5 November 2017
HUC Sermon
Accidental saints and the Sounds of God
1 Kings 19
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“A Thin Silence”
Silence.
You might hear a pin drop
Or you might hear God
You might hear your breathing
or you may hear the Spirit
You may hear your neighbour
or you may hear Christ.
You may hear a magpie
and you may hear the Creator
You who are Beloved of Christ,
these are the sounds of God
inviting us into a deeper encounter with God in a thin silence.
Will I pause to notice them?
Might I stop to hear them?
Could I be still to listen to them?
And might I invite them into the deepest parts of my soul,
just as they invite meinto encounter with God?
To Participate in silence, stillness, listening.
That we too might hear the sound of God in a thin silence.
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“Accidental Saints”
What’s your definition of a saint? Maybe someone who was or is especially holy or spiritual, or someone who has patience when we know our own would fail. “He’s just a saint” we say of a woman who is coping with a dementia-ridden and abusive parent week after week. We often reference other people as being Saintly because we feel that they are more pious or peaceful or ‘under control’ than we see ourselves. (Like on the golf course)
Nadia and Mary Madalene…
Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor at a church called House for All Sinners and Saints.She has an icon of Mary Magalene tattood on her fore-arm. In Mary Magdelene, Boltz-Weber sees a biblical reflection of herself: someone in whom Christ worked miracles, who wants to love God, and who is an odd witness to Christ’s resurrection.
She says, "Saints are simply the people of God, instead of the really special ones who were more God-like than us. … " Jesus never looks around the room for the most godly person who has their shit together. God uses the really broken! Broken people keep changing us - by extending grace and forgiveness to us.”
What we see of this person in this moment is often a result of many difficult days or years or events, through which God and that person have worked to become who they are. Saint Peter, Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Benedict, Martin Luther King jnr, Mother Teresa … or the saints around you today … or Elijah … all will tell you stories of “a dark night of the soul”, of events with which they have had to wrestle or shed tears or get angry with God over. None would call themselves saints, and if we asked them how they got to be who they are, they would point to God.
Boltz-Weber again:“[On All Saints Day] What we celebrate is not the godliness of the person, but God’s ability to do beautiful, redemptive stuff through the most broken means possible - a flawed human being.”
“Saints” in the New Testament is often used in reference to believers in a local congregation, such as the saints at Corinth, or Ephesus, or Colossae (or Heathmont). Some of these believers were far from saintly in their behavior, but they were called “saints” by virtue of their participation (communio) in Christ.
In the Apostles Creed, we say that we believe in the Communion of Saints. What do we mean by that?
First it means that we are connected to Christians from right around the world - From Coptic Christians in Egypt and Donvale, to Pentecostals from Hillsong and Honduras to Catholics, Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians in every language and culture.
Then it also references a spiritual union of members of Christ’s body who have died: These are women and men in whom God has worked … and through whom we might find deeper faith.
On All Saints day this year, I spent a lot of time thinking about my Dad.
This is my Dad’s bible. I’ll be preaching from it for the coming year. In the brokenness of who he was, and in his wrestling with God in difficult and easy and normal days and nights, Dad marked his bible. Colours, symbols, underlining, circling.
Some people would have called my Dad saintly. Many of us didn’t know the extent of the agony of his soul or his wrestling with God – I didn’t until a conversation with him shortly before he died last month. In that wrestling he declared God to be faithful, constant, and a source of strength that he could draw on.
So the story of Elijah’s encounters with God, when we read them on All Saints Day, becomes a story of the making of a person of deep faith, a godly person, a saint – because of the God whom Elijah encountered, and the God who worked in his life.
Elijah is an accidental saint. He appears in 1 Kings 17 and disappears 8 chapters later in a chariot to heaven. He reappears in the gospels as prefiguring John the Baptist, “Is he Elijah who was promised?” and at the transfiguration is Moses and Elijah with Jesus.
Those of you who went to Sunday school, will remember the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel defeating the prophets of Baal. Piles up 12 stones, dumps wood on it, digs a trench and pours a truck load of water over it – and calls on God to burn it up. God does what the prophets of Baal failed to do. The problem was that this god Baal was the pet god of the queen of Northern Israel – a chick named Jezebel. So she sent a message that she was on the hunt to kill Elijah.
He runs for his life – south to the south of the Southern kingdom of Judah. There he encounters God personally. God doesn’t speak to him about the king or jezebel or baal and the wicked people of Israel. The prophet himself is the object of God’s attention – this one person. Of sustenance, and care – food and water, food and water.
He ends up on the mountain where Moses encountered God and where Moses received the 10 commandments … and the text hints that maybe even in the cave where Moses was hidden as God passed by.
That is what creates Accidental Saints – Not years of pious study (though there is nothing wrong with that), nor getting their stuff together (though we shouldn’t ignore that), but those times when things go wrong … and they wrestle with God.
A Thin Silence
Elijah desired the God of the great wind, the God of earthquake, the God of the fire ...
Bringing judgement, tearing down alters, overcoming foes in shock and awe.
"But the Lord was not in the wind ... the earthquake ... the fire".
In "a sound of thin silence".
It seems so out of place in an age of tumult and division and violence ...
Silence seems so vulnerable and insignificant.
But again and again in the story of Scripture, silence is the place of encounter and revelation.
The silence of the Virgin's womb ... where God takes flesh and dwells amongst us.
The silence of Jesus before his accusers ... where hatred and violence become subject to divine love and forgiveness.
The silence of the tomb on that first day of the week, early in the morning ... where death is swallowed up in Life.
We are invited to follow Elijah to Mount Horeb, to that silence.
In his book “The Sounds of God”, Michael Mitton, begins with the ancient story of Adam and Eve, who “Heard the sound of God in the garden, and were afraid.” They knew that they had stuffed up, and didn’t want to encounter God. “Where are you” was the heart-broken cry of God.
They might have said, “If you knew me, you wouldn’t love me”, … and many more have said since then. God does know. And God invites you, beloved of God, to encounter and meet God – to know yourself as loved. As you are.
To know yourself, to know God, and to grow into that love for God in surprising ways.
Where silence calls us to humility, generosity and service. It is a call to us to cherish those times of silence...
To embrace the silence in our lives ...
To follow those accidental saints, to encounter God in the silence where we are most vulnerable. To know ourselves as truly loved by God.
-amen-
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