Is God Absent?
Anna Robbins · Tidal Church Moncton · November 27, 2022 · New Traditions series
Anna Robbins explores John 11 and the raising of Lazarus, showing that Jesus' delay was not neglect but love with a greater purpose. When God seems absent, she invites us to wait patiently and trust that He is already at work.
More from Anna Robbins · The New Traditions series
Transcript
[0:00] Good morning, Wellington Wesleyan. It's so good to see you, and thank you for those that are joining online. Today, we have a special speaker, and she has asked me if I would start by reading a portion of the scripture that she'll be sharing with us. And I'd like you just to listen to this. We're used to seeing the scripture on the screen, but just let the story begin to wash over you, if you would. It's from John chapter 11, starting in verse 1. Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped His feet with her hair. Her brother Lazarus was ill.
[0:45] So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom You love is ill." But when Jesus heard it, He said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather, it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after hearing that Lazarus was ill, He stayed two days longer in the place that He was. Then after this He said to His disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to Him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone You. Are we going to go there again?" Jesus answered, "Are there not 12 hours of daylight?
[1:30] Those who walked during the day do not stumble, because they see by the light of the world, but those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them." After saying this, He told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I am going there to awaken him." The disciples said to Him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right." Jesus, however, had been speaking about His death, but they thought that He was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. For your sake, I'm glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him."
[2:18] And we'll continue in the scripture in the message. The person that's going to share the message with us today grew up in Saint John, with a difficult family history and not a lot of resources, but she was welcomed and blessed by her local church, and they invested in her. She went on to get her education and become a pastor, a Baptist pastor, pastoring in the valley and other places, often alongside her husband, who was also ordained and is ordained. Then she began an educational journey. She went to Wales and did a PhD. She became a professor at the London School of Theology in the UK and a denominational leader with the Baptist denominations over there. She is now the president of Acadia Divinity College down in the valley. Many of you know of Acadia University. Well, at the heart of that is a little old Baptist divinity college, and it is perhaps the finest place of higher Christian education in Eastern Canada.
[3:20] So this is Dr. Anna Robbins, and I know, hold on for a second. Thank you. I know that she's going to invest and give you something in your life, because when I went to do my master's at Acadia Divinity, this was my supervisor, and she poured a lot into me, and she blew me away. I'd read a book by some great theologian. She go, "Oh, yeah, I know him." And so the other thing that blows me away about Anna is she never gets caught up on who's the greatest or who's the best in the world of thought or academia, because she knows that apart from the Spirit of God, nothing happens. And so she comes anointed by the Spirit of God to share with us today. And now, if you'd like to, you can welcome her.
[4:06] Thank you. Well, thank you so much for the invitation to be here today. I've heard of you many, many times, never had the opportunity, the privilege, to be here with you. So thank you for that. Very warm welcome, Nathan. Actually, I don't know if you know, but he was amongst the most intellectually curious and academically able students I've ever had the pleasure to supervise. So you also have a gift here in Nathan, and I bring greetings from Acadia Divinity College. We are the only evangelical seminary east of Montreal and north of Boston. And if you're thinking of studying theology or curious about more of that, we have a booth out in the lobby afterwards. You can connect with our manager of recruitment, Catherine Cole, and I'll be around as well. We also have, I don't know if you know, but we have a partnership with Kingswood University where students who graduate from Kingswood can receive advanced standing for their master's, their advanced degree at Acadia. So we're really delighted with that partnership as well, that perhaps you're familiar with, but we do this because of our call to equip women and men to serve the mission of God in the church and the world with transformative action.
[5:16] But let's face it, oftentimes we don't feel ready for the challenge to go deeper with God, to respond to the call of Jesus to really follow Him wherever He goes. Sometimes God seems distant or absent altogether, and when God seems absent to us in our daily lives, we can find ourselves asking, "Where is He gone? Why isn't He here when I need Him? What is going on?" And sometimes that can even push to, is He really real after all? That experience of God's absence can lead us to doubt our faithfulness and to doubt God's faithfulness. It can lead us to wander and to worry and to question His existence. If I can't see Him, hear Him, feel Him, is He real? Am I just living in a fairy tale?
[6:04] And when God is absent, we usually have one of two responses. One, sometimes we just don't listen, we're not patient enough, when we rush to find other things to stuff in that place that God usually would want to occupy. Or sometimes He's preparing to act and we just don't realize that He's on the move for a greater purpose that isn't ours to see. So the question of why God is sometimes absent is what John 11 helps us to explore and understand, that passage that Nathan just read for us. In verses 1 to 3, we read a man named Lazarus was sick. You heard that part, didn't you? He was from Bethany, the village where he lived with his sisters, Mary and Martha. And the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one You love is sick."
