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My sermon for Sunday, June 24, 2007  was based on the following scriptures:  1 Kings 19:1-18, Psalms 42, Isaiah 65:1-9, Galatians 3:23-29, and Luke 8:26-39.  These can be read in full by clicking here.

My thanks to my colleagues on Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary E-mail Discussion List: Jim McCrea, Beth Johnston, and especially Frank Fisher (to whom I am especially indebted for the sections on Elijah and the demoniac).

———-

Claude and Myrnie Hart are salt of the earth kind of people.
There were among the very first church members I met when I moved to Southern Lancaster County to become the pastor of Mt. Hope UMC.
Though I had served two years as an associate pastor at St. Mark’s,
a large suburban church outside Trenton, NJ,
and had a year of experience as a student minister at the Wesley Foundation at EKU, this was my first solo church.
Naturally, I was a little nervous and worried and anxious about how things would go. But I needn’t have been.
Claude and Myrnie took me under their wings almost immediately.
How do you like it out here in the country,
Myrnie asked me shortly after I had settled in.
And after having spent the last two years in New Jersey,
this old country boy from Kentucky had to admit that he liked it just fine.

In 1988 the Harts were already in their seventies,
but they were both still very active.
They had a huge vegetable garden and a small orchard behind their home.
I never lacked for fresh produce in the summer and fall.
Further, they invited me over to their home for dinner almost every other week or so.
Myrnie was Pennsylvania Dutch through and through,
and the meals she served were evidence of this.
They were always quite tasty,
even if the vegetables were a little overcooked for my taste.

I did make one major mistake when dining at their home once.
Myrnie served up some of her custard pie for dessert one evening.
To be blunt, it was nasty.
Much too eggy tasting for me - kinda like eating a very sweet scrambled egg mousse in a crust, without, however, the moussey goodness.
Of course I didn’t tell her that.
I told her it was delicious.
Imagine my chagrin then that from that meal on, whenever I ate at the Harts,
I was always served another piece of Myrnie’s delicious custard pie.

This, however, did not keep me away from the Harts.
Once or twice a week I would stop by their home and sit in their living room or out on the front porch swings and shoot the breeze with them.
I especially like to talk religion and church and theology with Claude.
He knew his Bible, was as sharp as a tack, and had a keen mind for details.
Claude had taught Sunday School for almost 40 years by then,
and he was the very definition of Christian, at least to me.
What I especially like about him was his ability to give voice,
not only to the certainties of his faith,
but also to the doubts he had.
One evening, while on the front porch,
watching the Sun go down after our supper and another slice of Myrnie’s custard pie,
Claude leaned toward me in the silence and said,
“You know, I’ve only asked God for two things in my life.
When my first boy was born,
all I asked was that he be healthy.
That was my only prayer.
But he when he was born,
we found out that he would be severely mentally and physically handicapped for his entire life.
At that time the only thing to do was to put him in an institution.
That’s what everyone did back then,
and we did it too.
He’s still there today.
The only other time I asked God for something was when my youngest boy was sent over to Vietnam.
All I wanted was for him to come back home alive.
This was my prayer for months,
until the day the soldiers drove down the road and pulled into my driveway and told me that he had been killed in action.”

After his confession, we sat in silence.
What more could be said, and what could I possibly say that would add anything to what Claude had just confided to me,
his young, inexperienced, still wet behind the ears, pastor?
After all, here was a man who had experienced a most profound disappointment with God,
and yet he had continued to serve this God for decades afterwards.
Sometimes silence  is the best, the most eloquent, response we can give.
To sit still, to be silent, and to let God enter into the silence in his own good time and way.

Of course, it took awhile for Elijah to come to this realization.
He is filled with disappointment, despair, and more than a little anger.
You see, God has let him down,
and now on top of all these other devastating emotions,
Elijah now also fears for his life.

At first it was merely a fear of Queen Jezebel.
For her husband King Ahab had told her how he’d killed Baal’s prophets.
Not being one to overlook a little thing like that,
she’d sent the prophet a fairly blunt message.
“So may the gods do to me, and more also,
if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.”

Knowing the extent of Jezebel’s power, Elijah believed her threat.
So away he went into the wilderness.
But he didn’t go quietly.
For suddenly all he’d been through,
combined with his uncertain future,
became a bit too much to handle.
So, being the mighty servant of God he was,
he did what came naturally to him . . . he started to whine.
“It is enough,” he cried, “Now,  O Lord, take away my life,
for I am no better than the prophets who’ve gone before me.”

