Lightning Strikes

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday June 6, 2010, the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

1 Kings 17:8-24
Psalm 146
Galatians 1:11-24
Luke 7:11-17

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Here’s a bit of grade school humor that I recall from many a long days past. Does lightning strike the same place twice? No, because after the first strike, the place is never the same. I think it was out of the Boy Scouts of America’s “Boys’ Life” magazine from the 1960’s or early 70’s. Then again, I suspect it gets reprinted every five years or so, as the readership of “Boys’ Life” turns over to a new generation of scouts.

At my high school, as on many other tall buildings, on the top of the tall exhaust stack were lightning rods. The purpose of this type of lightning rod is to attract lightning, not to repel it. Placed in the highest point possible on a building, the rod attracts the lightning bolt and its electrical current and directs it safely to the ground so that there will be minimal if any damage to the building or disruption to it’s electrical system. Larry and Margaret have seen first hand what happens when lightning strikes a building.

Unfortunately, this technology doesn’t always work. My high school also had a two story stairwell that had a spire at the top that accidently acted like a lightning rod. It’s a beautiful feature; it’s even the image on the school’s logo and letterhead, but about every five years of so, it takes a bolt instead of the nearby lightning rods or trees. Sitting in one of the rooms within ten yards of the spire tip during a thunderstorm could be a spectacle. Believe me; I was there for one of those times. The experience definitely reminds me of the lightning strike joke, where I was sitting was not the same place it was moments earlier.

But lightning strikes once and lightning strikes twice in the stories of the widows whose sons have died.[1] The stories themselves from 1Kings 17:10 and 17-24 and Luke 7:11-17 are nearly identical.

Both of these stories take place when the prophet came to town. In the reading from 1Kings, it was Elijah; in the reading from Luke, it was Jesus; the prophet, priest, and king. In both stories the woman whose son had died was a widow. Elijah stretched himself across the child three times. Jesus touched the bier and said, “Young man, I say to you, rise.” Life returned to both of these widow’s sons. Elijah and Jesus both gave the young man back to his mother.

There are two differences though. The last (and least) difference is that in 1Kings, only the woman proclaimed “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” Where in Luke we read, “The crowd said ‘God has looked favorably upon his people.’” I say this isn’t much of a difference because in the Kings reading only the woman was present when her son returned to life. In Luke not one crowd, but two were there when the man received new life. In both stories, everyone who witnessed the miracle praised God. In the first case, it was one woman; in the other, it was the whole crowd.

The other case is quite different, wonderfully different. In 1Kings we read that Elijah cried out to the Lord. In Luke we read that he had compassion for the widow. The glorious difference is this: Elijah cried out to God and for Jesus this action would have been unnecessary. Since Jesus is God, there was no need for Jesus to call out to anyone else.[2] Jesus sees what the Father has done in 1Kings and follows.

It is said that Luke’s gospel fully and intentionally formatted this miracle, which appears only in this gospel, to resemble the reading from 1Kings 17. The genre, structure, detail, and even the vocabulary connect these two stories beyond what could be expected by coincidence.[3] I’m not saying what a skeptic might say, that this didn’t happen it’s just a “copycat miracle.” What I am saying is that the way this story was recorded in Luke’s gospel intentionally tied these together.

I am not saying that the writers of Luke’s gospel put this story in here because they thought that it was a good story to copy and a good place to put it either. For doubters, I just want to remind you of the end of John’s gospel where it is recorded, “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” This could be one of those things not written anywhere else.

What I am saying is that lightning struck twice, and neither time was the place the same after it struck.

It is easy to focus on the triumphant aspects of these readings, everybody loves a happy ending. But before every happy ending, there is a time of trial and tribulation.

Elijah has seen his trials. In the reading immediately before our reading from 1Kings, Elijah went to Ahab, King of Israel, and told him of the coming seven year drought. Especially in instances like this one, the only thing worse than a prophet being wrong is a prophet being right. Directed by the Lord, Elijah is sent to a place for fresh water and promised bread and meat. But it didn’t take seven years for the wadi, stream, to turn bone dry. So Elijah is sent to Syria, to Zarephath, where he is met by a widow who is also in dire straights.

