Where do you get that living water?

Scripture: John 4:1-14

Coffeehouse style worship

Emma Dobson

           

Where do you get that living water?  I think the Samaritan woman asks a good question.  It’s been hot lately, and I’ve been getting thirsty. I’m betting it’s not just me who’s been getting thirst either.  So, thirsty brothers and sisters, where do we get that living water? 

           To find it, it might be helpful to know what we’re looking for.  I hope it’s not to much of a leap to say that Jesus isn’t speaking literally in this passage.  Jesus is not talking about the kind of water that we can put in a glass and drink.  Jesus is talking about spiritual nourishment.  He uses the metaphor of water because it’s one all of us can understand.  We all know what it’s like to be physically thirsty.  And, I’d bet that we all know what it’s like to be spiritually thirsty as well.  We wouldn’t be sitting here this morning if we weren’t spiritually thirsty. 

            And why are we thirsty?  Not because we’ve not drunk in the spiritually nourishing living water, but rather because drinking of the living water is not a one time event.  Though we often hear it implied in the reading of this text, Jesus never says that one drink of living water is enough to quench thirst forever.  What he says is “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”  Jesus uses the words will and will become.  This is both present and future tense.  Jesus promises us that, eventually, we will be satisfied by the spiritual nourishment he offers.  Jesus will live in us, and eventually, will transform and give us life eternal.

            We aren’t supposed to drink once and stop.  We live in a world that is parched by sin, and we thirst because it parches us too.  We need to keep drinking the nourishment that Jesus offers us.  It is only by this continued drinking that, eventually, we will be filled, we will be transformed, and we will have eternal life. 

            So where do we get this living water- the water that will fill us, transform us, and lead us to eternal life?  We were born from sacred living water, and we breathed its vapor in at our first breath.  At our baptisms, we were washed in living water.  We drink living water each time we gather to worship, to learn more about God’s word, to enjoy each others’ company.  We drink more living water when we read our Bibles, when we pray, and when we care for one another.

            And yes, we still get spiritually thirsty.  So this morning, I invite you to take satisfy that spiritual thirst a little bit more, in a different way.  I will have some meditative music playing, and if that’s spiritually nourishing for you, I invite you, to sit and listen or pray as it plays.  If you’d like, as you feel moved, come forward to the bowl of our baptismal font up front.  I will offer a blessing to you, and pour some water over your hands as a reminder of the living water you’ve already drunk and will continue to drink on your spiritual journey.  We’ll conclude this time of drinking of the living water together with a pray.  So now, let the Spirit guide you to the prayer, meditation, or movement towards the font that is most nourishing for you.

Blessing: The holy living water is around you and within you.  From your birth to your baptism to this moment, you have been drinking it in.  Drink deeply, and you will be transformed into a spring gushing up to eternal life in Christ.

 

Concluding Prayer: Nourishing Spirit, who hovered over the waters at creation’s birth, who descended in the form of a dove at Jesus’ baptism, who poured our under the signs of fire and wind at Pentecost, nourish us today.  Wash over us, fill us, renew us, and satisfy our thirst bit by bit as we continue to drink of you today, and every day.  Amen 

Luke 8:26-39

            His name wasn’t really John, but I’ll call him that any way.  John was in his 60’s, and he’d had a hard life.  He was in and out of prison when he was younger, but had managed to stay out for the past 20 years straight.  He had been in gangs, and it was kind of nebulous if he still had some connection to one or not.  But now, he really wanted to turn his life around.  He had found a nice woman.  He wanted to settle down, and leave the rougher parts of his past behind him.  What he was struggling with now was drug addiction.  The details aren’t important, but John was using some large amounts of some very powerful, dangerous, and illegal stuff.  He’d been going to NA- narcotics anonymous, for those of you who aren’t familiar- and he’d had some success staying clean for short periods of time. 

            But there was a problem.  John could give up his drug of choice when it was just him and his significant other.  But not when his family or friends were around.  His family and friends were used to John the addict.  They had crafted their whole lives and relationships around him being a certain way.  They knew how he acted when he was getting the drug.  They knew how he acted when he was high on the drug.  They knew how he acted after he’d come down.  And they knew just how they were supposed to act in all these situations.  They were comfortable with it, and they didn’t want to have to change because he suddenly felt like changing. Instead of being excited for him, his friends and family were angry, confused, and afraid.  And, because of their fear of change, they ended up either pushing him away, or pushing him right back to that drug he wanted to badly to quit.  They preferred the chains of addiction to the discomfort of change.