We are told that the Lord heard his cries.
In fact, an angel, a messenger of the Lord came to him, fed him, not once but twice, and then sent him on his way.
For forty days and forty nights he traveled
until he reached a cave at the base of Mount Horeb,
also known as Mt. Sinai,
the very place where God gave Moses, the first prophet of all, the law,
and it  was here Elijah heard the Lord speak to him as well,
just like he had spoken to Moses so many years before.
“What are you doing here Elijah?”
And so, once again he poured out his sad story.
And for awhile perhaps he thought that God would yield to his plea for death.
For God ordered him to “go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord,
for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Knowing you could not see the Lord and live,
Elijah eagerly went out to meet his fate.

So now he stands on the mountain where Moses had once stood,
and while he still wishes for death,
no doubt he still fears its coming.
And at first his fears seemed confirmed as a great wind arises,
so strong it begins breaking the mountain’s stones to bits.
But the wind ceases and Elijah  realizes the Lord had not been in the wind.
Then a mighty earthquake shakes the earth, knocking him to his knees.
But the earthquake ceases.
And he knows that the Lord had not been in the earthquake.
Then a fire blazes up, consuming everything in its path.
But it too ends,
and he understands that the Lord had not been in the fire either.

And then, there is silence. . . a complete silence.
A silence the world has never known since before creation began.
Only then, out of the silence, does Elijah began to feel God’s presence.
Only there, in the midst of silence, does God speak,
calming his fears and sending him once again on his way,
on the Lord’s way.
And as he descends the mountain of the Lord
Elijah knows he will always walk securely in the hands of the Lord;
the Lord of the silence.

Silence is the one thing that the demoniac in Luke’s gospel has had no experience with for many years.
The name he has given himself is Legion,
which seems appropriate because it  reflects the constant voices he seems to
hear shouting in his ears.
The voices drive him to rip his clothes,
to run away into the wilderness,
and to live his life among those who’re already dead.

Maybe he lives in the tombs of the dead because he envies them their silence.
The dead can’t hear the constant clamoring that drives him to break his chains and run from those guarding him.
Maybe he even hopes that one day soon he too will be dead.
And then his mind will no longer be filled with the cacophony of noise that has driven him mad.

But then one day, someone new appears among the tombs.
He’s a person the mad man has heard of before.
He’s heard this Jesus can heal all kinds of people,
even those, like him, who are all but insane.
But the voices in the man’s head will not let him embrace Jesus.
Instead they lead him to scream,
“What have you to do with me, Son of the most high God?
I beg you, do not torment me.”
Please, please, do not torment me, he silently prays.
Go away. . . Don’t get my hopes up with the possibility of healing,
only to have them dashed once again by yet another descent into madness.

And then, the impossible happens, at least for this man.
Jesus looks into his eyes and in a commanding voice orders the noise and turmoil in the man’s mind to cease.
And for the first time in years, there is silence.
When the people of his village eventually find him,
he is sitting quietly at Jesus’ feet.
The man begs Jesus to let him follow along after him,
But instead Jesus tells the man, “Return to your home,”
“Go and declare how much God has done for you.”
And the man obeys . . . he goes and tells everyone he meets about his encounter with the Lord; the Lord of  silence.

And that brings us to today,
to this place that so many people over the years have called home.
To First UMC on Sunday morning, June 24th at around 10:00 am.
Those of you who have been here awhile remember the days of old,
when the church was filled to overflowing,
with hundreds, not dozens, of people filling the pews.
With hundreds more attending Sunday School,
and money enough to build this grand edifice,
this beautiful church,  as a testament to the Glory of God.

But as all of us here now know that the days of 300 or 400 attending First Church on Sunday mornings were over 40 years ago now,
and despite our best efforts,
nothing has stopped the slow decline in our numbers or our finances.
It would be easy enough for us to join in Elijah’s lament:
We have had enough, O Lord.
Just leave us alone, let us die in peace.
It would simple enough for us to add our voices to the voice of the Psalmist who cries:
When shall we behold the face of God?
Our tears have been our food day and night,
while people say to us continually, `Where is your God?’
We I remember how we once went with the throngs,
and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
a multitude keeping festival.
And so we say to God, our rock, `Why have you forgotten me?

As I look out over the pews this morning I can bring to mind so many of those who sat here 6 years ago at the beginning of my ministry here,
but who have died or who have moved away.
I am sure that each one of here can see some of those faces.
And we may very well  wonder why the empty places they have left behind have not been filled by others.
And we may even wonder why hasn’t God heard our prayers and rewarded all the hard work we have done to turn our congregation around.
It is easy to become discouraged or depressed or angry when we think about these things long enough.
It is even easy to become disappointed with God.
And we are left ponder what it is that we can do that will make any difference at all to our declining fortunes.

