Proper 7 C
Transcribed from a
sermon given on
June 20, 2010
By Rev. Valerie Ann
Hart
At St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
Luke:26-39
Psalm 42
1 Kings 19:1-15a
Galatians
What is it that you
long for? What do you really yearn
for? A lot of people might say they want
more money, but is that what they really want?
Do they really yearn for more money?
If that’s what people really yearn for, then once they had some money they’d
be satisfied, but I’ve yet to find somebody who said, “Well, as soon as I have
‘X’ amount, then I’ll be fine.” There’s
always something more. So, what is it
that someone’s yearning for when they say they want money? Well, maybe they want security. Maybe they want toys. But is that what you’re really yearning
for? What is it that your heart really
wants?
The Psalm today is so beautiful, “As a deer longs for the water brooks, so longs my heart for you, O God.” You think of a deer out in the middle of the summer, and it’s hot, and it’s thirsty, and all it wants is some fresh, cool water – that yearning. What is it in your heart that you really yearn for?
The Psalm today is so beautiful, “As a deer longs for the water brooks, so longs my heart for you, O God.” You think of a deer out in the middle of the summer, and it’s hot, and it’s thirsty, and all it wants is some fresh, cool water – that yearning. What is it in your heart that you really yearn for?
In the Gospel story
today we hear of Jesus going across the Sea of Galilee leaving the Jewish area
and going into an area that was Gentile, to a Roman city, one of the Decapolis.
It was a place where the people were were called Hellenists or Greeks, which
meant they worshiped lots of different gods, they had a pagan sensibility, not
a Jewish sensibility. Jesus, numerous times, goes into areas where there are no
Jewish people around
When he gets there, he encounters someone who
is described as being possessed by demons.
That was the diagnosis in that time.
It was a time period where people were very literal in how they
interpreted things. These days, we would
probably diagnose this person as having schizophrenia or multiple personality
disorder. We know with schizophrenia people hear voices. Often people with mental disorders hear
voices, and sometimes these voices that tell them to do things that aren’t good
for them.
So, this person was hearing voices in his head that told him to rip his clothes off, voices that told him to break his bonds, voices that drove him away from his home. In that time period, the only way they could understand such behavior was that those voices represented beings in his mind, demons that had possessed him. He had all of these voices going on, voices that weren’t good for him, and my guess was that what he yearned for was some peace and quiet, and that’s what Jesus gave him. He quieted those voices. He stilled the voices so that he could listen to the truth within him, and put clothes on, and sit quietly, and rejoin society.
We all know what it’s like to have those voices. If you’ve ever gone through a period of time where you’ve been depressed, you may have found that you are thinking like a broken record about something that’s concerning you. You know - things are terrible, and they’re gonna get worse. Oh, things are terrible, and they’re gonna get worse. And it doesn’t really matter what the particular thing is, but the mind just keeps going round and round. Somebody may have hurt you. You might be afraid of something, but it’s like a voice in your mind that you can’t control. We’ve all felt that way. Or we’ve all had experiences where we’re trying to make a decision, and it seems like there’s an argument going on inside of us, different voices talking.
So, we’ve had smaller experiences of the extreme experience of this person that Jesus healed. What Jesus gave him was he quieted the voices within so that he was able to receive the love and care and healing of Christ.
So, this person was hearing voices in his head that told him to rip his clothes off, voices that told him to break his bonds, voices that drove him away from his home. In that time period, the only way they could understand such behavior was that those voices represented beings in his mind, demons that had possessed him. He had all of these voices going on, voices that weren’t good for him, and my guess was that what he yearned for was some peace and quiet, and that’s what Jesus gave him. He quieted those voices. He stilled the voices so that he could listen to the truth within him, and put clothes on, and sit quietly, and rejoin society.
We all know what it’s like to have those voices. If you’ve ever gone through a period of time where you’ve been depressed, you may have found that you are thinking like a broken record about something that’s concerning you. You know - things are terrible, and they’re gonna get worse. Oh, things are terrible, and they’re gonna get worse. And it doesn’t really matter what the particular thing is, but the mind just keeps going round and round. Somebody may have hurt you. You might be afraid of something, but it’s like a voice in your mind that you can’t control. We’ve all felt that way. Or we’ve all had experiences where we’re trying to make a decision, and it seems like there’s an argument going on inside of us, different voices talking.
So, we’ve had smaller experiences of the extreme experience of this person that Jesus healed. What Jesus gave him was he quieted the voices within so that he was able to receive the love and care and healing of Christ.
We all know those
voices. They’re very familiar. Father’s Day may even bring up some of those
voices, after all. How many of us walk around and have our father on one
shoulder and our mother on the other. Sometimes they’re whispering, “Good job,
great. I’m glad to see you doing so
well.” And other times they go, “I can’t
believe you did that.”
