| Note: No sermon is quite the same when you read it. You miss the inflections, the expression that you gain in the hearing. The words below are only a close approximation of the sermon, taken from handwritten notes. Nevertheless, the words (as best as can be deciphered!) are shared with you here. The Webmeister |
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost O Lord, long ago you asked a question of a man named Elijah as he crouched in a cave alone on a mountain lost in his own world of anger, self pity and depression. In a quiet voice you asked him, "what are you doing here Elijah?" O Lord, may your voice also come to us whenever we fall into our own moments of anger and self pity and depression. May we also have our lives put back on the path of your call to do your will and in so doing find new life and peace. As a student of human history, philosophy, and literature and as a student of listening, I know that human beings in all times and places have made feeling sorry for themselves an art form. I myself, modestly consider myself to be a master of this art form. I believe my wife can readily attest to my particular genius. Feeling sorry for oneself, feeling like you have been dealt a bad hand by fate or God, feeling like other people have it easier than you do, feeling that you are a victim of circumstances beyond your control, feeling like you have done nothing to deserve your situation. In all these areas I would compare myself favorably with almost anyone. A bumper sticker Jimmy brought me back from Washington D. C. says "the more you complain, the longer God makes you live." My mother likes to remember the time as a child that I somehow was running down a hall in our house and as I turned a corner I ran into it head first. As I held my head I blamed my mother for not having round corners in the house. That's another wonderful thing about feeling sorry for yourself; it doesn't have to be logical and everything is always someone else's fault. I remember the time not so many years ago when my garage which is filled with my woodworking tools was flooding during one of Houston's really bad rains. My wife Ginny to this day will tell people that I furiously blamed her for the flood. Well, Dr. Neil Frank was too far away at that moment and Ginny was handy. The thing is that in those moments of stress, playing the victim, feeling sorry for oneself, blaming someone or something else for your situation feels so good and it is so self destructive. The writer Frederic Buechner has written about anger: "Of all the deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor the last toothsome morsel, both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back. In many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you." Anger seems for a moment to give you energy; the trouble is, it is false energy that wears off like a caffeine buzz and leaves you nothing but depression. And that's how a lot of people live, moving from anger to depression and back, lost in self pity. It's addictive. It happens to the "best" people as well as those whom we think of as the "worst." The Old Testament story today continues to tell from last week the story of such a man. His name was Elijah. Elijah, with Moses, is one of the greatest heroes of the Bible. But the Bible is a most wonderful and honest book about human nature and Elijah, like Moses, is one of the most self pitying, victim playing folks you'd ever want to meet. And yet, like King David and Moses and a thousand others in Scripture, he passed beyond his self absorbtion and became a greater person. Elijah worshipped God during a time in ancient Israel when worshipping could get you killed. The Kingdom of Israel in about 850 BC was ruled by a man named Ahab. When he was young, Ahab's father, the old King had arranged a marriage for him with the daughter of the King of Tyre in southern Lebanon. This wedding between Prince Ahab of Israel and Princess Jezebel of Tyre was to strengthen trade and bring economic growth. Jezebel came to live in Israel but she also came determined to bring the culture and religion of her homeland with her. When Ahab became King she ruthlessly used the power as Queen of Israel to not only promote her religion but to persecute those who followed the God of Israel. Now among these "followers" of God the greatest was a wandering prophet who opposed King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. They became his sworn enemies. Jezebel encouraged Ahab to ignore or even flaunt the ancient covenant traditions of his people. Last week we heard how she had a small Israelite landholder named Naboth falsely accused and murdered so his land could be seized by Ahab for land adjoining his summer palace in Jezreel. Finally things came to a head with a challenge issued by Elijah to have a "contest" on Mt. Carmel. With the people of Israel watching, Elijah called on God and triumphed over the priests of Baal. And in that moment of