            His name wasn’t really James, but I’ll call him that anyway.  I don’t know how old he was, and I don’t know much about his past.  But he was possessed by demons, and they’d been torturing him for long enough that everyone knew it.  He was living among the tombs now, if you could call what he had a life.  He was kept chained up, and there was even someone there to guard him.  But, even those precautions weren’t enough.  The demons still got to him.  He would break free of his chains sometimes, and the demons would get him to run even further away from the people who used to be his family or friends.

            And then this man showed up.  Jesus showed up.  Jesus was different, and the man we’re calling “James” knew it right away.  He knew who Jesus was.  First of all, Jesus was a Jewish man, and Jewish people weren’t supposed to be anywhere near him.  They weren’t supposed to be around dead bodies, and he lived surrounded by dead bodies.  Jewish people weren’t supposed to be around pigs, and he was surrounded by a herd of pigs as well.  Second, Jesus wasn’t just any Jewish man.  He was, as the demons knew, the son of God.  Certainly, the son of God wouldn’t want anything to do with a demon possessed man.  Demons and God aren’t exactly best friends.  And, regular people didn’t want anything to do with James anyway.  Why would this Jewish man, the son of God, have anything to do with him?  Jesus must be there to torture him, James and his demons decided.

            But this isn’t what Jesus did.  Instead, Jesus set the man free from his demons.  This was big news.  So people started to come back to see James.  His family, and his former friends, maybe.  But, instead of being happy that he was newly free of what had been torturing him for so long, we read that they were afraid.  Like John’s family and friends were used to his drug addiction, the people who knew James were used to his demon possession.  They knew how he acted when he was under the influence of his demons.  And, they knew how to act around him.  They were comfortable with things the way they were.  They didn’t want to have to change just because James had suddenly been changed. The chains were better than the change.  So they ended up pushing Jesus away.

            It’s pretty easy to think that the people of the Gerasenes were awful, weak, or cowards doe pushing Jesus away.  But while they aren’t exactly exemplars of the faithful life, I don’t want to demonize them.  They’re humans, dealing with a difficult part of human life.  They’re humans dealing with difficult change, and there’s a lot of change going in this scripture passage. 

            In this passage, we first encounter personal change.  This is what happens to the man who was possessed by demons.  And personal change can certainly be difficult.  Going back to John and his struggle to stay clean, it wasn’t easy for John to stop using his drug of choice.  It was really, really hard.  He was going to NA and counseling, he really wanted the change, and still, he struggled.  The man we’re calling James, the Gerasene man who was possessed by demons, compared getting rid of them to torture.  I’m sure every one of us has a story, too, of making a change in our lives and how much we struggled to succeed.  Because change is hard.  Change takes away our familiar comfort and makes our lives difficult as we re-learn how to be ourselves in the world.

            And it isn’t just personal change that is so difficult.  There is also the kind of change that other people bring into our lives.  That’s the kind of change John’s family and friends fought when he stopped getting high.  It’s the kind of change the people of the Gerasenes fought when the man was freed from the demons that possessed him.  It’s pretty easy to get angry at John’s family and friends for pushing him back into the cycle of drug addiction.  It’s pretty easy to laugh or be incredulous that the people of the Gerasenes were so afraid of that they pushed Jesus away. 

            But here’s the honest truth.   It really is incredibly difficult when we have to change our lives because of someone else.  Maybe you’ve had a loved one become ill, and you’ve had to rearrange your life to care for them  Or, for those of you with children or younger siblings, remember the huge transformation of your life when they were born.  Maybe you’ve made a friend or had an encounter with someone and your life wasn’t the same afterwards.  This kind of change, the kind that comes from others, can be even harder than changing ourselves.  And, when others change our lives in this really difficult way, we tend to resist. 

