Christ our King, help us to find our lives hidden in your love. Amen.
Do you ever feel like life is a scavenger hunt? That’s the way that life is often described. When we are children, we’re looking for ways to have as much fun as possible while avoiding trouble. As teens, we’re searching for our sense of identity and who we are. A few years later, we begin searching for the right college or career path to choose. Then, many begin looking for a spouse. If children come into our lives, we then are on a quest for someone else – making sure their needs are met.
Paul Zahl is a retired Episcopal priest who has written several books, one of which is called “Peace in the Last Third of Life: A Handbook of Hope for Boomers.” He mentions that the decades of the 40s and 50s are among the most difficult because our searching can start to feel endless and fruitless. The career and lifestyle we had been building towards just aren’t coming out how we imagined they would. As we move towards retirement, we begin to search for a sense of legacy and purpose outside of work.
And throughout life, there are many quests we go on – the search for answers, meaning, validation, acceptance, love, contentment, companionship, and joy. As humans, we are always looking for something.
This morning’s Psalm is one expression of such searching. Psalm 132 is what scholars call a “Psalm of Ascent,” meaning that it was a processional psalm used on the approach to the holy city of Jerusalem. We heard the words of King David, “I will not allow my eyes to sleep, nor let my eyelids slumber; until I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob. “The ark!” We heard it was in Ephrathah; we found it in the fields of Jearim. Let us go to God’s dwelling place; let us fall upon our keens before his footstool.”
David’s quest, and by extension, the quest of all those, including us, who recite this Psalm is for the ark of God. And what is the ark of God? The ark is God’s presence. This Psalm expresses a yearning to be close to God. The ark was the gold-gilded wooden chest that sat at the center of the Temple. And before the Temple was built, the ark led the people’s procession from Sinai to the Promised Land. The ark was the place of God’s earthly presence. As we heard in Psalm 132, “Let us go to God’s dwelling place.” The ark was where God was found, which is why David was so keen to find it after it had been lost in battle.
We might not have an object like the ark that we associate God’s physical location with, and yet we are on the same quest that David was on. Even if we can’t name what exactly we are searching for, it is a longing to encounter the living God. All of the things that we yearn for – peace, friendship, fulfillment, purpose, love – have God as their source. And sometimes life has a way of making us feel lost; like we can’t find what we are searching for.
St. Augustine wrote it in his autobiography nearly 1,700 years ago and there may not be a truer thing written since: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until we rest in you.” In others, we are made from God’s love and for the purpose of love. And until we connect with this love and find ourselves to be held in this love, something will be missing.
We will search high and low for things to fulfill that yearning. As one theologian has put it, “We are never not in church.” By that, he means that we are constantly searching for meaning and purpose, for things that will soothe our insecurities and uncertainties. We look to our children for a sense of success, we associate our worth with our accomplishments, we hunt for hobbies that will fulfill us. And while there is nothing wrong with family, career, or leisure, none of those things can lead us to fully find what we are searching for. We are made to live in resonance with the love of God. And that is what, deep down, we are created to be about; that love is the only thing that will give rest to our restless hearts.
That is the quest of Psalm 132 – to search for the ark and come into the presence of love in which we find our enoughness. Psalm 132 was written about 2,500 years ago, but there’s a modern-day psalmist who wrote something similar. Bono is the lead singer of U2. On their 1987 album “Joshua Tree” there’s a song called “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” and it’s something like a modern retelling of Psalm 132.
It begins: “I have climbed highest mountains; I have run through the fields only to be with you. I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled these city walls only to be with you. But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” We can look high and low, in places of power and even in places of struggle, but we can’t manufacture what we’re looking for through our experiences. As we know from Scripture, we are lost. And the lost sheep never finds itself; it has to be found.
Finding the ark and encountering God isn’t about saying the right prayers, believing the correct doctrines, or having the best spiritual experiences. We encounter God when we cease our searching and recognize that the Good Shepherd has come to us, not that we found our way to the sheepfold. Being found by God is about recognizing that it is only by God’s gracious love do we exist. We are found by grace when acknowledge that the blessings of life are gifts from our generous and gracious God. So, indeed, our search will be endless and fruitless if we think that we have to find God instead of being found.
