WHAT ABOUT WHEN GOD IS NOT THERE?

(Preached on Sunday, September 16, 2007)

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and behold the face of God?                                                                   -Psalm 42:2

 

Last week we read the beautiful Psalm 139 which expresses so poetically the truth that GOD IS EVERYWHERE.  So reassuring and comforting a thought.  This week we hear an equally beautiful Psalm but with a very different truth about God: NO MATTER WHERE THE PSALMIST LOOKS OR WHAT THE PSALMIST DOES, GOD IS NOT THERE.  As much as this sounds contradictory to what we remembered together last week, it is equally true about our human experience of God.

 

This month this truth has moved front and center in our awareness as new revelations about the interior faith life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta have come to light.  The revelations come in the form of personal letters Mother Teresa wrote over the last 50 years of her life to her confessors and confidants looking for guidance, support, encouragement and answers to her struggles.  These letters have been compiled into a book, soon to be released, titled Come Be My Light. 

 

The letters reveal that shortly after Mother Teresa began her monumental work among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India, she entered a period of desolation where she no longer felt the comforting presence of God in her soul. Teresa had been a nun for 17 years with the Loreto Sisters working as a teacher in Calcutta.  On a personal retreat in 1946 she experienced Christ speaking to her, calling her to a new work: >in the slums of the city, dealing directly with the poorest of the poor C the sick, the dying, beggars and street children.  She reported that Jesus told her: ACome, Come, carry Me into the holes of the poor, Come be My light.@  The goal was to be both material and evangelistic, Ato help them live their lives with dignity [and so] encounter God=s infinite love, and having come to know Him, to love and serve Him in return.@  These visions and her sense of God=s presence and activity in her life were so strong, she was able to convince the hierarchy of the Church that her call to this special ministry to the poor was genuine.

 

Within a few months of her beginning this work which would have such a profound impact on the world, Mother Teresa reported to her confessor AWhat tortures of loneliness?  I wonder how long will my heart suffer this?@ and APlease pray specially for me that I may not spoil His work and that Our Lord may show Himself C for there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead.@  Again, AThe more I want him C the less I am wanted.@ and ASuch deep longing for God C and ... repulsed C empty C no faith C no love C no zeal. ... Heaven means nothing C pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything.@

 

Now some people reading these statements have jumped on them as proof that religion is false, that there is no God.  Christopher Hitchins, the self-described Aanti-theist@ who wrote a book some years ago critical of Mother Teresa, and recently published the bestseller God is not Great, has seized on the newly published letters as proof that the celebrated nun knew C but could not admit C that there is no God.  But what Mr. Hitchins doesn=t seem to understand is that there never is and never will be any Aproof@ for the existence of God.  That is why it is called Afaith.@  It is an act of trust.

 

In truth, Mother Teresa=s struggles and her experience of desolation should not really be surprising.  In the writings of faith and religious experience they are not all that unusual.  In the 1500's, Spanish mystic John of the Cross wrote of a similar experience and gave it the name by which it is commonly identified ever since: Athe dark night of the soul.@  In the 1600's German theologian Martin Luther wrote of the experience of the God who is hidden from us.  In the last century Teilhard de Chardin wrote in How I Believe: ACertain though I am C and ever more certain C that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ.... As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.@  And many, many more people of faith, great and small, have known the experience of the Psalmist, AAs a deer longs for flowing steams, so my soul longs for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and behold the face of God? ... I say to God, my rock, >Why have you forgotten me?=@

 

I have endured my own dark night, crisis of faith and sense of distance from God.  When I was young, faith was relatively easy.  It was all around me, almost like breathing. I gave my life to Christ before entering my teen years and all through those years God was as real and personal to me as any close friend.  Throughout seminary and into the early years of ministry I continually searched for a deeper, closer relationship with God.  This search led me to discover the depth of resources in Christian spiritual writings: through the early mystics, the desert fathers and mothers, the early monks, and the disciplines of lectio divina (spiritual reading), meditation, contemplative prayer, journaling, and spiritual direction.  I found a spiritual director and worked with her for several years, discovering new depths to my spiritual life and eventually encountering my own moments of ecstasy C intimate communion with God beyond description. 

Then it began to change.  My practice of prayer became more difficult to maintain, my sense of God=s presence more sporadic, even distant.  And then my wife had to have a pacemaker installed to keep her heart beating.  And my mother died from brain cancer.  And suddenly God seemed extremely distant.  Two years later 9/11 happened, and it really didn=t shake my faith, for God already did not seem to be a constant, daily presence for me.

 

Some would question whether I should be this honest in my sharing with you.  Others would suggest my life and work for a large chunk of my ministry have been hypocritical and a sham.  That is what some want to say about Mother Teresa.  But I don=t worry about that perception.  I feel good sharing my story with you for I believe my story is not all that uncommon an experience for many of you.  Plus I wanted to share it with you, to offer you what I have discovered to help me hold onto my faith.

 

The Spanish nun, Teresa of Avila, a contemporary of John of the Cross,  describes devotion and the life of prayer as a means of watering the garden of virtues.  The purpose of the devotional life is to bring water to the flowers in the garden, the virtues of one=s life.  Part of the confusion for us is that we come to enjoy the devotion, the experience of the presence of God, for its own sake, forgetting that the purpose of that devotion is to help the virtues of our life to grow.  Eventually, she writes, there comes a time when we no longer sense that joyfully, beautiful presence C our devotion seems dry.  At that point she directs us to look at the flowers in the garden, that is, check out the virtues of our life, how are they doing?  If they are strong and flourishing, even if our devotional life is dry, never the less they prove that our connection to God is still strong.  In other words, God is still nurturing us.  Whether we feel that nurture or not.

 

Looking at Mother Teresa=s life demonstrates the virtues were strong, the flowers well watered, God was clearly present in her activity and her actions.  When I look at my own life, I see the fruit of God=s Spirit present in the work God accomplishes through me. 

 

A poem by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre offers simple guidance for dealing with these experiences of desolation, of the absence of God.  It is titled, What to do in the darkness.

Go slowly

Consent to it

But don=t wallow in it

Know it as a place of germination