I heard about this minister who was a little overbearing and overzealous sometimes in asking some theological questions of some of the children in the church.  One day, he had the boys and girls line up outside his office and then he brought them in one at a time to ask them these theological questions, to, in a sense, see what they were learning in Sunday School.  He brought this one little boy in, and, as I say, the minister got a little carried away in his questioning of the boy.  At one point he asked the boy rather emphatically, “Where is God?  Where is God?”  And I’m not sure just exactly what answer he was looking for, but the little boy just kind of sat there and didn’t say anything, he didn’t know what to say to this question, “Where is God?”  But when he left the minister’s office, this little boy whispered to the next little boy in line, “God must be missing, and they think we did something with him.” 

Today we’re talking about God, we talk about God in one way or another every Sunday, but the “problem” with God is the way I’ve expressed it in my sermon title.  “Where is God?” we might ask ourselves at times when things don’t seem to be going our way.  But is the problem that God is absent, we can’t find him when we need him?  We don’t know where he is?  Or is the problem that we so often, in a sense, are absent from God, we don’t take God seriously enough, we don’t do as he directs.  Maybe the question isn’t where is God?  Maybe the question is where are we? 

I heard Fred Craddock, the great preacher, say that when someone comes into a room and says the word “God”, it changes the room.  Do you agree with this?  Do you believe this?  Just the mere mention of the word God has the power to change the room, it has the power to alter the whole landscape, transform your life, touch you in a way that you will never forget.

I heard of a little girl who was kneeling by her bed one night, praying.  She said, “Dear God, if you’re there and you hear my prayer, could you please touch me!”  And all of a sudden she felt a touch, so she got excited and jumped up and said, “Thank you God, for touching me!”  But then she looked over and saw her little sister standing there and got suspicious.  So she said, “Did you touch me?”  And her sister said, “Yes, I did.”  “What did you do that for?” she asked.  And the answer was, “God told me to.” 

There are many ways we can experience God’s touch.  “Oh God, please touch me.”  These weren’t the exact words of this man who was possessed by demons, but it was a touch from God, a touch from Jesus that he was looking for.  Some Bible scholars aren’t convinced that this man was actually possessed by demons, they may just not have known what to call it back then, perhaps it was a psychological problem or a neurological problem that today might be cured with therapy or medication.  But whatever it was, Jesus touched this man and performed instant therapy, instant healing, an instant exorcism, instant recognition of what his need was and how to cure it.  We need that touch of God today.  We often say this kind of prayer, for ourselves, or for others, “Oh God, please touch me.  Please touch this person I know who is hurting.  Please somehow touch the world.” 

The second verse of our prayer hymn for today gives us words that speak about our concern for the world.  “Still our children wander homeless; still the hungry cry for bread; still the captives long for freedom; still in grief we mourn our dead.” 

We long for God’s touch on our lives and on our world, we yearn for it, we pray for it, we say this is what we want, and yet the thing is that often we don’t know what to do with this touch from God when it comes.  I heard about this little boy who was praying to God and he said, “Dear God, please help me to be a better boy, and stop me from putting frogs in my sister’s bed, and keep me from all the other bad things I know I do.  But just so you’ll know, God, if you aren’t in any big hurry to make me a better boy, that’s okay with me.  I’m having a real good time just the way I am.”  Are we all a little like this?  Do we know what we should be doing, and yet often don’t do it?  Do we feel God’s touch, and yet fail to follow where he leads us?  St. Augustine’s prayer as a young man was, “Oh God, give me chastity.  But not yet, not yet.” 

Are we like that?  Or are we a little like Mae West?  Whenever I think of sin, for some reason I think of Mae West.  She is the one, you may remember, who was trying to convince someone that she wasn’t that bad of a person, she wasn’t that sinful.  In fact, she said, “I was as pure as the driven snow, until I drifted.”  And it was also Mae West who said that you know you’re getting old if you have two options of sins that you might commit, two options for how you might sin, you know you’re getting old if you choose the one that will have you home by 9:00.  Is this where we are sometimes, we’re not all that sinful really, we’re certainly not as bad as some people, we don’t engage in anything too serious really, nothing that will keep us out past 9:00.  But maybe if we look deeper, our sin is perhaps that we are too comfortable, while God may want us to grow, God may want us to go in a new direction, God may want to lead us some place that we’ve never been before, and our sin may be that we are going to stay right where we are, we are not going to budge.   Someone has said that hell is that point in time where God shows us all that we might have been, all that we might have done with our lives, all that he was calling us to, and we turned away, we didn’t do it, we wouldn’t do it, we wouldn’t be that person we were called to be. 