We carry within us lots of different voices, which brings us to the Old Testament reading where Elijah is in the cave waiting for God. Now, let me give you a little background of how he came to this situation. There was a conflict within Israel between worshiping Yahweh, the one God, or worshipping the other gods like Baal and other idols. When you read the Old Testament this conflict goes on for centuries where one side gets stronger and than the other. At this point the king had married a worshipper of Baal, Jezebel, and Baal was taking ascendancy. Worshippers of these various “gods” would make idols. They would make a cow or some other idol, and then they would go and worship it and thought that that temple and that idol represented God. Other times they would worship on a hill because they thought that was how to connect with God – or a pillar or a tree.
So there was this conflict, and Elijah was speaking up and the representing Yahweh. They to have a big contest. This was the Superbowl of contests between prophets, and you probably remember it from Sunday School or reading the Bible. It’s quite a story. Elijah challenged the prophets and priests of Baal to a competition, and they got two bulls to offer to their god, and one bull was cut in half and put on wood to be offered to Baal. Then Elijah said go offer that to Baal but don’t light the fire; let Baal do it. If he’s god, if Baal is so powerful, let god take the offering. So, the followers and priests of Baal spent all day chanting and singing and praying and dancing around this sacrifice that just sat there, and nothing happened. Then Elijah took the other bull and put it on some wood, and he told them to pour some water over it to make it extra hard. Then Elijah prayed to Yahweh, to the one tru God, and Yahweh sent down fire to burn the offering and consumed it.
So the people of Israel realized that Yahweh is a real God who can really do something, and they grabbed all the priests and prophets of Baal and gathered them together. Now this is the part of the story that’s really hard for us to read because Elijah had them all killed. Well, of course, Jezebel didn’t like that, so Jezebel – this is where the reading comes in – says, well, I’m gonna kill Elijah for doing that. Elijah is scared, and he runs off into the wilderness. He is there waiting for God. At one point he gets the sense that God is coming. And so he waits, and then there is this huge storm, this windstorm like a hurricane. Things are being blown over. It’s very dramatic, and the scripture says, “But God was not in the wind.” And then there was an earthquake, and the whole world trembled, “but God was not in the earthquake.”
Now the worshippers of idols would have considered these as omens that represented god, but not for Elijah. God was not in the wind. God was not in the earthquake. And even when the fire came, Elijah knew that God was not in the fire. Elijah knew that God was not just in dramatic things. “And then” – and in this translation, the New Revised Standard Version translation - it says, “And then came the sound of sheer silence.” I love that alliteration, “the sound of sheer silence.” You may have heard it in the King James Version as “a still, small voice,” or, “a quiet whisper.” But I really like this “sound of sheer silence.” God is in the silence. God is in the silence.
Think about it. If you have a friend, and you go out to coffee, and at coffee they talk nonstop. They don’t even breathe. They just keep talking, and they tell you about their children, and they tell you about their grandchildren, and then they tell you about the movie they’ve seen, and then they talk about politics, but they never listen to you because they’re too busy talking about themselves, and you’d really love to tell them something that you think might be helpful for them to hear, but they’re just talking on and on, and they don’t even have time to drink the coffee because they have so much to say, and by the time your coffee is over you’re exhausted listening to them, but you haven’t said a single word. It’s not much of a friendship, is it?
But that’s what our relationship with God is often like. When we sit with God how much time do we spend chattering, and how much time do we spend really listening to God? God speaks to us in that still, small voice. God is known to us in those moments of sheer silence. If you’ve ever tried to quiet your mind, if you’ve ever tried to sit still, you’ll notice, like when we have a brief moment of silence before the service, the first thing you’ll notice is all the sounds outside. You’ll hear the sound – the buzzing of the lights, and the sound of the birds and cars going by, and then you’ll start noticing your body, and how it doesn’t like the pews ‘cause they’re, kind of, uncomfortable, and then you maybe have an itch here or there, and then you’ll start thinking, and you’ll notice all the voices in your mind. One goes, “Oh, gosh. How long are we gonna have to sit in silence? When is this gonna be over? “Gee,” you know, “after church we need to stop at the grocery store. Now, what did I need? I needed” – And then it’s, “Well, what am I gonna make for dinner, or I have this to-do list. It’s Father’s Day. Hopefully I won’t have to actually do it today.” And, you know, you have this whole chatter that goes on, all those voices.
