Sermon: Night Vision
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Eagle Harbor Congregational Church, UCC Sermon preached by Rev. Emily Tanis-Likkel June 20, 2010
Night Vision 1 Kings 19:1-15 and Luke 8:26-39
Annie Dillard in her essay, A Field of Silence describes a time when she looked out over the field at the farmhouse that she had been renting. She had seen the field countless times, but suddenly and without warning saw it with new eyes. She wrote, “the silent fields were the real world, eternity's outpost in time, whose look I remembered but never like this, this God-blasted, paralyzed day . . I stood in pieces, afraid I was unable to move. Something had unhinged the world. . .” She was extremely uncomfortable with this forceful disruption into her life by silence! Her prior experiences of gazing at the field were perfectly wonderful, thank you very much, palpable sense of God's presence not required. Healing and transformation not desired. She hadn't even realized that she had been living in the dark. She wrote, “I do not want, I think, ever to see such a sight again. That there is a loneliness here I had granted, in the abstract—but not, I thought, inside the light of God's presence . . . and signed by (God's) name.” She wrote later that it was the paralysis of her own spirit at the time that caused her such discomfort and fear. It wasn't until several months later that she recognized the grace of it – that the field, that all fields everywhere were filled with angels. This morning in the Old Testament reading from 1 Kings, we meet Elijah in the cave. He is worn out, he's had enough – he's done. God said, "So Elijah, what are you doing here?" Elijah replied, "I've been working my heart out for you. The people of Israel have abandoned your covenant, destroyed the places of worship, and murdered your prophets. I'm the only one left, and now they're trying to kill me." We've all been in the cave. Darkness may be grief, depression, anxiety, illness, loneliness, crisis of faith, loss of hope – darkness may be something without even a label that we can use to describe it. We have heard the deafening silence. But in the silence, in the dark—God is there with us. In the Luke reading, we meet a man who is barely a man, living among the tombs as though he were dead, surrendered himself to demonic possession, naked—without dignity or purpose. After Jesus called the demons out of the man, after he restored him to true personhood, giving him meaning and purpose, everybody around were seized with fear. Jesus had come to the man who was in such darkness and resurrected him. That kind of power caused the foundations of a hierarchical society to crumble. What could they be certain of when the lowest of the low among them was restored? It was such a disruption to the categories they lived by, the laws they loved. They were comfortable with darkness. They didn't know what to do with grace. How do we respond when grace breaks through our darkness? When I'm outside for a long stretch of time and it's cloudy, I don't bother putting on sun-screen. What's the point? The sun's not even out, right? You'd think I'd remember that even under cloud cover the strong sun is able to reach my skin and turn it pink. Sometimes we live under cloud cover not realizing that the light has been shining through all along. God has been there with us in the silence, in the dark, changing us and challenging us. Listen to the question posed to Elijah, “What are you doing here?” It's a question of mission. Elijah rose and listened and continued to use his gift of prophecy. I think that Christians can so easily become burned-out from ministry when they are not using their God-given gifts. When we are doing this and that without really searching their souls and asking the Spirit, what gift do you have for me to give—we are not allowing God's grace to lead and nourish us. Jesus may have asked that demon-possessed man, “What are you doing without clothes and surrendered to these demons? Do you not know who you are?” Jesus turns the light on. This is not simply about individual transformation, it is about the Kingdom of God. It is the transformation God offers to all. Here at EHCC we have been exploring our mission as a church. In the fellowship hall there is a lot of blank paper, asking us how we would describe our mission as a church in seven words or less. It's been up there for awhile. Maybe it feels intimidating to walk over and put our thoughts on the wall for all to see. But what an opportunity! What are we doing here? What is our mission?
I recently read the quote: “Vision liberates people to be what God created them to be, not what a few people want them to be.” Elijah's experience of God in the stillness gave him vision to keep on going, to not be discouraged. The man freed from demons and restored to be who he was created to be uncovered a vision of the kingdom of God, a vision that those around him did not open their eyes to see.
Flannery O'Conner's stories take place in the rural South, with characters that are a garish and strange caricature of humanity. The stories typically begin, one author explains, “by showing someone in apparent if uneasy control, locked tight in a universe of his or her own making, defended against change. Inevitably, however, change arrives on the scene and with it the shattering of worlds . . . (suggesting how) breakdown may also be a breaking through.”
