THE HOUND OF HEAVEN Jeremiah 31:1-3 I have loved you with an everlasting love I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped; And shot, precipitated, Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. In 1917, a Roman Catholic magazine in England published a poem by a drunken, destitute drug addict. The poets name was Francis Thompson, and his poem was titled The Hound of Heaven. No one thought much of the poem at the time, but it has since been translated into more than 70 languages. Even the cynical New York Times said in an editorial, It is one of the few English lyrics that make the same powerful appeal to all nationalities and faiths. A young Robert Frost found a copy of it in a Massachusetts book store and spent his cab fare to buy a copy. Eugene O Neill memorized all 183 lines of it. And the phrase with deliberate speed came to symbolize the Warren courts perception of the way their Brown V. Board of Education was intended to be implemented. Even Justice Frankfurter, in writing the majority opinion, made reference to it. At its heart, the poem is about the struggle found in our human relationship with God. It tells of how we seek God and yet run from 1
Him at the same time. It also tells of God s pursuit of us and His final capturing of the human soul. All of this is the essence of scripture, the entirety of the Bible captured into this one poem. Among the first pages of scripture, God asks, Where art thou? Then on its final page is found, The Spirit and the bide say, Come. And let him that hears say, Come. And let him that is thirsty come. The Bible is the story of a search. More often than not, when we speak of searching it is from our standpoint our need to find God as though He were the one lost. Yet there is truth in this, because the history of humanity is one of searching for the Living God. Plato said that in the beginning man and woman were one person, then when they became separated love became an appetite and a restless hunger urging them to be reunited. Just so, at the heart of every human being is an unnamed hunger to be at one again with his or her Creator with God. The search for beauty is the search for God, as is the search for truth. Some find God through suffering, or torment inner emptiness, or in times of deep need. Many have found Him through music, while others have come to Him through nature. St. Ignatius said that he found God while sitting by a stream. Billy Sunday proclaimed, I stumbled drunk into the Great Arms. George Henry Luce wrote, The history of philosophy is the history of man s long quest for God. The greater reality though, is the Divine s unrelenting quest for man. It is Adam hiding from Him among the trees, Jacob wrestling Him to the point of exhaustion, and Jonah running the other way. It is 2
God s relentless love for David in spite of the adultery, murder, and hypocrisy which David did in return. Yet when David finally did pray, Cast me not from your presence, and take not your holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation David was given another chance not only did God forgive him, but He also restored Him to the point where David preaches from every pulpit, sings from every song book, and his psalms are the pillow of comfort beneath the head of the dying. Peter ran from God. The honors, the distinctions, the special instructions that Christ gave to him were repaid with a huge denial that the two of them had ever met let alone being a follower. But God kept reaching and searching and called him back to feed His flock and to become a great leader of His church. God made of him a true rock no longer in name only, but in deed and in character as well. John Mark lost all heart to continue with Paul and Barnabas on their journey when the way became rough. So much so that Paul lost all confidence in John Mark and when leaving on their next journey did not want him to come along because he was too unreliable just could not believe that he would finish what he started. But he repented of his cowardice and weakness, was given another chance, and proved himself a useful and faithful tool for Christ. In one of the last messages we have from Paul, written from his prison in Rome, he asks Timothy to bring Mark with him, because Mark was a very useful and necessary piece of his ministry. St. Augustine ran hard to get away from God. At age 16 he left home and plunged into the abyss of a cesspool in which he continued 3
to wallow to the age of 31. God did not let him go and kept tugging at him through his mother Monica. Finally God brought Augustine to know Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. The rest is history the long struggle concluded and Augustine knelt at the foot of the Cross as one who was to do great things for Christ and His Kingdom. These are still accurate pictures of our restless generation. I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways down the nights and down the days with desperate haste, deliberate speed. The real truth about us, the real secret of our feelings, the true tempo of our culture, the tragedy of our life, is that we are not really attempting to find, but rather to flee to get away, to hide from the eyes of the Holy One. But we can never escape the inescapable. Always on the same path as we are on there is the sound of strong