Eagle Harbor Congregational Church, UCC

Sermon preached by Rev. Emily Tanis-Likkel

August 7, 2011

        This summer we are hearing from the minor prophets of the Bible. Each of the Biblical books is small, but chock-full of poetry, theology and the range of human and sacred emotion. There has been a pattern: the prophets speak to a people who have lost their way. They are not very popular. They give reality checks to a society that is out of whack. These prophets use poetry to emphasize their frustration, God's frustration with God's people. Habakkuk pleaded with God to act with justice, to show the Hebrew people, and everyone how destructive they were: their injustice in how they treated the least among them, their undying trust placed in gold plated wooden objects.  Habakkuk was weary of violence, and did not understand why God was not stepping in to stop it.  He looked around, bewildered at the world surrounding him. God had him wait for the answer to his complaints. Habakkuk stood at the watch post and waited. When God spoke, God promised justice. The prophetic message was that in the midst of God's anger, mercy will prevail. A warning was given about those who did not listen to God, “Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by faith.”

        I am reminded of a story written by Alice Walker called The Welcome Table. Resistance and faith go hand in hand for Alice Walker. She grew up in a poor family in the South, surrounded by violent racism. The Welcome Table refers to a spiritual of the civil rights movement, that looks forward to a time of all people having enough to eat, all people treated as equals, and of walking and talking with Jesus. The protagonist of Walker’s story is an elderly black woman who is close to death. She has become forgetful and practically blind, but she put on her best Sunday-go-to-meeting-clothes, and staggered a half mile to the church with the glittering cross. She was a righteous, faithful woman who served those whose spirits were not right in them. She spent her life cooking and cleaning for white church-goers in the South who live by fear. Upon entering the church, the pastor greeted her pleasantly and said, “Auntie, you know this is not your church?” Walker wrote, “she brushed past him anyway, as if she’d been brushing past him her whole life.” After she was situated in the first pew from the back, a young usher came and whispered to her that she should leave. She paid him no attention. She was busy worshiping, singing spirituals in her head. The women of the congregation, self-righteously took it upon themselves to do what they thought was needed. The old woman felt them come out of nowhere, hoisting her up with their fists under her arms, and flung her out of the door.

        Out on the church steps, the woman looked around her in bewilderment. Did that just happen? We never learn her name. Perhaps she’s nameless because she represents so many. This short fictional story tells the truth. We live in a world where black women have been flung out of church. We live in a world of racism, injustice, classism, war, greed and rivalry.

        Like the woman in Walker's story, sometimes we look around in bewilderment. Like Habakkuk, we ask, “What is going on, God?” Why do you let these things happen?” Frederick Beuchner wrote, “The question is not whether the things that happen to you are chance things or God’s things because, of course, they are both at once. There is no chance thing through which God cannot speak . . . He speaks, I believe, and the words he speaks are incarnate in the flesh and blood of our selves and of our own footsore and sacred journeys.”^[1] He says that we must be sure to always be listening to God. Sometimes fear creeps in, and we worry that we won’t like what God has to say or that we’ll misunderstand or that we won’t hear a thing. But then the command comes which is commanded more frequently than any other command in the Bible: fear not. Verses with fear not occur 366 times in the Bible, one for every day of the year (including leap year).^[2] 

        Habakkuk is expecting God to answer, to be just, to be faithful. Habakkuk is told he had to wait awhile. The unnamed woman didn’t have to wait anymore, because it was her time to die, and she was ready. She looked up and saw Jesus walking along the side of the highway. The woman is ecstatic to see Jesus. He doesn't say a word to her, simply smiled a kind sad smile. The picture of him walking toward her is reminiscent of the Disciples seeing Jesus walking on the water. In this story, Jesus walked out toward the disciples in the midst of a storm. Peter was ready to walk to Jesus on the water. Peter asked Jesus, command me to come out on the water. He wanted to be where Jesus was. He got out of the boat, but for a moment he took his focus off of his teacher, and noticed the wind. Jesus beckoned him to step out of the boat, and steadied him when he began to doubt. Jesus answered him when he called out. Then he called Peter on his doubt. Sometimes God’s answer is not so clear. Sometimes the response to prayer is wait. I’ve always liked the tidy theological formula that God always answers prayer, and the answers are yes, no, or not yet. It helps us understand that not having things go according to our prayer does not means that God hasn’t heard us. If the answer is not yes, it might be no because God sees the bigger picture. The not yet gets at the waiting, the art of holy listening.

