The Holy Silence: Sermon for Proper 14A, August 13, 2023

In the dawn of the mornings when I am first to rise, I let our three dogs out through the front door, and they go galloping off to chivvy the squirrels that stalk the birdfeeders. It’s a luxury and also a danger, since our yards are not fenced, so before opening the door I look to see if any deer, possums, or raccoons are visibly lurking, and rather than leave them alone I walk out with them.

I have learned in the months we have lived here to look up as well as out. More often than not, as they got rocketing into the woods, I will catch a glimpse of one or two barred owls launching themselves huffily from the very tops of the ash trees bordering our driveway. The first time I noticed this was in winter, and their large brown bodies stood out starkly against the pale gray dawn and the descending snow. In fact, I noticed that the hissing sound of snow caressing trees and ground as it fell was much louder than the sound of the owls’ flight. I was amazed that snow, which has sound-dampening qualities of its own, could be louder than the flight of these very large birds.

I later learned that, due to the unique structure of their feathers and wings, certain owls can fly absolutely soundlessly, despite their large size. Scientists speculate that this is a survival feature: given how slow they are, their silent flight can both help them sneak up on their prey, and help them be able to listen as they fly to locate and then track their prey (1).

In the stories we hear today about both Elijah and Jesus, silence plays an often overlooked role. In our story form the first Book of Kings, Elijah is in hiding in the desert, and feeling like God is not doing enough for him. He has obeyed God zealously, as he notes, and it has come at great cost to him. He lived when Ahab was king, a very weak king he was, childish and not too bright. Ahab foreign-born queen, Jezebel, was the real power behind the throne, and she encouraged the worship of Baal, a local storm god. At God’s command, Elijah had engaged in a spiritual contest with all of Jezebel’s Baal prophets. When they could not entice their God to outdo Elijah’s God, Elijah had not only triumphed, but had slaughtered them all. This caused Jezebel to demand Elijah’s head, and off into the wilderness he fled. In anger, he lay down under a shrub and demanded that God take his life.

In response, God led him up to Mount Horeb, we are told, and actually goes before Elijah. What we are NOT told is that Horeb is also known as Mount Sinai. This might help us make more sense of this story, especially compared with what we heard last week. Elijah kills agents of the corrupt Kingdom, flees into the wilderness, and then has an encounter with God. Does that sound like any other prophet we have ever heard of in the Hebrew scriptures? Try this: Moses, though raised in a position of privilege as the adopted son of an Egyptian princess, strikes down and overseer who is beating an Israelite, and then flees into the wilderness, where he encounters God in a burning bush. After freeing the Israelites from slavery, Moses climbs up the same mountain Elijah is on and converses with God in such a transformative way that his skin glowed, as we heard last week. In our story we hear today, we are meant to hear echoes of the relationship that God had with Moses. Undoubtedly, Elijah is meant to make that connection as well.

When things get rough for Elijah, he loses his faith in both God and himself. He loses faith in God because he expects God to be a thunderous, storming, smiting kind of God-- the kind of God that Baal was. Elijah doesn't want the God that we heard about being described in Psalm 85. Instead he wants the God who has described in Psalm 77, which describes God this way.

16 When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; the very deep trembled. 17 The clouds poured out water; the skies thundered; your arrows flashed on every side. 18 The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightnings lit up the world; the earth trembled and shook. 19 Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen.

But God is greater than a puny storm god. God therefore takes Elijah up on one of the most significant mountains in Israel's history, and actually reveals God's self to him.

So is God in a mighty wind? No.
In an earthquake? No. Once again, puny Baal-like parlor tricks.
God is not even in a fire, not this time.

Instead, God is in what is described in this translation as “a sound of sheer silence.” Other translations describe it as “a small still voice.”

And yet Elijah is not impressed. After having the very presence and glory of God pass him by, when again he is asked why he is there, he simply repeats his complaint about God, implying that God is not supporting him enough.

In our gospel story, Jesus shows us the importance of silence and soft voices in communicating with God. After a day in which he's fed a multitude and healed countless others, all Jesus wants is a little bit of peace and quiet so that he can pray to God. And the only way he can get it is by forcing the disciples into a boat and sending them out on the waves. And in the midst of his quiet prayer time, he becomes aware that the disciples’ boat is in the midst of a storm, and so stops what he is doing and goes out on the waves to save them.

