Nancy Ferree-Clark - "Listening to God" (June 24, 2001)
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| - | Let's pray. | 0:03 |
| May the words of my mouth and the meditations | 0:07 | |
| of all our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, | 0:10 | |
| O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer, amen. | 0:13 | |
| Just a moment ago, our presiding minister Richard Hayes | 0:20 | |
| invited each of you to stand | 0:23 | |
| and to read a portion of Psalm 42. | 0:26 | |
| I wonder how many of you remember the words that you read? | 0:29 | |
| My soul thirst for God, for the living God. | 0:34 | |
| My tears have been my food day and night. | 0:38 | |
| While people say to me continually, where is your God? | 0:43 | |
| My soul is cast down within me. | 0:48 | |
| I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? | 0:50 | |
| Now I'm realistic enough to know that most | 0:58 | |
| of what is read in church washes over you and me | 1:01 | |
| like warm bath water. | 1:04 | |
| The words are generally comforting | 1:06 | |
| to us in their familiarity. | 1:08 | |
| The hymns are satisfying for their musical appeal. | 1:10 | |
| And the faces around the chapel are beaming with confidence | 1:13 | |
| that everything really is going to be okay, | 1:16 | |
| at least for this one hour. | 1:19 | |
| But every now and then, we think about what we've just said, | 1:21 | |
| and we start to get a little nervous. | 1:25 | |
| Who are we to speak in such a casual way | 1:27 | |
| to the maker of heaven and earth, | 1:31 | |
| the Alpha and the Omega, the Ancient of Days? | 1:33 | |
| My God, why have you forgotten me? | 1:38 | |
| I'm reminded of an image first penned by Annie Dillard | 1:42 | |
| in her book, Holy the firm and since quoted by preachers | 1:46 | |
| in many pulpits, including this one. | 1:49 | |
| And she writes, the higher Christian churches, | 1:52 | |
| and by that I think she means churches a lot like us, | 1:56 | |
| come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, | 1:59 | |
| with authority and pomp, | 2:04 | |
| as though they knew what they were doing. | 2:06 | |
| As though people in themselves were inappropriate | 2:09 | |
| set of creatures to be and to have dealings with God. | 2:11 | |
| I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words | 2:16 | |
| which people have successfully addressed to God | 2:19 | |
| without they're getting killed. | 2:22 | |
| Based on Annie Dillard's words, | 2:26 | |
| perhaps wearing crash helmets to church would be | 2:27 | |
| the most appropriate attire as we dare to approach | 2:29 | |
| the throne of the Almighty. | 2:32 | |
| We say all the right words, but so often | 2:35 | |
| do so without thinking about what we are saying. | 2:38 | |
| And certainly without knowing how God will choose | 2:42 | |
| to respond to us when we say them. | 2:44 | |
| If this happened to be your day, | 2:47 | |
| for really listening to the Psalmist's words, | 2:49 | |
| for feeling them right down in the marrow of your bones. | 2:52 | |
| This warning probably doesn't apply to you. | 2:56 | |
| If tears have been your food both day and night. | 3:00 | |
| You didn't have any trouble connecting with this psalm | 3:04 | |
| because you've been there. | 3:07 | |
| You have your own story, | 3:10 | |
| or you know someone else's story well, that tells | 3:11 | |
| what it's like to feel completely alone in the world, | 3:15 | |
| to be forgotten, afraid, | 3:20 | |
| swallowed up by the darkness, angry with God. | 3:23 | |
| I'm sorry even to have to remind you of these feelings | 3:28 | |
| when you may have simply been trying to get away | 3:32 | |
| from them on a pleasant summer morning here at Duke Chapel. | 3:34 | |
| The problem is you can't really get away | 3:38 | |
| from these things in church. | 3:41 | |
| Not if you're gonna read the Bible, | 3:43 | |
