A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
(1 Kings 19:1-15a; Psalm 42 and 43; Galatians 3:10-14, 23-39; Luke 8:26-39)
How prone we are to forgetting the power and grace of God!
Recently Elijah was front and centre in the most dramatic showdown between YHWH and the prophets of Ba-al. Greatly outnumbered, Elijah boldly increased the odds against himself: an altar repeatedly drenched in water.
God answered the mighty prophet’s simple prayer with a fire that consumed offering, wood, stones, dust, and water. The people bowed. Ba-al’s prophets were defeated and eliminated.
It all angered the queen and Jezebel’s unsettling message hit the mark. Even Elijah is shaken. This same man who called down fire is now running. Fear drives him from civilisation. Exhausted. Hungry. He collapses breathing a prayer to die: ‘It is enough…’
I love the practicality of this visiting angel. The messenger’s gift: food and sleep. Sometimes God’s gifts seems quite unspiritual. This respite, however, sustains miraculously. The previously spent prophet finds the energy to drive himself on for a staggering forty days. Finally he arrives at the ‘Mount of God’.
YHWH led Elijah to this place. God’s visit, however, opens with a question: ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ The prophet’s answer indicates a loneliness: ‘…I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life to take it away.’
So God graciously ‘passed by’. The God of the universe is preceded by a mountain-tearing wind, breaking rock, a quaking earth, fire. A fitting procession.
God, however, has not yet entered the frame.
Then a whisper. All the drama passes and God comes quietly. God repeats himself: ‘What are you doing here?’ And so does Elijah: ‘I have been very jealous for the LORD…’ God listens and re-calls: ‘Go, return on your way to the wilderness…’ There is more for this lost prophet to do.
An angel-guided forty-day journey to the Mount of God with the apparent purpose of bringing Elijah back to his work. The account brims with God’s patience, reminding voice, ongoing call. It amounts to grace.
How prone we are to forgetting the power and grace of God!
Jesus’ miracles went beyond the people of Israel. The people of the Gerasenes had their own struggle with evil. A naked strong-man dwelling among the tombs. Posted guards. Locked chains. Closed shackles. Each time the demons broke their captor free. For the unrestrainable man, however, there was never freedom.
That is until Jesus crossed the lake. With a word the tormenting ‘Legion’ left him hurtling the heard of pigs into the lake. Then herders flee and report.
And then the saddest of accounts. The people ‘come’ and ‘see’ a quiet and clothed demoniac sitting at the feet of Jesus. Jesus momentarily moved into their region and brought about all they could not.
And their response: fear.
Fear has a lot to account for. The grace of God is manifest among these people and they ‘asked him the depart from them, for they were seized with great fear.’ Jesus leaves them with a single reminder of the day: ‘Return to your home’ he said to the demoniac, ‘and declare how much God has done for you.’ His story will be an ever-present testimony to this gracious act of God.
How prone we are to forgetting the power and grace of God!
Paul clearly presented the early Galatian church with a call to freedom. His gospel set them at liberty from ‘law’. They are urged to live by faith. It is their trust in God that counts. The works of law are nothing.
Paul’s argument from the life of Abraham supports his radical stand. A staggering 430 years before the law was introduced, God pronounced Abraham ‘righteous’ because of his willingness to trust God.
Paul is not covering this ground as an academic exercise. He is addressing these things because the Galatian community of believers are reverting to their old, legalistic ways.
Alarmingly, they are forgetting the power and grace of God.
The Orlando killings this week left me numb. So many young lives taken in a needless, violent act. Motives are emerging, but they are still sketchy – Homophobia? Racism? Self-loathing? Religious zealotry?
Yet the most disturbing article I read this week was by a ‘Christian Pastor’. He declared that his primary emotion upon hearing of the slaughter was joy. He believes the world is a better place with 50 less members of the gay community.
I wanted to shake him. To scream that his response can never be a reflection of the character of God or a way to honour the God-image is others. Families torn. Lives gone. People crippled by fear. This is an occasion to broadly mourn society’s lostness. A heartless, detached celebration does not communicate the grace of God as demonstrated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Sadly, such heartlessness emerges around other issues as well: the death of terrorists, the loss of refugees, people narrowly defined as ‘criminal’. Whenever we refuse to mourn it is telling.
And it makes me think that we have forgotten the power and grace of God.
Last week we considered Barnabas and his mediating work between the Jewish believers and the believers from the surrounding nations. The place of keeping the Jewish law was the issue of their time. It split the early church.
Such issues still exist. How do we respond to terrorism? How do we respond to the push for gay marriage? What do we do about people fleeing from war who want to live in our country? These issues split church communities and divide families. More alarmingly they become artificial ‘touchstones’ of so-called Christian authenticity.
It reminds us of our call to be Barnabas-like, grace-filled, mediators. People who communicate and prioritise the power and grace of God – even (perhaps especially) in the face of our greatest challenges.
I do not have all the answers. I do, however, know this: Our God is a God of power and grace and we are called to follow. Jesus alone is our touchstone, our centre.
Nothing else is strong enough to hold us together.
Amen.