In this description of Jesus walking on the waves, we once again are reminded of those same lines from Psalm 77, this time being enacted by Jesus as the Son of God: “Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen.” Jesus is here revealing himself as more than just a prophet. Unlike Elijah, the disciples are incredibly impressed-- so impressed in fact that you could call it terrified. They call out to him in the midst of the storm and even though he answers still can't believe what they are seeing understandably enough. Then Peter-- impetuous, leap before you look Peter, asks his teacher to allow him to walk on the water too, as proof that it's really Jesus. And so Peter is invited to step out into the waves, walking in the footsteps of the almighty, only to lose faith even quicker than Elijah and begin to sink. Jesus comes to the rescue, returned him to the boat, and stills the storm--the storm that is a symbol, as it often is, for a lack of faith in God., Just as it was a symbol of the worship of Baal in the time of Elijah.

As I think about the challenges facing the capital C church in these times, I wonder if the lectionary isn't trying to lead us into a place where once again we are being challenged to focus our imaginations and our attention so that we may see the presence of God all around us, and be encouraged. We are told that Christianity is in the midst of a storm of disbelief and irrelevance, Especially in the incredibly loud and busy world in which we live, a world where the quiet that allows us to see the wonders all around is deliberately almost impossible to come by.

St. Martin’s continues to struggle against a storm of financial challenges caused by lack of revenue, despite all the wonderful ministries and faithfulness of so many of her people--a problem that has existed for decades but is reaching crisis proportions now. And this couldn't be at a worse time, but also is somewhat unbelievable-- this is a parish that when I arrived here five years ago supposedly only had three years left to exist--and then COVID happened and yet we survived that and even in many ways flourished, even as we experienced terrible losses, including of beloved members of long standing. They loved this parish-- and entrusted it into our care.

Yet there seems to be this constantly swirling storm that assails our ears and our hearts and fails to believe that there is enough-- even more than enough-- to be able to place this parish on a sound financial footing so that we can concentrate on the really important things: seeing, and hearing, and proclaiming the generous and life giving presence of God in our lives and in the world around us. Even further, we are actually called to then embody that belief so that others may see it as well. Like Elijah, rather than believe that we already have the resources to succeed, we are tempted to act like Elijah and crawl under a bush and ask to die. God plays in 10,000 places all around us, and reveals the glory of God's love to us in every moment--if only we quiet the incessant grumbling of our expectations that God do our fighting for us. What if we decided to stop drowning out God’s compassionate love for us, reinforcing our own fears, and instead expect to see God even in the quiet little miracles that surround us every day—and even empower us to be miracles ourselves, as this parish church IS already to so many people?

As scripture repeatedly reminds us, and psychology affirms, our expectations have enormous influence on our ability to discern and experience the presence and activity of God and the world around us. If we expect to see God in the storm, that's the only place we will see god. But if we expect to see God all around, we will have the faith and the courage to do what we need to do to continue in the ministry God has blessed us with.

I wonder if each and everyone of us made an effort to mindfully seek the presence of God in silence for even 15 minutes of a day and silence so that we could hear that small still voice of God in every heart beat how that would change us, both as individuals and as a parish.

One of the gifts of my classes this June at Sewanee was an assignment to spend 30 minutes each day (at least five of the seven days of the week) in unstructured prayer: to simply sit and open my heart and spirit to God. Because my accommodations were in a busy apartment building, I decided to find quiet places around campus, often near water or an overlook. Sometimes I prayed in the morning, some days it was so busy I could only pray at night.

I want to invite you into considering joining me and seeking out the small still voice of God both in our common lives and in our lives as individuals, each and every day.

Be still, and know that God is God.
Be still, and know that God is there in quiet and in stillness.
Be still and look for God's hand at work in our lives-- not in the earthquake, or the wind, or the fire, but in the quiet love and tenderness that surrounds us and upholds us always.

May we seek out the small still voice within the sound of God's loving, precious silence, and then go into the world, charged to truly testify to the amazing presence of God’s love that will be revealed.

Preached at the 505 on August 12 and the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, Missouri.

Readings:

1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33


Citations:

1) Lesley Evan Ogden, “The Silent Flight of Owls, Explained,” July 28, 2017, at Audubon.com, https://www.audubon.org/news/the-silent-flight-owls-explained

Night Blessing: Speaking to the Soul, August 10, 2023

(Night time is beautiful; a bedtime prayer for children)


The moon and stars dance overhead
To let us know it’s time for bed.
Night holds us in a safe embrace,
So we may rest in this soft place.

Thank you, dear God, for this past day
With time to learn and time to play.
Thank you for friends, and family too,
God bless them all, and bless us too!

God, guide our dreams, for your love’s sake,
Bless all with peace until we wake.
Jesus, stay near, with angels bright,
And guard us through this blessed Night.



-- Leslie Scoopmire, written August 4, 2023. This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on August 10, 2023. The Episcopal Journal and Cafe ceased publication the following week, so this was my last piece for them.

This was written when I searched for hours and could not find prayers that did not need adaptation because they mentioned death, and/or only imagined children living in a two-parent household, and/or used exclusive masculine terms for God. It is also meant to reassure kids that the night is not frightening. 