| and think about what those people went through. | 3:45 | |
| Take Elijah as a good example. | 3:48 | |
| You heard about him in 1 Kings 19. | 3:51 | |
| He went from being most successful prophet | 3:55 | |
| to most wanted man, in a matter of minutes. | 3:58 | |
| In fact, the words of this psalm | 4:03 | |
| could have come straight out of Elijah's mouth. | 4:04 | |
| My God, why have you forgotten me? | 4:07 | |
| We meet him in this story at the conclusion of a contest | 4:12 | |
| between Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. | 4:15 | |
| Why was he in a contest with the prophets of Baal? | 4:21 | |
| Well, there was a drought at the time, a terrible drought. | 4:24 | |
| And the people were conflicted about which deity, | 4:28 | |
| Yahweh or the Canaanite God Baal, | 4:31 | |
| just might be able to send them some rain. | 4:35 | |
| The purpose of this contest was to discover | 4:38 | |
| whether Yahweh or Baal could miraculously bring down | 4:40 | |
| the fire that would burn the sacrificial offering, | 4:44 | |
| and the winner would surely be the one | 4:47 | |
| who could end this terrible drought. | 4:49 | |
| The prophets of Baal went first with Ahab, King of Israel, | 4:52 | |
| and all the Israelites as witnesses. | 4:56 | |
| These prophets danced around the altar | 4:59 | |
| and they shouted instructions to the sky | 5:01 | |
| with Elijah standing back and mocking them all the while. | 5:03 | |
| Maybe Baal is meditating or taking a nap, | 5:07 | |
| or maybe he wandered away, which means in Hebrew, | 5:10 | |
| he was attending to natural needs. | 5:14 | |
| But all of this was to no avail. | 5:17 | |
| There was no fire forthcoming from Baal. | 5:19 | |
| Now, when it was Elijah's turn, he repaired the altar, | 5:22 | |
| and he doused the wood with water three times, | 5:25 | |
| enough even to fill this trench | 5:28 | |
| that he had dug around the altar. | 5:30 | |
| Then he prayed for the Lord to reveal His power, | 5:32 | |
| which he did, by sending a fire so hot | 5:36 | |
| that it consumed the whole thing, the wood, | 5:40 | |
| the offering, even the fire that was in the trench. | 5:43 | |
| The people were duly impressed and they declared Yahweh | 5:47 | |
| to be the winner, and Elijah declared the profits of Baal | 5:50 | |
| to be the losers by killing all 450 of them. | 5:54 | |
| The final scene of this encounter describes Elijah | 6:00 | |
| telling King Ahab, his old nemesis, | 6:03 | |
| you better get that chariot off the mountain | 6:05 | |
| because there's a storm coming. | 6:07 | |
| And as the rain began to pour, Elijah surged ahead | 6:09 | |
| of Ahab's chariot on foot, | 6:13 | |
| and ran the entire 17 miles back to Jezreel, | 6:16 | |
| flaunting his victory every inch of the way. | 6:20 | |
| It was only when Ahab got home to describe these events | 6:24 | |
| to Queen Jezebel, his wife, | 6:28 | |
| that things took a sharp downhill turn for Elijah. | 6:31 | |
| You see, Jezebel had been the biggest supporter | 6:35 | |
| of these prophets of Baal that Elijah had just murdered. | 6:38 | |
| As the daughter of a Phoenician King, | 6:43 | |
| who was also a priest in one of the cults of Baal, | 6:44 | |
| she was used to getting her own way. | 6:48 | |
| And she was not about to take | 6:50 | |
| this kind of behavior from Elijah lying down. | 6:51 | |
| She probably sent the message to Elijah, | 6:55 | |
| that within 24 hours, she would do the same thing to him, | 6:58 | |
| he had done to the prophets of Baal. | 7:03 | |
| With this news, Elijah plummeted from the heights of glory | 7:06 | |
| to the depths of despair, | 7:10 | |
| he was terrified by Jezebel's threats. | 7:13 | |
| He tried to get as far away from her as he possibly could, | 7:16 | |
| and ran away to the middle of the wilderness, | 7:19 | |
| where he found himself sitting | 7:22 | |
