Bob Kaylor

The Dance of Worship--1 Chronicles 15:25-29

If the stories in 1 Chronicles look at little familiar it’s because they are. Chronicles was designed as a kind of supplement to the books of 1 and 2 Kings, chronicling the history of Israel all the way from Adam to the Persian King Cyrus the Great. Though the Chronicler uses 1 and 2 Kings as his source material, he omits some details—like the whole story of the northern kingdom of Israel. He’s focused on Judah and the line of David, so as we read through this we’ll be going over some of the same territory we’ve covered before. But, the good news is that it lets us come back to some themes we’ve passed by quickly on our rapid march through the Bible.

One of those themes has to do with worship. As we’ve been reading through the Scriptures one of the things you notice quickly is that there is a lot of worship going on—people bringing their praise and offerings to God by building altars, writing Psalms, taking sacrifices to the Tabernacle or Temple. But one of the things we often miss, however, is the fact that the forms of worship that we encounter in the Bible are rarely passive. People aren’t just sitting in pews, soaking in information. When they worship, it’s a full body experience.

Today’s text takes us back to the story of David and his bringing of the Ark of the Covenant to the new capital of Jerusalem. This is a big deal, because the Ark represented the very presence of God with the nation of Israel, God’s chosen people. The Ark, you may recall, was such an icon that it was even revered by Israel’s enemies. I love, for example, the story in 1 Samuel about the Philistines who captured the Ark but suddenly they were inflicted with a plague—tumors caused by the fleas of rats. This is very Indiana Jonesy, really! The Philistines realize that the Ark is causing them all kinds of problems, so they put it on an unmanned ox cart and ship it back to Israel along with an offering of golden tumors and rats (wonder what those looked like?). The point is, though, that when God is present, stuff happens!

David encounters the reality and power of God’s presence the first time he tries to bring the Ark to Jerusalem. To speed things up he, too, puts the Ark on a cart, but God’s commandment had always been that the Ark needed to be carried by priests using poles, not a cart. So, when the cart hit a bump and began to topple over, a man named Uzzah ran up to steady the Ark. But when he touched it, bam, he dropped dead! 1 Chronicles 13:9-14 describes the scene and the fact that David was angry when this happened. But the point of the text is pretty clear—when it comes to holy things, God-ordained things, there’s no messing around. Worshipping God is serious business.

But it’s not boring business, at least biblically speaking. When David tried a second attempt to bring the Ark to Jerusalem, he adopted a much different approach. Rather than expediency, David carefully made preparations, lining up the musicians and priests and procedures to do it right. And while the Ark was being brought into the city, the Bible tells us that David didn’t walk solemnly beside the Ark, hoping that it wouldn’t tip over. Instead, he danced…in fact, it says he danced by “leaping.” 2 Samuel is even more graphic: David “danced before the Lord with all his might” (6:14).

Here is David, the King of Israel, dancing. Could this been a very early edition of “Dancing with the Stars?”

Interesting, isn’t it, that one of the most popular shows on TV these days is “Dancing with the Stars”—so popular that it has spawned imitators like “So You Think You Can Dance.” Dance studios have reported a huge upswing in people taking dancing lessons as a result. More and more movies feature dancing that would make Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers look positively motionless by comparison. We’ve got a culture that’s dancing with all their might everywhere.

Everywhere, that is, except in the church—where, we might argue, dancing itself originated!

Sure, some churches have tried something called “liturgical dance,” but that’s usually done by people who have been trained to dance and love it. They do it while everyone else watches. But, for the most part, worship in your average American church is a pretty passive affair—set up more like a lecture hall than a dance floor. And in some church traditions, dancing is considered to be the equivalent of cavorting with the devil. Dancing and church are just two things that don’t really seem to go together.

And for many of us, that’s fine. Jennifer will tell you that I’ve always been afraid to dance—probably too many gigs playing drums and watching people do it badly. At the high school dance I was usually sitting in the bleachers. I get out on the dance floor and feel very self-conscious so I do the only thing I know how to do…air guitar.

Yeah, most church people would rather not have anything to do with dancing…or any kind of demonstrative behavior. When someone raises hands in a worship service, for example, it really freaks out your average Methodist. That’s something those Pentecostals do. Dancing? Out of the question.

But I’ve had a conviction in the last few years that when it comes to worship, we get it all wrong precisely because we are self-conscious. Worship is always God-conscious. Like the call to worship this morning expresses, “It’s not about us.” It’s always about God. And if we’re truly worshipping, then we get out of the way and let our feelings and emotions and thoughts run to God and not to the worship leader, or the choir or the band and we don’t care whether someone else is watching.

