*Before you read this a note of warning: If you imagine these stories as
White stories, if you picture Elijah, Peter, the Disciples, the Psalmist, Saint
Paul the Apostle or Jesus Christ as white folk you will not hear the word of
God in this sermon nor in the Scriptures upon which this message is drawn. I
wish this note of warning was unnecessary. I wish that my Christian European
forbearers hadn’t worshiped at the altar of White Supremacy, but it is clear
(and has been clear for a long while) that we have yet to escape this
distortion and misappropriation.
For Elijah, and the disciples and Peter, the
manifestations of the divine come to them unexpectedly and in times of distress. They are low moments of faith. We may find
ourselves in a similar moment of fear and despair, as we’ve watched white
supremacists march with torches shouting, “You will not replace us” and the
Nazi slogan “Blood and soil.” surrounding a black church and unleash violence
against counter protestors and a car ramming into counter protestors killing
one. What is happening in Charlottesville, Virginia isn’t isolated from the
police killing of black folk and the electoral victory of Trump and the various
policies of the Trump administration and the chaos we’ve seen. Gathered here
today we may feel a bit like Elijah We may be angry like Elijah that all this
is even possible and happening, and we have our own litany of complaint before
God. We may be wondering with Elijah and the disciples on the boat where God is
in all this and if God is out there in the storm and the overwhelming waves. Yet,
our Scriptures point out that Elijah and the disciples and Peter are examples
of asking the wrong question. The question isn’t where is God when evil
threatens to overwhelm, because no storm, no chaos the enemy can throw at the
world chases God away. Nothing a Nation state is will bring the reign of God,
nor truly accomplish God’s shalom in the world, and nothing White supremacy
does can negate what God did in Jesus Christ upon the cross. The people of God
have seen this before and before the Shalom of God comes and is manifest we the
people of God will see it again. Yet we who may be surprised and angered and
fearful must confess that this form of Empire and Babylon that we call White
Supremacy was embraced and nurtured both by the nation state called the United
States of America and by its European Christian Citizens, calling themselves
White. For centuries members of Christ have themselves chased after these other
gods of patriotism, nation state and white supremacy. This is not new and the
Nation State and government of the U.S.A., can’t eradicate this power because
the U.S.A has worshiped at the altar of White supremacy from its founding. So yes,
there is reason to feel the despair of Elijah.
Things are dire. But our scriptures aren’t only stories of despair., They
begin there and end in hope. So, amid the chaos, white supremacy, and the
failure of human attempts to suppress and eradicate this evil we once embraced,
we seek God. Hope isn’t found out there in the world, nor in some isolated
fearful retreat. Hope is found in an unexpected but obvious place.
The faith that produces
righteousness, doesn’t ask the very human question, why is this happening and
where is God in this Chaos, or the evil? Paul says that true faith doesn’t ask
Who can go to heaven, …or who can go to hades.” Faith that leads to justice,
affirms with the psalmists that the word of God is near us in our hearts and
upon our lips. This doesn’t mean that we people of faith won’t find ourselves
sitting with Elijah despairing in the cave or with the disciples buffeted by
waves threatening to overwhelm our boat. But, No matter, God always comes near.
Whether our experience is like Elijah Or we may have moments like the disciples
when we have a profound sense the divinity of Jesus Christ, we should not cling
to those experiences. Whatever our experience, Paul’s word tells us these
experiences of God at our low points, aren’t central to the life of faith.
These are moments of grace but not
moments of faith. Theophany’s and epiphanies aren’t what the life of faith is
about. The life of faith is trusting something we perhaps don’t quite have the
capacity to perceive. The word of God the second person of the trinity become
human and dying and descending to the dead isn’t what brought God to us. God was always there, in the world amid our
chaos, on our lips and in our hearts. The problem has never been with God not
showing up. What Jesus fixes is our faith, our ability to see and recognize
God. The problem is in us as human beings not in God! God in Jesus Christ fills
out our faith when it is weak, but what we need is always and has always been
accessible. Through, Christ we are awakened to what is truly at the depth of
our being.
The exercise of faith is to trust
this fundamental reality, even when we are overwhelmed by our fears. The
exercise of faith is to trust even when we are threatened by other people’s
sins, when we wonder how will we overcome white supremacy once and for all. To
continue trustin in the nearness of God even in the face of evil and chaos. In
trusting in Christ, we can affirm that the Word of God is in our hearts and
upon our lips. We need go nowhere, nor do something to find God. God is here,
wherever you are, God is in your heart and upon your lips, you can see it if
you trust and have the faith of Christ.
