Luke 8: 26-39
God’s coming as
we know is not where, when, or how people expect. We know this.
And yet still, where do you think people look for God? Where do you think most people expect to see
God or claim to see God? Natural
disasters, natural actions. When big
things happen in our lives – if these things are good, we say, “God blessed me”
and if things are bad, we tend to ask, “Why did God do this to me?” or “Why did
God let this happen”…like the Holocaust or natural disasters, the big Jesus
burning down. This was true in Biblical
times as well. People looked for God in
the big things, the big movements in the world or in their lives or in
nature. That is a big part of why we
have this passage written the way it was in 1st Kings. It needed to be said that for Elijah, God
wasn’t in the wind, the earthquake or the fire. Where was God?
In the NRSV the
translation of this passage says that God was found “in the sound of Sheer
Silence.” In the NIV it says God was
found in a “Gentle Whisper”. In the
Common English translation it is “ there was a sound. Thin. Quiet.” I love that.
A sound of thin quiet. There is great
power in God showing up in silence, or even in a gentle voice.
Because what
really gets us to listen? Do we hear or
understand a message in the earthquakes and disasters in our lives? What kind of message is that? Does it get us to stop and listen? Not usually.
Instead, it causes us to talk back, to talk more, to lament and cry and
yell and ask “why?!” God’s voice is not
to be heard in that. We hear anger, we
hear punishment, we hear revenge. But do
we hear God? I don’t think so, not only
because I don’t believe God is about punishment and revenge, but also because
if God is wanting us to change, just telling us “bad! Wrong!” usually is not going to help us know
how to be different or what to do that is different.
We know this to
be true. Psychology studies are
absolutely consistent in showing that when we yell at our kids or hurt them,
our kids are actually incapable of hearing or understanding or incorporating
into their being what it is we are saying.
They don’t learn the lesson when we deliver it in anger or violence. They just plain don’t learn it. Do we think that God doesn’t know this? No.
God knows and God wants us to learn and grow. Anger is a secondary emotion. And there are two things that underlie
anger. Always. The first is grief and sorrow. But the more common emotion behind anger is
fear. God has no reason to be afraid or
to act out of fear. Therefore, God’s
response to us is always one of love, one that is quiet, one that is
compelling. One that is unexpected.
Barbara
Brown Taylor wrote a wonderful book titled, Learning to Walk in the Dark. In it she shares the value of finding God in
the unexpected and unexplored and scary places.
Some of what she says, “Those of us who wish to draw near to God should
not be surprised when our vision goes cloudy, for this is a sign that we are
approaching the opaque splendor of God.”
This thing that we fear so much, the dark, is actually essential to our
health. We need real darkness to be able
to sleep well and we need real sleep in order to think well, to function well,
to be healthy in our lives. Jesus died
on the cross. But we are so afraid of
the dark that we don’t want to face the fact that it is only in our dying that
we, too, truly live. Only in facing that
which is uncomfortable, hard, but true and deep that we find God. She continued, “One of the central functions
of the dark night” (used as a metaphor to mean those times when we go through
difficult and painful things and cannot feel God’s presence) “is to convince
those who grasp after things that God cannot be grasped. God is not a thing. And since God is not a thing, God cannot be
held on to. God can only be encountered
as that which eclipses the reality of all other things. …(our) images of and ideas about God are in
fact obstacles between (us) and the Real Thing.” (p 138). (p144 - ) “The dark night is God’s best gift
to you, intended for your liberation. It
is about freeing you from your ideas about God, your fears about God, your
attachment to all the benefits you have been promised for believing in God,
your devotion to the spiritual practices that are supposed to make you feel
closer to God, your dedication to doing and believing all the right things
about God, your positive and negative evaluations of yourself as a believer in
God, your tactics for manipulating God, and your sure cures for doubting
God. All of these are substitutes for
God.”
Thomas
Merton says it this way: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself and the fact that
I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing
so. But I believe that the desire to
please you does in fact please you. And
I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart
from that desire. And I know that if I
do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about
it. Therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” (from “Thoughts in Solitude”)
God is present
in the silence – in the quiet. Often we
think of silence as an absence, but in this case it is a present silence. It is a profound presence.
God’s coming, or
seeming lack of coming is very rarely what we expect. And what we eventually learn is that God’s
presence in the silence is much more profound that any voice that we could
hear, especially when we are in a dark time.
When grief is strong there are no words of comfort that can help, that
can fill the void that is left. All
words in profound grief are empty, meaningless dribble. The only thing that is meaningful in that is
presence. Genuine presence. “A Noise.
Thin. Silent.”
God is always in
the unexpected places and that is scary.
