“The Eclipse of God” - First Presbyterian Church

“The Eclipse of God”
a sermon by
The Rev. Dr. James F. Miller
First Presbyterian Church
Charlotte, North Carolina
March 9, 2008
Text: “I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt … ” (Exodus 3:7).
Martin Buber, the 20 th century Jewish thinker, draws a profound if puzzling distinction by posing
a question in his little book, The Eclipse of God. His phraseology is compact and what he offers
us sounds like a riddle. But, it is no mere word play; it is a matter of life and death.
When God seems unreal; when God seems distant; when God seems to be a make-believe; when
God seems weak and incapable of action; when you and your loved ones are in the hell of
Auschwitz; when all this happens and God does not show up, how do we faithfully describe the
experience? What is it we truly are experiencing, Buber asks? Is this terrifying darkness to be
described as “the presence of the absence of God or the absence of the presence of God?”
This is no casual form of Nietzsche’s “death of God.” Buber saw how whimsically shallow
Nietzsche’s philosophical agony had been. Instead, he articulated a desperate agony; the
desperate, real agony of faith.
Is the terrifying darkness of life “the presence of the absence of God or the absence of the
presence of God?”
Perhaps you have never heard it asked this way. But you certainly have heard it asked: why have
I got this terrible disease? What is God doing in the world; there is simply too much starvation,
suffering, war, and death? Why did my little one, so innocent and full of the promise of life, have
to die?
How is this terrifying darkness of life to be described?
The presence of the absence of God means simply this: the darkness is it. There is no help; there
is no hope. That which you call God is the absent one; absence is his “reality;” he is that which
can never be present.
The absence of the presence of God is utterly different from this. You are experiencing bleak
desperation, yes; you are in searing agony, yes; the darkness is all around, yes, and it is wholly

eal, yes. That which you call God is absent, yes. But, this absent one is yet known as the one
who can be present; this absent one is yet known as the one will be present.
We read a brief portion of Exodus 3, one of the pivotal chapters in the entire Bible. Moses, the
runaway cop-killer, is being chosen by God to return to Egypt and lead the people out. It is the
beginning of exodus; the beginning of freedom; the beginning of the end of the terrifying
darkness for God’s people. For those slaves it is the beginning of the end of God’s absence. For
them the absent one was about to become present. And how he did! The absent one showed up
with uncompromising power; with clear and present danger to the powers of the world; with a
singular purpose, to shock and awe without reservation all that would masquerade as divine by
claiming to establish purpose for the world.
Think of the facts for a moment.
Consider: the people of Israel were slaves. Brought to Egypt through the Joseph adventure, there
they had grown and prospered, but the day came, as the Bible ominously puts it, when there
arose “a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.” [Exodus 1:8] Pharaoh had ambitions; he had plans. As
ever with the powers of the world those ambitions and plans required elevation of his own self;
extension and amplification of his own power; making the first even more first and the last even
more last. Pharaoh made slaves of the children of Israel. [There is only one more potent symbol
of the world’s arrogant power than enslaving others. Can you imagine what it is?]
All this is bad enough. But consider: it is even worse. In enslaving the children of Israel Pharaoh
was containing God’s plan of salvation for the world. In enslaving the children of Israel,
Pharaoh, the power of the world, was condemning the world to a life of eternal terrifying
darkness, of living permanently with the absent one.
Then consider this: our chapter of the call of Moses, while full of promise and heavy with hope
for freedom and salvation, tells a story which took place 400 years after the enslavement began.
400 years! It’s not that the people became slaves and after a week or so, a few months, a decade,
the absent one showed up. Four centuries. This is twice the length of the history of the USA.
Here then is the burning question of faith, a faith that believes the terrifying darkness and all its
agony is but the absence of the presence of God—why? Why the delay? Why the suffering
before the healing? Why the darkness before the light? Why?
Why allow the insanity of the world to defeat even for one heartbeat the saving, life-bestowing
purposes of God for the very world itself? Where is God when this happens? Where is the light
of God’s presence in the midst of the darkness? Why is he absent, because he can’t show up, or
because he chooses not to? Of these which is worse for the believing heart? Can we do anything
other than embrace Dylan Thomas’s advice, “Do not go gentle into that good night, ... Rage, rage
against the dying of the light”?
God to Moses [Exodus 3:7] “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard
them crying out because of ... their suffering.” I have seen; I have heard. What? For 400 years?
Why the delay?
First Presbyterian Church Page 2 March 9, 2008

Do you have an answer to the other question I asked a moment ago? There is only one more
potent symbol of the world’s arrogant power than enslaving others. Can you imagine what it is?
This is truly the answer to our question about the delay.
The only symbol more potent in illustrating the arrogant and terrifying power of the world is the
crucified Jesus. What more potent symbol can there be than of a Roman soldier, violent agent of
the Empire, hammering nails into the body of Jesus of Nazareth? In crucifying Jesus the world
sought to nail God down; to put God in his place; to make absent forever any possibility of his
showing up. Shock and awe? Clear and present danger? “If you are the Son of God come down
from the cross!” [Matthew 27:40] God is absent because he can do nothing to stop this.
Did God not see? Did God not hear? Was God ignoring Jesus as cried out: “My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?” [Mark 15:30] That terrible Friday must have weighed on the heart
of God as did the 400 years of slavery; worse! Why did he remain absent?
Paul says it best: “If Christ has not been raised ...we are of all people most pitiable.” [1
Corinthians 15: 17 & 19] Paul insists on an historical fact, indeed, but so much more than that.
He is insisting that we understand the character, the purpose, and the power of God. Our God
does not handout spiritual vitamin pills to boost our resources for meeting the natural challenges
of living. Our God does not suggest piety supplements to make up for the psychological
shallowness of our inner selves. Our God does not affix holy band aids for the emotional bumps
and bruises we sustain in life. Our God, however absent he may appear to be, can show up, will
show up; shall be hugely present to conquer lies in the name of truth; hate in the name of love;
death in the name of life. But, our God may appear to delay lest we belittle his power and his
promise by crying out for less.
God not to help me make better bricks for Pharaoh, but to lead me into the wilderness of reckless
manna-dependent freedom. Is he delaying? Perhaps it is because I do not yet see that I am called
not to make for Pharaoh any bricks at all, but rather to build the kingdom of heaven. Perhaps he
delays because I am not yet ready to receive him. Perhaps he delays to raise me because I do not
yet see that without him I am dead!
As another poet has written:
I will not like some churlish child rage against the dying of the light
For I cry out to one who comes in certain might
To hold me in the terrifying darkness close and tight
And lead me on and through to his eternal banquet of most brilliant light
Where shimmering truth and love and life shall be my sight.
[Soli Deo Gloria]
First Presbyterian Church Page 3 March 9, 2008