            We like the way we are.  We worked hard to be who we are and we don’t want anyone else to change us!  Change is hard and we like to be comfortable instead.  But comfortable isn’t always good.  It’s a desire for comfort that got John’s family to push him back to his drug addiction and their dysfunctional family dynamics.  It’s a desire for comfort that got the people of the Gerasenes to push Jesus away.  And, it’s a desire for comfort that keeps us, today, from embracing the kind of radical change that Jesus still offers us.  And sadly, there are times we prefer the chains of the way things were to the change that can be.   

            There are so many examples of this around us.  We’d rather leave transgendered people chained among the tombs than have to change restroom signs.  We’d rather leave republicans or democrats, liberals or conservatives—whichever we’re not—chained among the tombs than actually get to know them.  Because then have to change our idea of who the “other” really is, and it’s hard to get into a shouting match with a real person.  We’d rather leave the homeless, single parents, teenagers with strange hairstyles, people of other races, anyone who is different than we are chained to the tombs.  We do this because it’s so hard when others being change to our lives.  But, when we leave people chained among the tombs, we become John’s family refusing to accept him back.  We become the people of the Gerasenes asking Jesus to leave.  All because change is so uncomfortable, that it scares us to our cores.

            I’m sure you get this by now-- The comfortable and familiar aren’t necessarily good.  Jesus didn’t show up, see the man with the demons, say “Well this looks pretty good,” and leave.  Jesus frees him from his demons and then sends him back into the very same community that would rather have him chained among the tombs.  Because as hard as it was, both the man and the community needed that change.

            And we too, need to make room for change.  I’m willing to bet that none of us wants to become John’s family, pushing him back into drug addiction and clinging to an unhealthy family dynamic.  So, the question is, who do we want to be?  How do we want our story to end. 

            I don’t know how John’s story ends.  I don’t know if he ever was successful staying off his drug and settling down with the woman he loved.  And we don’t know how the man we’re calling James’ story ends.  We don’t know if he was accepted back into the community and one day found a place to belong and happiness.  But, we do get to write the ends of our story.  We get to pick.  Chains or change? 

The Gift of Forgiveness

Psalm 32; Luke 7:36-50

         The box sat on Adrian’s shelf for 12 years. It was a small box, square, and wrapped in shiny green paper with a big red bow on top.  It was a Christmas present his wife Trudy had given him before she died.  He just couldn’t bring himself to open it.  It hurt too much.  So it sat there, for twelve years.  He would bring it out at Christmas time, and put it under his tree.  He would look at it.  He would touch it.  But he wouldn’t actually open it.  He wouldn’t receive the gift she’d given to him.

            Now, if you watched the TV show Monk while it was on, you know just what box I’m talking about and you know who Adrian Monk is.  If you didn’t watch the show, I’ll fill you in on the essentials.  Adrian Monk was a detective.  But, he had some problems. He had all kinds of phobias—milk, germs, ladders, lady bugs—there was a list of about 300.  He also had obsessive compulsive disorder, and was always touching lights and counting poles, checking to see if he’d left the oven on.  He had always had quirks, but it was his wife’s death that sent him over the edge into full blown psychological problems to the point of disability.  And still, he was brilliant.  He could walk into a crime scene and see things no one else noticed.  He could put together bits of information no one else could connect.  By the end of the hour, he could always solve the case. 

            Except for one.  His wife Trudy’s murder.  He couldn’t figure it out, and he couldn’t let it go.  And in the end, we find out that the box, the Christmas gift that he wouldn’t open is actually intimately related to this seemingly impossible to solve mystery.  But more on that later.  Because at this point, you’re probably wondering what in the world Adrian Monk has to do with the Psalms and Luke. 

            In both these scripture passages, we are reminded that, like Adrian, we have been given a gift.  Our gift, however, is from God. Now, I’m not going to tell you what the gift from Trudy was.  But I will tell you what our gift from God is  It’s forgiveness.  And, like the gift from Trudy was so difficult for Adrian to open, God’s gift of forgiveness can be incredibly hard for us to accept too. 