I’ve shared with you before about my favorite restaurant in San Leandro:
the Bella Italia Inn, which had no inn
attached to it at all. It was an Italian
restaurant, though the owner/cook was Indian. This was the first thing you would notice when
you walked into the restaurant - the Indian cook behind the counter in the
kitchen cooking the food. In case you
missed this, you would be reminded of it by the choice of music - Indian music
playing over the speakers. The waitress
who worked there was from Central America, and spoke very little, if any,
English, only Spanish. The decor in the
restaurant was an odd mix of quality and...lack of quality - the wood work in
the restaurant was high quality, truly lovely stuff. But the tables would rock back and forth on
their uneven legs. The rugs were
beautiful, but filthy both with current grime and with deeply set stains. Drinks that you would order would be brought
to you in glasses that didn’t match. The
last time I went, my friend was given a beautiful large crystal wine glass out
of which to drink her coke, and I was given a beautiful, small and differently
designed plastic wine glass out of which to drink mine. There were beautiful
glass oil and vinegar holders on each table right next to the cheap plastic
salt and pepper shakers. If you were
able to order your food (if you were able to communicate with the Spanish
speaking waitress) she would bring you hot food on cold plates, and cold food
on hot plates. If you asked to split
your dessert, they would “split” your two layer piece of chocolate cake by
cutting off the top layer, so that one of you gets all the frosting and the
other all the filling. The waitress
wouldn’t bring you a spoon with your spaghetti nor a pen with the credit card
slip if you pay by credit card. If you
ordered mineral water, they brought something that wasn’t carbonated. One time when I went, I had to wait for an
hour to be served, though it was obvious that there was only one other couple
in the entire restaurant - “we’re understaffed tonight,” we were told. But in the midst of this very chaotic and
strange place, the food is fantastic.
The seasonings exquisite, everything cooked to perfection. Truly wonderful Italian food cooked by this
Indian man in these strange circumstances.
If you were put off by the circumstances, the décor, the incongruity of
the place, you would miss out on one of the best Italian meals in the Bay Area. God is like that. The unexpected gifts in the chaos.
The story of the
pigs. Again, God in the unexpected. It terrified the people. But he healed the man. Why was it so scary? In part because it was so unexpected, and so
uncontrollable. We like the boundaries
that define our world, that help us to walk through and navigate each day. The physical rules and scientific facts give
us comfort: we know x can happen, we know y can’t. But then when y does happen? It is terrifying.
We are
complex. We are found to be in many
different moods, with many different challenges and gifts and reactions and
ways of responding to our world and being in the world. And we are made in the image of God. So God, too, is complex and shows up in many,
many ways. When we limit the ways in
which God can show up or the ways in which we see God, we limit God-self. We make our God too small.
I think about
the Joan Osborne song, “What if God was one of us”. The words are:
If God had a
name what would it be?
And would you
call it to his face?
If you were
faced with Him in all His glory
What would you
ask if you had just one question?
And yeah,
yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah,
God is good
And yeah,
yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah
What if God
was one of us?
Just a slob
like one of us
Just a
stranger on the bus
Tryin' to make
his way home?
If God had a
face what would it look like?
And would you
want to see if, seeing meant
That you would
have to believe in things like heaven
And in Jesus
and the saints, and all the prophets?
People were
offended by this song. Why? And yet, the message of Jesus is very clear:
God IS one of us, with all that that means.
But we have a fear of God being present in what we don’t like, what we
don’t know, what we don’t understand.
So our challenge
then is to keep our eyes open, keep looking for God even in the places we don’t
like. God works in the world, is alive
in the most unexpected places, is present in the silence. The biblical stories remind us that God comes
where we least expect to see God, the stories remind us of our need for the miracles
of wholeness, of transformation, of change, of seeing God in the unexpected,
even if that can make our lives uncomfortable.
I
just finished reading a wonderful book called Tattoos on the Heart, written
by Jesuit Priest Gregory Boyle. Father
Boyle works with gangs in L.A. and has won the California peace prize for his
work. One of the many things that makes
the book so compelling is when he talks about the unexpected places where he
has met God. He warns that if we only
look for God where we expect to see God that our god can become very tiny, very
limited, very boxed in by our beliefs, our experiences, our own thinking, and
most especially our expectations.
(p.19) He goes on to say that God
IS compassion, compassion that we, too, are called on to embody. One story I believe highlights that especially. Father Boyle is sharing about a woman who had
two of her sons killed by gang activity, both of whom had actually outgrown
their own gang behavior, had moved on to reclaim their lives and were living
with hope, integrity and movement, going to college, going to work. But they happened to be in the wrong places
at the wrong time and were shot and killed.
She is devastated by both of these losses and is struggling to live each
day, which she must do because she has two other children who still need
her. But at one point she is taken to
the hospital herself with an irregular heartbeat and chest pain. Boyle continues,
“The doctors are tending to her with EKGs and
the like when there is a rush of activity at the entrance. With a flurry of bodies and medical staff
moving into their proscribed roles, a teenage gang member is rushed to the
vacant space right next to Soledad. The
kid is covered in blood from multiple gunshot wounds, and they begin cutting
off his clothes. The wounds are too
serious to waste time pulling the curtain that separates Soledad from this kid
fighting for his life. People are
pounding on his chest and inserting IVs.
Soledad turns and sees him. She
recognizes him as a kid from the gang that most certainly robber her of her
sons.
‘As
I saw this kid,’ she tells me, ‘I just kept thinking of what my friends might
say if they were here with me. They’d
say, ‘Pray that he dies.’” But she just looked at this tiny kid, struggling to
sidestep the fate of her sons, as the doctors work and scream, ‘We’re losing
him. We’re losing him!’
‘And
I began to cry as I have never cried before and started to pray the hardest
I’ve ever prayed. “Please… don’t… let
him die. I don’t want his mom to go
through what I have.”’
“And
the kid lived.”
That’s where God is. God is in those unexpected moments of grace, of vision, of love, of compassion, and of silent presence. Sometimes it is hard to see God there, but if we want to be close to God, we have to start looking in the unexpected places, to look not in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire, but in the presence.
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