But I think there may also be other responses God gives to our cries. One that God uses often: Dig deeper. You may be praying for your job to give you more meaning, but God wants you to pray that you would find meaning and purpose in everything you do. You may pray that you would see evidence of God in your life, but God wants you to pray for God to dwell within you, changing your life from the inside out.

When we go to the watch-post to pray, or like in the picture, lean against a tree, may we open our hands and our lives and say, what would you have me pray for? In my imagination I go to a bench by a tree, where Jesus sits. It’s where I go to listen. I also go to my journal and write, I go to a Labyrinth and walk slowly to the center and crouch down and say, what do I need to hear? In all of these instances, it is often something along the lines of Don’t be afraid, You are loved, Trust me, Follow me.

It may be that you have not experienced listening to God in this way. If it’s not clear what God is saying to us, then we need to listen closely to our lives. It is in our lives that God speaks. What can we learn by paying more attention to our interactions with people, writing down our dreams, or overhearing a conversation on the ferry? I was moved one day on the ferry when a family sat in a booth near me, and it was the first time any of them had been on a ferry. The school-aged girls were amazed and awe-struck by the experience. The immensity of the boat, the beauty of the water, the unsteadiness they felt when walking, the discovery that there was a restaurant on board! Their joy was contagious and I found myself smiling along with them. I thought to myself, why am I no longer amazed? Why do I live so often with my eyes shut tight? Awesomeness and beauty and discovery are everywhere, and God speaks through these things.

We may be waiting for answers, we may not understand much of who God is, but we can step out in faith. We can trust that when we put our foot down, we will be on solid ground, or that the water will hold us. We can trust that when we walk with Jesus, he will be looking on us with kindness, and smiling. Then . . . if we are called to action, we need to step out of the boat. (show clip from Indiana Jones)

God calls us and prepares us. It’s not true that “God only asks of us what we can give,” because that is not how God chose the prophets. You may hear a call to do something extraordinary, something difficult, something you had never imagined. It might be tempting to brush it away as beyond your capabilities. But it is when it is beyond your capabilities that you know it could be God calling. Because God calls, then equips. We may be afraid, but if we stay focused on Jesus, we can rise above the fear. John Ortberg wrote, "growth always involves risk, and risk always involves fear."^[3] He explained that whenever God wants someone to step out in faith, several things always happen: first, there is a call, next there is fear, there is always reassurance, there is always a decision (response to the call), and there is always a changed life. He explains that lives are changed when someone takes a risk for God, and that when someone's fear overshadows them and they avoid the risk, they are changed then too--becoming more resistant to hearing God's call.^[4] 

How do we get over the fear, the darkness that threatens to over whelm us? How do we resist injustice without resorting to violence? For Alice Walker and Habakkuk, it is by speaking up through prophetic poetry. It is reminding ourselves that faith is believing what we cannot see. Telling ourselves that although we can't see the bridge, God can, and God is with us in the journey. I read of one follower of God who often asks himself, "Am I growing more spiritually discouraged these days? 'Because  . . . if I have the sense of God being with me, I find that problems lose their ability to damage my spirit.'"^[5] Singing, reciting Scripture, serving others, all these practices lift our spirits and enable us to grow in faith. After Indiana Jones got to the other side of the cavern, he wasn’t finished. We need to keep on listening to God, listening to our lives, focused on living our faith, following Christ. when we look around in bewilderment, may we see that Christ is with us. We don't understand the ways of God, but we know that God is with us, every step of the way.