GEC-Sermon-2017-08-13 - Pentecost 10

Grace Church Sheboygan

Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14A) 1 Kings 19.9-18, Ps. 85.8-13, Romans 10.5-15, Matthew 14.22-33 May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His holy Word. Amen. What gesture or signal do you make across a room to tell someone else that there is a telephone call for him or her? (For you younger people, you’ll have to imagine a time when people didn’t always carry a telephone on themselves. In the not-too-distant past when there were just land lines, you actually had to tell someone else that they were wanted on the phone!) In this country it was common to hold your hand up like this [indicates hand with thumb and little finger extended, held next to ear], but the gesture could vary by culture. My favorite gesture was the one used in Argentina, in which you went like this [indicates forefinger extended, and rotated pointing toward ear]. Even if you succeeded in getting someone to the telephone, or if you just answer your own phone now, it’s still possible to fall into the game of “telephone”. This is a process in which a message is passed from one person to another, and becomes increasingly garbled with each transmission—something like this: Company President to Vice President: Let’s have the senior management team meet over lunch. Vice President to Department Head: We’re meeting for lunch with the President. Let the other Heads know. Department Head to Department Manager: Reserve the conference room for lunch. The President will be there. Department Head to you [the department secretary]: Find out what the President wants for lunch. This happens even in writing—just think of text messaging and social media posts. We latch onto particular words and messages, words and messages that stand out to us because they fit with our preconceived ideas, and it’s those words and messages that we tend to remember and pass on. In the case of Scripture, there has been a lot more discipline about fidelity to the text, but we still see very wide variations in what people and churches focus on, and in what they say that a verse or passage means, even though we all agree that Scripture is important and that we have to pay attention. Elijah is not looking to Scripture; the Lord is actually speaking to him. And what God says is “What are you doing here?”, twice, because each time Elijah is doing something that is not what God commanded him. Each time God has told Elijah what to do. Each time Elijah has protested of his zeal for God’s will, but has ignored that each time God has said “Go”, and Elijah has then done what he thought best. Elijah is supposed to be in Israel, but has fled into the wilderness beyond Judah. The Lord then says, “stand on the mountain”. Elijah stands in a cave. God ...