The Presbyterian Church in Morristown, New Jersey

“Mr. Magoo and Smudged Foreheads”

Isaiah 56:6-12 and Mark 8:22-26

Preached on Ash Wednesday
February 25, 2004
by
Rev. David G. Carpenter
at The Presbyterian Church in Morristown

Have you ever tried to play hide and seek with a little child? It is impossible! Little kids don’t really want to play hide and seek. Ohhh, they THINK they want to play hide and seek, in fact they think it is their favorite game. You ask a bunch of kids what they want to do, any game, and nine out of ten of them will look you straight in the eye and tell you they want to play hide and seek. But they don’t really want to play hide and seek, I’m convinced of it. You see, they love going to hide, but the minute a little child finds that perfect spot where no one is going to find them, and gets themselves wedged in there between the suit cases behind those old dresses that smell like moth balls, all they want … is to be found!

I really enjoyed the years that I worked with Young Life. It is a great organization that brings the gospel to kids who most likely would never have darkened the doors of a church otherwise. I made some great friends and had some of my more meaningful moments of ministry in association with the Young Life clubs that I volunteered with and led in the Philadelphia and Princeton areas. One of my good friends, Kevin Pound, always complained that his kids always bugged him to play hide and seek. Every single night ... after dinner ... without fail ... his two daughters and little son would BEG him, “Please daddy, pleeeaaase can we play hide and seek!?” It was like they didn’t know any other games. So every night he would give in and they would get all excited, “OK dad, you stay right here, hide your eyes and count to 100,” and they would run off screaming and giggling down the hallway to hide. Now hide is kind of a loose interpretation for what they actually did because every night, without fail, even as he was counting one ... two ... three ... Kevin would hear the stampede of their little feet and their laughs and screams as they would run up the stairs, and down the hall. He could hear them run straight into his bedroom and would then listen as the closet door there would open and slam shut. He always knew exactly where they were before he even started his search. But every night, he would try his best to make it look good and build up the suspense. He would come up the stairs and walk past his bedroom and down to the guest room, the whole time being as vocal as he could so that they would be sure to hear, “Well! Maybe they are down here in the guestroom.” Immediately he would hear giggling coming out of the closet in his room and his kids who could not stand having him look in the wrong place would start yelling out little hints, “Dad! Dad!” to make sure that he knew he was looking up the wrong tree. So he would wander into his room, but instead of walking straight over to the closet and opening up the door and finding them in the same spot for the 487th night in a row, he would start by looking everywhere else. “Well now, could they be ... under the bed? Nope! Not there.” Giggling sounds came from the closet. “Could they be in the bathroom? Nope!” But before he could get any further, his children, unable to bear being hidden one moment longer would invariably burst out of the closet like they were going to explode. And they would scream, “Daddddyyy!!” and run to his feet and jump up in his arms.

Now tell me, how silly is that? Why play hide and seek, if you can’t stand being hid?

It’s a good question, perhaps one that we should be asking ourselves … because we, being the mature and rational adults that we are, do the very same thing! We spend great amounts of energy and time, often much of our lives, running away from God. We hide just like Kevin’s kids, like a little child playing hide and seek and yet all the while, deep down inside, we are dying to be found … to be discovered by our creator and to be coaxed out of those places that we run to. We run and we hide but we long to be found and to be picked up into the light and the truth of God’s strong and sturdy arms.

Remember St. Augustine? He was famous for his many years of deliberate running, hiding and evading of God. Before becoming a priest and then the fabulously famous Bishop of Hippo, Augustine was quite the swinging bachelor of Rome. He was involved in every kind of vice and pleasure he could get his hot little hands on. Throughout his book, The Confessions of St. Augustine, (which I realize sounds more like a Danielle Steele novel than a Christian classic) Augustine admits he felt and knew that God was trying to call him into the priesthood but he was having way too much fun to listen. At least it’s an honest answer, huh? His mother had been praying for him for years and there were a couple of times that he almost gave in, but then he would think about what he might have to give up and the whole idea of giving control over to God and he would say, “No Way!” Until one day he was out in the rose garden behind his house and he sensed that he was hearing God’s voice telling him to pick up the Bible that was there in the garden and to start reading it. Well he did and the rest is history. Augustine is one of the most revered saints of all time. His exposition of the scriptures was ground breaking, he was a genius in philosophy, theology and psychology, and his leadership both outside and within the church has made him one of the most famous men of all time. Yet Augustine spent much of his life holding God off at a good safe distance. Running, hiding, avoiding, fighting a battle that was inevitably already lost, a battle that deep down he really wanted to lose. Looking back at his life, he penned these famous words, “Lord, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” A loose translation? “What am I thinking? It doesn’t matter what I do, where I run or hide, it doesn’t matter if I try to find my happiness in my family, my career, or my friendships. Ultimately, I will never really be happy until I find my happiness in you.” It is one of the greatest lines ever written or uttered and it is so eternally true. We can run, we can hide, we can ignore, we can actively avoid God, but the truth is … we will never be settled. We will never find true deep down peace, and I don’t care what Renee Zellweger told Tom Cruise, we will never feel totally complete until our hearts find rest in God.

