Sermon: "Pitless Religion"

Fifth in a series on "The Kingdom of God."
Delivered August 24, 2003 by Dr. Ann Philbrick.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 .
See also NV: The Kingdom of God... A Primer.

The audio file of this sermon is available for download and listening in MP3 format.

Click to Download & Listen (2.6MB)

Would you join me in prayer please? O God, we come now to listen to you. We seek your word, we seek your grace. Speak to us we pray in the name of Christ, we pray Amen.

The Old Testament lesson comes from the 19th chapter of the first book of Kings. It's the story of an important part of the story of the prophet Elijah. Let me just give you a little context. The kingdom of Israel was ruled by kings, and some pre-context - there was a time in the life of Israel when they did not have kings. And they begged God for a king. God said, "You don't need a king, you have me." And they said please, please, please, every other nation has a king, we want a king. And finally, God relented and gave them a king. But he warned them that they would have problems and indeed they did. And the story that is the larger story from which we are going to hear today is about King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, who were king and queen of Israel, but who did not believe in the Lord God, but instead worshipped Baal. And they had prophets and made it illegal to worship God. But God rose up the prophet Elijah who preached and spoke and taught. And finally king Ahab and Queen Jezebel pulled Elijah in and said, "OK, we're going to have a showdown. We are going to prove once and for all that our God is stronger." Well, they were wrong. Yahweh God beat the prophet of Baal. And our text picks up right after that episode, where Elijah has been able to win the contest, the prophets of Baal have been killed and this is what happens. Let's listen to the Word of God.

Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them." Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day's journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, LORD," he said. "Take my life; I am not better than my ancestors." Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep. All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat." He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.

The angel of the LORD came back a second time and touched him and said, "Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you." So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night.

And the word of the LORD came to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He replied," I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."

The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it , he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

It is indeed a privilege to be here with you. I had the opportunity to serve the Baltimore Presbytery for about 9 or 10 months and it was a wonderful time to get to know this area. I worshipped here in this congregation. I would kind of just show up at churches and worship and had a great time and came here and enjoyed it very much. But, one of the interesting things about being a Presbytery staff is you get to do guest preaching and I have learned there is a little difference being a guest preacher and being the home preacher. It is indeed good news to hear that you are about to receive your new pastor, which I am delighted for you by the way. I know it has been a long time coming. But when you are the home pastor, which I have been in a previous part of my ministry, you know the people to whom you are preaching. To me, preaching is about bringing together the world of scriptures in the world in which you live together and listening for how God is speaking to all of that. But when you are a guest preacher, you don't live in this specific world or know the people, but I can count on the fact that we have common bonds in being human and in being Christians, and in my previous experiences and my experiences touch enough on things that are common for you, that I can bring a word today that can be helpful. And it is in that spirit and in that hope that I offer my word to you.

Let me begin with a story, a joke that I learned from my first colleague in ministry whose parents came over from Ireland, a story about three Irish guys who are arguing about the miracles of modern science. The first one says, "Ah the most amazing miracle of modern science is the airplane. Why you step into that vehicle and they close the door and take off and in a matter of hours you are across the ocean in another land." The second fellow says, "Aye your daft, the true miracle of modern science is the television. Why you can turn on a button on that box and you can see all around the world while sitting in your own living room." And the third fellow said, "You are both daft. The most amazing miracle of modern science is the thermos bottle." And they looked at him a little askance and he said, "Ah, I can put my hot tea in it and it stays hot or I can put my cold tea in it and it stays cold and therein lies the miracle, how does it know the difference?"

