Faith for Anxious Times

Faith for Anxious Times (March 18, 2001)

"Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Isaiah 55:6-7

Jesus urged us to "be not anxious" and St. Paul said "have no anxiety about anything but let your requests be made known to God". Of course, a cynic might say, yes, but neither Jesus nor Paul ever invested in Amazon.com at the peak!

It is always good to be reminded that when the Bible speaks of faith it talks of it not just for when times are fat but also, and even especially, when times are lean.

There was probably no more anxious and even despairing time than that which faced the people of Israel almost 600 years before Christ.

When the southern kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians the vast majority of the people, including the best and the brightest, were led away to a long and bitter captivity in Babylon. Many became embittered by the experience. They doubted they could "sing the Lord's song" in a strange land. Many felt God had deserted them. They wondered if they would survive at all. They were in despair and they were certainly anxious about the future. All the "props" of their comfortable way of life seemed to have been knocked out from under them. The land they loved, the beautiful temple Solomon had built, the city of Jerusalem itself, the olive trees and magnificent gardens, the gently flowing Jordan river and the lovely Mediterranean - all now were a distant memory as they lived as captives in a desert not far from the city we now called Baghdad.

Then an unknown prophet appeared to give the people hope. Unlike the first Isaiah 150 years earlier, the prophet whose words became associated with him but whose name is lost to history, spoke tenderly. He enlarged their vision of their place in the world and of the power of God. In the midst of despair, they found a renewal of hope and faith. They saw they saw that they had a mission to be a light to the world. They realized they had to form a stronger worshipping community - as do many exiled groups. They became far more conscious of the world-wide sovereignty of God.

Where Isaiah of Jerusalem had to speak words of judgment and warning, the unknown prophet spoke hope and consolation and a new world horizon.. He spoke of the liberation of the people by Cyrus the Great, "the rod of God's anger". God was not coming to punish but to redeem, to bring grace and pardon. Instead of practicing ritualistics sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem the people turned to their scriptures to study them in synagogues, led by rabbis instead of priests. What appeared to be a time of darkness was in reality a time in which the people could experience the power of God anew and live in hope that they would return.

But the people had to see that the basic issue they had to deal with in life was God. In our reading today the prophet spoke to this. God is ready to answer the discontent in the hearts of men and women, who thirst for God even if they don't know that is what they are really looking for. God's grace is free, it comes "without price". It can be had for the asking, and it is accessible to even the most sinful. In the prophet's speech God almost sounds like a Middle Eastern hawker of wares in bazaar. "Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. Come!" There is no question of being worthy of it. The person who has no money is invited. It is one of the greatest evangelical invitations in the Old Testament.

It is clear that God's offer is there and God's call is there, but people must do something themselves. "Ask…seek…knock". Jesus spoke the same way. There has to be a movement toward God to match the movement of God toward us. There must be a genuine turning toward God and there must be a genuine recognition of sin and wrongdoing, but we must hear this clearly: God is near. "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, that he may have mercy upon him." What a great statement of the nearness of God.

The other day a newspaper columnist referred to Lent as "the dour season" - the sad time. And in truth it is a time of self-examination and penitence. Ultimately Lent points to the cross of Christ, the sacrificial death of God's son for the salvation of the world. But what appeared to be a moment of great despair for those who had put their hopes in Christ turned out to bring the greatest blessing to all. That is why the day of the greatest darkness and despair is called Good Friday. Beyond Calvary is the empty tomb and Christ's glorious resurrection.

No faith in the history of the world has had more to say to people in times of trouble and anxiety than Christianity. But our faith has something to say precisely because it recognizes "the dour times" in our life, in fact, puts them into our calendar. It is like the paintings of Rembrandt. Whereas many modern painters enjoy bright canvasses of nothing but light colors Rembrandt's masterpieces employ darkness in order to accentuate the light.

As we have said many times, those who come to church only on Easter miss so much because they have not had the experience of "the dour season" which precedes it which then makes the light of Easter all that much more radiant.

In January I went to the memorial service at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church for the Rev. David H. C. Read, who was pastor there from 1956 to 1989. He died at the age of 91 in early January. Born in Scotland, he was a chaplain in the British Highlanders regiment when it was captured at Dunkirk in 1940 and he spent five years in prisoner-of-war camps in Europe.

That was certainly a time of anxiety if not despair for many men. Yet the young minister taught Bible classes and preached sermons to the prisoners and when he came out he was famous because his sermons had been smuggled out and published. In that situation, he once said, you don't worry about whether Jonah was swallowed by a whale but whether or not God is real. And God was definitely real for Dr. Read. He believed with Karl Barth in preaching with the Bible in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other, connecting the Word of God to our daily human world. No one did it better.

In October fourteen years ago the stock market experienced it worst one day fall in history. Louis Rukeyser invited several well known experts to put things in perspective. One of them was John Templeton, whom Rukeyser called the most successful man ever on Wall Street. Templeton gave some practical advice, but what was most obvious was his attitude.

"The future is wonderful," he said. John Templeton is a life-long Presbyterian who served on the board of Princeton Seminary and single-handedly, I understand, put it on a sound financial footing. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and founded the Templeton Prize in Religion because he said with all our concentration on money and success in this country "we've had a blind spot on the most important issue of all - progress in religion."

This is a good time to take a cue from John Templeton, not only about our future but also about the importance of putting things in their proper perspective. Draw near to God and God will draw near to you, the Bible says. This may exactly be a time for many people to hear the message "seek the Lord while he may be found". The Lord may not always be found, especially when people are feeling self-satisfied.

In our reading from the gospel Jesus tells of a man who wanted to cut down a fruitless tree. His vinedresser said, let's give it one more year and if it doesn't bear fruit, then we'll cut it down. God has patience, but not, it would seem, infinite patience. We are given opportunities to draw near to him, and the promise that if we ask we will receive and if we seek we will find, but there is no guarantee these opportunities will always be there.

The novelist Emily Bronte, who wrote Wuthering Heights, with its great story of Cathy and Heathcliff, was brought up in an Anglican rectory, but her father was half-demented. Two sisters had tuberculosis and a brother came home night after night drunk from the village tavern. Yet with all this despair around her she wrote: "No coward soul is mine, no trembler in world's storm troubled sphere. I see Heaven's glories shine, and faith shines equal, arming me from fear."