Second Sunday After Pentecost Year C 2010

And They Glorified God

02 Pentecost C 10

June 6, 2010

1 Kings 17:8-24

Psalm 146

Galatians 1:11-24

Luke 7:11-17

In a newspaper commentary I read yesterday a guy named Matt Bai observed that we've been living in what feels like a crisis for about forty years. Of course, for a lot of that time, at least half of the people felt like something positive was getting done about whatever it was. It was usually only the other half who felt like things were getting worse and worse. Now, we're in a rather special moment in this country. I think everyone is pretty convinced that things are spinning out of control and show no signs of getting sorted out. You don't hear too many people saying hopeful things.

Mr. Bai said that if you wanted a metaphor for the growing sense of crisis we've been experiencing over the past forty years, you couldn't ask for a better one than the oil leak. A slowly and steadily spreading disaster of unimaginable proportions with results that are almost impossible to imagine or predict. Think about it. For forty years the situation between Israel and the Muslim world has gotten worse and worse, and now is getting critical. The uneasy peace between the Koreas is now descending back toward war. Iran is working on a bomb, we're still at war in two countries, Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose, the continent of Africa continues to waste away with AIDS and coups and massacres, and the world's economy is shaky at best. And nothing anyone has done seems able to stop it. No one has been able to plug the leak.

At Regional Assembly over the last two days, I have to say the message was somewhat gloomy all-in-all. The two authors who came to speak seem to specialize in writing books with catchy titles with nothing in them but the same message as the title. This one was "Getting People Under Forty While Keeping People Over Sixty." And if you read the book, it basically says we should get people under forty and keep people over sixty. It never really tells us how.

The fact is that the mainline church has been in decline for forty years and hasn't really done a thing about it. Nothing that's worked anyway. Even the Baptists are declining. I remember thinking yesterday that I've been going to assemblies for eighteen years, literally, because I was ordained 18 years Friday, and I've pretty much been hearing the same message. We need to change but we aren't changing. If we don't change we're going to disappear. And everyone nods and applauds and heads back to their congregations ready to change the world. But the oil just keeps on pumping. The church keeps declining. There are fewer and fewer Christians in every generation.

I think about a year, maybe two years ago, we all started feeling like the metaphorical oil leak was pumping away and no one was able to stop it. I think the feeling is getting really pointed now, and it's beginning to infect every aspect of our lives. It's not only the world that's coming apart, it's our older parents, it's our kids, it's our church, it's our own communities and neighborhoods.

Some of us are angry. Some of us are exhausted. Some of us are still hopeful. But all of us finally know that the leak pumps on.

There's a drought in Israel, don't you think? Not only has the widow lost her husband, but now, cruelty of all cruelty, she's lost her only son. Not only has Jesus been crucified, but this guy Saul has it in for everyone who believes in Jesus. Insult upon injury. Trial upon trial. Do you know the root words for "pandemonium?" "Demons everywhere?"

At some point or another, the solution really does have to come from outside. At some point, there's no one to hire, no one to fire, no one brilliant enough, can-do enough, insightful and wise enough, to fix this. Nor is there any way we can all consult one another and thrash it out and make it all work.

At some point or another, the savior has got to step in. At some point or another we really have to get on our knees. And I don't mean as some kind of metaphor for giving it more thought, or as some kind of show of piety. I mean surrender. I mean making that last loaf of bread, eating it and laying down to die. I mean just loading the body on the bier and having the funeral. Just go on and say, "This is all wrong, and I have not the foggiest idea what to do about it." Just go on and grieve. Just go on and admit the battle's over and we lost.

When Paul is saying that his gospel comes from God, he's really not trying to validate himself; he's trying to validate his gospel. He's not affirming himself, though it rather sounds like it, doesn't it? He's affirming the message he's been given. He's trying to point out that the thing that comes from God is the thing that saves. Ideas that come from people are not saving. They might put a bandaid on the wound, they might redirect the oil leak in some other direction, but the solutions that come from us usually make the situation worse. The ongoing effort to keep improving and solving and fixing actually amounts to a spreading field of poison.

The answer will come from God, and it will come when we cry "uncle" and not before. When we become as ready as only the dying can be, room is made for a miracle.

I'm wanting to glorify God. That's the path I'm interested in this morning. That's the salvation I'm looking for this morning. I'm ready to say I'm licked. I don't know what the right thing is to do. I don't know how to fix any of it. I don't know what the moral choice is, the righteous choice, the effective choice. I don't have the magic technique or the perfect ideology. I'm looking for the miracle. I want to give up and lay down and wait to die, and see what God does.

Just when I thought the Assembly was pretty hopeless a bunch of young people of multiple colors got up on the stage and told all us old fogies that we needed to figure out how to get blacks and whites together, that all our talk about acceptance and unity was hollow to them. And they proposed a simple plan to make it happen I don't know why but tears started flowing down my face. Maybe its just that I so badly needed a little hope. I think I was glorifying God there fore a minute.

And later, I went to a workshop where a congregation in Lynchburg told how it had come to openly welcome and affirm everyone at their church, particularly people of different sexual orientations. One of them said, "if you are worried about being accepted at a church for any reason at all, find an open and affirming church. They really mean it when they say they accept you." Wow. In Lynchburg of all places. I did a little glorifying God right about them.

Will you all do a little exercise with me right now? I want you to think of two phrases. The first phrase is "God might be..." And the second phrase is "But soon God will..."

Now you're going to complete the phrase. The first phrase is about the punishment of the trial God might be visiting upon you. Like that old widow who told Elijah it was God who took her son. Like the early Christians who though of Saul as God's test for their faith. Now don't bother arguing about whether God causes bad things to happen or not. That's why the word "might" is in there. God might be causing that oil leak to spew. God might be giving me cancer. God might be taking my mother away from me piece by piece. God might be putting my church through a trial. God might be brewing another war in the Middle East. Put it all on the list. Just close you eyes and list all the terrible things God might be doing.

Now I'd like you to complete the second phrase. The second phrase is about the sudden reversal that God is going to bring about. Like the widow's declaration about Elijah, like the congregation's that had feared Saul glorifying God because of Paul, like the people of Nain glorifying God because the widow's son was brought back to life. "But soon God will..." But soon God will restore his creation to wholeness. But soon God will liberate my mother and comfort me. But soon God will deal with my cancer. But soon God will bring peace in war-torn places. But soon God will...

I'm looking to glorify God. How about you?

Amen.