We carry within us lots of different voices, which brings us to the Old Testament reading where Elijah is in the cave waiting for God. Now, let me give you a little background of how he came to this situation. There was a conflict within Israel between worshiping Yahweh, the one God, or worshipping the other gods like Baal and other idols. When you read the Old Testament this conflict goes on for centuries where one side gets stronger and than the other. At this point the king had married a worshipper of Baal, Jezebel, and Baal was taking ascendancy. Worshippers of these various “gods” would make idols. They would make a cow or some other idol, and then they would go and worship it and thought that that temple and that idol represented God. Other times they would worship on a hill because they thought that was how to connect with God – or a pillar or a tree.
So there was this conflict, and Elijah was speaking up and the representing Yahweh. They to have a big contest. This was the Superbowl of contests between prophets, and you probably remember it from Sunday School or reading the Bible. It’s quite a story. Elijah challenged the prophets and priests of Baal to a competition, and they got two bulls to offer to their god, and one bull was cut in half and put on wood to be offered to Baal. Then Elijah said go offer that to Baal but don’t light the fire; let Baal do it. If he’s god, if Baal is so powerful, let god take the offering. So, the followers and priests of Baal spent all day chanting and singing and praying and dancing around this sacrifice that just sat there, and nothing happened. Then Elijah took the other bull and put it on some wood, and he told them to pour some water over it to make it extra hard. Then Elijah prayed to Yahweh, to the one tru God, and Yahweh sent down fire to burn the offering and consumed it.
So the people of Israel realized that Yahweh is a real God who can really do something, and they grabbed all the priests and prophets of Baal and gathered them together. Now this is the part of the story that’s really hard for us to read because Elijah had them all killed. Well, of course, Jezebel didn’t like that, so Jezebel – this is where the reading comes in – says, well, I’m gonna kill Elijah for doing that. Elijah is scared, and he runs off into the wilderness. He is there waiting for God. At one point he gets the sense that God is coming. And so he waits, and then there is this huge storm, this windstorm like a hurricane. Things are being blown over. It’s very dramatic, and the scripture says, “But God was not in the wind.” And then there was an earthquake, and the whole world trembled, “but God was not in the earthquake.”
Now the worshippers of idols would have considered these as omens that represented god, but not for Elijah. God was not in the wind. God was not in the earthquake. And even when the fire came, Elijah knew that God was not in the fire. Elijah knew that God was not just in dramatic things. “And then” – and in this translation, the New Revised Standard Version translation - it says, “And then came the sound of sheer silence.” I love that alliteration, “the sound of sheer silence.” You may have heard it in the King James Version as “a still, small voice,” or, “a quiet whisper.” But I really like this “sound of sheer silence.” God is in the silence. God is in the silence.
Think about it. If you have a friend, and you go out to coffee, and at coffee they talk nonstop. They don’t even breathe. They just keep talking, and they tell you about their children, and they tell you about their grandchildren, and then they tell you about the movie they’ve seen, and then they talk about politics, but they never listen to you because they’re too busy talking about themselves, and you’d really love to tell them something that you think might be helpful for them to hear, but they’re just talking on and on, and they don’t even have time to drink the coffee because they have so much to say, and by the time your coffee is over you’re exhausted listening to them, but you haven’t said a single word. It’s not much of a friendship, is it?
But that’s what our relationship with God is often like. When we sit with God how much time do we spend chattering, and how much time do we spend really listening to God? God speaks to us in that still, small voice. God is known to us in those moments of sheer silence. If you’ve ever tried to quiet your mind, if you’ve ever tried to sit still, you’ll notice, like when we have a brief moment of silence before the service, the first thing you’ll notice is all the sounds outside. You’ll hear the sound – the buzzing of the lights, and the sound of the birds and cars going by, and then you’ll start noticing your body, and how it doesn’t like the pews ‘cause they’re, kind of, uncomfortable, and then you maybe have an itch here or there, and then you’ll start thinking, and you’ll notice all the voices in your mind. One goes, “Oh, gosh. How long are we gonna have to sit in silence? When is this gonna be over? “Gee,” you know, “after church we need to stop at the grocery store. Now, what did I need? I needed” – And then it’s, “Well, what am I gonna make for dinner, or I have this to-do list. It’s Father’s Day. Hopefully I won’t have to actually do it today.” And, you know, you have this whole chatter that goes on, all those voices.
How can we hear the
whisper of God through all those voices?
God is speaking to us always with love and care and support and wisdom,
but the noise sometimes keeps us from hearing.
God is not out there in the idols.
God is in the sheer silence, in the still, small voice, and the gift of
healing we can receive from Christ is that peace that passes understanding,
that peace that quiets the worry, that quiets the concern, that quiets all
those voices and gives us a chance to just be with God because as the deer
longs for the water brooks, our souls long for the living God.
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