Years ago, Jim McCrea, a colleague of mine on the P-RCL, attended a conference that featured a speaker who had been a POW in Vietnam for almost six years.
In his speech this man talked about the fact that for most of those years,
he and the other prisoners were in solitary confinement.
And while over the years, the POWs developed some elaborate methods
of communicating with each other,
for the most part their time was spent pacing their small cells:
eight feet this way and eight feet back,
over and over, again and again.

During their imprisonment, the POWs had lots of time alone,
time to think and time to pray.
He said that even though some of the prisoners - himself included - underwent vicious tortures, the thing they found most difficult to endure was the loss of human companionship -
that is, simply having someone with whom to talk.
He said that none of the prisoners had been prepared for this kind of utter solitude.

As the war was winding down and the American government was
negotiating for the release of the prisoners,
leaders in the military expressed a great deal of concern about the potential mental and emotional damage that the POWs might have suffered by enduring this type of treatment for so many years.
And so it was that almost as soon as the former POWs boarded the plane for the flights home,
they began taking a comprehensive series of psychological tests to
determine the effects of their lengthy confinement.
Surprisingly, the results were overwhelmingly positive.
The psychiatrists found that, on the whole, the POWs were in better mental shape than the American population at large.
Follow-up studies have continually confirmed these findings.
In fact, statistics show that an impressively large percentage of returning
Vietnam prisoners have gone on to great success in their chosen
professions.

What was their secret?
It should come as no surprise that the speaker said they had learned to listen for the voice of God in the sounds of stillness and silence.
Some people might object that they really didn’t have any choice.
After all, there wasn’t anything else to do in solitary confinement except to build a relationship with God.
For that matter, most of them had no other means of escape from their cells except through prayer.
But the answer to this objection lies in the results these prisoners had.
Their ability to endure wartime prison and their later successes serve to demonstrate the practical power of working through one’s doubts and turning one’s life over to God.

Of course, most of the time unless people somehow feel backed into a hopeless situation like that of the POWs,
they are reluctant to put their faith completely on the line.
It is, after all, so much easier to just follow our instincts or to simply muddle through life, rather than to fully give God control of our lives.

In the new movie Evan Almighty, Morgan Freeman plays God.
In one scene, he appears to Evan’s wife Joan in the guise of a waiter and she really isn’t aware that he’s anything more than that.
She’s depressed and totally confused by the changes in her husband that
have been caused by his following God’s apparently crazy commands.
As Joan is trying to figure out what to do,
God-in-the-guise-of-the-waiter asks her,
“If someone asks God for patience, do you think God gives them patience or do you think God gives them an opportunity to have patience?
And if someone asks God for courage, do you think God gives them courage or do you think God gives them an opportunity to show courage?”

It’s an interesting question, since we tend to assume that God would give us what we ask for in the way we want it.
But sometimes that’s not the case at all.
Sometimes we have to simply accept whatever happens and continue to walk by faith.
And while walking by faith is probably the hardest thing we’re ever called to do as Christians, know this: our spiritual lives depend on it.

Probably the most comforting thing about the stories of Elijah and the man called Legion and psalmist is the fact that they teach us another lesson
as well:
We can know that whenever we enter our times of failure and frustration, God will come to us and comfort us just as he did with Elijah.
God will come with healing in his hands as he did for the demoniac.
God will come and answer our prayers in the silence,
if we allow that silence to turn our hearts and minds back to him.

When we examine our faith and stop to listen for God,
we can find new inspiration and energy for the work ahead.
We can rediscover a sense of the awesome power of God that is beyond all human comprehension.
And then, and only then, will we be able to echo the other words that the psalmist spoke in today’s reading:
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.
My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you
Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

And we do this by opening our hearts and minds and souls to the power of silence.
A silence in which we will encounter the God above all the other gods in our lives.
A silence that is, in fact, a prayer,
and in which and through which our very lives become prayers to God.

Today I ask you to risk an encounter with God in the silence.
Come and encounter in a deep and life changing way the only One who can hold you and this church securely on the path to the future.
Come and encounter the One who can heal any wound and sooth every pain.
Come and encounter the Lord of the silence.

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Technorati tags: 1 Kings 19:1-18, Psalms 42, Isaiah 65:1-9, Galatians 3:23-29, Luke 8:26-39, Elijah, Demoniac, demon possession, silence, sermon, lectionary, Pentecost 5, Proper7C, Ordinary 12C

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