            Accepting God’s forgiveness requires us to admit that we need God’s gift in the first place.  First and foremost, this requires us to recognize our own sin.  We have to see where we have gone astray, and that can be difficult when our world doesn’t reflect God’s realm very well.  Sin doesn’t always stand out.  To figure out what this means, let’s take Simon in the Luke reading as an example.  He thought he was doing pretty well.  As a Pharisee, he was a strict observer of Torah, and a very religious man.  He had invited Jesus into his home, and is feeding him a meal. He’s showing hospitality to a man many viewed as strange or radical. 

            And yet, Jesus points out, Simon didn’t do everything he could have for Jesus.  And, more importantly, Simon didn’t even realize that he had done and not done things that needed forgiveness.  Jesus points out small things, and these small things probably mirror the kind of sin most of us commit.  It’s not likely that we’ve murdered someone, but it is likely that we don’t always show God’s love to its fullest potential.  But, just because our sin is hard for us to see, it doesn’t mean that we aren’t in need of forgiveness. 

            But, even when we do see our own sin, we run into another complication.  There’s the whole part where we need to admit it, to ask God for forgiveness.  And we live in a culture teaches us that we’re not supposed to need anything from anyone.  It’s a culture that idolizes independence.  If we can do accomplish projects by ourselves, if we can “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps,” if we can figure out a way to make it work without involving anyone else, then, by cultural standards, we’ve made it.  The goal is to get enough money and enough resources that we can support ourselves, and whatever we need to do to get there is ok, as long as we make it to self-sufficiency.  We’re not supposed to move back in with our parents (I did), we’re not supposed to ever take government assistance (I have), and when we get older, we’re not supposed to need anyone to take care of us, because if we do, that’s a failure. Or, to return to the opening story, Adrian was a brilliant detective.  He wasn’t supposed to need a Christmas present to help him solve a case.

            So, to need forgiveness then, in our culture is to be seen as weak or a failure. And that make forgiveness a hard gift to accept. To be fair though, this mindset of self-sufficiency isn’t unique to this particular culture. Even the psalmist, thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away, writes about how difficult it was for them to acknowledge sin.  They write that they “kept silence” before they could even bring themselves to acknowledge sin to God.  We often do this too, don’t we?  Not just with God, but perhaps with a partner or a friend.  We realize we’ve done something wrong, but it hurts or shames us too much to admit it.  Even though, in most cases, we know they will forgive us, we still hold back. 

            And, with God, we can be sure that we will be forgiven, and yet, we hold back.  I want to repeat that, because sometime it’s hard to accept that part too.  God will forgive you, even if the sin or sins you see don’t seem small.  God will surely forgive all of us for whatever we’ve done or left undone.   Even so, we’re still not quite sure if that gift of forgiveness is worth the effort and pain it takes to open the box.

            Why should we even bother then?  If our sins are hard to see, if it’s hard to accept forgiveness, what’s the point in even finding our sin, admitting it, and asking for forgiveness?  The psalmist helps us out with this too.  As they point out, sin has consequences.  Even physical consequences.  I’m not suggesting that God physically punishes us when we sin and don’t admit it.  I am suggesting that there are natural consequences to carrying around the burden of sin.  The psalmist talks about this.  They write that while they carried around the burden of unacknowledged sin, their body wasted away, they groaned all day long, and their strength was dried up.  Adrian almost died before he was willing to open the box.  He was sick, weak, and miserable.  Perhaps you know the feeling.  I’m willing to bet that we’ve all carried around guilt or shame, and it’s hard.  It hurts.  It breaks us down, physically and mentally. 

            And still, sometimes, we hold on to our sin.  We may think it’s trivial and we can hide it.  We may think that it’s not that bad and really doesn’t need forgiveness.  But it weighs on us and wears on us and it robs us from the full experience of forgiveness and yet we can’t let it go.  We can’t open that green box.  Maybe it’s because we wonder if it’s really worth it.  Because, yes, sin wears on us, but we can survive.  We’re not to the point of death yet.  And if we survive without opening that box, we can avoid some pain and maybe some shame.  Is forgiveness really that good of a gift, anyway?

            Yes.  Yes, forgiveness is that good of a gift.  And, only when we accept it can we experience how good forgiveness is.  When Monk opened the box from Trudy, it was incredibly painful for him.  But, it was also incredibly liberating.  Without spoiling it for those of you who haven’t seen the show, in that little green box was what he needed to finally solve her murder.  Because he opened the box, his pain, guilt, and mental anguish subsided.  He found joy again.  He was able to love again. 

