Hide and Seek

Scripture: Genesis 3:1-13; Luke 11:1-13

Sermon by Dr. George B. Wirth

First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta

May 21, 2000

 

 

Introduction

Robert Fulgham, a well-known author and minister who lives out in Oregon, was sitting in his study 12 years ago and heard some commotion outside the window. This is how he described what happened: “In the early dark of an October’s Saturday evening, the neighborhood children are playing hide-and-seek. How long since I played the game? Thirty years, maybe more. I remember how, and I could join them in a moment, if invited...

 

Did you ever have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good that nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him...and leave him to rot, wherever he was. Sooner or later, he would show up, all mad because we didn’t keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn’t playing the game the way it was supposed to be played. There’s hiding and there’s finding, we’d say. And he’d say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-up. And we’d all yell about who made the rules and who cared about whom and how we wouldn’t play with him anymore if he didn’t get it straight and who needed him anyhow...hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He’s probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know...

 

A man I knew found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor and he knew about dying, and didn’t want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And he died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and on and so forth. But privately, his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn’t need them, didn’t trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn’t say goodbye.

 

He did too well. Hide-and-seek, grown up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to sought. Confused about being found. ‘I don’t want anyone to know’ he said...’I don’t want to bother them.’”

(From All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned In Kindergarten by Robert Fulgham, Villard Books, New York, 1988, pages 36-38)

 

Part 1

My own experience as a pastor over 28 years, including the last decade here in Atlanta with all of you, has taught me that what Fulgham observed about the doctor is sad but true. We adults play hide-and-seek in our own grown up way, and it’s not nearly as much fun as the game we enjoyed and delighted in when we were children.

 

Some of us are hiding from ourselves, from past events and painful moments which we’d rather forget than confront. There are those of us who are hiding from others, from family members and friends, as we pretend on the outside to be stronger, more confident and successful people than we feel we are on the inside. And a number of us are trying to hide from God, to keep secrets from Him about our doubts and fears, about our failures and our sins. And the longer we live that way, hiding from ourselves, from others and from God, the more difficult it becomes to seek and to find the truth that will set us free.

 

In preparation for last Sunday’s sermon about The First Family, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel - described in Genesis 2 and 4, I read again the passage in chapter 3 which all of us have heard before. After Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the forbidden tree, the Bible says that they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said ‘Where are you?’ The man answered ‘I heard the sound of Thee in the garden and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’ (Genesis 3:8-10)

 

Because of their sin and the sense of fear which overwhelmed them, Adam and Eve, like little children in the garden, tried to hide from their Father in heaven. But because of His love and forgiving grace, God came looking, seeking, wanting to find them. And if you read the rest of the Bible, from Genesis on through the book of Revelation, that is the theme which re-occurs over and over and over again. It’s called Hide and Seek as fearful people try to hide their sin, only to discover that a loving God continues to seek after them with the promise of forgiveness and redemption.

 

We Christians believe that the game was changed once and for all when God came among us in person, in the person of Jesus, to show us that we don’t have to hide anymore. Through His life, death and resurrection, Jesus Christ has reconciled and restored us to His Father, to our Father in heaven. And ever since then, over the past 2000 years, we in the church have proclaimed the promise that Nothing - not even our fear - can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:39)

 

Part 2

So why, why do we still play the game of hide-and-seek with ourselves, with others and with God? I don’t know for certain about you, but sometimes, looking back over my own life, I have wondered if the promise was simply too good to be true!

 

Three years ago in the fall, one of my sisters called from Ohio to say that our father had been taken to the hospital and the prognosis wasn’t good. His heart was failing and although the doctors were doing all that they could, my sister encouraged me to come right away.

 

I flew up there the next day and found the situation even worse than I had expected. My father was down to less than 100 pounds, he was connected to all those machines and had an oxygen mask over his face to help him breathe. Within an hour or so, the doctor and nurses and members of our family left the two of us to visit alone.

