you all the time.
Not the dramatic appearance that Moses saw, that Jesus saw. Just a quiet, pretty much undetectable presence.

But you know, that was actually how it was for Moses, and even for Jesus, most of the time.
When Moses stood trembling in front of Pharoah,
when the people of Israel
started rebelling and muttering against him,
when they turned to false gods and made golden idols,
there was no dramatic intervention by God.
Just God present, working quietly in and through Moses.

And even Jesus. He might be convinced
that he's on a mission from God
but there are times of terrible doubt,
out in the wilderness, tested by Satan,
exhausted, praying alone
after the feeding of the five thousand, hanging desolate
on the cross.

We tend to assume
that it was easy for him. He got the face to face meeting, he got the absolute certainty. But all that
was worth next to nothing
when it came to the cross.
Jesus, God himself in flesh,
the one who experienced the most powerful, tangible presence of God,
blinding light and the voice of God
owning him
as God's beloved.
Jesus had seen God
in all God's power and glory and mystery.
And still he asked that final day,
hanging in agony,
barely able to breathe
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
There was no answer. No magical Superman-like act
that would save him at the last minute. Instead, just the desolated cry of abandonment.

And
then
the cry of faith. "Father, into your hands
I commend
my spirit."

For all Christ felt
the total abandonment of God,
he knew
that if everything he had lived for, everything he had died for
was true
then God was with him
and he could trust God
with his last breath.

We want the certainty the certainty of an in-person meeting with God.
We want that mountain top experience.
Some of us
may be lucky enough
to experience something like that.
But for most of us
our meetings with God
will be much less dramatic.
The presence of God
alongside us
day by day
even when we don't know it.
The knowledge that God
has not abandoned us.

The play ended
kind of abruptly.
You could tell the journalist
wasn't quite convinced.
She wasn't quite sure
that she wanted this God
who was with her
but didn't do something dramatic
to stop bad things happen.
She wasn't sure
that she wanted this God
who was with her
but didn't make his presence clearly known.
But that's the God
she got.
A God
who made it possible
for her to survive those terrible times of her childhood.
Who walked beside her
and gave her strength.
Who inspired her, week after week, to write the stories
that changed other people's lives.

That's the God
we get.
Who has all the power and the glory, so much so
that the few people who have seen it in all its fullness
have been terrified,
but who chooses
to stay in the background
always present, never abandoning us,
giving us strength, inspiring us.

And if Jesus
is anything to go by,
that's what really matters.
The face-to-face, in-person
meetings with God — that is amazing and terrifying and transforming.
But it's the day by day presence of God
that keeps us going through the tough times,
that gives us strength, that grants us peace.

 

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005