When God Speaks, Rock Springs, WY, 1st Congregational UCC

When God Speaks
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 6/20/2010
Based on 1Kings 19:1-15a, Galatians 3:23-29, and Luke 8:26-39

Today is the day where we as a nation recognize “fathers”. Typically for me and with many pulpits throughout this country, the focus of the sermon on this day is on some aspect of “fatherhood”. This generally means not using the suggested Lectionary readings and finding some story within the scriptures in which to support whatever is going to be said by the pastor about “fatherhood”.
I’m not going to do that today. Rather, I think in today’s Lection reading, there are aspects found that relate to most men. When I think about what the role of a father in our society is, I think about how much change is going on. In the 1950’s and 1960’s when I was a child, the father of a typical family was generally the sole bread winner. The father worked 8 hours away from home and was responsible for the maintenance of the structure of the house and outside perimeters: meaning fixing anything that broke around the house, mowing the lawn and so forth. Fathers had very little interaction with their children and were usually used by moms as the authoritarian figure, with the threat of, “you kids just wait till your father gets home!”
In the 1970’s and 1980’s, fathers were no longer the sole bread winner as moms started to work outside of the home for a variety of reasons. This meant that dads started to move from doing maintenance outside the house to also helping do domestic duties inside the house. This meant that for many men, we had to learn where the “on and off” switch was on the vacuum sweeper! But I think the most radical change came in how we as fathers interacted with our children. Dads could be seen taking their children to the park to play, or taking them to the grocery store with them to do the weekly shopping. Dads were taking on the role of hands-on care-givers, a role that was filled mostly by mothers up to that time.
By the 1990’s to the present, it isn’t uncommon to see dads working from home as telecommuters. It also isn’t unusual to see a number of dads becoming “stay at home dads”, where the mom is the sole bread winner. With our current economic climate, this phenomenon had increased exponentially. Who knows how the role of “fathers” will look as the current generation of children grows into adulthood?
Even though the roles of dads has changed over these past three generations, there is still the “historical” attitude of what a man who is married and has a family is suppose to be like and, it has nothing to do with the current role of fathers. We still perceive fathers to be the bread winners, the protectors, the final decision makers, and the one who will stand strong when the world is falling apart around him. This type of perception brings tremendous internal conflict within men who see their current role not matching up to the perceived role of fatherhood. This conflict often brings feelings of isolation and a sense of failure over success. Now there is the same issue going on with women as well, but since today is Father’s Day, I will use fathers as the example for all adults, for in reality, we all have these same feelings at one time or another in our lives.
The prophet Elijah certainly was having these feelings in today’s lection reading. Here he has had great success in confronting King Ahab and Queen Jezebel in defeating her false prophets of Baal. Yet he runs and hides for fear of his life as Jezebel threatens to kill him. Elijah who has had the God of Israel on his side, is now feeling totally isolated, fearful for his life, and is hiding out in a cave. Elijah, who could in many ways be representative of what our society still perceives the role of a man to be, was in his mind anything but that.
When I was in my twenties, I had the world by the tail. There wasn’t anything that I couldn’t accomplish, if it was something that I had set my sites on. I seemed to know no failure. One day, a dear woman in her early 70’s, who had been adopted by us as a surrogate grandmother, told me out of her wisdom that I shouldn’t expect to get everything that I wanted; that at some point in my life, there would be some things that would be out of my control to accomplish. I finally had the realities of her wisdom in my 30’s. The changes that happened in my life during that decade could have easily defeated my spirit for the rest of my life yet it didn’t. I was able to survive both emotionally and physically because of one important aspect in my life. I was able to “hear the still-speaking God.”
While Elijah was hiding in the cave, an angel came to him and told him to go outside, for God was going to pass by. So Elijah went outside before the Lord and waited for God to pass by. “Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. Then there came a voice to him ….” In our thinking of the majesty and the might and power of God, we often attribute things like earthquakes, high winds, and fire as places that we would find God, yet here we read that God’s voice is found in silence. It is not in activity that we will be able to hear God’s voice, but rather it is in the quiet times, those times that we just sit in silence, that we will hear God speak to us.
I just mentioned that, in my thirties, I was going through some of the most challenging times in my life. I was being challenged with my identity and how that challenge was going to affect every aspect of my life. It was in those times of silence that I was able to hear God speaking to me. I spent hours in prayer, without distractions of T.V., radio, or family and friends; just me in my room, quietly waiting for God to pass by. And like Elijah, I was then able to find renewal and move forward with what I needed to do in order to reconstruct my life.