Elijah asks for water, which she provides and then he asks for a morsel of bread. This is when we find out how nasty things are for the widow. In so many words, she apologizes for not keeping the sacred responsibility of hospitality but she is preparing the last meal for her family. The death sentence has been handed down by the drought and she’s making their last meal. Elijah shares the greatest invocation God ever gives the people, “Fear not.” “Do not be afraid,” he says, “because the Lord, the God of Israel promises that their meal will not run out and their oil will not run dry. Fear not, the Lord will provide.

Gloriously, the Lord provides. Even after the cruelest twist of fate, the later death of the widow’s only son; gloriously, the Lord provides.

By the same turn, Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, the Word become flesh, is the Word threatened by those who would take his life. Between Luke 4 and our reading today, Jesus is tempted by the devil, tempted with the most wonderful treats of this world if he will only betray God.[4] He discovers the truth of the old adage that no prophet is accepted in his home town.[5]

He healed the paralyzed man, this healing being more than the physical healing of the man’s body; Jesus forgave his sins as well healing his entire being, raising the ire of the scribes and Pharisees.[6] Eating with the outcasts, Jesus is scorned by those he has been sent to save.[7] He teaches on fasting[8] and the Sabbath,[9] turning from conventional wisdom and showing the world new constellations in the midst of the oldest stars.[10]

Jesus is nearly in constant danger from those who rule the land where he lives, those who he has come to save, and finally by one of his disciples. Jesus knows his woes so he knows the joy of restoration. He knows the joy of the Father’s presence, the presence that enters our lives like a bolt of lightning, making it so that we will never be the same.

Elijah and Jesus were both surrounded by those who would have their heads should the opportunity arise; so as we read their words, as we soak in their actions like the waters of our baptism, we are reminded that they knew the woes of the world as well as and better than we do. They don’t come to us as some lofty above-it-all types that promise new life without experiencing our life. They come as the Lord’s emissary and as the Living God, the ones who know our pain by experience, not by just hearing the story. Woes surrounded one of the greatest heroes of the faith, Elijah and the subject of our faith, the Lord Jesus Christ, and yes, woes surround us too.

There are some things I want to repeat that I have said in the last couple of minutes:

-Before every happy ending, there is a time of trial and tribulation.
-Elijah shares the greatest invocation God ever gives the people, “Fear not.” “Do not be afraid,” he says.
- Fear not, the Lord will provide.

I believe this, truly I do. I know that only in Christ is life worth living. Christ is the Victor over the forces of this world. I know this and I believe it.

The psalm from our Call to Worship makes this abundantly clear, the Lord cares and sustains those who the powerful push to the sides of society.

Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help!
whose hope is in the LORD their God;
who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
who gives justice to those who are oppressed,
and food to those who hunger.
The LORD sets the prisoners free;
the LORD opens the eyes of the blind;
the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
the LORD loves the righteous
and cares for the stranger;
the LORD sustains the orphan and widow,
but frustrates the way of the wicked.[11]

I know this to be true. I have faith that sustains me, even if some days I’m hanging by a thread. One of the recurring themes that can come from our readings is “Don’t worry, be happy! Fear is a sin, trust and believe because God is greater than the world.”[12] But this can be offered naively, and like the whitewash that covers Aunt Polly’s fence, it doesn’t last long. I say this because I know that there are many, many who live daily in the space between the joy of dancing in the morning and living in long, dark times that are always darkest before the dawn.

Pain and suffering is as close as the foodbank. It is as close as the hospital. For people sitting on either side of the visitor’s glass, pain and suffering are as close as the jail. They are as close as the city square and the skate park. They’re as close as these pews and this pulpit. We know that Jesus is calling us to life triumphant, we know that we should have no fear, we know that the Lord will provide; but there are still many who can’t be sure if that next call is salvation or (more likely) a debt collector.