| underneath a solitary broom tree. | 7:24 | |
| He begged God to let him die on the spot. | 7:28 | |
| According to Elijah's own words, | 7:31 | |
| he was feeling that the example of his ancestors, | 7:33 | |
| such as Moses, was so far beyond his own, | 7:37 | |
| that he could never match their standard. | 7:41 | |
| And now he just wanted to end it. | 7:43 | |
| But the Lord had other things in mind. | 7:46 | |
| After God sent food and water to the beleaguered prophet | 7:48 | |
| via an angel, Elijah embarked on a very long journey | 7:52 | |
| for 40 days and 40 nights to mount Horeb, | 7:56 | |
| also known as Mount Sinai, | 8:00 | |
| the place where Moses had received the law. | 8:02 | |
| Not only was it a very long journey, | 8:06 | |
| but Elijah fasted all the way. | 8:08 | |
| And when he arrived there, Yahweh was waiting for him. | 8:11 | |
| The Lord asked, what are you doing here, Elijah? | 8:16 | |
| He answered that he had been very zealous for the Lord, | 8:19 | |
| but the Israelites had forsaken the covenant. | 8:22 | |
| And now he was the only faithful one left | 8:25 | |
| and a hunted man at that. | 8:29 | |
| If Elijah was looking for sympathy, | 8:32 | |
| he wasn't going to get it here. | 8:33 | |
| Yahweh simply instructed him to stand on the mountain | 8:36 | |
| and wait for the Lord would pass by. | 8:39 | |
| So he did. | 8:43 | |
| First there came a great wind strong enough to split | 8:45 | |
| the mountains all around Elijah into a million pieces. | 8:48 | |
| But the Lord was not in the wind. | 8:51 | |
| Then there came a great earthquake so powerful | 8:55 | |
| that it seemed as if the foundations of the whole world | 8:57 | |
| were trembling, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. | 9:00 | |
| And then there came a great fire so hot | 9:05 | |
| that no one could stand anywhere near it. | 9:08 | |
| But the Lord was not in the fire. | 9:10 | |
| What was Elijah supposed to make of this, | 9:13 | |
| were this supposed to be the signs that traditionally | 9:16 | |
| told that Yahweh was near? | 9:19 | |
| Remember Moses and the burning bush on this same mountain, | 9:21 | |
| even Elijah himself had prayed for rain | 9:25 | |
| and a miraculous fire on Mount Carmel, on Mount Carmel, | 9:27 | |
| and the Lord had delivered. | 9:31 | |
| But now, as he listened, and he waited, | 9:33 | |
| the only thing left to do was to grow more terrified. | 9:36 | |
| Finally, there came a still small voice, | 9:40 | |
| translated variously as a thin whisper, | 9:44 | |
| or a faint murmuring sound, or a sound of sheer silence. | 9:47 | |
| So quiet, it was nearly inaudible. | 9:52 | |
| But for Elijah, there was no mistake, that Yahweh was near. | 9:56 | |
| When he heard it, he wrapped his face in a mantle | 10:01 | |
| and stepped to the entrance of the cave where | 10:03 | |
| he had been waiting, just as Moses had hid his face from God | 10:05 | |
| and took shelter in the cleft of the rock on Mount Sinai. | 10:09 | |
| Once again, the Lord asked, what are you doing here, Elijah? | 10:14 | |
| And once again, Elijah made the very same response | 10:17 | |
| that he had made earlier, | 10:20 | |
| that he was the only faithful one left. | 10:22 | |
| But this time, there would be a clear directive from God | 10:25 | |
| about what Elijah had to do. | 10:29 | |
| He was to go back, back to Damascus, | 10:32 | |
| and back to the people in the place | 10:35 | |
| he had been running away from. | 10:37 | |
| Like Moses, when he left the mountain, | 10:39 | |
| carrying new tablets under his arm of the law to read, | 10:42 | |
| the way, to lead the wayward Israelites, | 10:45 | |
| Elijah came down off that mountain | 10:49 | |
| with an appointed assignment from God. | 10:50 | |
| He was called to lead the Israelites back to God, | 10:53 | |
| and to put into motions, the events that would lead | 10:56 | |