I would like to jump to the Gospel lesson that we have in Luke and make a couple of observations, as again I think it speaks to the changing role of “fathers”. I had a laugh with Paul the other day as he was searching for the musical selections that we are singing today, as he wanted to know if I was going to use the Gospel text in my reflection this morning. He informed me that, “Casting Out the Swine” isn’t in our hymnal. In his mind, he was thinking it a pretty difficult subject of Jesus casting out demons into pigs and relating it to modern day experiences. He is right, I don’t think I have ever experienced an exorcism of demons, let alone really believe in demon possession. Then he laughed and said he has been surprised at how well I’ve approached some other difficult passages and was able to make it relate to current cultural understanding. So hopefully I will be able to do the same with this passage as well.
In the Gospel ready we see just how powerful the word of God can be. Jesus is confronted with the man who is possessed by not just one or two or three demonic spirits, but a whole legion of demons. It isn’t until Jesus is able to identify who has possessed this man, that He is able to exorcise the demons out of him. This is the first point that I wish to bring forward. Before we are able to move forward, we must first be able to identify what the issue or issues are in our lives. When we are feeling isolated and that separated from our support group and even from God, we must first be able to name what the issue is. No problem can be addressed until we are able to name it. If I am an alcoholic, I cannot work on that illness until I can name it; if I am tormented with sexual identity, I cannot move forward until I name it; if I have issues with physical or emotional abuse, I cannot begin to heal from it until I name it.
After Jesus identifies who possesses this man, Jesus is then able to cast the legion of demons out, and in this story he honors the request of the demons to not be cast out into space where they would perish, but rather into a herd of pigs where they may continue to live. This presents some very interesting theological questions. Why would Jesus allow the demons to continue to live? Isn’t the ultimate goal of God to bring about harmony and healing by doing away with evil? Even in the book of Revelation, we read where the Evil one and his followers are cast into prison for a thousand years, before they are again released to create havoc upon the earth, then ultimately cast into a lake of fire, implying that evil is ultimately consumed and no longer exists. Does this story imply that Jesus doesn’t have the power yet to destroy these demons? This is a question that I or the best theological minds are not able to answer.
The last piece in this story that I would like to examine is in allowing the demons to go into the pigs. Many a person would not see a problem with this part of the story, thinking that in Jewish culture, pigs were unclean and it is only natural that they would be used as a host for spirits that are also unclean. Yet, that is only for a Jewish mindset. What about the livelihood of the Gentile who doesn’t look upon pigs as unclean and in fact had his livelihood in pig farming?
Elaine Heath, in the commentary “Feasting on the Word”, gives this understanding,
“…because to the people whose living depends on the pigs, their loss is catastrophic. The swineherders are understandably afraid and, despite the miraculous healing, want Jesus to leave. From this standpoint, the story demonstrates that the coming of the gospel brings upheaval and sets in motion forces that will disrupt economic and social arrangements. (repeat) The good news will not seem good to everyone. We do not know how the Gerasene man fell into his pitiful state, but he is not unlike homeless people today, who wander the urban wastelands of bridge abutments and alleys. Many of them are mentally ill, unable to live a normal life with a job, family, home or basic necessities.”
Let me tie this all together by referring back to a question that I presented a few weeks ago, from the book, In His Steps, “What would Jesus do?” Often throughout that book, the work ethics that many of the characters had were called into question, such as: is this Christ-like? In one instance, one of the characters lost his job by becoming a “whistle blower” on his employer, an act spurred solely by his honestly asking “What would Jesus do.”
Today’s lectionary readings might seem disjointed but actually they address God speaking. With Elijah he was able to move forward after hearing God speak to him in the silence. In the Gospel, we see that when God speaks, for healing to occur, the economy of the town is disrupted. For us, if we truly ask the question, “What would Jesus do”, we will have to be prepared to have our lives disrupted. When we wrestle with questions such as “human sexuality”, we will have our social arrangements altered; when we struggle with the questions of who is allowed inside our borders and who isn’t, the discussion will go beyond immigration; the real question will ultimately be given a name, and that name is “entitlement”, and in discussing who has the “rights” to receive the majority of the earth’s resources, our economic structure will dramatically change. Once we start to address these issues with honestly and integrity in light of God’s ethics, we will be faced with major economic upheaval.
On this Fathers Day, as men who have families, our roles are constantly evolving. The best way for us to be able to cope with the pressures of these changes is to make sure that we allow time where there is silence, so that we might hear God speaking to us. As a nation we must understand that as God speaks out toward injustice, we must be prepared to act upon God’s leading and that there will be change, sometimes economically, sometimes socially. As Christians, as disciples of Christ, we are compelled and obligated to put a name to the injustices that exist, not just around the world, but in our country, and in our homes, and more directly within our selves, for we are people of the “still-speaking God”. Amen