To me, this is the hardest part of speaking the truth to speak; the truth that God provides and in the meantime there are widows and orphans in this world, like the families restored by Elijah and Jesus. The hardest part of this truth is that there are people in this world who wait and wait faithfully for restoration. They wait faithfully for the dawn that never seems to rise.

There are a couple of quotes from the Reverend William Sloane Coffin that I want to share with you. The first is like a whetstone for my sharp tongue. Coffin quotes the Reverend Reinhold Niebuhr saying, “Despair is the fate of realists who know something about sin, but nothing about redemption.”[13] And yes, as I say the hardest part of speaking the truth of God is the reality of people waiting in pain, this quote speaks to me. I know Niebuhr’s despair, I know realism, and I know about redemption. Some days the difference between knowing about and truly knowing can be measured by inches, other days by light years.

But the other thing Coffin says is “Hope is what’s still there when all your worst fears have been realized”[14] When the wolf is at the door, when it is darkest before the dawn, that is when all we have left is hope. This hope is not in might or power. It’s not in the princes of this world. Our hope is in the love of Christ, Christ who walked in our shoes 2,000 years before we did.

Christ who walked with us. Christ who knew all that this world had to offer from personal experience. Christ who would experience the most degrading death the Roman Empire had to offer. Our hope is not in the sun that rises, but in the Son who calls upon it to rise. Our hope is not in the words of my mouth, but in the one whose Word brings new life.[15]

Today in our Call to Worship, we praised the Lord who sustains the orphaned and widowed; frustrating the ways of the wicked.[16] In our Call to Confession we prayed declaring that the Lord visits “calamity’s child with the gift of new life.”[17] In our Confession of Sin we confessed not only our faith, but our failure to live our faith as we are called to live it.[18] As we prayed together in our Prayer for Illumination this morning, this is Christ’s word to the helpless, the needy, those who mourn, and those who are desolate or wounded by life.[19] In our scripture readings this morning we heard of how Elijah and Jesus both restored life to the sons of widows, and in the eyes of their cultures, restored their mothers to new life too.

This is the joy of life in Christ, we receive new life. We receive life that we could have neither expected nor imagined. In Christ all is new. This is the word that spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country. This is the word that is true in our lives today. This is the word that we must continue spreading throughout the world beginning with our next door neighbor.

[1] My wife Marie noted that given the miracles of modern medicine, the miracle of resuscitation can seem almost commonplace, ordinary, no longer the thing of miracles. I like the point but I really couldn’t find the place to put it.
[2] Comparison taken from a table in “The New Interpreter’s Bible.” Volume IX. Keck, Leander E. General Editor. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995, page 157.
[3] Ibid, 158.
[4] Luke 4:1-13
[5] Luke 4:24
[6] Luke 5:17-26
[7] Luke 5:27-32
[8] Luke 5:33-39
[9] Luke 6:1-11
[10] The “Stars/Constellations” turn of a phrase comes from William Sloane Coffin. I do love the way he preached.
[11] Translation of Psalm 146:5-9 from “Book of Common Worship.” Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993, pages 777-778
[12] Among others, the June 4 and 5 entries of: Chambers, Oswald, “My Utmost for His Highest.” Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers, 1935, 1963, 1992.
[13] Coffin, William Sloane, “The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin, The Riverside Years.” Volume 2. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, page 66.
[14] Coffin, William Sloane, “The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin, The Riverside Years.” Volume 1, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, page 137.
[15] In the pastoral prayer, I noted that things are difficult for this part of the Body of Christ. Our hope is not in our wisdom, but in the grace and peace of Christ. Amen.
[16] Psalm 146:9
[17] Kirk, James, G. “When We Gather, A Book of Prayers for Worship.” Louisville, KY: Geneva Press, 2001, page 313.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Prayer for Illumination, Year C, Ordinary 10. “Revised Common Lectionary Prayers: Proposed by the Consultation on Common Texts.” Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2002.