SETTING THE CONTEXT
Our first
passage
today is about the prophet Elijah. He was burnt out. The king of
Israel at that time, Ahab, was one of the most wicked kings in their
history. 1 Kings 16:30 says “Ahab did more things to disobey the
Lord than any King before him.” Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, was so bad
her name became a cliché for being a treacherous woman. It is no
wonder that Elijah was discouraged, he had been fighting with these
two trying to overcome the pagan religion they brought to the people
and Jezebel wanted him dead. Elijah was ready to quit so he climbed
up Mt. Sinai and here is what happened.
Read 1 Kings 19:11-15a
There is some disagreement
about
where
this next story took place. The Greek manuscripts had small
differences in spelling that point to different cities. Each city
though is primarily a Gentile or non-Jewish city. This is Luke’s
only record of Jesus ministering in a primarily Gentile place. Notice
how the townspeople react to Jesus’ use of power and why they react
the way they do.
Read Luke 8:26-39
THE SERMON
This
weekend
as we celebrate Father’s
Day, it is an appropriate time to think about men and power. Who are
our male role models who use power well? There are certainly many we
could name who have misused their power. But think for a moment of
men who you think really have shown the right use of power.
I can’t help but
think about the kind of modeling my own father gave me of power. As a
child, I remember him working to provide for us, he protected us when
he could like when someone tried to break into our car, but sometimes
he couldn’t like when my mother was robbed while he was at work, he
was the primary disciplinarian, so if we did something really bad he
would determine our punishment. How many times one of the four of us
(usually one of my brothers) would hear, “Just wait until your
father gets home!” I know now that that wasn’t a role he
particularly liked, but it was one he felt was absolutely necessary
for us to become responsible adults. It was after all of us children
grew up and he retired from the military that my father has really
shown us how to use his personal power. He has for many years
mentored a kindergarten class. My dad is bilingual, so he can help
the Spanish speaking children as they learn English and he can help
the English speaking ones learn Spanish. He has served the community
through the Kiwanis service club and has serviced their Episcopal
church as both a leader and a worker in all kinds of ways. This
summer at almost 80, he will once again volunteer to help at the
Vacation Bible School as he has for many years. My father is not
perfect, but he has taught me so much about responsibility,
leadership, and the use of power. And you thought I got my
inclination for nontraditional jobs from my mother, oh no! The
appropriate use of power has to be learned and we need good role
models, especially good male role models so desperately. Our
true measuring stick and our perfect model of how we even define the
right use of power is Jesus Christ.
In the story of Jesus healing
the
man
with demons, we see Jesus wielding great power. He didn’t use it
though with a lot of fanfare or pyrotechnics. Remembering that Jesus
was in a Gentile community, no one seemed to really know Jesus at all
other than the demons who knew him immediately. Jesus used his quiet
strength, his awesome power to free this man who had lost everything,
everything and Jesus freed him of his demons. Jesus used his power to
restore him to his rightful mind, to health, to his family, to his
community, to his life. What a blessing from that quiet strength!
Now did you notice the reaction
of the
townspeople? Their first reaction was fear and the owner of the swine
was probably angry at losing his herd of pigs that is a big loss for
a pig farmer! The townspeople wanted Jesus to leave and leave
immediately. Even though this awesome power of God had done great
good, instead of rejoicing in the healing of this man, they were
uncomfortable with a power that they could not manage and control.
After all they had gotten used to the demon-possessed man being out
of their lives a long time ago; they had their routines without him
but could they really trust this outsider, Jesus? The difference
between the healed man who wanted to stay with Jesus and the
townspeople who wanted him gone was trust. The healed man experienced
Jesus’ power first hand and knew its healing touch, he trusted
Jesus. The other townfolk were afraid of him and his strength and
wanted him gone, so he left with his quiet strength untapped in their
lives. How many times has that been repeated through history? What a
tragedy for them! Perhaps as the healed man shared his story, perhaps
as he proclaimed what Jesus had done in his life some of his family
and friends had opened themselves to God’s healing touch, God’s
quiet strength and it spread slowly, but surely. Perhaps…
In our other Scripture, the
story
is
about a burnt out prophet, Elijah. From the very beginning, it had
been difficult, but Elijah’s work environment got even more hostile
when Jezebel, the Queen, had sworn to kill him. Elijah, discouraged
and afraid, returned to the source of his strength. He listened to
God and returned to Mt. Sinai, the same mountain where Moses
encountered God and had received the Ten Commandments. Elijah did not
find the Lord in the great natural pyrotechnics of wind, earthquake
and fire, but it was in the silence that Elijah heard the voice of
God. It was in the quiet strength that Elijah found his
re-commissioning to his ministry of prophet. Sometimes we need to
find a place of silence, of quiet, to hear the voice of God and to
receive that quiet strength, a bit of God’s awesome power that we
need to go on.
Getting into God’s creation
helped
me to hear that quiet voice of the Creator as I sought rest and
renewal on our vacation. In Yellowstone National Park, we spent one
morning hiking along a muddy, boggy trail through a forest and
meadows to a little lake. I kept hearing God’s quiet voice as I
walked along the trail weaving next to a flowing creek. These were
some of the things I heard about being your leader:
- Walk a well trodden path or road
from the opposite direction and you’ll see different things
- When there is a muddy situation
stay on the high road and you’ll stay clean and dry
- When there is an obstruction, don’t
just stand there and fight it, flow around it remembering that God is
like the mighty river that flows through time and history. In time,
God will go through or around anything!
- God can and will bring new life out
of devastation.
We saw this in the Yellowstone
Park and
we celebrated it as this stepmother officiated at the wedding of our
son (technically my step-son) as he remarried so that our grandsons
now have a stepmother. God is the God 2nd chances, of new
possibilities, and of new life: the quiet strength of God working in
the plants of the park where a fire had destroyed the forest and
devastated the landscape; the quiet strength of God working in the
lives of a man and a woman to blend a new family of one generation
and then another; everywhere the healing, restoring, connecting,
re-creating power of God at work.
The quiet strength of God is a
model
for the use of power. In Jesus, we see a perfect model for the right
use of power. He took God’s awesome power and used it as quiet
strength to heal, to bless, to uplift, to renew and to give a new
future to one who was shunned. In God’s creation and re-creation,
we see the divine Spirit still working. May we on this day that we
celebrate the special calling of fathers recommit ourselves to using
our power as this quiet strength. Amen.
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