Pulling Back the Veil: Sermon for the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 2023

When I was a kid, my mother bought me a little microscope at a hobby shop in Southland Mall, and a set of glass slides. This was pretty awesome as a gift, because it reminds me that I have ALWAYS been a nerd. I mean really, how many little six-year old kids are thrilled with the gift of a microscope? Dolls I could take or leave, except my Mrs. Beasley doll, but I used that microscope for the next three years to look at all kinds of things—blades of grass, creek water, butterfly wings, and, my favorite, my own blood. That was a trip. It was amazing how something that looked one way with the unaided eye looked completely different with the aid of some magnification and some light.

Magnification and light also were at work in the telescope my brother got about the same time with books and books of S and H green stamps—remember them? This was right about the time of the later moon landings, too. We would train that telescope on the moon, hoping that we could actually see the astronauts walking on the lunar surface. The cheap telescope my family could afford really was not nearly capable of that amount of magnification and resolution, but we still would see some of the features of the moon more clearly than we ever had before. We also saw that some of the things we thought were stars were actually planets!

I actually experienced objects differently once my knowledge of them had been changed through a shift in perception. I became aware- and for a little kid, weirded out—by the idea that that blade of grass was made up of thousands of green cells that looked like bricks, and that my blood wasn’t just red liquid but was made up of all kinds of weird round things floating in it. My mother never again had to tell me to not swallow pond water after I saw all the weird little critters like water fleas and bacteria flailing around in a drop of it.

Those experiences with the microscope and the telescope completely transformed my perception of the natural world. Microscopes and telescopes don’t just magnify light, they remind us that our world is so much more complex than what we see as we take things for granted in the hurry-scurry of our lives. And that is infinitely more true about the life of faith in God, as the Transfiguration reminds us.

It’s like that engraving on the side mirrors on your car: “Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.” Things are really NOT as they appear. They are greater. And if that is true about a blade of grass, that is abundantly true about Jesus.

I’m not one who tends to hold with the idea that God “gives” us experiences for a reason. I’m more inclined to think that, later on, we attach the reason to the experience, particularly if the experience was difficult at the time we went through it, like when someone you thought was a friend betrays you, or someone takes a dislike to you for no discernible reason.

I will admit that I found a great saying about that hanging on a plaque in an Ace hardware store a few years back. It said, “There are two reasons why people are in your life-- to be a blessin’, or to be a lesson.” That saying made me laugh, but it once again makes a point about perspective, as well as about learning how to deal with challenges in our lives that can seem to make no sense. I do think we comfort ourselves or allow ourselves to move on in life by making meaning wherever we have an experience that puzzles or frightens us. But the experience of the Transfiguration IS given to us as both a blessing and a lesson. Taking it seriously invites us to open our minds to the understanding that whatever we think of Jesus as the Son of God, he, and God, are far greater than whatever understanding we have.

In today’s gospel reading, we see one of the most astounding perception-shifting passages in the Bible, and that is saying something. Jesus has been hinting to the disciples that he is more than what he seems to be, but they don’t get it. And let’s be fair—why should they? There certainly hasn’t been anyone like Jesus before.

The last few weeks, we’ve been hearing Jesus trying to encourage us to shift our perceptions with his parables. He’s been telling us outrageous stories that were deliberately exaggerated and extravagant in describing the abundant, profligate generosity, mercy, and grace of God. To remind us that no matter how amazing we think God is, God is far beyond what our imaginations can conceive.

Now we flip to this account from Luke, and we are shown an unaccountable, fantastic event that tears at the fabric of our understanding of reality. What if WE are also being invited to have our perception transfigured, so that we can live our most fulfilled, most amazed lives by perceiving the glory of God in our midst? 

Have you ever had such an experience? Felt just a brush of God's glory spread over you and make you feel fully alive?

That is exactly what God’s presence in our lives does. God approaches us over and over to pull our perception up out of the puny horizons of our meager striving to see that there is something greater on just beyond the horizon of our limited sight. What if we allowed ourselves to be right alongside Jesus’s friends and be blown away by the wonders of God’s presence in our lives all around us, instead of simply trying to engage in a transaction with God to save our souls but otherwise leave us alone to do as we please?

Their perception of Jesus shifts, and suddenly they see him more for who he really is, both human AND divine, the very things we drone through about believing, without thinking too much about it, every week in the Nicene Creed. Sounds simple when you say it, but it is obvious from a careful listening to the gospel that the Christians of Matthew’s time were still struggling to figure out who exactly Jesus is, just as we also are all these hundreds of years later. Listen to how raw and fragmented the parts of the story are, and how little explanation there is. They thought they knew Jesus, as frustrating as his speaking in parables and answering questions with questions could be. But here in the Transfiguration we are reminded that he is far more.

