Isaiah 64 - Where Is God?

KNU International English Church
Josh Broward
November 30, 2008

In 1928, on the border of Hungary and Romania, a Jewish family celebrated the birth of a son. God had blessed them. On the eighth day he was circumcised to show his participation in the covenant God had started with Abraham.

While this boy, Elie Wiesel, was still growing up, World War 2 began. Nazi Germany began moving across Europe sucking nation after nation into its dominating war machine which pretended to be Christian. In 1944, the German authorities put all of the Jews in Elie's home town into a ghetto and later into Auschwitz, a “concentration” camp.

In Auschwitz, Elie and his father endured near starvation, hard work, torture, and watching the death and execution of thousands of others. Elie and two of his sisters survived, but his father, mother, and younger sister all died at Auschwitz.

In his famous book, Night, Elie Wiesel tells of his experiences in a work camp connected to Auschwitz. After telling the story of a boy his age being hanged, he writes this account:

I witnessed other hangings. I never saw a single one of the victims weep. For a long time those dried-up bodies had forgotten the bitter taste of tears.

Except once. The Oberkapo [the section leader] of the fifty-second cable unit was a Dutchman, a giant, well over six feet. Seven hundred prisoners worked under his orders, and they all loved him like a brother. No one had ever received a blow at his hands, nor an insult from his lips.

He had a young boy under him, a pipel, as they were called – a child with a refined and beautiful face, unheard of in this camp. … the Dutchman's little servant was loved by all. He had the face of a sad angel.

One day, the electric power station at Buna was blown up. The Gestapo, summoned to the spot, suspected sabotage. They found a trail. It eventually led to the Dutch Oberkapo. And there, after a search, they found an important stock of arms.

The Oberkapo was arrested immediately. He was tortured for a period of weeks, but in vain. He would not give a single name. He transferred to Auschwitz. We never heard of him again.

But his little servant had been left behind in the camp in prison. Also put to torture, he would not speak. Then the SS sentenced him to death, with two other prisoners who had been discovered with arms.

One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. SS all around us, machine guns trained: the traditional ceremony. Three victims in chains – one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel.

The SS seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To hang a young boy in front of thousands of spectators was no light matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him. …

The three victims mounted together onto the chairs.

The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses.

“Long life liberty!” cried the two adults.

But the child was silent.

“Where is God? Where is He?” someone behind me asked?

At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over.

Total silence fell throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting.

“Bare your heads!” yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping.

“Cover your heads!”

Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive . …

For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:

“Where is God now?”

And I heard a voice within me answer him:

“Where is He? Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows. ...”¹

When Elie Wiesel experienced some of the worst suffering humanity has ever known, he and his peers asked, “Where is God?” The answer was that God was there in the child dying on the gallows.

Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1947.² His parents were upstanding Catholics - middle-class, well-educated, hard-working citizens. Very early in his life Paulo dreamed of a career in the arts.

However, this was unacceptable to his straight-laced parents – no artsy-fartsy kids for them! When his parents couldn't change his mind through begging, pleading, threatening, scolding or applying parental pressure, they took drastic measures. Obviously, their son was sick. Obviously, he was mentally ill. No one in his right mind would want to be an artist or a writer. When Paulo was 17, his father put him in a mental hospital to undergo electro-shock therapy to “cure” him of his dream of being a writer. After he was released, Paulo began working with a theater group and began working as journalist. His parents sent him back for more “therapy.”

In the 1960s and 70s, Latin America experienced great unrest. Paulo sought spiritual experiences all over Latin America, and he used his writing skills for magazines, music, and comic strips calling for more freedom. In 1973, the government cracked down, and Paulo was kidnapped and tortured.

Faced with personal suffering and the relentless crushing of his ideals, Paulo abandoned his spiritual search and his quest for change. He settled into a “normal” life. For many years he worked quietly as a music executive.

Suddenly, Paulo Coelho's life was changed by a meeting with a man in a cafe in Amsterdam. The stranger challenged Paulo to return to his Catholic roots and to go on a spiritual pilgrimage in the countryside of Spain.

This pilgrimage revolutionized Paulo's life. As he walked through Spanish vineyards and slept in abandoned churches, he learned again how to connect with God. He also began to hear and to follow the quiet voice within his heart calling him to write.

Paulo first wrote The Pilgrimage as the story of his life-transforming journey. One year later, he wrote The Alchemist, a second look at the same journey. The first edition of The Alchemist sold only 900 copies. In the publishing world, that is a desperate failure!

But “Paulo would not surrender his dream.” He continued to write. After another novel, Brida, got attention, the public began to look at The Alchemist and The Pilgrimage again. Soon, both books appeared on bestseller lists around the world. The Alchemist has now been translated into 56 languages and has sold over 60 million copies.