            Here’s the really good news.  When we accept the forgiveness that God offers us, it’s even better than Monk’s box.  God’s forgiveness takes away our burdens from sin, guilt, and shame.  God’s forgiveness opens us to experiencing joy.  We can see this as we go back to the psalmist—they describe their time before confessing sin and subsequently receiving forgiveness as a time of anguish.  And how do they describe forgiveness?  Happiness, glad cries of deliverance, gladness, and shouting for joy.  And, the psalmist tries to persuade us to do as they’ve done—to open that box of forgiveness no matter how hard it might be.

            Forgiveness gives us a new, better quality of life. Through acknowledging sin and accepting God’s gift of forgiveness we are freed to live in gratitude and love.  Just look at the woman from the Luke passage—she is living in forgiven gratitude and love.  She is weeping with gratitude, kissing the feet of the one she knows has forgiven her sins.  And Jesus praises her as the example of faithfulness.  Jesus doesn’t actually forgive this woman’s sins in the story we read.  She enters Simon’s house in a state of forgiven gratefulness, and this is the example we get of how to live faithfully.  A sinner, forgiven and grateful for the gift.

            So if we want to follow the example this woman sets, we, too, need to accept that difficult gift of forgiveness.  I won’t pretend to know how this looks for each of you, because it will be different for everyone.  However this looks for you, whether it’s crying your gratitude all over Jesus’ feet or the glad cries of deliverance the psalmist speaks about coming out of your mouth, or simply basking in the newly received joy of forgivennness—accept this part of God’s gift too.  Live in loving gratitude, in faith, in hope, and in joy.  You are forgiven.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Holy Interruptions

June 9th, 2013
Third Sunday After Pentecost
1 Kings 17:8-24
Emma Dobson

 

She was just trying to make some bread.  She was hungry.  Starving really.  Not the kind of “starving” we feel when dinner is too long in coming, but real starving.  Dying of starvation.  She didn’t have enough money to buy food to eat.  There was no to take care of here for her.  So, she was going to make one last bit of bread with the oil and grain she had left, and then, she and her son were going to starve.  She wasn’t exactly in a happy mood.  And then, this man showed up.  She could tell from his accent that he wasn’t from Zarephath.  And she could also see that he had been eating and drinking.  He wasn’t starving to death.

            And then, he has the nerve to ask her for water.  This man from a strange land who clearly had been able to eat and drink just fine while she had next to nothing.  Maybe she just didn’t have the energy to protest. Wordlessly, she turned to get him the water he wanted.  But then, he asked for more.  For bread.  She didn’t even have enough for herself and her son, let alone for herself, her son, and this man.  As tired and hungry as she was, she was also angry.  And she couldn’t be silent any more. “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die."

            To paraphrase, I have nothing. You and your God should know this. I’m dying.  Go away. Stop bothering me.  But the strange man—Elijah-- has the audacity to stay.  Feed me first he says, even though you and your son are starving to death.  God will provide more than enough.  You will not be dying of hunger.  God has other plans for you. 

            Maybe this is when the widow remembered what God had spoken to her.  We don’t hear in the text how it happened, but we read that God had already told this widow to feed Elijah.  And, amazingly, she does.  She takes the little bit that she had and she gives it to this strange man.  She had planned to die.  God had planned for her to live.

            An interesting portrait of the Divine is painted here.  God as provider of life is something with which we’re pretty familiar.  But the way God goes about providing life sustaining bread for this woman and her son is a little unexpected.  God provides through miraculous interruption.  Like we read in the text—she had plans.  She was going to gather sticks, make bread, and die.  God interrupts these plans, with plans of God’s own. 

           I don’t know about you, but I’m a planner.  I like to plan, and to go about my plan and get to my goal.  And if you’re a planner too, you know that we tend to fall in love with our plans.  They’re the perfect way to accomplish whatever it is that needs to be accomplished.  You know-- plans are good, interruptions are bad. Except I get the sense from this text that it might not be as cut and dry as that.  There are good plans and bad plans.  There are God’s plans and our plans. And sometimes they overlap.  Sometimes they don’t.  And when they don’t, God can break in, and interrupt us as we try to accomplish something that go against what God has planned. 