Just like with Moses, if we are really confronted with even a glancing blow of encounter with God’s glory, it overwhelms us. So we allow—and even seek out-- a veil to be placed between the true fabric of reality in God’s universe, and our everyday existence. But in doing so, we also make it easier to ignore the everyday wonders of God’s presence in our lives. We end up being comfortable—but also blind.

It doesn’t help that the story depicts Jesus as changing. It’s important to realize that Jesus was-- and is-- as he appeared at that moment all along. Only the veil between his two natures was more forcefully pulled aside at that moment. Rather than saying that Jesus has changed, it’s more precise to say that the perception of Jesus is changed by this experience on the mountain. The perception we have of Jesus as a wisdom teacher and faith-healers is expanded by this glimpse into his true nature as the Son of God. And Peter’s there to see it all—kind of showing him what is really meant by his proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah. The glory of God that exists on the other side of the veil is real.

In the 60s and 70s, there was a lot of effort made by certain theologians to try to discover what they called “the historical Jesus,” and by that they meant they one whose presence could be verified by actual documentary evidence. Of course, what happened as this quest progressed was a stripping away of all of the things that would have made Jesus anything other than a first century Jewish peasant, and often people weren’t left with very much to actually believe in about Jesus. That’s why it is good to remind ourselves that we are engaged not in a scientific experiment, but in a quest of faith throughout our lives—not that there is anything wrong with scientific experiments mind you, because I am a BIG fan of science. Don’t misunderstand me. But science and faith sometimes do not ask the same questions. Science asks “what?” and “how?” But faith asks “what does it mean?” and “how do we live faithfully?” and “what is good?”

So what does the Transfiguration mean? What the disciples saw in this experience will never be fully captured in words or descriptions, or explained by science, probably. But one thing that is implied by this story is that Jesus is not merely a human being, limited to a human lifespan, but he is the fulfilling of the law and the prophets—that’s what is suggested by the appearance of Moses, the law-giver, and Elijah, the greatest of prophets. Jesus is the Christ, not just a dust-covered Jewish peasant and prophet.

The Transfiguration is not just the story of a magic trick. And I believe it is NOT a parable. I believe it actually occurred so to remind us of the amazing reality of God’s presence and glory all around us—even in a blade of grass or a drop of water—or the real love that God has for each and every one of us, puny as we are. And that can be overwhelming. We need tiny doses of that sort of thing at a time. That’s why, at the end of the story, Jesus does that most human thing of all to bring his friends back from their amazement—he touches them with his hand, reminding them that he is ALSO still their pastor and friend. And so he does for us today. 

Open your eyes to see beyond the veil, unafraid, for the same Christ who dazzles with God’s glory is the same Christ who loves us.

Amen.


Preached at the 505 on August 5 and the 10:30 Principal Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.


Readings:
Exodus 34:29-35
2 Peter 1:13-21
Psalm 99 or 99:5-9
Luke 9:28-36

Transfigured: Speaking to the Soul for August 3, 2023

 Luke 9:28-36

Sometimes, for a suspended moment, 
light can be a physical presence, causing 
eyelids to slam down like window-blinds, the doors 
of the mind to bang shut in shock and wonder, 
hands thrown up, defensively, as the flare 
makes visible the bones in those same hands, hands 
whose strength had been a source of pride but now 
seemed as ephemeral as moth wings against such a light. 

Even with our eyes closed, the figures danced 
orange and black upon the green screen of eyelids. 
Light so bright it deafened, 
at first we reeled, contained within the thunderous roar 
of an open furnace door. Lightning forked heavenward 
and split. Jesus stood, and two more-- 
on one side the Law in Moses, forming community; on the other 
Elijah’s prophetic imagination: poet and goad. 
In the center the Human One, divine image perfected 
yet also living, enfleshed, as when veiled, among us. 

And then the humming sound of our own heartbeats. 
Now we saw the seams torn asunder, 
Virtues at the center of a humanity, 
enlightenment embodied, laid bare 
and God’s Wisdom in the center, committed, 
to lay himself down for our sake. 
The holy companions murmured together, 
as old friends do, laughing at meeting again, 
the delight in pulling back the curtain 
revealing essential cosmic union. 
Of course we wished to stay forever. 

But the pronouncement to listen shocked us to silence, 
and we staggered like sleepwalkers 
from the cloud-shrouded mountain, 
newly alive, boundaries of earth and sky 
an illusion. Scattered images dancing 
along nerves, transformed from experience to memory,
our footsteps in sync with each pulse 
that beat as one with that sacred heart 
and thrummed from that unpierced wrist 
and beautiful, unmarred brow, 
Earth electric beneath our feet, transfigured. 

--LKS, written for the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul for August 3, 2023.