Notice the contrast in this text. David dances while his wife, Michal, stands up in the tower of the palace and watches and is disgusted. She looks at David as an embarrassment because he is acting un-kingly by dancing. She’s the equivalent of a wallflower or, well, maybe more like a weed—always the one to choke out the fun. I’ve known a lot of Michals in the church—those who say the music is too loud or too classical or the preacher’s haircut is too short or too long.
But David doesn’t give in to her indignity. In the version of this story in 2 Samuel 6, Michal confronts David with sarcasm and disgust: “How wonderfully the king has distinguished himself today—exposing himself to the eyes of the servants’ maids like some burlesque street dancer!”  To which David replies: In God’s presence I’ll dance all I want! He chose me over your father and the rest of our family and made me prince over God’s people, over Israel. Oh yes, I’ll dance to God’s glory —more recklessly even than this. And as far as I’m concerned … I’ll gladly look like a fool … but among these maids you’re so worried about, I’ll be honored no end” (2 Samuel 6:20-22, The Message).

David is blessed by God. Michal is not. See, for David, it was all about giving joy and worship and praise to God. For Michal, it was all about reputation and appearances. True worship is never concerned about appearances or applause—only about giving ourselves and our absolute best to God.

Now, some of you are sitting there nervous right now because the pastor is going off the deep end. Pretty soon, you’re thinking, the pews will be gone and there will be a disco ball hanging in the middle of the sanctuary and he’ll be air-guitaring every Sunday.

Well, not exactly…but you never know.

Point is that if we show up here to worship God, and if God were to really show up in this place in a big way, we don’t know what will happen…but it’s bound to be something overwhelming joyful and good.

I love Annie Dillard’s quote about worship: “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, making up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies hats and straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offence, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” (Teaching a Stone to Talk, p. 40)

When we come to worship, are we “sensible of conditions?” Are we ready to encounter the living God and have God transform us—the waking God drawing us to a place from where we can never return?

Worship is a huge thing, but it is also a dangerous and risky thing. It is a serious thing, but it is also a hugely fun and exciting thing when we do it right. It’s also a thing we don’t just do with our minds—like David, it calls for our whole body to be involved. Maybe it’s dancing, maybe it’s raising our hands in prayer (actually that was the way it was originally done, not hands folded and heads bowed). Maybe it’s singing, maybe it’s even air-guitaring…just a little bit. But when it’s God that we worship, we need not fear embarrassment, only the embrace of God’s blessing when we worship with all our might.

The point here is not what we do in worship. We may or may not raise our hands or break into a dance number, but the point is that whatever we do in worship we are to do enthusiastically with our focus on God.

Interesting word, “enthusiasm.” It comes from the Greek phrase “en theos”—“In God.” We we come to worship, we come to be “in God.” My prayer for Park City Community Church is that we’ll be the kind of worshipping community that’s a little less predictable, a little more joyful, a little less reserved and a lot more excited about giving God our worship.

It is here in worship that God meets us. It is here that God asks you and me, “Shall we dance?”

Why Nations Fall: 2 Kings 17:5-20

Note: Special thanks goes to Dan Carlin and his excellent "Hardcore History" podcast for the inspiration for the opening of this message. Check out the podcast on iTunes or at dancarlin.com.

2 Kings 17:5-20

At the end of the movie Planet of the Apes (the original with Charlton Heston), Heston’s character and his female companion are riding a horse down a beach—ostensibly toward freedom, when they come across something sticking up out of the sand. The closer they get, the more Heston begins to realize that it’s a familiar icon—The Statue of Liberty. He had thought he was on a different planet, but now he realizes that he’s on earth, but thousands of years in the future. And his country, and all its symbols, are forgotten—dispatched to the realm of archaeology.

Hard to imagine that ever happening, isn’t it? It’s virtually impossible for Americans to think that symbols like the Statue of Liberty or the Washington Monument or Mount Rushmore or the White House would ever be forgotten or lost, only to show up thousands of years later in an archaeological dig, with future people trying to figure out what it all meant.

But here’s the thing: people of every civilization in the history of the world have thought that their way of life, their symbols, their icons could not possibly ever be forgotten or ruined. And yet, history teaches us that every civilization, every dynasty, every empire eventually winds up as an archaeological curiosity sticking up out of the sand. Travel in the sites of the old world and you see it over and over again—the ruins of Egypt, Greece, Rome: great civilizations, great empires, but now just broken columns and crumbling architecture.

The stories we read in 1 and 2 Kings in the Bible are illustrative of this principle. There’s a lot of detail here about the different kings and wars of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah—Kingdoms that, no doubt, the rulers and people thought would last forever. But these texts tell us that within the course of a few hundred years these kingdoms would be at best reduced and, at worst, wiped out. But, then again, so would the kingdoms and empires of their conquerors.