[6:54] Now, these friends, you can see, have an intimate relationship with Jesus, a close friendship. They know that God loves them. They know that Jesus loves them, and that's why they send for Him. The one that You love is sick. They need their friend. They need Him to come to them. And in verse 4 we read that when He heard this, Jesus said, "This sickness will not end in death, for it's God's glory, so that God's Son may be glorified through it." You see here, Jesus is already hinting to the disciples that He's hanging out with that something is going on that the disciples cannot see or understand. It must be very confusing for them because they hear that Lazarus is sick. And yet Jesus isn't actually hurrying off to see him.
[7:42] What is going on? It sounds as though Jesus plans to heal Lazarus. He won't die. And God will be glorified, and all will be as we think it should be. And in verse 5, the Scripture reminds us twice again. You see in this whole section that Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus. This isn't in question. And this is why they do send for Him. They remind Him that His friend isn't just a friend. He's a beloved heart friend. You have those heart friends, you know, those ones that when you're in trouble and you're struggling, they're the ones you call for. They're the ones you expect to come. This is who Jesus is to them. And in time of need, you might expect that friend to come. Especially if they have particular skills that could help you out in this time of need. I mean, imagine your very best friend is a plumber and you're having a sewage backup in your basement.
[8:35] You text them with a pic, you say, emergency, help. And your friend decides to stay until where he is for a couple more days. Well, by the time he turns up, everything's a mess. You've called someone else out instead. Your house is a wreck, and you're left thinking, I think I overestimated our friendship. Or imagine you're best friends with a doctor, best in the field. Your spouse or your parent is taken ill, and you've called her office and the receptionist took the message, but your friend decides not to come. We thought you had a deep friendship, but now you're confused. In the same way, it seemed Jesus decided not to go to Lazarus to heal him, even though He knew He could, and that's why they sent for Him.
[9:20] Remember, even though the passage makes clear they have this deep love for each other, Jesus made an odd decision, it seems to us, for a friend. He didn't run to Lazarus, and then when Lazarus died, He didn't run to comfort Mary and Martha. Instead, stayed where He was not one but two more days. You might think that with their close connection, Jesus might hasten to be with them in their time of need. This does not seem like a good example of pastoral care, I would say. Martha knew Jesus could have made all the difference if He had come sooner. In verse 21, we read that when He finally turned up, she told Him, "If You had been here, my brother would not have died." This must have been difficult for her to understand. Few people knew Jesus, knew Jesus better, and few people were more convinced of His love. Few would have a deeper relationship with Him, and yet He did not come, and Lazarus died. Her comfort must have been cold.
[10:21] If we look carefully at the text, though, we discover something really interesting. The passage says He loved them. And in the version that I asked Nathan to read, the NRSV, it says although Lazarus was sick, He stayed two more days. That doesn't make any sense, does it? Although He loved them, He stayed two more days. That sounds harsh. And I've heard an interpretation of this passage that is far more accurate. Josh Coots, New Testament scholar, says that it should be translated not as "although," but more like, in the NIV, it's more of a "therefore." He loved them, therefore He stayed where He was two more days. There's a purpose here. When there's a therefore, Jesus has a purpose in staying where He is. He's not saying He doesn't care about them. He's not saying, "I'm not interested in helping Lazarus." He's not saying, "I don't want to be with my friends." He has a different agenda. He has a different purpose. Therefore, He stayed where He was two more days.
[11:29] He knew His delay meant that Lazarus would die. And so these words seemed confusing when He said to His disciples, "This sickness won't end in death," but he did die. And then in verse 14, Jesus says, "Lazarus is dead, and I'm glad I wasn't there." Glad He wasn't there to help His friend, to comfort them all in time of sadness. What is going on? Is God glad He isn't here when we feel like we need Him? In our experience of Him is simply His absence. Is He glad? What often happens, though, when we have that space, that feeling of God's absence? We're very quick to put other things in that place. We don't like to wait. It's uncomfortable. It's painful. It might mean grieving.
[12:18] And we push other things down into that space, and we reduce God's place in our lives to only the big things we can't do for ourselves. So in a modern period where we have much more ability to have power over resources, we think, well, you know, I don't pray for my house. I have a house. I don't pray for my... we might have other times when we do that. I don't pray for these things because I can do that for myself. And so we save for God the really big things that we can't do for ourselves, like cancer or a tsunami or whatever it is. And then when God doesn't do what we expect Him to do in those spaces, what do we do? We say, well, God, You must not exist. I don't see You. I don't hear You. I don't feel You. I certainly don't understand You.