Our exercise of this faith, awakens
this same faith and awareness in others. Faith and salvation aren’t individual
affairs. The individual American protestant evangelical interpretation of this
passage focusing on the individual fails to recognize the communal and
interdependent nature of Paul’s message. Faith turned in upon itself either
obsessed with experiences of God’s presence or with some sense of assurance
that because one has confessed with one’s mouth and believed in one’s heart one
can be sure of one’s own individual salvation, is a dead end, and completely
misunderstand the Apostle Paul. Rather f the faith that trusts that God’s word
is near, in our hearts and upon our lips, confesses this faith so that others
may be awakened to that same faith that leads to justice.
Even so sometimes we think we are responding
to the chaos in faith, but really, we are seeking proof of God’s presence. Peter
in an attempt to show Jesus his great faith, falters in that faith. Thankfully
Jesus Christ, doesn’t let Peter be overcome, but gently points out, Peter’s
lack of faith. But really the lack of faith began with Peter’s compulsion to prove
his faith and step out from the boat. Jesus never asks this of Peter. Jesus
doesn’t say Peter show me you aren’t afraid and how great your faith is by
coming and walking on water with me. No, Peter asks for proof that it’s Jesus
and tells Jesus to tell him to come out on the water. Jesus being kind and
loving acquiesces (knowing he has Peter no matter what) and invites him out on
the water.
God, in both the story of Elijah in
the cave and Peter walking on water, comes in gentleness, grace and in the full
otherness and awe inspiring frightening presence. Jesus attempts to calm the
disciples and lovingly does as Peter asks, telling Peter to come on the water. Jesus gently encourages Peter to not doubt
but believe. God meets a frightened and discouraged Elijah and asks Elijah a
simple question. A question that is to call Elijah back to himself. God announces God’s presence with the
familiar manifestations of Mount Sinai, but doesn’t attach the presence with
any of those. Elijah only encounters God in Holy Silence. When in Silence God’s
presence is known, Elijah can truly hear the word of God in his heart and upon
his lips. God meets us where we are at and will even do what we ask, but
doesn’t allow us to stay in the place of little faith. God is patient with us,
but also pushes us along, to that place of faith.
What is this place of justifying
faith? What is this faith that is accounted to us as righteousness? The place
is our being illumined by Christ, God with us, where we remember who we are. To
have faith is to no longer see ourselves as distanced from God, but trust that
we are close to God and that God is close to us, no matter that our human
institutions and attempts to bring about goodness and righteousness and justice
continually fail. No matter that we have misplaced our hope and trust in the
very things that bring about the chaos. No matter our collective or individual
failures, God is always near in our heart and upon our lips, if we can step
back and not doubt but believe.
Paul says that they very Word of
God is on our lips and in our hearts, when in Christ we trust and believe in
the nearness of God in our hearts and trust that our words can confess this truth.
We then become those blessed as bearer of good news, and we can awaken this
faith and justice in those who hear our confession. It is by this faith, not
through the Powers and Nations that the world is transformed and righteousness
and justice flourish.
I hope we can find that place of
the Holy Silence where we can like Elijah hear God’s voice and call. But maybe
your still with Peter on the boat buffeted by the waves of the chaos of our
moment, and you want God to call to you.
God will acquiesce to your request, and will tell you come. But your desire
to do something, if motivated from a need to prove that God is in the chaos, isn’t
God asking you to step into the chaos. Even so, God will invite you into it if
you ask God to do so. But if you falter, know God has you and God didn’t ask
you to come, you asked God to invite you. However, Jesus’ word to Peter to come
is very different form Elijah’s word from God after the Silence. I encourage us
to wait before we act. I encourage us to look for the deep silence out of which
God can speak. It is form that silence that we can hear God’s word for us not
what we think we want to hear from God, as proof of God’s presence but a solid
word for us is that God is near and unassailable.
We like Elijah, we of little faith,
shaky on our feet, depressed and uncertain in our ways, wondering how this all can
be real, we, if we trust and believe in our hearts and confess with our lips
the nearness of God, Jesus Christ the Word, we are restored to that
relationship with God that humanity had in the Garden of Eden. Through faith,
we bring others back into this restored state in Jesus Christ, the Word. It is
in this moment of both knowing for ourselves and that we are for others that we
can hear God’s word to us that is for others, and then know how we will be sent
into the world.
However, the grace of God accepts us where we
are, even if we have more doubt than faith, even if we want God to tell us to
step out into this chaos. But the way of surer footing is to wait, to be still,
to wait to hear from God in your deepest being out of the holy silence. Out of
that silence God’s word is near to us. From this silence, we will know how we
each are called to be for others. The word of God is near in our hearts and it
will be upon our lips. First, we must be silent, then in faith we will be able
to proclaim and bring God’s justice and truth. From this faith that God is near
in our hearts and upon our lips, the world is renewed. . Amen.
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