This period in biblical history corresponds to the rise and fall of two great empires in the ancient world: The Assyrians and the Babylonians. The Babylonians you’ve probably heard of, but the Assyrians are less well-known for reasons I’ll get to in a minute.

The Assyrians were a factor on the world stage for some 1700 years and, in many ways,  were the Nazis of the ancient world. They conquered most of the Ancient Near East including the northern Kingdom of Israel, and they did so with a cruelty that would seem to be unmatched in history. Listen to how one Assyrian king named Ashurnasirpal describes his treatment of a defeated people:

“I flayed all the chief men who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, and others I bound to the stakes round the pillar. . . . Many captives . . . I burned with fire; and many I took living. From some I cut off their hands and fingers and from others I cut off their noses, their ears, and their fingers; of many I put out their eyes. I made one pillar of the living, another of heads, and I bound many heads to posts around the city. Their young men and maidens I burned in the fire; the city I destroyed, I devastated.”

These are the kinds of writings you find in Assyrian ruins—no literature, no philosophy, just endless boasting of military conquest. This was the original terrorist state and they ruled for almost two millennia.

But then, suddenly, they disappeared. Having stretched their empire too thin, the Assyrians were vulnerable to attack. The neighboring Babylonians and Medes, who had been subject to this Assyrian cruelty, took the opportunity to finally revolt and laid siege to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh and, in fairly short order, destroyed it completely. The Assyrians had left nothing behind, no influence on culture, no legacy of art. A world power was so devastated that just two hundred years after the fall of the city, the Greek historian Xenophon visited the site and encountered the ruins of the enormous fortifications of Nineveh and none of the locals could tell him who these fortifications belonged to. It was the equivalent of the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand—the Assyrians were simply gone, wiped out. And no one cried. The prophet Nahum would write, “Nineveh is in ruins. Who will mourn for her? Where can I find anyone to comfort you?” (Nahum 3:7).

The answer, of course, is no one—the Assyrian empire, the most powerful empire of its time, fell.

The Babylonians were the next power to rise, but their time in the driver’s seat of the ancient world was relatively brief—less than a hundred years—but long enough to conquer the southern Kingdom of Judah and take away many of its citizens into exile and slavery. But the Babylonians themselves would soon be conquered by the Persians, who were then conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, whose empire eventually became the outline for the Roman empire.

You get the picture. These empires come and go, and the Bible portrays this continuous shift of power as a kind of human folly. Yes, God uses other nations to judge Israel and Judah, but then these nations are in turn judged themselves and taken over by others.

What’s it all mean? Well, I think one of the main points of these texts is to teach us that our reliance on our own national power and longevity is grossly misplaced. Reliance on Kings, military power, nationhood, boundaries, monuments, conquests, and the like ultimately leads to forgotten monuments sticking up out of the sand. Nations and empires fall and the Bible wants to teach us that our loyalties, hopes, dreams, and aspirations need to be given to a higher purpose.

Historically speaking, empires fall for a number of reasons. Edward Gibbons, who wrote the seminal work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century, said that there were eight different reasons for the fall of that empire and, by association, the fall of any empire. You see those reasons listed here:  a decline in morals and values, poor public health, political corruption, unemployment, inflation, urban decay, inferior technology and military spending. Look at any empire that’s fallen in history and you can trace it to a combination of these causes. I don’t know about you, but when I look at this list and look at my newspaper, I see it happening to us already! Cullen Murphy’s recent book Are We Rome? is an interesting study on how our own country is ticking off everything on Gibbons’ list.

But while these may be socio-economic reasons why nations and empires fall and wind up on the scrap heap of history, the Bible offers another reason that would seem to trump all the others. Look again at the text we read early from 2 Kings 17. The writer lays out the real reason for the decline and fall of Israel and Judah: “All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God...They worshipped other gods and followed the practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before them...They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless.”

See, for God the problem of nations and empires isn’t that they’re not managing themselves well, it’s that they don’t realize that they are subject to a greater authority. When people begin to worship their symbols, their prosperity, their military power, their economy, and their pride, they make those things into gods that, ultimately, will lead people collectively and individually to ruin. 

God, however, calls people of all nations and races to a higher way of thinking—an allegiance to a greater Kingdom and a most powerful ruler. Fidelity and faithfulness to God is the key to eternal longevity. It’s fine to be a citizen of a country like ours, but God calls us first to be citizens of his Kingdom—a Kingdom that encompasses the whole world for all time.

Jesus would talk about this often in the New Testament. In fact, most of his teaching will be about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God (also known as the Kingdom of Heaven) isn’t about a place faraway in the clouds, but is focused on a present and future reality on earth—that God is King now and his reign will be made manifest in the future. What the Israelites consistently forgot, and what we forget, is that we have all been called to be citizens of God’s Kingdom and subjects of God’s reign and rule first and foremost because, after all, only God’s Kingdom is eternal.