Just a little silly story to introduce the idea of the miracles of modern science, if you will. All those things in our life that make our world quite convenient. Things that we have grown, that we have produced, that we have manufactured, you name it. Permanent press clothing, microwavable food, fast food restaurants, cell phones, car phones, computers, faxes, self service gas stations. I remember when I was learning how to drive my mother told me you never went to a self-service gas station. You should always make sure that someone pumps your gas. Well, we don't do that anymore. We have engineered our foods so that it is easier to eat, right? I eat a lot more carrots these days because they come all cut up and all peeled, all in these itty-bitty things. We have even grown our food to be more convenient. Why there was once a day when there weren't seedless grapes, okay? Convenience is the order of the day and it is wonderful and it is a gift that God has given us to be able to do these things for life. All of these conveniences are designed to minimize what I might call down time. The fixing, the preparing, the waiting so that we can get on with living. Now for many people, religion plays a specific role in our convenience oriented society. For many people, religion is meant to minimize kind of emotional or spiritual down time. It is supposed to keep us happy and productive and thus my sermon title, which really is longer than we can put on the board, so I just gave that little Pitless Religion. This was the original title. There may be seedless grapes, but there is no such thing as pitless religion. You know what a pit is? There are a couple of different definitions for the word pit. One is that large seed inside of a peach, right? But the other is a hole dug in the ground. That is a pit. And metaphorically a pit can be a hole in our heart. There are expressions that use that word and I know they are old fashion because they were in style when I was young, but when things were terrible we used to say, "Oh it's the pits". Any of you out there remember that? Some people have never heard of it. It may be regional too, but it was, "Oh it's the pits". Of if you were not feeling well or you were feeling depressed you might say of yourself, I am in the pits. So to call something the pits in my youth was to say that you did not like it or you found it disappointing or depressing, or to say that you were feeling depressed and things were not okay. And you see many people want to believe that the Christian faith is an inoculation against the pits. And it is just not so.

Now, every one of us here to one extent or the other, even in little ways or big ways, knows what I am talking about, these pits if you will. They can happen for all kinds of reasons. Things can happen in our life that really throw us for a loop. It can send us spinning. It can send us just off into depression. A loved one dies or we are fired from our job, we don't make the team, we are dumped by our boyfriend or girlfriend, or we get divorced or school or work is just so overwhelming or we get very sick. Sometimes we can get down and there is really no cause and you can not explain it. And sometimes those moments can be caused by a great success or a wonderful achievement and you do all this work to get something done and its great and when it is all over, it's like now what? Is that all there is? I have often heard church people say, "If only my faith were stronger, I wouldn't feel this way." As if having faith meant there would be no down time. Faith is indeed important for helping us get through those times and it is about that, that I want to talk this morning, but it is not a guarantee that there won't be hard times. I heard a wonderful quote that a gospel singer once said, We have been promised good news, not good times. And indeed we have good news to help us through all of the times.

I want to lift up for you the story of Elijah, which comes to us as a way that God can help us understand, how do we get through these times in our lives. You see Elijah had a big success. He had this wonderful achievement and then they were after him to kill him and he just, he ran and he was a mess. The story tells us that he first went off at what looks like to die. He just said, I am out of here and off into the desert he goes and it tells us that he fell asleep under a broom tree after praying to God that God would kill him. Please God let me die. He was depressed. But then an angel wakes him up and feeds him twice and then he gets up and he goes for 40 days and 40 nights through the wilderness to the Mount of Horeb, which by the way is where Moses got the Ten Commandments, so it is an important mountain in his faith tradition. He gets there and he spends the night and then God talks to him and says okay Elijah, what are you doing here? And Elijah has the same answer, Oh, nobody is here. It's just me. They all want to kill me. And God says, Go outside, I am going to show you myself. In the Old Testament, scholarly world, there is this fancy word called a theophany. And a theophany means when God shows himself. And usually in those stories there is wind and earthquake and fire and all kinds of things, but interestingly enough in this story, after the wind, after the earthquake, after the fire, is when Elijah really truly hears and meets God and it says in the newer standard version, that the sound of shear silence, the older revised standard version said, a still small voice, both of those are ways that you can translate the Hebrew and in either way you say it, it means that it was either total silence or a voice so quiet you had to be perfectly silent to hear it. And that is where Elijah has a new discovery of God's presence. Out of that moment, Elijah meets God and gets a new direction and the story goes on to say that he goes forth, in fact he gets a helper and on he goes with his ministry. But there is three things in this story that we can remember for our own down time.