[13:05] We stuff other things then in that place in the silence of God. Remember, in the wilderness, God's people, Moses goes up on the hill because he's going to hear from God. He's waiting to hear from God, and the people are supposed to wait and pray. Does that sound familiar? Remember Jesus in the garden, and He said to the disciples, just, you know, stand watch a little longer. What do they do? They fell asleep. And in a way the people of Israel fell asleep, but in a really big way, because they were down there below the mountain thinking, well, we don't know where God is, and we don't know how long it's going to take God to speak to Moses up on the mountain. So let's just make ourselves a golden calf to fill the space, because we see that's what other people are doing to fill their space. So that's what we'll do, too. God wasn't silent, but they weren't willing to be patient for His timing.
[13:54] We're celebrating the beginning of Advent today. There were 400 years of silence between the prophets and the appearance of Jesus. Hundred years for the people of God to wait when God seemed to be silent. And Advent is also a time when we wait and look forward to Christ's Second Coming. And we feel like we're waiting a long time. Where are You, God? Don't You see what's going on? We don't listen, and we put other things into His place. We're distracted from the things that matter. We're conforming to our culture. We infantilize the story of Jesus and miss the fact that this is the God of the universe entering into the very center of the human condition to revolutionize the history of the world.
[14:42] We put other things in the place because it's easier, or we're impatient, or we're in pain. And we use other things to focus on. I'm going to show you an ad. I love this ad. It's one of my favorites. It was on the tail end, when, before we moved back from the UK. Well, actually, we had been back from the UK, but I was over to visit and saw this ad, and I actually love it because I think it's such a commentary on how our culture understands Christmas, and how we often, as Christians, also approach this season with our golden calves. At Christmas time, take a look at this ad. It's a humorous account. And maybe you're not looking for a $10,000 bag for Christmas.
[15:29] But there are things that we put in the way to distract us, whether it's something small or something big, to distract us from the fact that we haven't heard from God in a while. And thankfully, the disciples had learned, and perhaps Martha had too, that if you want to see Jesus at work, you have to hang around. His timing is His own. But if you build your own gods or wander off at the first sign of spiritual disorientation or boredom, we can miss what He's up to. They had to be there and ready for the moment when He turned up and acted. You know, the theologian Stan Grenz once said that most people are in church on a Sunday not with the fascination of the theologian, but with the memory of the one time that the gospel struck like lightning. And waiting and hoping that it could happen again.
[16:15] If that's you this morning, then I hope that a new tradition this year would be that by sticking through with patience, you'll see that Jesus is actually up to something, up to something big. And the spiritual life in Christ is really not meant to be some sort of waiting game, where nothing happens for most of your life. And once in a while Jesus talks. Jesus is actually talking all the time. Do you know it? He's talking all the time, and we miss it because we don't stay focused and awake long enough. Remembering to stay awake. Do you remember when you were a kid, you'd stay awake and try to catch Santa delivering the presents? My sister and I had all the techniques in the world. I even would put my hair brush under the bottom sheet of my bed, so every time I rolled over I'd wake up so that I could catch Santa in the act. Yeah, I was creative. That's pretty bad. But I never did. I always fell asleep and I missed the mission.
[17:12] I missed Santa altogether, but then there was the evidence of them all around and I'd missed it. Well, walking with Jesus means we'll not always have the inside track on what He's up to. Even the disciples here were wondering what was going on. They had learned what it was to walk with Jesus in a very deep way over three years. Remember, they traveled together. They ministered together. They were together all the time and they saw some amazing things, and being part of what Jesus was doing, and then later being empowered by the Spirit to do His work, was a phenomenal thing. They learned to walk by the Spirit day by day, and we are called to the same, those of us who are in Christ. We're called to be in step with the Spirit, to be learning to hear Him when He's not shouting, to hear Him in a whisper, feel the tap on your shoulder of something He wants you to do.
[18:01] This is the life that imagines possibilities because God's always pointing them out to you, that prays powerfully into life because you feel God's heart for others, that serves with passion because you've tapped into the life that really is life. And you have energy more than you could ever imagine. Maturing in the Christian faith means learning the Scriptures so well that you can discern lies from truth, light from darkness, developing your confidence in God's love for you, stepping out to serve others with the gifts that God has given you by His Spirit, and it comes with a deep assurance and often a profound sense of God's presence. But not every moment is golden in this deeper life, because you don't have to walk very far with Jesus to know that no matter how deep our friendship is with Him, sometimes the things that happen in life are things that we cannot understand.