 

Realizing that this might be the last conversation my father and I would have together, I thanked him for bringing me up in the faith, for being a good husband to his wife, my mother, who died far too young, and for all the years that he had been a loving father to me, my sisters and my brother.

 

I could see his eyes focus as I shared those memories, and then I took a deep breath, looked straight at him and said “Dad, I know that I wasn’t always an ideal son, and there were times when you could have given up on me. Do you remember that night, when I was 18 and wrecked the family car, and the police called and you arrived at the scene of the accident? I was embarrassed and afraid and didn’t know what to say, and the only words you spoke were ‘Thank God you’re still alive.’

At that moment in the hospital room, we both began to cry as I whispered ‘Dad, have you even been able to forgive me for the foolish thing I did that night?’ Suddenly, I felt my father’s hand slip into mine, and as he lifted up the oxygen mask with the other hand, he whispered back to me “Son, I forgave you a long time ago because I love you. Can you forgive me for the times I let you down?”

 

I shook my head and said “Of course I can, and I already have.” We sat there in silence for a while until the others came back into the room. The conversation picked back up again, talking about the places where we had lived, the churches my father has served and even the dogs that belonged to our family over the years. We laughed and we cried and then it was time for me to go. I said “Dad, I have a plane to catch and a sermon to preach on Sunday. I’ll be thinking and praying about you.” He tried to smile, lifted up the oxygen mask one last time and said “Preach a good one for me.” I told him that I loved him and said goodbye. It was Friday evening, around six o’clock, and early the following Sunday morning, my sister called to say that my father had died peacefully in his sleep.

 

Now I tell you that personal story because, over the course of my life, there were times when I wondered, with all the mistakes I made and stunts I pulled and foolish things I did, whether or not the promise of my father’s love and forgiveness was really true. Thank God, I was able to ask him that question before he died, and how grateful I will always be for the answer he gave to me.

 

Part 3

Just like that, said Jesus, and even more so, does our Father in heaven love and forgive us. And sensing we might not always believe that the promise was and still is true, Jesus told a personal story of His own, recorded in the 11^th chapter of Luke:

 

What father among you, if his child asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give that child a serpent? Or if they ask for an egg, will give them a scorpion? If you then, who are sinful, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? (Luke 15:11-13)

 

For every one who asks, receives, and he or she who seeks will find, and to those who knock, the door will be opened.” (Luke 15:10)

 

Now we know that’s a story about prayer, wherein Jesus assured us that if and when we seek the presence and peace and power of God, He is not far to be found. As Tennyson put it so beautifully,

 

“Speak to Him, thou, for He hears,

And Spirit with spirit may meet.

Closer is He than breathing,

And nearer than hands and feet.”

 

To be sure, this is a story about prayer and the way we can find God. But I think there is a deeper dimension to the story Jesus told, which reveals to us the reaching hands and outstretched arms and open heart of our Father in heaven to find us! Even and especially when we try to hide from Him in our fear and in our sin, He, relentlessly seeks after us and comes in person to find us and promises to love and forgive us no matter how far we have wandered away or what we have done.

 

And if you have ever wondered, as I have from time to time, if that promise is too good to be true, then remember what Jesus Himself told us to do: Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.

 

At the beginning of the service our tenor soloist Charles Hart sang that beautiful prelude from Mendelssohn’s Elijah “If with all your hearts ye truly seek Me, ye shall ever surely find Me.” That is God’s promise and the promise is true!

 

My friends, we don’t have to play the game of hide and seek with ourselves, with one another or with God anymore. Because God has already found us through His Son our Savior Jesus. And as we come to trust Him, He will slip His hand into yours and mine and whisper to us down through the centuries of time: I love you more than you will ever know, and I forgave you a long, long time ago. Christian friends, that is our story and it is good news! So listen to how Robert Fulghum completes his story:

“Olly-olly-in-free. The kids out in the street are hollering that cry that says ‘Come on in wherever you are. It’s a new game now.’ And so say I. To all those who have hid too good, it’s time to get found.”

 

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.