| to the downfall of King Ahab and his family. | 10:59 | |
| Elijah would be the new Moses, | 11:03 | |
| destined to lead his people through a perilous time. | 11:05 | |
| I suppose none of us have stories nearly as dramatic | 11:09 | |
| as Elijah's who was ultimately | 11:13 | |
| taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire. | 11:15 | |
| Yet all of us, at one time or another, | 11:18 | |
| have undoubtedly found ourselves stuck in a very dark place, | 11:21 | |
| searching for God. | 11:26 | |
| What happens when we pour our souls out to God | 11:28 | |
| with words like, why have you forgotten me? | 11:31 | |
| Only to be met with sheer silence. | 11:35 | |
| How long does it take, before we completely give up on God? | 11:38 | |
| Can life ever be found on the other side of despair? | 11:43 | |
| Christians have struggled for centuries | 11:49 | |
| to find answers to these questions. | 11:51 | |
| In the process, a rich tradition of teachings | 11:55 | |
| and practices has grown within church | 11:58 | |
| to guide us on our spiritual journeys. | 12:00 | |
| One model for spiritual discernment developed | 12:04 | |
| by St. John of the Cross dates back to the 16th century. | 12:06 | |
| He wrote about an experience | 12:12 | |
| which he called Dark Night of the Soul. | 12:13 | |
| The Dark Night which he writes about, is not something that | 12:18 | |
| should be considered completely negative or destructive. | 12:21 | |
| On the contrary, it is an experience, | 12:25 | |
| which is almost to be welcomed as a sick person | 12:29 | |
| might welcome surgery, when it promises to bring healing. | 12:31 | |
| The purpose of the darkness is not to punish or afflict us, | 12:36 | |
| but its purpose is to set us free of the distractions | 12:40 | |
| that have been impeding our relationship to God. | 12:43 | |
| St. John of the Cross embraced the soul's Dark Night | 12:47 | |
| as a sort of divine appointment, | 12:51 | |
| a privileged invitation to draw close to the divine center. | 12:53 | |
| What does this Dark Night look like? | 12:58 | |
| It may involve feelings of abandonment, dryness, | 13:01 | |
| desolation, emptiness, exactly the kind of things | 13:04 | |
| we spend a lot of time and energy trying to avoid normally. | 13:08 | |
| St. John described this in one of his poems as | 13:13 | |
| my house being now all stilled. | 13:16 | |
| Somehow, we've been sold on the idea | 13:21 | |
| that life should be one big celebration. | 13:22 | |
| And it isn't, we can certainly turn it into one. | 13:25 | |
| But the Dark Night of the soul is a time | 13:29 | |
| when we don't have that energy anymore, | 13:31 | |
| to try to put up a false front. | 13:34 | |
| Rather than our being able to run away | 13:37 | |
| from life's difficulties, we're stopped dead in our tracks. | 13:39 | |
| And as a result, we can be primed into a period | 13:43 | |
| of stillness and receptivity to God's voice, | 13:47 | |
| even when we didn't choose to be there. | 13:50 | |
| It's in times like these when we may benefit | 13:53 | |
| from a spiritual relationship. | 13:56 | |
| One such as working with a spiritual director, | 13:58 | |
| or meeting with a Stephen minister, | 14:02 | |
| or even talking with a trusted friend | 14:04 | |
| who can walk with us into the dark places, | 14:06 | |
| and provide support in the discernment process. | 14:08 | |
| This would not be a friend who rushes to your rescue | 14:12 | |
| and tells you to hurry up and get over it. | 14:14 | |
| But someone who offers a compassionate presence, | 14:17 | |
| and gentle acceptance, and may even be able to advise you | 14:20 | |
| if you need professional help, or medical treatment as well. | 14:24 | |
| A spiritual guide can be helpful in moving us | 14:28 | |
| beyond our need to order and fix life's problems, | 14:31 | |
| to embrace the whole of human life. | 14:36 | |