            For example, the widow had a plan.  It was to finish her store of grain and oil, and then to die.  Clearly, this is not what God planned for her.  And, in the person of Elijah and the miracle of grain and oil replenishing themselves, God interrupted her plan.  But maybe it’s a little unfair to say that the widow  planned to eat and then die. She didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter. Her near starvation was part of a larger plan, not of God, but of the empire in which the widow lived. 

            Society at the time this text was written was structured hierarchically, in terms of how useful those in power deemed people to be.  Women had two main ways to be useful. First, women’s usefulness was to provide money for their fathers through being sold to their husbands.  Then, while property of their husbands, their usefulness was in providing children and labor.  Since widows were doing none of these useful things, they ended up at the bottom of the patriarchal social structure. They had no governmental, social, or financial structure to support them, and they were among the most vulnerable people in society. 

           So, when we come into the story in Kings, the land in which the widow lives is experiencing a drought, and an accompanying famine.  Rather than caring for the vulnerable, who were the first to feel the hunger pains of the famine, the rich were hoarding all they could to take care themselves.  God had a problem with this.  When God fed the widow and her son, God did more than interrupt the plans of a widow with no real options. God interrupted the plans of an empire with no compassion.  

            And in our scripture passage, God shows us how much of a problem God has with this lack of compassion.  And God does this through interruption.  God interrupts the plan that the empire has to let her and her son starve. But then we get to the middle of the scripture passage, it seems like God’s interruptions didn’t even matter.  Though not of starvation, the widow’s son dies anyway. 

            Elijah realizes that this is not part of God’s plan.  If we learned anything from the miraculous bread, it’s that God wants life for the widow and her son.  Knowing this, Elijah asks for one more interruption.  And God responds.  God gives life back to the child, as if to say that God’s plan is never for death and destruction.  Once again, God interrupts certain death to give life when it seems impossible.  Death does not stop the power, the plan, and the love of God. 

            But here’s a really tricky thing with these miraculous interruptions.  They don’t fix everything.  The widow and her household ate, but there were still starving people.  The boy was raised from the dead, but other people still died. The boy himself eventually died again and didn’t come back.  So though God interrupts the plans of neglect, marginalization, and death, even God’s miraculous interruptions didn’t make everything better.  They don’t make everything fit into God’s plan.  They are simply an enactment and a reminder that empire, or any powers of sin and death, do not have the final word.  They show us that nothing will ultimately stop God’s will from being done.

            We know that hunger, death, and all kinds of other problems and pain surround us.  As one small example from the text, we know that hunger is still a problem.  People still go hungry and even starve to death, even in this country.  While the rate of hunger has remained about the same in the rest of the world in the relatively recent past, it’s been increasing in the U.S.  About 35 million people in the U.S. are food insecure, meaning they don’t know where their next meal will come from.  And, like the widow and her child in the scripture passage, the rates are highest among female-headed single parent households.  All of this, while we still have money for tax-breaks on corporate jets, music videos for the IRS, and subsidies for multi-billion dollar corporations.  We are still living in a culture that lets the vulnerable languish, while a few live in incredible luxury.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that God still has a problem with this. 

            We need the reminder that this scripture give us. Hunger is not God’s will, and God is still with us.  God was with the starving widow and her son before Elijah came on the scene with the miraculous promise of bread. God was with the grieving widow and the dead boy before Elijah asked him to be raised.  How else could God hear and respond to the needs of the people?  More than being with us in difficult times, this scripture also reminds us that God cares about the pain we experience.  And pain, hunger, death, marginalization, oppression of any kind—these aren’t what God wants for us.  These aren’t part of God’s plan.

            Unfortunately, we don’t get any kind of rhyme or reason for why God sometimes interrupts with miracles and sometimes doesn’t.  But we do get this.  As God’s people, we do have a role in holy interruptions.  It’s not just Jesus and the prophets who get in on this part of the game.  We, too, can participate in interrupting plans that lead to hunger, pain, and death.  It is by Elijah’s role in interrupting hunger and death that the widow recognizes him as a man of God.  And when we participate in holy interruptions, we too fill our role as people of God. 