Paul wrote to the Philippians that “our citizenship is in heaven.” Now, some clarification about that (and here’s where context helps). In the first century AD, Philippi was a Roman colony—a place populated by Roman colonists. They were citizens of Rome, but no one was expecting to eventually go back to Rome to live. In the same way, Paul says, we have our citizenship in heaven, which is a way of saying that our allegiance and loyalty is given to God, but we live in on earth and in earthly kingdoms. We are not to expect that someday we’ll go “back” to heaven, but rather that we are to populate and colonize earth with the life of God. I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating: the point of the Bible and Christian faith is not about getting people into heaven, but about getting the life of heaven into people so that they can live the life of God’s Kingdom on earth.

That life has certain markers and characteristics.
•    Faith and allegiance to God as creator, redeemer, and sustainer of humanity and all of Creation
•    Moral, ethical, and spiritual practice (i.e. Mosaic Law, Sermon on the Mount)
•    Transcends boundaries of nationality and race
•    Emphasis on community of all nations “under God”
•    Living in the present with an eye toward the future
Life lived in God’s Kingdom has an eternal dimension. Regardless of whether our countries and kingdoms come and go, when we put our faith and allegiance in God we begin to see our lives as having a larger purpose that reaches beyond borders—a purpose that can never be buried in the sand. We are participating in God’s mission of redeeming the whole world.

A few years back I was standing at the door after church like I normally do, and a woman cornered after a worship service. She was deeply offended by the absence of the American flag in the front of our sanctuary and missed the “Christian” flag, too (An aside: Who came up with that flag, by the way? Was there a first-century Betsy Ross somewhere in Asia Minor? But I digress.) The woman began the conversation with a finger pointed at my chest saying, “My son is a Marine, and you should be honoring this country by having the flag up in the front.”

Well, I’m a veteran, too (Army), and I certainly understand her passion. I have saluted the flag, displayed it in my own home, worn it on my sleeve, proudly served my country and, while I was fortunate to never have experienced the horror of live combat during my 10 years in the infantry, I knew I could have been called on at any time to sacrifice my own life for what that flag represents, as many have done and continue to do. The Stars and Stripes have been a significant symbol in my own life.

But there are places where that symbol is less important than others. I may sound heretical to some of you, but I’ve come to believe that one of those places is in the church.

The U.S. Flag Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Section 175.k states, “When displayed from a staff in a church or public auditorium, the flag of the United States of America should hold the position of superior prominence, in advance of the audience, and in the position of honor at the clergyman’s or speaker’s right as he faces the audience ....” When I exegete that passage of the code, it seems to me to be saying that in a public meeting place, the flag should have the greatest position of honor to the right of the speaker. And, in most cases, that’s exactly where it should be as the prominent symbol.

The way our church is set up, however, there is another symbol of “superior prominence” immediately to the right of the pulpit that is hard to miss and seems to cry out for the place of honor. It’s the cross, of course — the center of focus for just about every worship space in all of Christendom.

While the flag reminds us of the sacrifice of men and women who gave their lives in defense of the United States of America and its freedoms, the cross reminds us of a Savior who gave his life for the whole world. It reminds us, too, that if we are truly following Christ, then our primary allegiance must be to his Lordship, no matter where we live. Patriotism has its place, but it is always less prominent than the place of discipleship. When we come into a place of worship, we’re called to recognize that we are citizens of the kingdom of God, first and foremost, and Americans second.

So I gently reminded the proud Marine mom that morning that I celebrate her son’s service and respect the flag so much that I didn’t want to violate the Flag Code (or at least my interpretation of it). In this place, I said, we always pledge allegiance to a greater symbol first. In here, it’s always “Dependence Day” because when we worship, we recognize our full dependence on God to save us. That’s why the cross is our symbol of superior prominence.

Someday, all of our monuments and achievements will be fodder for future archaeologists. What will last? Only that which we do for God.

So, which Kingdom do you want to serve?

Elijah: Trial by Fire

We’ve come a long way in our study over the last two weeks so I want to update you on where we are historically. Last week we were going to be talking about Solomon, that is, until the advent of the “aporkalypse”—had to do a sermon on that. We’ll talk more about Solomon when we get into the wisdom literature in few weeks.

What’s important for us to note for our purposes today, though, is that after Solomon’s death the nation of Israel that was ruled by David and Solomon becomes rent in two by civil strife. Solomon was a heavy-handed ruler who exacted a high price in taxation and labor from the people in order to maintain his opulent lifestyle. After his death, his son Rehoboam increased the oppression of the people and the then northern tribes revolted under the leadership of Jeroboam (Jeroboam had formerly been one of Solomon’s trusted overseers). Jeroboam sets up his own centers of worship in the north, thus cutting off connection with all of Judah and, in a very real sense, setting the table for the destruction that was to come.