vindication and exhaltation Elijah and the people of Israel rose up and killed the foreign priests. Elijah felt that his life and its hardship had been rewarded by God. At this moment in the story, today's reading begins. Rather than collapsing, the efforts of Queen Jezebel were redoubled. She sent a message to Elijah telling him that he was on the very top of her "hit" list and suddenly instead of triumph, Elijah is forced to flee for his very life with the soldiers of the King at his heels. He fled south across the border of Israel into the Kingdom of Judah but at that moment in history, the Kingdom of Ahab was much more powerful than the Kingdom of Judah and if Elijah had been arrested he would have been sent back to Jezebel. So leaving all his followers in the town of Beersheba in southern Judah, he fled on alone into the Niger Desert. As night fell that first day, alone he threw himself down under a small desert tree and prayed this prayer to God: "It is enough! Take away my life now O lord, because I am no better than my ancestors." Then he fell into a restless sleep and as he slept, in his dreams an angel touched him and told him to wake up and eat. And when he woke he looked and saw a small loaf of bread baked on a hot desert stove and a small pottery jar of water. This happened again and again as he kept walking south alone. Finally he came to the southern part of the Sinai Peninsula to the mountain where some 400 years before, God had made a covenant with Moses and the Hebrew slaves who had escaped from Egypt. Elijah crept up into the mountain and found a cave where he sat waiting for death, him mind full of anger, and self pity and despair. It was there that the story simply says "a voice" came to him. And the voice asked him, "What are you doing here Elijah?" And at that moment all the built up anger and pain in Elijah bursts out against God to whom in his heart of hearts Elijah probably blamed for his troubles. And he cried, "I have been fighting for you Lord but everybody else has forsake you. They have killed your prophets and only I am left and they are hunting me!" Whew! And does the voice of God respond to Elijah by saying: "You're kidding! Why wasn't this brought to my attention. You just sit here and rest while I go smite a few people!" Does he say, "Poor, poor Elijah. You've really gotten a bad deal and I'm soooo sorry for you." No! The voice simply said, "Go! Stand on the mountain and wait for me." And of course you know the old story. Elijah sees and hears sequentially a great wind storm, an earthquake and a fire, but the story says that God was not in these 3 manifestations of disaster and power. And only Elijah could have told this story to those who kept it alive so it could one day be written down for us to read. He still waited at the mouth of the cave and then he heard absolutely nothing. Our translation today says Elijah heard the "sound of sheer silence." That's an oxymoron. How can you hear nothing. col remamah racah Sometimes the sound that came to Elijah is translated as a "still small voice," a whispering murmur. What in this moment of awe did God say to Elijah and what by extension might he say to us? The voice repeated so quietly that it must have echoed in the silence of Elijah' agitated soul. "What are you doing here Elijah?" All the sound and fury of life falls away when we stand surrounded by the sound of God's sheer silence. And then like any human being practicing the art of self pity, Elijah begins again his rehearsed litany of anger and despair. Isn't that the way it always is? We all think our struggle is, by definition, the most important struggle of all. Those we are struggling with are at best stupid or maybe at worst even evil. And then something happens if we are willing to listen, to get up and walk to the mouth of the cave we are hiding from the world in, to listen with all our heart, body, mind and soul. And to try and "be still and know" that God is there. The voice that spoke out of silence to Elijah did not respond with anger or pity to his tale of woe. God had already saved Elijah's life, he had already sent his angel to give him food and water in the desert and now God needs him to go back out into life and do his ministry. Life isn't all about Elijah. Life isn't all about us. Life is about God. His name given to Moses is, "I am." "I am life." And God's got things for us to do and that does not include sitting in a cave, hiding from life, licking our wounds, feeling as if we have been unfairly treated. It means going back into life. God asks everyone of us today and asks us everyday the same question the still small voice asked Elijah. What are you doing here? May we all find a greater sanity and peace as we follow in his service. Let us go forth into this world always rejoicing in the power of the Spirit. Amen. The Reverend James T. Tucker June 24, 2007 *Past sermons may be found here. |
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