            So how do we participate in holy interruptions?  Elijah helps us out with this.  Elijah talks to the widow.  He crosses a bit of a social boundary to do this in the first place.  And then, in talking to her he brings out in the open what is wrong—that this woman and her son are starving to death because no one is caring for the most vulnerable people.  We too, can do this.  We can cross barriers, talk to those in pain, and refuse to let stories of oppression, marginalization, and pain be silenced.  We can cry out, too, like Elijah did when the child died.  We can cry out against what we know goes against God’s plan of abundant life for all.  We can pray.  We can ask for those holy interruptions that seem impossible.  And we can keep the faith that God is with us, and God cares, and God has better plans for us and for all.   

             

1 Kings 18:20-21, 30-39

It was a junior high Bible study.  There were about a dozen young people gathered in the room, sitting around a few old folding tables shoved together.  They were there because their parents had dropped them off, insisting that the youth needed to be at church.  They had no interest in actually studying the Bible.  They knew why they were there—to play air hockey and foosball, to gossip, and to eat pizza. This was what they’d done every week.   No one in the congregation was bold enough to take on this bunch of adolescents and the adolescents knew it.  Maybe that’s a fear not isolated to that particular congregation, eithe.  So, until someone was brave enough to stop them, this group of young people intended to keep on playing games, chatting, and eating pizza for the foreseeable future. 

            And then, the new pastor stepped in.  His name was Steve, and he was fresh from seminary.  He was full of new ideas and perhaps a little too much confidence lingering from his days as a college football linebacker at Brown.  So, he’d decided he would be the one to change this Sunday evening gathering into a “real” Bible study.  And now he’d sat the youth around these tables, set out Bibles that no one was touching, and started his class.  What he wanted to do was get the young people talking about what it meant to be Christian.  So he asked them questions--  Do Christians have to listen to Christian music?  He was met with silence.  No, someone finally said.  More silence.  He moved on.  Does being Christian mean that you can only be friends with other Christians?  Silence.  He went around the group, forcing responses from everyone.  No, they all agreed.  Do you have to go to worship to be a good Christian?  Someone laughed.  No, worship is boring, it’s pointless, the group said, it doesn’t really have anything to do with being a good Christian. 

            Those junior high students were longing for the chance to go back to playing ping pong and gossiping with friends.  They were pretty confident in their answer to the worship question.  Worship just didn’t matter—it was a thing they had to sit through on Sunday morning to make it to the doughnuts afterwards.  Maybe, this wasn’t Pastor Steve’s best planned discussion.  Or maybe it was.  Because I was sitting in that group of junior high students and now, more years later than I’d like to admit, I can say we were wrong about worship.  Worship matters.  More than I knew then, more than the whole group knew, probably even more than our parents understood.

            I wish I could say that Pastor Steve opened up his Bible to the 1 Kings passage that I read today when we were talking about worship.  But he didn’t.  Like I said—it may or may not have been his best planned Bible study.  But, when I read this text searching for what to preach on this morning, the image of that Bible study immediately came to mind.  This 1 Kings text is all about what it means to worship God   What does worship have to do with living faithfully?  And what is worship?  What does it do, for us and for God?  Or, as I briefly thought about titling this sermon, who are we, and what are we doing here?

            Let’s return to the scripture.  “Elijah then came near to all the people, and said, "How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow the Lord; but if Baal, then follow Baal." First and foremost, worship is about a choice.  Let’s start with where we are.  To state the very obvious, we’re all here this morning.  Every one of us could have chosen to be somewhere else.  We could be at soccer practice, sleeping in, having a cup of coffee in our pajamas, or spending some time taking a walk outside.  But we decided instead to come to this place, and to worship.  We have chosen, if only for an hour this Sunday morning, to make God our priority.  And maybe, like that junior high Bible study group, some of us are waiting for the food or the chance to talk with our friends, but being here still matters.  It is a choice we have made to put God first. 