But for now, realize that you have two kingdoms. The Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The rest of the books of Kings and Chronicles tell the parallel stories of these Kingdoms, their rulers and the prophets who challenged those rulers. You might want to use this chart to keep them straight.

The succession of rulers in the north became increasingly idolatrous and evil, according to the biblical narrative. In response to that apostasy, we begin to see God raise up prophets from among the people—prophets who were to be God’s mouthpiece and speak God’s truth to these wicked kings and warn them of God’s impending judgment.

That brings us to the story in I Kings 18. Now let me set this up for you …Elijah was called to be a prophet in about the ninth century BC during the reigns of Kings Ahab and Ahaziah. Elijah seems to come from nowhere in particular, coming out of the desert as many other prophets will do.

Now King Ahab was exceptionally powerful for a king. If you go to the city of Megiddo, for example, you’ll see the remains of the stables for his horses, a symbol of military might. But Ahab had a glaring weakness – he had married a foreign woman from Tyre, a pagan named “Jezebel”. Jezebel brought with her the worship of the Baal fertility god and, once again, Israel found herself on the outs with God. Jezebel was, well, a “Jezebel” – controlling the king and the kingdom with her fury. She even launches a campaign to kill all the Israelite prophets of God while Ahab simply yes, “OK, dear.”

Elijah shows up to call the king and queen to account. He is a nomadic prophet, dressed in leather, a wild-haired kind of guy. He proclaims a drought over the land as a sign of God’s judgment. Ahab decides to go after him, and when he meets Elijah he calls him the “troubler of Israel.” Here again we see a prophet being a burr in the saddle of the status quo, challenging the prevailing culture.

But rather than simply gripe at Ahab, Elijah proposes a contest – a winner take all kind of event, a superbowl of prophets that will settle once and for all who would really be the god of Israel – the wooden deity Baal, or the God who had brought the ancestors of these same Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.

Elijah tells Ahab to gather all the people of Israel at Mt. Carmel and there they’ll have a contest – the 450 prophets of Baal (and 400 prophets of Asherah, Baal’s female deity consort) vs. Elijah the prophet of God. When the people gather (tickets must have been hard to get), Elijah says to the people, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” No more fence-sitting. Choose.

But the people said nothing in response, their silence indicating their indecision

Now Elijah sets the rules. Each side will build a stone altar to their god and sacrifice a bull on that altar. They’ll cut the bull up in pieces and lay the wood to burn it. But here’s the kicker: the fire for the altar will have to come from a divine source.  Look at verse 24 where Elijah says to the prophets of Baal, “Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD. The god who answers by fire—he is God.” Whichever altar gets fired up first is the winner.

 The ultimate fire-building contest.

An interesting geographical note here: Mt. Carmel lay between Israel and Phoenicia, the lands of the gods in question. The Phoenicians believed that the god Baal actually dwelt on Mt. Carmel, thus Elijah had already given the prophets of Baal a homefield advantage. Not only that, Elijah lets them go first.

The 850 prophets build their altar to Baal and begin their ritual fire dance. From morning to noon, with whooping and hollering, prayers and dancing, the 850 prophets milled around their altar. But no fire came, no answer from the mighty Baal.

About noon Elijah, who I picture as kind of standing off to the side by himself, arms folded, has a bit of a smile creep across his face and he starts to talk some trash to his opponents. Verse 27: At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” (translation note: the Hebrew word translated as “busy” can also be translated as “going to the bathroom”. In other words, Elijah suggests that Baal just might be in his “throne room”, if you know what I mean).

The prophets of Baal just get louder and begin to cut themselves, which was part of their ritual. But still, nothing happens. I like the way it’s put in verse 28: There was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.

Evening comes and now it’s Elijah’s turn. Elijah builds the altar of the Lord with 12 stones, representing the 12 tribes of Israel. And puts out the wood and bull, but then he does something unusual. He digs a trench around the altar and then instructs the people to fill four large jugs of water and pour it over the wood, the sacrifice, the whole thing. Then he has them do it again. And again. Three times So much water is poured over the altar that the trench around it is full to the brim, the wood thoroughly soaked.

Then Elijah, standing alone, prays – not with loud shouts or dancing, but a simple prayer: “O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. 37 Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.”

And this time…the  real God shows up.

Fire comes down from heaven – whether it’s lightning or whatever – and the fire consumes the wood, the bull, the stones, the surrounding soil and even all the water in the trench….a serious fire! An impressive display.

It’s fire that puts the people on their knees. Impressed by the display they shout, “The Lord, he is God! The Lord, he is God!” Elijah orders them to hunt down the prophets of Baal and then turn their allegiance to God.