[18:59] Sometimes darkness comes, sometimes silence comes, sometimes so dark that we cannot see, so quiet we cannot hear, and sometimes it might seem we're in that space alone. Sometimes trusting God means learning to be patient and confident when our faith seems not to be working, when He seems not to be saying anything, when He seems to be hidden. Things were going well, and then you turn around, you're going deep with Jesus, and then you turn around, He's gone. What happened? And sometimes that's the character of a maturing faith, where we realize that God is bigger and more majestic than we had imagined. And that refocusing might inhibit our vision for a while. The theologian Michael Rea, he talks about the hiddenness of God from the perspective of a childlike faith.
[19:48] He describes attending church for the first time as a four-year-old, and he had been regaled with stories of the house of God. He went with a great expectation of seeing a light and hearing a voice, but God seemed to be neither in the light nor in the voice. He writes this: The owner of the voice seemed to be none other than the man on stage, he writes, and that man seemed to be old and balding, unlike the pictures of Jesus I'd seen in the halls. And by the end of the service, I concluded that God had skipped church. The mysterious house of God had turned out, after all, to be quite familiar and ordinary. Now, like Rea, I would affirm that God is everywhere. There's no escaping His divine presence, whether we feel it or not. But like Rea, I would also affirm that God is everywhere, but not everywhere in the way that a child might expect.
[20:34] We don't find God sitting physically in our sanctuaries. He doesn't inhabit the light, He doesn't speak with that voice for all to hear, most of the time anyway. And seeing no signs of God in the heavens or down in the depths, we question God's existence again. We have no evidence, God, of You. And yet You're telling me God loves me, then why haven't I felt it? Why don't I feel it? Where is He when I need Him? Surely God's presence is a sign of God's love, presence is a sign of love. And so as we go deeper in our relationship with God, we affirm these two contrary things. We're going deeper with God, and we are aware that He's present everywhere, but there are times when we have to relearn how we experience and encounter God and trust when we don't hear, to put away that childish picture of God and to begin to walk more deeply. We might have questions that are hard to answer or trouble with what He's saying and understanding what's going on, and we can be afraid.
[21:37] And we can also trust at the same time as we lean into a deeper dependence, like the psalmist, for example, in Psalm 13. How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts, and day after day the sorrow of my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look at me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, I've overcome him, and my foes will rejoice when I fall. You see, this guy, this psalmist, he knows the pain of God's absence. Where were You, God, when it hurts? Where are You right now? My enemies are surrounding me He doesn't hear him. and he has a decision to make Does he put something else in that space does he walk away?
[22:28] But I trust I trust in your unfailing love. My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord's praise for he has been good to me. Martha knew that Lazarus wouldn't have died of Jesus had come sooner. She chose to believe that Jesus can do anything and she says do I know even now even now now that Lazarus is dead. God will give you anything you ask. And Jesus gives her the most amazing response your brother. Your brother will live again. Her faith or trust is evident. The depth of the rest of the relationship is palpable. I know she says I know he'll rise on the last day. She affirms her absolute belief and trust and Jesus tells her that he is the resurrection and the life and she believes him. She trusts him even though her brother is dead and Jesus didn't stop it from happening. And maybe on this one Mary is less confident. Maybe we're more like Mary again on this one too. Maybe we are, because she comes out to Jesus and she has so much more pain in her voice.
[23:36] "If You had come, Lord, my brother wouldn't have died." But when we trust, we're open to miracles of God's greater purpose. Because what they missed, perhaps, was that Jesus hated death more than they did. Jesus hates death. More than we do. Jesus hates death more than we do. Do you see? God is angry with death in this passage, when Jesus is troubled when He comes to Lazarus later on. He's troubled. The language here is very strong. He's angry at death. He hates death. More than we do. And He gives, through Lazarus, a foretaste of just how much He hates it.
[24:25] He will show how much He loves Mary and Martha and Lazarus. He loved them enough to stay where He was two more days. Until Lazarus had died. Because He wanted to show them something much more amazing than a healing. He wanted to show them what it looked like to have power over death, what it looked like for life to have the last word. So they experienced His absence for a while, because something much greater was being planned. It would be so great that they wouldn't mind that He hadn't been with them. It would overcome their loneliness, their confusion, their questions. It would make them forget that He ever seemed distant or absent or uncaring. They simply had to trust and hold fast in their faith.