Number one. It can help to get up and do something. Okay, and here is where I see this in the story. When Elijah gets fed by the angel. Elijah runs off, he is depressed and he is down and he is running away and he goes to sleep and the angel wakes him up. "Come on, wake up Elijah." I almost have the image of a Jewish momma, Eat, Eat, you will feel better. Well, in a way it helped. It didn't completely fix it, but it helped to a certain degree. It gave him strength. So when you are down, sometimes just getting up and doing something can be a helpful thing to do and that's okay. It may not take it all away, it may not make you completely better, but it can help. Go cook a meal. Go out to eat. Wash the dishes. Walk around the block. It's okay to just do something to get your mind off of how you are feeling. And let that just be for what it is. So it can help to just get up and do something.

Number Two. It's going to take the time that it is going to take. Elijah in the story travels for 40 days through the wilderness. And the wilderness is a reality that is very barren and very forbidding and so it is both an actual place that he went through, but spiritually speaking we can go through a wilderness when we are down in a kind of very scary, barren place. 40 days is symbolic. You have probably heard that number before, Moses and the Israelites traveled for 40 years before they got to the Promised Land. And who else? Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days before he came out, right after his baptism. 40 in the Hebrew language and concept is a symbol for enough. It means 40, but it also means enough. So whenever you see that number 40 in a story, you know that God is trying to communicate enough time has passed for whatever I needed to happen to have happen. And Elijah's time in the wilderness is enough for some things to begin to go on inside of him. It does not tell us what. It could be some healing began to take place in side of him, that he was sorting things out or what he had done and what God was asking, what was God going to be doing with him next. Maybe he was accepting the limitations of what he could offer and accept the power of what he had done. But the point here is that when you are down, it can't be rushed. That's what enough means. We need to take the time to get through it. Whatever it is for us. You see, there is no such thing as the perfect timetable for getting through a down time. Let's say you have a friend who just, I don't know, just got divorced and you know two months later you go to them and say, well you better feel better now, it's two months. I mean, or three months or six months. You can't do that. You can say to your friend, how are you feeling? And if it is still hard, let's pray. I am with you. But you can't put anyone, it's going to take the time that it is going to take. We have to have patience with ourselves if we are feeling down and we have to have patience with one another.

Number Three. God is there even in the silence. Elijah's downess ended with this amazing revelation of quietness. All the loud important crashing events, yes God was a part of that, but that's not really where God broke through in a new way. In his heart, he heard something beyond words, something that reminded him all over again of God's calling and God's reality in his life. Often it is without those words and without the drama that God speaks to us and we find some new direction. If you have ever been depressed, you know that sometimes it feels like you are just sleepwalking. And if you have ever been really confused, you know what it feels like traveling through the wilderness and if you have ever been really angry, you know it can feel like fire burning through your bones and if you have ever been really sad, you know that grief can shake you like an earthquake and if you have ever been really despairing, you know that it can just howl through you like the wind, but in all of those feelings and in all of those realities, God is there and when all of those things pass, you will discover that God is there, even in the silence, in the nothing, in the no answer. For another person who went through the deepest darkness we can ever know is Jesus Christ and he faced the ultimate pit, if you will and that's death. Did you realize that in Hebrew and Greek the word in scripture for hell is pit. The word for hell literally means abyss, deep pit, the dwelling place of the dead and at his crucifixion and death, that's where Jesus went. What do we say in the Apostle's creed? Descended into hell. He went in to the deepest, darkest pit that we could ever face and he went feeling like he was alone. What did he say on the cross? My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? But he wasn't alone, was he? God was with him and God died with him in that silent agony and was in the pit of death and God had the power to raise Jesus up and create new life. See that's the good news. Not that there are no pits, but no pit is deep enough to fork God's power of love and life.

So folks, God will not smooth out our lives so that there is no holes, there is no down time or not pits, or darkness'. God instead promises to be with us and promises us that God has seen the deepest that can come our way and has come back through it full of love and life. So in those moments when there is nothing, when there is silence, hold your breath and listen because that is the sound of faith. That's the sound of faith. Amen.

© 2003, Dr. Ann Philbrick
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org