Now I almost never do this, but I’d like you to get the pew Bible that’s right in front of you, if there is one, and turn with me to our scripture out of the New Testament, Mark 5:1-20, it’s on page 39 in the second part of the Bible.  Jesus has just healed this demon-possessed man, and there were those who went out and told everyone, so now they’ve all come out to see for themselves. 

So we get to verse 15 and we read, “They came to Jesus and saw the man possessed by a demon sitting there, clothed and in his right mind [for the first time in his life], and they were [all these people were]. . .”  What?  What would you think their reaction might be if you didn’t know what was coming?  They were astonished?  They were captivated?  They were just so grateful to Jesus for doing this?  They were ready to take Jesus by storm and declare him to be their Lord?  No, they weren’t any of these things.  It says, “They were afraid.”  Now do you get the irony of this?  They weren’t afraid of this man apparently when he was insane and demon-possessed.  They had gotten used to that.  They were comfortable with that.  But when they saw him in his right mind, and when they saw Jesus, they were afraid.  It says down in verse 17, “Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood.” 

Jesus had touched their lives in a way that was just too unpredictable, too uncomfortable, too different from what they were used to, and they couldn’t handle it.  It had taken them a while, but they had gotten used to this demon-possessed man.  They could handle him.  What they could not handle was Jesus.  How about us?  How about you and me? 

John Donne, the poet, talks about the sin of fear in one of his poems, the sin of fear, the sin of knowing what we are supposed to do, knowing what God is calling us to, but we refuse, we decide not to do it, not to go in that direction, because we’re afraid of where it might lead, we’re afraid of what it might cost us.  Another poet, William Butler Yeats, put it like this, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”  Imagine this, while the worst are out there doing their worst, we sit on the sidelines, we can’t be bothered, we don’t think that any of this is ever going to affect us so why get all excited? 

Someone passed along to me some Christian one-liners this past week that I thought were pretty good.  Maybe you’ve heard some of these before, these pithy little statements.  A few of them caught my eye.  For example, “Opportunity may knock once, but temptation bangs on your door forever.”  Or, “Quit griping about your church; if it was perfect you couldn’t be there.”  “A lot of church members who are singing ‘Standing on the Promises’ are just sitting on the premises.”  “Don’t wait for six strong men to bring you to church.”  The one that really caught my eye was this, “Some minds are like concrete, thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.”  Now is it a sin to be thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.  No, probably not, but if you are permanently set in your ways, permanently set in the way you want to go, then you cannot, necessarily, by definition,  you cannot, you are not available to go the way that God might want you to go. 

God may come into your life and say, “Look, I don’t want you to do this, I want you to do this.  I’m not going to help you accomplish this, but I will give you what you need, I will give you all you need, to accomplish this.”  Someone has put it like this, that if the direction you want to go feels safe and comfortable, it’s probably not the right way, it probably is not from God.  But if it’s just a little bit scary, if it’s just a bit scary, then it probably is right, it probably is of God. 

The problem with God.  Well one problem is that God’s plans may not be our plans, God’s direction for our life may not be our direction for our life, and we may need to be open in ways that we don’t really want to be open.  

But the biggest problem with God, I think, is not just that he may have other plans for us, he may want to get us out of the rut we put ourselves in, the real problem with God is that he will not leave us alone.  He is constantly pestering us with his love and with his grace and with this new life in Christ that he offers.  This crowd that gathered around Jesus, they were afraid and they told Jesus to leave, and so he did leave with his disciples, but he sent that demon-possessed man, now healed, back to them to tell them all about it, to remind them, constantly, day-after-day, of what God had done for him, and what God could do for them. 

I remember a scene in the movie, and also in the novel, “Cry, the Beloved Country”, set in South Africa, where a minister is told by someone how good of a person he is.  This man tells the minister that he is a virtuous man.  But this minister says, “No, I am not a virtuous man, I am a sinful man.  But God has placed his hands on me.”  God has placed his hands on me. 

Someone has said, “God will not let us down.  But God also will not let us off; he will not let us go.”