[25:13] You know, I was out in Banff a couple of weeks ago speaking at another Western Baptist venue, and Banff is a beautiful place. If you've ever seen the mountains, they're gorgeous. And my favorite view, I tended to get up early because of the time difference, right? So, and I'm not normally that much of a morning person, but I was, and my favorite view was just before dawn. When it took time for the sun to be high enough in the sky. And if you've seen mountains, you know, the sun has to be quite high in the sky to shine down into the valleys, right? But when the sun starts to come up, you can't see it yet. But you look up at the mountain peaks and there's just a glimmer, a glimpse of light shining off the snow on the mountain peak, and it takes a long time then from the time you see that first glimmer of light for the light to be shining down into the darkness of the valleys in between. And I love that view because I think sometimes, as individuals and as churches, we wonder where God's light is in this world. It is a world of pain. We know pain in our own lives and our families and our communities and in this world. Why is it taking so long for the dawn to appear when we have prayed and waited and prayed and waited? Why does He seem so absent?
[26:29] How long, oh Lord, do we need to wait for You? Do You really care? Are You there at all? And sometimes our despair or frustration, our reflections of our own limited perspective. We might be in the dark of the valley, but the sun is already on the rise. Do you see? Mary and Martha were in the darkness of their grief, but the sun was already on the rise. Jesus already knew what was going to happen. That was so much more amazing than they could imagine. God's perspective is different from ours. The light will come, but we don't see it yet. And with Lazarus and Mary and Martha, He had a bigger picture in mind. It was dark in their valley of grief, but the sun was already on the rise, visible in small but bright reflections on the mountaintop. You see, Jesus did better than preventing Lazarus from dying. He demonstrated God's anger at death and His power over it, that would be for Lazarus and eventually for all who would believe.
[27:32] If you're in the valley of life right now, don't despair. Grieve, yes, grieve. There are real losses, but know that grief and death and loss are not God's design for our lives. His design is for life, and for life to the full. But in your valley, lift your eyes and see the glimmer of light on that mountain peak. You might not see it yet, but God is already at work, because the sun is on the rise. Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. "Take away the stone," He said. "But Lord," said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there's a bad odor, for it's been four days." And Jesus said, "Did I not tell you, if you believe, you'll see the glory of God?"
[28:25] So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I know that You always hear Me, but this is for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that You sent Me." And when He had said this, Jesus called out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and his feet wrapped in strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. And Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go." Abraham knew the silence of God, and he trusted and became the father of nations. The psalmist knew God's silence and trusted and came to know His comfort. God's people experienced the silence of 400 years, and then the silence was broken by a baby's cry piercing the night when a whole new tradition was being born.
[29:24] 400 years of silence was broken. Jesus gave them this experience with Lazarus so they would remember as they followed Him to the cross that the darkness and the absence and the despair and the grief they felt were not the last word. Even as He went to the cross and to the tomb, the sun was on the rise. Do you see? You might not see it yet. Jesus is at work doing something great in our world and in our lives as Christian people and in His church. And you might be on the fringes of that and thinking, "I just don't know if I'm ready to step into that.
[30:10] I think there might be something there, but I don't feel God in the way that maybe I expect to." At the beginning of this Advent season, maybe you've been waiting for God to tell you something, to speak a message, something. "Let me know You exist, God. Let me know You are real, that You care." Well, here's your word this morning. It's right here. Are you ready for it? A message from God: "I love you. You're My child. There is never a moment that you have been alone. Never a moment you have been out of My care. I carry you in the palm of My hand.
[30:57] And when you have felt alone or abandoned or absent, I have been with you all the while. So put aside the golden calves, the false gods, the things you put in My place, the doubts and the fears." And today He says, "Follow Me. See what great plans I have for you. Plans to help you and not to harm you, plans for a future and hope." Because He was born not to die, but so that you might live with Him. If this Christmas you want to start a new tradition of walking with Jesus, I'm going to invite you to pray with me.
[31:42] And if you are a Christian who has felt the absence of God longer than you can remember, I invite you to join in praying as well. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I confess, I've been looking for You and I haven't heard You. I'm sorry that I put so many things in the way that kept me from hearing Your voice, that kept me from waiting for You, from seeing Your greater work. God, I'm ready. I'm ready to step in. I'm ready to move forward and trust, one foot then another foot. Lord, thank You that You love me. Show me what it means to live with You. Show me what it means for You to indwell my life.
[32:27] Fill me with Your Holy Spirit, that I might know without a shadow of a doubt You're with me and You're for me and You have a plan. God, I'm ready to move forward and trust. And I know that the Son is on the rise, even when I can't see it. Receive my life, receive my heart, and teach me the forward way. If you prayed that prayer, you'll have a chance to come forward later and solidify your commitment, or if you want someone to pray with you for some of the things that God's been speaking to you today. Don't hesitate, because God is ready to meet you. And remember, He's already on the rise.