One childhood game that seems to have survived from one generation to the next, even in this age of multiple electronic devices, is hide and seek. All of my grandchildren have enjoyed that game at some point in their childhood, including one who cracked me up by hiding her little brother in the clothes hamper and then proudly announcing to us that she put Ryan in the hamster! The game is fun – but only up to a point. The late great preacher Fred Craddock told a story about a great hiding place he found at his grandparents’ farm. He hid under the front porch of the old farm house and proudly told himself “They’ll never find me here.” Minutes went by, which began to seem like hours. The seeker ran by the front porch several times without ever looking under it, and Craddock says he suddenly found himself saying, “They’ll never find me here!!!”
The solution to that problem is figured out even by young children who start making subtle or not so subtle noises to reveal their presence. As adults however it is often much harder to be “found” when we are hiding from each other and even from ourselves. Why do we do that? To be able to live out the other qualities of a meaningful life we need the confidence that comes from being fully known and affirmed by one or more other people and ultimately by God. That’s intimacy.
Intimacy is a tricky word in our culture. It is laden with overtones of sexuality. We talk about undergarments as “intimate apparel.” Being intimate with another person is often code for having sex. For that reason I struggled with whether should use the Genesis 3 account of the fall for this sermon. We know the story: Adam and Eve disobey God and eat of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And suddenly they realize they are naked and make loin cloths for themselves. Next they hear God walking in the garden and they try to hide themselves.
This story is a way to explain why human life is full of sin and difficulties, but the reference to nakedness has confused people for centuries about “original sin. I want to suggest this story is really about a loss of intimacy. In order to understand that I invite you to make a mental leap to a deeper understanding of nakedness beyond the literal meaning. On an emotional and spiritual level nakedness is about being vulnerable and defenseless. It’s about being uncovered and unhidden in the eyes of God. Adam and Eve were playing hide and seek with God and of course they were quickly found. When it comes to God that old adage is especially true – “you can run, but you can’t hide.”
Adam and Eve are afraid and try to hide from God, but not because they have no clothes. We know that because they have already made their figgy loin cloths before this encounter with God. Their nakedness is of a much more serious variety. They are ashamed and afraid because they are naked and defenseless before God in their disobedience to a direct order. They now know the prime evil, which is not about sex, but is alienation from their creator. They are afraid and ashamed. And so they try to hide from God, which of course is foolish. We live in a cyber society where our location is tracked 24/7 by GPS and countless apps in our phones that are smarter than we are. We leave a trail of where we’ve been and what we value every time we use a credit card. But from day one there has been an even more powerful force in our lives that knows where we are and what we do all the time. It’s not GPS but G-O-D. We cannot hide our mistakes from God. Just ask Ryan Lochte how well trying to cover up a stupid mistake with a lie can turn into an international incident! We all make mistakes because we are all fallible. And yet how much time and valuable energy do we spend trying to hide who we are from God, others and even from ourselves?
My friend Mebane McMahon recommended an excellent book on intimacy to me and I highly pass that recommendation on to you. The book is “The 7 levels of Intimacy” by Matthew Kelly. Relax, I am not going to try to cover all 7 levels of intimacy today and can only begin to scratch the surface. But the fact that Kelly identifies 7 levels and has written a whole book on the topic is an indication of what a complex subject intimacy is.
We like to simplify complex topics, which is one of the reasons that it is tempting to just equate intimacy with sexuality. But being in a relationship, even a sexual one, does not guarantee the safety and security we feel in a truly intimate relationship where we feel loved and affirmed unconditionally. We can all be lonely in a huge crowd or sitting in a church service if we are hiding from God and others.
When I was much younger and even more naïve than I am now I had no idea of the difference between sex and real intimacy. I still believed the fairy tale notion of finding one true love that would meet the need I couldn’t even yet identify as intimacy. When I fell in love in college with the woman who became my first wife there was a popular song, “The Theme from a Summer Place,” that seemed to capture what we were expecting and hoping to find in our relationship. The song lyrics say this about that summer place:
“There are no gloomy skies
When seen through the eyes
Of those who are blessed with love
And the sweet secret of
A summer place
Is that it’s anywhere
When two people share
All their hopes
All their dreams
All their love.”
Isn’t that what we all hope from in our most significant relationships – whether they are sexual or not? Someone with whom we can share ALL of our hopes and dreams and love. And yet how often are we disappointed because most relationships don’t live up to that ideal? Ironically, when I recently googled the movie for which that song was written, I discovered that it is all about broken relationships and extramarital affairs, things that happen when we start looking for love in all the wrong places.