You see, it’s human nature to run away from God. We’ve been doing it since the beginning of time. Adam and Eve were the first but they certainly weren’t the last. Like Jonah, like Jacob, like Jeremiah, Peter and Paul, we’re no different. In all of our relationships we want to be close, but not too close. Belonging … but with complete independence. Total commitment … but with a prenuptial agreement. I could take you tonight into New York City, to the steps of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church or to the streets of our own town here in Morristown and we would meet people who are living on the streets and are not willing to go to a homeless shelter because they are scared of losing their freedom. They are terrified of what they might give up if they were to accept help. They don’t want people around them who are going to care too much. It’s scary. And you don’t have to be homeless to feel it.

We long for intimacy and yet we are scared to death of it. And so it is with God. We play this crazy game of cat and mouse in which we run from the very one whom we are dying to embrace. We put off the only one who can fill those deepest needs and desires that we are in search of.

So we hide from God, afraid that he will step into our life and stifle us, challenge our way of doing business or interfere with the way that we live our lives.

I think that deep down many of us are afraid that if we stop running we will find God to be too much of a burden for our already over taxed fragile sense of wholeness or that we won’t have time for God. He might put too much of a strain on our schedule and our time. We are terrified that he might discover that we are just barely hanging on. We might give the illusion of having it all together and being self confident, but if we were to slow down long enough to allow God to really take a good long look inside, it may be exposed that we aren’t so sure of ourselves or our abilities, that we are holding our fragile egos together with a lot of shoe string and duct tape. We are just trying to make sense of it all and keep one step ahead. Sometimes we have honest, difficult questions that cause us to hold God off at a safe distance … and other times we create questions and we hide behind them because we are scared, and a good offense in the form of some difficult questions may be the best defense for protecting the only sense of security that we know.

Well, Mardi Gras is in full swing down in New Orleans and that can only mean one thing … Lent is just around the corner. This Tuesday they will be whooping it up at Pat O’Brian’s with Fat Tuesday hurricane drink specials on Bourbon Street. And then Wednesday morning, all across the country, across the world, people will be pouring into churches, including this one to begin a forty day observance as we remember Christ’s forty day fast and prepare ourselves for Christ’s Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection. And yet I think even more important than asking you what you are going to give up this Lent, I think I should be asking you what it is that you are hoping to find.

As we approach this week, this most important period of the year for soul searching and reflection, the question that I want you to be asking yourself, that I want to challenge you to take some time to reflect on is “Where am I hiding? With what part of my life am I playing hide and seek with God?” It is easy to forget that the home of our heart is a big house with many rooms and even if we have given most of those rooms over to God, there always seem to be more rooms of our lives or at least little closets that we keep locked up and try to hide from God. As we begin not only the Lenten season but this new era for the church we would do well to take some time to think about it.

Where in your life are you hiding from God? Perhaps it is at work. The way that you conduct your business life, treat your clients, or choose your goals or ambitions. Perhaps it is at home. In your love life, or your family life, or the way you treat your children or your spouse or even the presence that you allow Christ to have in your home. Perhaps you are hiding from God simply within the recesses of your own mind. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel, often our running takes the form of questions or refusal, refusal to give up our independence or sense of control. We want to call the shots, darn it, and so we refuse to give the reigns over to God who would take our lives, if we would only ask, straighten them, heal them, strengthen them, and then give them back to us … complete … everything that we have been searching for. Perhaps it is pride that keeps us running and hiding. Pride that tells us that we are perfectly fine just the way we are. To allow God to find us would be to admit that we still have room to grow … that we are not perfect just the way we are.

So where are you hiding? Could it be that God is asking you to surrender … to come out of your hiding place, to stop running and to allow His love to transform your life? You see this crazy game of hide and seek is human nature. But lucky for us total dedication and perseverance is God’s nature. Through all of the wild goose chases and dead end roads that we take God on, God never grows tired of chasing after us. Perhaps it is just a room or a closet, but perhaps it is your whole life that you need to give over. Whatever it is, remember, just like Kevin’s kids running straight to Kevin’s closet, there is no where that we are running to where God does not see us and know us and love us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He sees where we are running even before we get there, and He … just … keeps following … leaving those ninety-nine sheep without hesitation to come looking for us … constantly trying to woo us back to himself

. And you know, if He really can only do us good, if He really is everything that our restless hearts are restless for anyway, then maybe it is time we stop running. Maybe it is time to harken to that divine, “Ally Ally All Come Free,” to jump out of our hiding spots, come running to His feet, surrender ourselves completely to Him and allow God to be our true hiding place.

Thanks for listening!

We’ll see you on Wednesday!

AMEN