And so Bono continues, “I have kissed honey lips; felt the healing in her fingertips. It burned like fire, this burning desire.” Human relationships and pleasures, as wonderful as they can be, cannot fulfill us perfectly because none of us are perfect. Bono then references First Corinthians and says “I have spoken with the tongue of angels; I have held the hand of the devil. It was warm in the night; I was cold as a stone. But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” We can give into temptation, we can seek wealth, power, fame, and reputation – all things that Jesus was tempted with by Satan in the wilderness. And even if we have all of these things, we still lie awake at night and wonder “Is this all there is?”
Even religion itself cannot assuage these feelings of inadequacy and incompleteness. The song continues, “I believe in the Kingdom come, then all the colors will bleed into one. But I’m still running.” The Church hasn’t done a great job teaching this –faith is not about what you think about the nature of God or any doctrines. Bono even says something that sounds like it could come right out of the New Testament, “You broke the bonds and you loosed the chains; carried the cross of my shame. You know I believe it, but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” It is one thing to know Scripture, to read theology, to attend church and say the Creed. But none of those things will lead us to what we are looking for. Faith is not a formula, it is a relationship. Until we know ourselves to be included in the story of Scripture and trust that the truths of the Creed are “for us and for our salvation,” we won’t find the peace we are looking for.
Faith is the state of being found by our Good Shepherd and knowing ourselves to be a part of his flock. This is why, for some, the Church doesn’t help people find what they are looking for because we give too many answers and are too prescriptive about how to “do” faith correctly. We confuse belief with things we are supposed to do instead of faith being a relationship that we enter into. The thing is, we’ll never find what we’re looking for or recognize that we are in the presence of God until we know that we have been sought after and found by the God who created us, who forgives us, and loves us dearly.
Jonathan Daniels is one of the saints included in the icons in our Chapel. Daniels was born in 1939 and found himself at seminary in Massachusetts in the 60s. I say that he found himself in seminary because it wasn’t really something he sought – rather God sought him out. On Easter 1962, Daniels attended worship at an Episcopal church in Boston and had a religious experience that rekindled his faith. That wasn’t his plan, but he was found by grace.
Fast forward a few years and he was at Evensong when the call of God again found him. As they were singing the Song of Mary, the Magnificat, the words “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek” he felt something stir in his soul. In his journal that he wrote that he knew what he had to do. He had to go to Selma, Alabama, for he had heard of a pastor down there named Martin Luther King who was calling on people of faith to show up for a march. So he went, and as John Lewis might have put it, Jonathan Daniels got into some good trouble.
He intended to go for a weekend, but ended up spending the rest of the semester in Selma. He was arrested for joining a picket and when he was released, a small group went to a local convenience store for some food. Upon entering, the shopkeeper pulled out a shotgun and aimed it at a young black girl who was with them. Daniels pushed her out of the way and took the blast of the shotgun. An all-white jury found the shopkeeper not-guilty on account of self-defense. It’s an incredibly powerful story of faith and martyrdom.
What I want to call our attention to is something that Daniels wrote in his journal just days before his death, “I lost fear in Alabama when I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord’s death and Resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God.”
It’s not so much that Daniels found what he had been looking for, but that he knew that he had been found by the love that made him. He found his life hidden in Christ, and so he knew that no matter what happens, all shall be well. His heart was no longer restless because it rested in God. His searching was over because he had been found. Being found by the love of God makes all the difference and gives us the courage, audacity, and hope to follow Jesus and take the risk of love.
I don’t know about you all, but I know how fickle and restless I can be. I know that if I go out on a search to find whatever my sinful and wandering heart wants on a particular day, I’ll come up empty-handed and empty-hearted. I’m not sure what things you’ve been searching for, but I bet you, like me, know what that relentless searching feels like. One of the reasons why U2’s song is so popular is that we all know what it feels like to not find what we’re looking for.
The Good News is not that I have a treasure map that will lead us to find what we’ve been looking for. The Good News is that the lover of our souls, the King of Creation, Jesus Christ has gone as far as the Cross to find us. We can stop our searching and putting our trust in people and ideas that will always let us down. The purpose of life isn’t to strive, search, earn, or deserve. Rather life is a gift in which we receive, enjoy, and participate in the only thing that truly matters and satisfies us: love. The Good News is that our hearts can be at peace knowing that, despite our frantic searching, we can stop looking because our lives are secure in the love of God and we have been found.