Intimacy, like all the marks of a meaningful life, requires work and a lot of it. That’s because love is not a feeling, it’s a choice. We can learn to control how we deal with feelings and impulses, but we can’t determine when they appear, often in unexpected and uncomfortable situations. Intimacy with others and with God requires conscious choices and actions. Like Michael Phelps or Simone Biles have to work hard and dedicate themselves for years to their goals for Olympic gold, intimacy is a quality of life that requires discipline and determination. Too many relationships fall short of gold medal status because we lack the discipline to work on the relationship when it gets difficult and uncomfortable.
The same is true of having an intimate relationship with God. Jesus’ followers are called disciples and that word comes from the same root as the word discipline. All disciples of Christ in 30 A.D. or 2016 must make a choice to follow Jesus each and every day. It’s not a one and done deal. The forces of worldly temptations for material rewards or cheap pleasures all pull us every day toward the wide and easy road that leads to destruction.
I decided to use the Genesis 3 story to talk about intimacy primarily because Kelly points out in “The 7 Levels of Intimacy” that shame is one of the greatest enemies of intimacy that must be overcome. Chapter 3 of Genesis, commonly called “The Fall,” describes what happens when Adam and Eve disobey God and get caught. Unlike a game of hide and seek, the stakes here are existentially higher. Eve and Adam make the classic mistake we often resort to when we screw up; they play the blame game. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent. Instead of simply confessing their transgressions and asking for forgiveness, they continue to try and hide, and the consequences are severe. Because of their disobedience they are evicted from paradise – where everything they needed was provided in abundance. Instead they are forced to grow their own food and survive by the sweat of their brow. The pain of childbirth is greatly increased for womankind forever and she is made subservient to the rule of her husband. And finally they are made aware of their own mortality. Ouch!
Pretty gruesome stuff if the story ended there, right? Unfortunately many of us get stuck in our spiritual development with that image of a judgmental God, and when we do we cannot ever achieve true intimacy with God because we are afraid of the consequences if we have to come before God naked and defenseless. Worse yet, the shame and guilt we all carry in some degree also gets in the way big time when it comes to human relationships. If we are using up a lot of psychic and emotional energy playing hide and seek from God, we simply to do not have enough gas left in our tanks to create and maintain an intimate relationship with other people, no matter how much we love them or they love us.
But here’s the Good News – the Judeo-Christian salvation story doesn’t end with Genesis 3. The rest of our Scriptures tell a glorious story of redemption. Like a parent ticked off with disobedient children, God puts Adam and Eve in time-out. He stations Cherubim to guard the gates of paradise so the naughty children can’t sneak back in. But like disappointed parents or partners or true friends, God can’t and doesn’t give up on the wayward ones. Genesis doesn’t say this, but I’ll bet this is the first time it was ever said, “This hurts me more than it does you.” And so the other 1986 chapters of the Bible tell the story of God’s persistent, faithful efforts to redeem and restore an intimate relationship with humankind. Why1986 chapters? Because we are slow learners. We keep trying to play hide and seek to cover our nakedness while God bails us out of one mess after another.
Intimacy is the key that unlocks the gate to paradise and salvation. Intimacy with God is the truth that sets us free to be open and vulnerable and honest with ourselves, with others and with God. This truth is described repeatedly in different ways in the Bible, but it boils down to the same basic ingredients – trust, honesty, confession, and forgiveness and grace.
Ephesians 4 puts it this way: “But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” Intimate relationships are those where we trust each other enough to speak the truth in love. That’s different than brutal honesty that flows when we allow our emotions to rule our tongues. It’s different than “telling it like it is,” without regard for the other person’s feelings or perspective. Balancing honesty with the sensitivity and compassion of love is sorely lacking in many social media postings and much of our political discourse, but it is absolutely necessary for the most important relationships we have with loved ones and with God.
That kind of openness and honesty is not a New Testament creation – even in the Hebrew Scriptures where God is often portrayed as a judge to be feared there are glimpses of grace. The prophet Isaiah in the very first chapter has God speaking to his rebellious children and says, “Come now, let us argue it out, though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” In other words, don’t play hide and seek – come to me, no matter what your sins and they can be forgiven. My favorite New Testament verse about the power of confession is in I John 1:9. “If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” No sin is bigger or wider than God’s mercy; so what are we hiding from?
I wonder how different Adam and Eve’s story would have turned out if they had known that simple truth about intimacy. We’ll never know – but what we do know is the sacred truth that sets us free to live meaningful lives. That doesn’t’ mean it is simple or easy to live it. The world still is playing one giant game of hide and seek based on deceit, manipulation and false pride. But God will provide us with the faith and courage and discipline to play a different game–to stop hiding and trust God enough to confess each time we fall short of the gold medal. God will pick us up and dust us off to try again, but we have to be brave and honest enough to ask for help.
So my friends, church is not a place to play hide and seek. It’s safe to be real here without fear of judgment. So blow your friends minds – tell them next Sunday you’re going to church to be intimate with a few hundred of your friends!