It’s an amazing victory. Elijah, as God’s prophet, has stood alone in the face of overwhelming opposition and was successful with God’s help. If this were a fairy tale, everything would be turned right and the people would live happily ever after.

But here’s where the lesson comes in for me for this section of the Bible By now you have come to realize that most biblical stories have no “happily ever after.” Humans continue to be broken and weak. Even the prophets are no exception.

That brings us to chapter 19, which we read earlier. Word reaches Jezebel, the evil queen, that Elijah has killed off her prophets and she is angry. She sends word to Elijah that she will use all her powers to hunt him down and kill him.

Now Elijah has just demonstrated the power of God, has defeated the prophets of Baal, has shown amazing pluck and determination. He is at his zenith as a prophet of God. But when this pagan queen threatens him, what does he do? He becomes afraid and he runs away into the desert from whence he came. He sits under the shade of a broom tree and, according to 1 Kings 19:4, prays for death. Listen to his prayer: “I have had enough, Lord. Take my life. I am no better than my ancestors.”

You’d think that he’d be pumped up by the powerful fireworks display on Mount Carmel, but instead he is exhausted and defeated. As Anna Carter Florence puts it: “Maybe he’s was just having ‘one of those days.’ You wake up, you eat breakfast, you slaughter 450 prophets of Baal, y’know. Well it’s hard work to be the only one left. It is no fun.”

Ever felt like you’re the only one left? Does working only 9 to 5 sound like a dream? Too much chauffer duty for soccer practices and piano recitals and youth group events? Serving on too many committees and sitting in on too many meetings? To-Do lists longer than the days to accomplish them? Screaming kids leaving you with a tired soul?

Or maybe the isolation is ever more painful — maybe you’re dealing with a painful loss of a family member or friend recently. Some may be feeling the emptiness of lonely singleness. I know some deal with feelings of depression and despondency. Sometimes, like Elijah, there are those even wondering if not living is better than living like this.

But notice in this story that God doesn’t choose to meet Elijah in the midst of success. Sure, God sends the fire to impress the people, but for Elijah God waits. See, God chooses to meet Elijah not in his success but instead in the midst of all of this life chaos — in his fatigue, in his busyness, in his stress, in his depression, in his questioning, in his self-doubt. An angel comes to strenghthen him by giving him food and water—call it comfort food. But the real comfort for Elijah will come in a different form.

The first thing you notice here in this story is that God meets Elijah’s needs through his presence within these circumstances, not the removal of the circumstances.

Through his angel bearing food and rest, God brings his presence to Elijah’s physical needs. Through his own words, God brings his presence to Elijah’s spiritual needs. It is the presence of God which is what Elijah most needs.

I know that I have had times in my life when I have felt like running away. Indeed, times when I’ve done it. I figured that if I could change my circumstances, everything would be better. If I could only run away from that bad job or that difficult person, then I’d be OK.

But I have found that it never works that way. We might be able to change our scenery, but if our problem is a spiritual one then running won’t change our outlook.

What we need is a change of heart—the kind of change that we receive only when we experience the presence of God.

Elijah goes and hides in a cave. God comes to him and says, “What are you doing here?” Why are you hiding? What are you running from? Don’t you know that I am with you now and have been with you all the time?

Elijah’s response is that of a burned out prophet—“Don’t you know that I’ve been working for you? I’ve been zealous for you, but these people haven’t been. They’ve rejected you and rejected me. And now I’m the only one left.”

I’ve had this same conversation with God on more than one occasion. Maybe you have, too. It’s a kind of pious pity party, when you get right down to it.

But there in that cave God decides to show Elijah that he isn’t alone. God “passes by” in a loud display of wind, earthquake and fire—but note the text: “God was not in earthquake, or in the wind, or in the fire.” Where was God? Verse 12: “in a gentle whisper.”

Man, how we want God to come in earthquake, wind and fire to show us his power and shake, destroy and burn up the circumstances that frighten us. But God doesn’t do that. God doesn’t always rescue us with a display of raw supernatural power. But God does come—in a whisper.

To hear that whisper, though, we have to be listening. When we’re under the crushing burden of burnout and despair, we have to get alone, quiet our hearts, shut up all that self-talk that breeds fear and simply listen to God. Would your life be quiet enough — free enough of noise and distraction — that you might hear God’s whisper and know his voice there? What keeps you from hearing from God?

If we look at the rest of this passage we can see that meeting God changed Elijah. It rested and refreshed him. It reset his attitude and lifted his depression. It prepared him for life once he went down the mountain again. It restored his sense of God’s purpose in his life. His solitude filled him up with God so that he was spiritually and emotionally healthy enough to be around people again.