            However, when we leave this place, we will be bombarded with the pressure to follow so many other gods.  The lectionary skips over the section of the text that describes what it’s like to worship another God—Baal in particular here.  Clearly I’ve chosen not to read the whole thing, but I’ll summarize.  Baal worship was frenzied shouting, wailing, it was bloody, and it went on from morning until afternoon.  In contrast, Elijah’s worship of God is much more restrained.  He builds the altar, sets up the sacrifice, and says a simple prayer.  Worshipping God and worshipping Baal share some common threads like prayer and ritual, but Baal worship takes these to the extreme. 

            The temptation for us worship other gods isn’t as obvious as building an altar and praying to Baal--- I doubt any of us have had a hard time resisting that.   The temptation to worship another God is much more subtle.  It’s when we mirror he Baal worship from text.  It’s making something that isn’t God our focus, and twisting something good into something harmful.  So, the Baal we’re tempted to worship might be money.  We may spend all our time and energy working to make more and more.  We may abandon our families, our friends, or maybe our spiritual lives as we do whatever it takes get more money.  There’s nothing wrong with making money or making a profit.  But, when CEO’s make 500 times more than their workers, who can’t even afford the basic necessities, clearly, something is twisted.  By making money more important than people, or quality of life, our culture worships money as a god.  It tempts us to do the same.   

            Money isn’t the only other god worshipped though.  The Baal we’re tempted to worship might be something like a youthful appearance, an unhealthy relationship, or maybe a sports team, if I can say that in this town.  Anything that consumes our focus and becomes our ultimate goal, it’s a god we worship.  We all do it at times.  We put our faith in the wrong place, lose focus, and we get off balance.  But, when we gather here to worship God, we make a statement that worshipping those other gods is not our final choice.  In worship we live into our intention to put our faith, trust, and hope in God.

            Now that we’ve made that choice to be here, what are we doing here?  It might sound strange, but part of it is figuring out who we are.  In the Kings passage, Elijah rebuilds the altar of the Lord.  And he rebuilds it in a very symbolic manner. He uses twelve stones, one for each tribe of Israel.  He reminds the people of Israel where they came from, and who they’re called to be.  And worship, at its best, reminds us of our identity as well.  Like the tribes of Israel were the sons of Jacob, we are sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters in Christ.            

            Even more than simply reminding us of this sacred identity, worship is a place where we try to live out our identity as God’s children.  The identity as God’s family is different than the identities the world often likes to give us.  Because of that difference, we do things that might seem strange from the outside when we worship.  We gather with people we wouldn’t necessarily gather with in other situations.  We shake hands and hug as we pass the peace, even though we may not necessarily feel at peace with everyone in this room. We voluntarily give our money away. We eat bread and drink juice and say that there’s more to them than meets the eye.  We say things and think things with the intent that a being we can’t really see will hear, and understand, and respond to us. 

            God heard Elijah.  God responded to Elijah.  Yes, there was the fire, but if we focus on the physical fire, we miss the point.  The really exciting fire is the fire that springs up in the people’s hearts, causing them to confess that “The Lord is God and no one else.”  We already knew that God was more powerful that Baal, and so did the ancient readers of the text. What we didn’t know was how the people would respond to God’s presence.  Think about it.  Go way back to the garden even.  God creates a paradise, and what do people do?  Turn away from God’s instructions.  God frees the Hebrew people from slavery, and what do they do?  Build and worship a golden calf.  Again and again, God provides, and the people turn away.  So God provides again in this story from Kings.  And the people respond.  They fall on their faces and cry out, "The LORD indeed is God; the LORD indeed is God."  They caught a glimpse of God.  It changed them.        

            So when we gather to worship, we make a choice. We see ourselves through different eyes. We do things that look and sound a little strange, but we do them because sometimes, we too catch a glimpse of God.  The fire of the Holy Spirit ignites in our hearts and we are changed.  Before you start asking what worship services I’ve been at, let me say that we all know that it’s not always perfect.  There are times when we feel  like that junior high Bible study group.  There are weeks we don’t like the sermon, we’re mad at the person sitting next to us, and all we want to do is grab some coffee and get out the door.  The fire in our hearts may not feel ignited every week, but we’re here.  By making the choice to be here, and to worship God, we keep intentionally opening our eyes in the hope that they will be able to see God and God’s fire will ignite us again. May God’s fire shine brightly enough in us that others may catch glimpses of God in us even when we leave this place.