feet following after us. You can name His footsteps in your own life just as I can name them in mine. One of them is memory deep down memory half hidden and half forgotten, yet remembering a time when we were made a little less than God. Can that really ever be forgotten totally? Macneile Dixon said that this is what the fine arts are about at their heart. Music, poetry, painting are all humanities attempts to find and recapture this old ideal, like some lost chord, an attempt to put together that perfect combination of keys on the piano. Much is being said today about the rise of secular humanism and the abandonment of old, out-dated beliefs. But those beliefs have not abandoned us. They continue to lie buried in our minds and hearts like a dream which awakens at unexpected moments. I have always enjoyed the old Russian fable about a school girl who was raised as an 4
atheist. One of the questions on a test she was taking read: What is the inscription on the Sarmian Wall? She wrote: Religion is the opiate of the people. However, being unsure of her answer, she went to the wall following school to look and see if she was right. There she found the inscription: Religion is the opiate of the people. Turning to go home she sighed, Thank God, I got it right. Even under the frozen mind of human denial there stirs the memory half hidden, half remembered. Even when suppressed by the world governments, cultures, mores of the times Strong Feet will continue to follow after us. The absence of God and the emptiness of life are complaints which we hear all around today. Jesus makes life full we say. I came that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full we quote. We need to bring God back into our lives we preach. We are on a search, a quest to fill that void which we can never truly identify or name. But what if the truth of it is the other way around? What if everything which we interpret as being a sign of Divine absence is actually a sign of God s presence? What is a sense of guilt but proof that we are His children? What if misery is the surest sign of hope? What if sadness is really an invitation home? Or if discouragement and disillusion say that God is still in our heart? Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and restless are our hearts until they rest in Thee St. Augustine prayed. Have you ever considered that God just might pursue us the strongest through heresy those brilliant arguments which seek to convince that God does not exist just might be the surest proof we 5
have of His very existence. Question: Why is so much contemporary media filled with God talk? Why are so many people preoccupied with the tragic side of life, the victimization of men and women and children, the revolt against religion and the cutting out of God from culture? So much is being written and said about religion being finished. If that is true, then why not drop the subject? If God is dead then why keep talking about Him? Why all the talk about God by people who say they do not believe in Him? One of the most brilliant atheists of the 20 th century was Jean Paul Sartre. Why was he so preoccupied with God? He said that humanity must forget God, give up the search for God, and then then page after page of his writings are filled with his search for meaning, shaking his fist at the sky and justifying his case against the Almighty. We must forget God he said, and yet God haunted him and hunted him all of his days. Sartre believed that he was finished with God, but God was not finished with him. Martin Luther understood this ambivalence well, Nobody in this life is nearer to God than those who deny Him. He has no children more dear to Him than those like Job and Jacob who wrestle with him and cannot let Him go. Herein lies the truth of it: we try to get away, to run and to hide, but we cannot. Take the wings of the morning and fly to the ends of the earth and He is there. Make your bed in hell the hell of stupidity, the hell of sorrow, the hell of pain and He is there. Something greater than ourselves is coming after us, and because the world is round we have nowhere to hide. Because His love is great, 6
he will not let us get away. His goodness and mercy have followed us all the days of our lives. The old time preachers and theologians had a phrase for this prevenient grace. It means that God has been on this road of life long before we were and He is calling us to journey forward, holding us, guiding us, catching us, making the crooked a little straighter and the obstacles a little smoother; and that we look for Him on this road of ours and seek Him to help us only because He reached out to us first. He is the seeker and we are the sought how else do you explain the Cross? He is calling your name. Do you believe that He is distant or absent, hard to find and hiding? Or are you hiding from Him? Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, Save Me, save only Me? All which I took from thee I did but take, Not for thy harms, But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms. All which thy child's mistake Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home : Rise, clasp My hand, and come!" Halts by me that footfall : Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? "Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me." Amen. 7