And read the beginning of verse 15: “Go, return on your way …” That is spiritual direction. As part of comforting Elijah and meeting his needs, he sends him right back to the place that either caused or was the location of his difficulties. Instead of running away, God encourages Elijah to face the very things that are challenging him. And he does…not because circumstances have changed, but because Elijah has—having encountered God in the midst of silence.

God doesn’t always remove the hard circumstances of our lives or allow us to run away from all that challenges us. In this case, God joins Elijah in the midst of difficulty. He gives him purpose within it.

We live in uncertain and fearful times. Like Elijah, we can look around us and think that we’re the only ones left, that everything and everyone seems to be against us. But it is in that place that God wants to meet us, to strengthen us, to comfort us, to get us to go back and face our difficulties with a renewed sense that God is with us.

The Year of the Pig - A Sermon on the Aporkalypse

As many of you know, a lot of Park City has been shut down over the presence of the H1N1 Swine Flu virus in our town...well, if one case so far counts as a "presence." At the Health Department's recommendation, we're not holding any "large group gatherings," which includes Sunday worship. But I wrote a sermon anyway and it's below. You can also catch the podcast on our website.

The Year of the Pig
Mark 5:1-20

There have been a bunch of national magazines arriving at newsstands in the last several months that have featured a picture of a smashed piggy bank on the cover. In each case the pulverized piggy was grinning, but the stories about the economy that were grimly told inside the magazines were nothing to smile about. These days when that little piggy that is our bank account goes to market and sees the 401k disappearing, it cries “Wee, wee, wee!” all the way home--which is probably in foreclosure. When we start having to dig through the pig for loose change, we’re getting down to a crisis of pig sty proportions.

Lots of folks blame Wall Street hogging up bad debt or CEOs who’ve pigged out on big money while their companies went bankrupt. The government’s trying a bailout, but everyone’s concerned about too many pork barrel projects getting thrown in the to mix.

And now, this very week, we encounter another porcine problem. The Swine Flu, or the H1N1 as it’s more properly called, is threatening to reach pandemic proportions. Schools are closing, travel advisories being issued, and folks are wearing surgical masks and buying their weight in hand sanitizer. With some confirmed deaths in Mexico and health officials brooding over a potentially historic health crisis, anxiety is running high. But the question that many are asking is, “Is it really that scary, or is this all hype? Is it a true health emergency or simply a pandemic of paranoia?”

At this juncture we still don’t know for sure. But it’s pretty obvious that we’ve all been hit hard by some seriously bad news in quick succession over the last several months. The year 2009 has already left many people wallowing in fear, doubt, and despair. The Chinese may call this the year of the ox, but you could definitely make the case that this is really the year of the pig.

When the Scriptures refer to pigs it’s usually in a negative context. The Israelites were forbidden to eat these “unclean” animals (Leviticus 11:7; Deuteronomy 14:8). While it’s common to see this as an ancient sanitary precaution, it more likely had something to do with the fact that other ancient pagan peoples saw swine as being sacred. In 167 B.C., for example, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus deeply offended the sensibilities of the people of occupied Jerusalem by polluting the Temple with an offering of a pig to the Greek god Zeus. This was the “abomination that makes desolate” referred to in Daniel 11:13. There wasn’t much that was more repugnant than a pig in ancient Israel.

Paganism was one disease the people in first century Israel didn’t want to catch. As we are seeing in our study through the Old Testament, the pagan practices of Israel’s Canaanite neighbors brought on a debilitating illness of sin and death. Worshipping idols, syncretizing their belief in God with belief in other gods, would ultimately result in the devastating pandemic of exile at the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians. The very existence of their nation had been held in the balance.
So, by the time of the first century, the ancestors of those Jews who had been taken into exile were, by and large, very sensitive about anything pagan or porcine. Keeping pigs was not something your upstanding Israelite would do.

Which brings us to this story in Mark, also told in Matthew. Jesus has gone to the other side of the Sea of Galilee to the region of the Garasenes. Scholars don’t know exactly where that was, but the implication of the text is that it was territory that your average Jew would avoid like the plague. For one thing, there were tombs everywhere, it seemed, and being around the dead was also a ritual no-no.

That brings up a point about the idea of uncleanness. The ancient Israelites believed it to be, in some sense, “contagious.” If you touch an unclean thing, that makes you unclean and then if someone touches you, they’re unclean, etc. We’ve been hitting the hand sanitizer hard these last few days, but in first century Israel the whole thing was about getting yourself cleansed ritually in a mikvah in order to preserve your purity. Bottom line is that if you didn’t want to get the virus of uncleanness, you just didn’t go where those people were. Call it the original “social distancing” strategy.

