Takoma Park Baptist Church, Washington, DC October 5, 1986
In some of the more strict religious communities there is the practice called “shunning.” When someone is shunned, usually because he or she has violated the moral code or has broken the way of behaving expected in that group, it means that no one, absolutely no one, is to have anything to do with the object of this punishment. If you are to be shunned, say by one of the stricter and more conservative Amish groups, no one is to speak to you, no one is to do business with you, no one is to recognize that you exist. If you are married, your wife or your husband is expected to cancel out all normal marital relationships. If you have children, even they are to be barred from conversation or from being disciplined by you. Shunning is a devastating punishment because it directs people to act as though you did not exist. They look past you and through you, rather than at you; and it's worse, far worse, than being fought or being argued with or even being hated. To be ignored, to be left out, is vastly more damaging than to be fought. The human mind has thought of few punishments more thorough and more destructive than shunning.
Imagine, then, if someone were to shun God. How would God feel? Imagine, if you can, that someone were to act as though God did not exist, if someone were to refuse to speak to God, were to erase the name of God from his lips as well as from his books. Imagine if that person, working at shunning God, putting God in a corner, were to go on his merry way, pretending that God is nothing, God is nonentity. How Would God feel? What would that do to God?
Well, the psalmist gives us an insight into that here in the 14th Psalm. “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Actually the Biblical scholars tell us that that is not quite the right translation of the text, that there's a better way to say it. The Biblical scholars tell us that there really is nothing like atheism or agnosticism in the Bible; for these people the experience of God was too immediate, too direct and too personal, and so never does anyone deny that God exists. But the better translation would be something like, "There is no God here.”' or “God can't reach me here," or even “God doesn't matter." The fool has said in his heart, "God doesn't count". The fool, the man who never learns from experience, has said in the secret places of his being, "I can get along without God".
Now when you begin to read it like that, does it sound a little familiar? Does it sound less like know-it-all atheism and more like the everyday garden-variety foolishness with which our world is infected? Of course it does, because, you see, very few people anywhere around the world will stand up and say for all to hear, “There is no God.” Very few societies are without some form of religion, very few peoples in history have been without reverence for some sort of God; that's important to remember on this Worldwide Communion Sunday, as we celebrate a worldwide Gospel. There are folks allover the world with God's name on their lips and with these symbols of Christ set before them, millions of them. Very, very few would say, right out loud, "I don't believe in God.”
But if I hear the Psalmist correctly, it is just as true in our day as it was in his that scores of us shun God. Scores of us are foolish enough, rash enough, to act as though God did not exist, practically speaking. Scores and hundreds of us, even Christians, even those who gather at the Table of the Lord on this day, scores and hundreds of us will look right past our God instead of looking at him and will say in the secret places of the heart, “God doesn't count. God doesn't matter. I’m doing very well on my own, thank you." The fool, we fools, have said in our hearts, "Oh, come on, I can agree there must be a God, but practically speaking, He doesn't matter, not really.“ The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”
In the beginning of this idea, I asked, what does God think of this, how does God feel about it? When you shun God and sail right on past without a nod, what is God's response? The psalmist has it, "The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any that act wisely, that seek after God. They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt, there is none that does good, no, not one. “
Well, that is a gloomy diagnosis, isn't it? That is hardly something to take home and glow with all afternoon today. They have all gone astray, there is none that does good, no not one. But I submit to you that there is a terrible truth there, a truth which the Prophet Isaiah echoed when he said, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way,” a truth which the Apostle Paul reiterated in the Roman letter, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Isn’t it striking? Think of it this way: I’ve said already that the awareness that there is a god is universal, it’s worldwide. Almost everyone has an intimation that God is. The awareness of God is worldwide, but so is the infection of sin. In too is a worldwide, universal reality. And no matter how much we’d like to pretend that this is not so or that we have escaped it or that, after all, we’re pretty good folks – no matter how much we may want to deny it, here it is: the Lord God, shunned, set aside, thought of as irrelevant, looks at us and says, “None of them act wisely, none of them seeks God. “
It reminds me of what the scientist and philosopher Aldous Huxley said about his little grandson, " Isn't it something the way he looks you straight in the face and disobeys you?
Do you see what I am saying? We look God straight in the face and we disobey Him. Every time that we make a decision, and we could pray about it, we should pray about it, but we just barge ahead as though God were not there, we have become the fool who says in his heart, "There is no God."
Every time we face some moral dilemma, some temptation, and, though we know what God's will is, we just look past that and see only what we want to see, we have again played the fool, saying at the core of his being, "God doesn't count."
Every time I interfere in someone else's life and try to play God, every time I try to compromise the holy freedom which the Father has given every other human being, I have in effect become the impudent fool who is in everything he does proclaims, “I can get along well enough without God.”
The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” Everywhere in the world there is a knowledge that God is; but everywhere there is also an attempt to make end runs around Him, to ignore him, to count him out. But there is also a worldwide and universal remedy. To a universal human predicament, a universal solution.
If I were being shunned, if I were being set aside and ignored and talked around as if I did not exist, I think I'd spend some energy grabbing somebody by the shoulders and screaming at them, "I'm here, I'm here. You can't do this to me.” If I were being shunned, I would not just go off somewhere and crawl into a hole. I would find some way to demand recognition, I would invade the space of those folks who were shutting me out. I would intersect them in such a way that I could not be forgotten. You’ll see that this afternoon on the football field, when Manley or Betz get into your path, you don’t ignore them!
And so in the man Christ Jesus, the Lord God, about whom foolish men and women had said for centuries, "Oh, he's just an absentee landlord, you can do with out him.” – in the man Christ Jesus He whom the very heavens could not contain poured himself out into one solitary life. He became concrete, tangible, obvious. He intersected our lives and our history, and, my friends, it is impossible to ignore Christ. Do what you will, you cannot forget him. Try as you might, you cannot long evade the issue, What will you do with Jesus? For he stands at the very center of human history, he stands at the threshold of my life and of yours, and God in Christ becomes so concrete, so definite, so insistent that never again will any but the most foolish of the fools say in their hearts, “ There is no God.”
John's Gospel puts it so beautifully and in such lofty language. “The word became flesh and dwelt among us, pitched his tent among us, and we beheld his glory, full of grace and truth.” We beheld him, we saw him, we cannot get around him. There he is, the sentinel of every man’s heart and mind, and he will not be set aside again.
And so on this Sunday, Worldwide Communion Sunday, we have a universal awareness of God, yes, but a certain foolishness that would ignore him. And we have therefore a universal and worldwide human problem, the reality of sin. But in the word made flesh and in the blood outpoured for us at Calvary, surely there is a God with whom we have to deal. Surely there is a compulsion about his love for us. And surely to look at this table and to handle this bread and this wine, surely to taste these things is to know that God in Christ Jesus is never going to let us go, nor can we long drop him from our sights. All we can do, all we at heart want to do, is to learn again from the psalmist, “Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
Be still. Be still, my foolish heart, and know that God is and that God loves. Be still, my foolish heart and know what it is to obey one who came in too too solid flesh to be ignored. Be still, my foolish heart and know what it is to respond to him whose life was spent for you, for you. Be still. And know.