| With all its ambiguity, failure, and paradox. | 14:38 | |
| These are times when we have to be reminded | 14:43 | |
| that life isn't ultimately about problems, | 14:46 | |
| to be corrected according to our own desires, | 14:49 | |
| but a mystery to be lived into, | 14:52 | |
| including the pain and the chaos | 14:55 | |
| that can lead us into new birth. | 14:58 | |
| Elijah did not get the answer from Yahweh | 15:01 | |
| that he anticipated, when he complained of his miseries, | 15:04 | |
| feeling like a failure in every way. | 15:07 | |
| First, he asked to die. | 15:10 | |
| But instead the angel gave him bread and water. | 15:12 | |
| Next he bemoaned the fact | 15:15 | |
| that he wasn't as good as his ancestors. | 15:16 | |
| And he was ordered to take a long journey | 15:20 | |
| to the same place where Moses had met God. | 15:22 | |
| Then he was told that the glory of the Lord would pass by, | 15:25 | |
| but it didn't happen in any of the usual ways, | 15:29 | |
| only in a thin murmuring sound. | 15:33 | |
| And at last, Elijah continued to insist | 15:36 | |
| that he was the only faithful one left in Israel. | 15:39 | |
| But still he was instructed to go back, | 15:42 | |
| to face all the faithless people | 15:45 | |
| he had been complaining about all along. | 15:47 | |
| None of this was anything he had asked for. | 15:51 | |
| He wanted simply a peaceful end. | 15:55 | |
| And what he got was a lot of chaos. | 15:57 | |
| But this was the path he was called to follow, | 16:00 | |
| for a genuine encounter with God. | 16:04 | |
| This was the way God re-energized him, | 16:07 | |
| to go deeper and to go forward, | 16:09 | |
| to become the obedient servant he was created to be. | 16:12 | |
| Like Elijah, God has surprising things | 16:17 | |
| in store for each of us. | 16:20 | |
| Are you listening for that still small voice? | 16:22 | |
| Are you brave enough to answer? | 16:26 | |
| I love an image given to me at a workshop by Parker Palmer, | 16:29 | |
| a Quaker and well known spiritual writer. | 16:34 | |
| And this relates to an experience he once had, | 16:37 | |
| while rappelling down a very steep precipice. | 16:39 | |
| If you've ever done this or seen it done, | 16:42 | |
| you know that rappelling involves dangling | 16:45 | |
| from a series of ropes, | 16:47 | |
| as you gingerly make your way safely to the bottom. | 16:49 | |
| Parker was climbing down carefully but steadily, | 16:53 | |
| until he reached a very awkward place with a rock face | 16:57 | |
| suddenly turned away from him at a very sharp angle. | 17:00 | |
| Suddenly, he was dangling in midair | 17:05 | |
| with nothing to grab onto. | 17:07 | |
| He was not only terrified but paralyzed as well. | 17:10 | |
| It took him a moment to be able to regain his composure | 17:14 | |
| long enough to think about what kind of help he needed. | 17:18 | |
| But when he did so, he called out only in a tiny | 17:21 | |
| little child like voice, "Help!" | 17:25 | |
| The instructor who was watching all this | 17:31 | |
| from his own safe place on the ground, called back to him, | 17:33 | |
| "Parker, if you can't get out of it, get into it." | 17:36 | |
| Meaning for Parker to bemoan his state of affairs | 17:41 | |
| would get him nowhere. | 17:44 | |
| He was going to have to fully enter into his predicament | 17:46 | |
| to see what new possibilities would present themselves | 17:50 | |
| for the future, and then go with it, | 17:53 | |
| or else he would be stuck dangling in the same place | 17:56 | |
| for the rest of his life. | 18:00 | |
| Sounds a lot like something | 18:03 | |
| Yahweh would have said to Elijah, doesn't it? | 18:04 | |
| Or maybe even to you or to me. | 18:06 | |
| If you can't get out of it, get into it. | 18:10 | |
| The Lord is surely with you. | 18:14 | |
| And there will be bread for the journey. | 18:16 |