But notice that Jesus goes there anyway. A wild man comes running out of the tombs—a man so crazy and his actions so bizarre that, as Matthew’s Gospel tells us, nobody could pass that way. The man’s seeming insanity increased his strength to the point that no one could contain him. He was demon-possessed, isolated, and outcast.

It’s interesting to note what has happened during this most recent panic. I read an article on CNN’s web site this week about how the flu has brought out some of the latent racism of our culture as Mexicans and people of Hispanic descent are, in some places, being considered pariahs because the flu supposedly began south of the border. Countries are shutting off travel and commerce with Mexico, which threatens to further topple its already fragile economy.

What we don’t understand, we fear and what we fear, we tend to hate. The implications of that fear are all over this story. The Jews feared the pagan Romans who had conquered their land. The religious people feared the unclean Gentile people because they didn’t act properly and their disease of religious idolatry could be contagious. Everyone feared the man running wildly and dangerously through the tombs.

Everyone, that is, except Jesus. Read the Gospels enough and its pretty evident that there’s really nothing that scares Jesus. Now, you could argue that’s because he’s the Son of God and all, but I think there’s a different reason he’s not afraid. See, Jesus isn’t afraid because he’s got a larger vision for the world beyond himself.

Look at the previous context at the end of Mark 4. That’s the story of Jesus and the disciples crossing the Galilean lake in a boat that is nearly swamped by one of the storms that is common to that region. The disciples, even though they are experienced fishermen, are in an absolute panic. Now, surely, they had weathered other storms but in their groupthink they allow the terror to overtake them. So they wake up Jesus. “Don’t you care if we drown?” they ask.

But Jesus rebukes the wind—“Quiet! Be still!” The wind dies down. You’d expect that from someone who was the Creator God come in the flesh. All of creation is at his command. But Jesus doesn’t look impressed with himself here. Instead, he rebukes his disciples. “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

See, for Jesus the answer to fear isn’t all about knowing what to do, though that’s important. The disciples knew how to fish, how to pilot a boat in a storm. We know how to quell the spread of disease—washing our hands, covering our mouths when we cough or sneeze—we’ve been taught that since we were little. Yet even with all that knowledge, we still can become frozen with fear. The answer to fear is faith—faith in God, faith in the power of God to make us whole, faith that God is at work in the world, faith of the kind that sees God’s hand at work even in the midst of difficult times. In the midst of a viral storm, Jesus seems to be saying to us, “Quiet! Be still!” No need to panic when God is in your boat.

So when Jesus is confronted with this maniac demoniac, he doesn’t cower in fear. He moves right toward the problem. In this case it’s the violence of evil at work in this man. The term “Legion” that the demon gives its collective self is instructive here. After all, Legion was the name of the basic Roman fighting unit. There are those pagans again. This man is possessed by great powers, evil powers, powers that want to remain in the country and wreak havoc on the populace.

But the powers can’t stand up to Jesus—that much is clear. They beg Jesus for a new home—a home where they belong—with the pigs. The legion of demons enters a herd of swine nearby and causes them to throw themselves into the sea, which in biblical terms always seems to represent chaos and disorder. In effect Jesus takes all the fear, all the suspicion, and all the terror and puts it where it belongs—back into the realm of chaos.

Remember how the biblical narrative starts in Genesis? There is a formless void of watery chaos, but then God separates the sea from the land. God brings order out of chaos. And he does so with a word. With a word, Jesus brings order out of chaos and a man’s life is restored.

Even the pig herders got this. They ran back to town and told the story. The people came and saw the former maniac now clothed and in his right mind. But notice their response—they were afraid! And they begged Jesus to leave their region!

Fear is what keeps us wallowing with the pigs. Fear is what keeps us from seeing the truth. Fear is what drives us deeper and deeper into chaos.

And Jesus asks, “Why are you so afraid?”

This pandemic won’t be the last. The economy will rebound but will go through another down cycle at some point. We can watch the news and be gripped by fear for our lives and our livelihoods, or we can live as Jesus people—people who see these situations and other people as opportunities to serve and bring a message of hope.

Jesus told the man to go home and “tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.” Jesus took his problem and gave it back to the pigs. Maybe that’s where our anxiety needs to go, too.

It’s important that we pray for those affected by the Swine Flu, but it’s important that we be praying for and in ministry with people who are sick every day, people who are crippled by fear, those who have been immersed in the chaos of life outside of a relationship with Christ. We can’t just make that a concern when there’s a crisis!

It’s perfectly OK to take precautions. That’s what we’re doing with church this Sunday. I think Jesus would concur with that. But we musn’t be willing to give into fear, now or at any time. As it says in 1 John 4:18, “Perfect love casts out fear.”

In the Year of the Pig, we need more than ever to turn our focus toward the Lamb of God—the one who takes away the sins of the world. The one whose perfect love can cast out all fear.