In the introduction to The Alchemist, Paulo asked himself the obvious question: “What's the secret behind such a huge success? The only honest response is: I don't know. All I know is that … we all need to be aware of our personal calling. What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chooses for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to follow our own dream.”³

In the novel, The Alchemist, Paulo explains his own discovery. Every person on earth has a God-given dream. When we are children, our hearts speak freely of the dream – calling us out into the adventure of following God's amazing dream for our lives. But slowly the dream is buried by prejudice, fear and guilt.

At one point, the main character's heart speaks to him:

Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him ... We, people's hearts seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them – the path to their Personal legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.

So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out ...⁴

For Paulo, this became the answer to his questions about God. Where is God? He is here in our hearts, quietly speaking to us, calling us to pursue the dream he has given us. God is here, quietly calling us to join him in making a better world. God is here whispering softly, but never stopping to whisper his quiet call for us to do our unique part to change the world. For Paulo – and for us - “Every second of the search is an encounter with God.”⁵

God had made great promises to Israel: “I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to other. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you?” (Genesis 12:2-3).

On and on and on, generation after generation, God made promises to Israel: “I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries of distress because of their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey ...” (Exodus 3:7-8).

And God acted. He sent the plagues on Egypt. He split the Red Sea. He brought water from the rocks. He made their clothes and shoes last for decades as they wandered in the deserts. He made the mountain shake with lightening and thunder at Sinai as he gave them the Law. He brought his people into the promised land with many miracles.

But those promises all seemed hollow to the people of God at the end of Isaiah. Israel had been attacked and beaten. The best and brightest children of Israel had been taken into exile. The Temple of God had been overrun and destroyed by enemy nations. The “land of milk and honey” had become the land of burned-out buildings and wild animals.

Naturally, the people questioned God. Our text for today is a “Lament Psalm” from the book of Isaiah. This is a song of mourning – a complaining prayer. Let's read it now in Isaiah 63:11 – 64:12.

Isaiah and Israel asked, “Where is God? Where is the God who led Israel out of Egypt? Where is the God who gave his Holy Spirit to his people? Where is the God of passion and power, compassion and mercy? Where is God?”

In Isaiah 65, God answered, “I was ready to respond, but no one asked for help. I was ready to be found but no one was looking for me. I said, 'Here I am, here I am!' to a nation that did not call on my name. All day long, I opened my arms to a rebellious people. But they followed their own evil paths and their own crooked schemes” (Isaiah 65:1-3).

Where is God?

He is holding out his arms waiting for us to respond to him.

Today we begin the season of Advent. Christmas is usually a cheery time, celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus. People hang decorations and give presents and have big feasts with family and friends, and rightly so. Christmas celebrates the coming of the Messiah, God entering the world as a human being with flesh and blood.

But Advent is not so cheery. Advent is a season of waiting and longing. “Advent” means “coming.” We are waiting for God to “come” as the Messiah to redeem the world and make everything right. We are waiting with the Israelites before Jesus, and we are waiting with the church around the world for Jesus to come again to finish the new creation, to restore justice and peace to the world once and for all.

In many ways, Advent is a season of absence. If we are still waiting for God to “come,” then in some ways he must not be “here” yet. God must somehow be or feel absent to us now. And that is how many of us experience God – absent, away, apart, distant, silent, not involved in our lives, not involved in our world.

• We face the pain of our inner lives: loneliness, shame, fear, anger, feeling of not being good enough.

• We face the pain of our relationships: betrayal, fighting, mistrust, divorce, abuse, physical distance, lack of love, unreturned love, mixed loyalties, conflicting obligations, debt, financial insecurity.

• We face the pain of our world: a struggling economy, politicians, scandal, crises in the church, changing morals, changing technology, changing philosophy, war, terrorism, confusing ethics, starvation, poverty, corruption.

And amid all this pain, God so often feels absent to us. Where is God? Why does God allow the pain to continue? Where is God? Why doesn't God come down and do something about this? If God is so loving, why doesn't he help? Where is God?

After enduring unspeakable suffering in a concentration camp, Elie Wiesel asked, “Where is God?”

God was in a dying child hanging from a rope.

After enduring rejection from his family, abuse and torture from his countrymen, and the crushing of his dreams, Paulo Coelho asked, “Where is God?”

God was in the quiet voice inside his heart calling him to pursue his dream to the ends of the earth.

After enduring slavery and exile and destruction of their homes and temple, Isaiah and Israel cried out, “Where is God?”

God was there all along holding out his arms to them, waiting for them to respond.

As we enduring our personal pain, pain in our relationships, and pain in our world, we cry out, “Where is God?”

What is your answer?

This is Advent. Advent begins with absence.

Come, O Come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lowly exile here

Until the Son of God appears.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

1Elie Wiesel, Night, (New York: Bantam, 1980), 60-62.

2Most of the information below comes from: Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, (New York, 2006), 193-195.

3Ibid, “Introduction,” vii-viii.

4Ibid, 131.

5Ibid, 130.