“Revelation” is one of these stories. In this short story we meet Mrs. Turpin – a woman who prides herself on her white, middle-class, church-going, farm-owning status. She thanked Jesus for everything being exactly the way it was. The story opens with Mrs. Turpin disdainfully observing the folks around her in a doctor's waiting room. She struck up a conversation with the woman next to her, and made it known everyone in the room that she was sizing them up and determining herself as better. Her hypocrisy caused the blood of a college student by the name of Mary Grace to boil. When she could no longer contain her rage, she rose and struck Mrs. Turpin on the head with a hard-cover book, and began digging her fingers into her neck. The hospital staff leaped into action, sedating Mary Grace, but not before she whispered to Mrs. Turpin loathefully – Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog. The Turpins went home, and she could not shake those words. They disrupted her to the core. She tried to sleep but stayed awake, making her defense. “I am not, she said tearfully, a wart hog. From hell.' As she tended to her pigs in the barn later that evening, she began crying out to God. “What do you send me a message like that for? How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too? Go on!” She yelled, “call me a hog! Call me a hog again! From hell! In her anguish, she didn't even realize that the hose she held was delivering a steady stream of water right into the eye of an old sow. She yelled, “Who do you think you are?” at God, and the words echoed back at her. (Reminicent of God's question of Elijah: What are you doing here?) Who do you think you are, the question pierces her, she opened her mouth, but no sound came out of it. Then the light shines through and she beholds a vision of God's Kingdom – a vision of the last being first and the first last – a vision that offers liberation to be who God has made her to be. It is a moment of transformation, of healing. In describing her stories, Flannery O'Conner explained, “All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it . . .” I wonder how often we humans are not open to receiving grace—if we are not always ready or willing to support it. Grace frees us to be who we are in God's family. Yet this liberation is not always what we are looking for. We may be huddled up in the cave when God's voice of grace begins speaking in the silence. The story of Elijah gives us an insight into listening to God's guidance. If we are waiting for a larger than life sign, we may be waiting for some time. God often speaks, nudges, inspires us when we pull ourselves away from the hurry and flood of information with which we are so accustomed, and cultivate space in our lives for silence. The story of the possessed man can give us some insight into how Jesus disrupts status quo. The people were very upset to see the man clothed and at the feet of Jesus. They were very comfortable with the way things were, and were fearful of change. Liberation not required, or desired. When we listen for the grace in our lives, we can ask ourselves, what has me bound? What am I afraid of? How are the social reversals of the Kingdom of God beginning to emerge?
We can get accustomed to surrendering to the darkness. We can get comfortable staying where we are in life, when change and healing are waiting for us. Elijah wishing for death, the demon-possessed man accepting his place at the bottom of the heap of society, Mrs. Turpin withholding grace. But it is in that place of darkness, of disruption, of fear, where breakdown may be transformed to a breakthrough – where being broken open may allow the light to pour in. Elijah emerged from the cave. The possessed man freed from bondage, Mrs. Turpin released from her judgments, Jesus rose from death.
And just as Elijah was told to eat and get up, as the newly freed man was told to go and be and witness, we are called to something. . . We all have gifts to give, we all have a mission. Flannery O'Conner does not tell us what Mrs. Turpin does after her vision. Maybe you feel like your next steps in life are shrouded in mystery. Maybe that's okay. Look to the light, let the grace in and let it form and transform you, even when –especially when-- it challenges you to stretch beyond what you had previously believed about yourself. A band by the name of Tenth Avenue North offers a song called This is where the healing begins: So you thought you had to keep this up God asked Elijah, “What are you doing here?” Mrs. Turpin was asked, “Who do you think you are?” The possessed man was asked, why are you living in the tombs? Don't you know that you are a child of God?
We may not expect to be healed. Or perhaps we aren't aware that there is any need for it. Are we open to hearing God in the silence, in the dark? God meets us there, in our hellish fear—prods us, changes us, and gives us vision. Listening for God, Paula J. Carlson and Peter S. Hawkins, eds. Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers, by William M. Easum. Listening for God, Paula J. Carlson and Peter S. Hawkins, eds. |
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