Sermon: God Is Doing A New Thing
Text: I Kings 19: 1-15a
Date: June 20, 2004 Kendall's Notebook page 28
By: Kendall Brown
Today’s story about Elijah has to be the Biblical source for the old saying, “To head for the hills.” That is exactly what Elijah had done. Queen Jezebel was after him. She had made him public nuisance number one and placed his most wanted mug shot in every corner of the Northern Kingdom. [His story comes to us from the period of history several generations after King Solomon and his father David. Their great Kingdom had split into a Northern and a Southern Kingdom under the rule of David’s grandsons, Rehoboam (South, Judah) and Jeroboam (North, Israel)].
In today’s lesson, Elijah flees for his life after Jezebel, Queen of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, had put out the word that he was wanted dead of alive and preferably, dead. In fear, Elijah left the Northern Kingdom and went to Beersheba in the Southern Kingdom. Even there, he did not feel safe from the wrath of the vengeful queen and traveled another day’s journey beyond the boundaries of the Kingdom into the wilderness. There, finally, in exhaustion and terror he fell asleep under a broom tree.
My sermon title this morning is, “God Is Doing A New Thing.” Elijah could not have been easily convinced that God was doing anything at all. He was in despair. If one can sink to different levels of despair, then the deepest despair at the bottom of the pit must be absolute loneliness. That bottom was where Elijah had landed when he lamented, “I alone am left, and they are seeking to take my life.” And, “Oh Lord, take away my life.” Elijah wanted to die. One who wants to die can hardly imagine that God is doing a new thing, not to mention that God might actually have plans for the lamenter in the process of accomplishing the new.
With Jezebel’s soldiers out pounding the bushes all over the country in search of the prophet, it was hard for Elijah to see beyond his own experience of fright and flight and comprehend that God was up to something new. Elijah gave all the power to his problem and in the process forgot that God still might be acting in a powerful way. While Elijah was scurrying around the back hills, God was right in the middle of things doing a new thing. As God reminded Elijah, God was already looking forward to the end of Jezebel’s reign and the reign of the next king. Thus God told Elijah to stop crying in his milk under the broom tree and go back to anoint new rulers and prophets. Jezebel was having her day in the sun, but her day in the sun was but a passing breath in God’s eternity.
In response to Elijah’s lament about being all alone, God also had a comment or two. We didn’t get to it all in today’s hearing of the story. But God, reminds the prophet that when all the smoke and dust has settled, he will find that there are 7000 persons as faithful as
he is in the country. To be reminded that there are 7000 faithful souls hard at work is quite a rebuke to Elijah’s self-centered complaint that he and he alone was the only one left who loved God.
To give Elijah some credit he was up against a formidable and fearful antagonist. It is true that the pen is mightier than the sword. But when you are the only one on the field with just a pen in your hand facing a company of soldiers well equipped with swords, spears and bows, the presence of a pen in your hand is not all that comforting. That is about where Elijah was as he fled the wrath of a hateful queen.
That is where Elijah was. That is where we as a church are in so many ways. Like Elijah, we too love our Lord, want to serve and want God’s cause to succeed – and we want to be a part of it. Like Elijah, we can see ourselves failing at every point and wondering if perhaps we should give it all up. Like Elijah, we can see ourselves up against forces far mightier than anything that our little plastic pens can overcome. I have my own broom tree story here. Each and every one of you who have been a part of the church for most of your lives could get up here and tell your own parallel story as experienced by a person in the pew instead of in the pulpit.
I will capsulate my story with a quick reference to my seminary education. My seminary experience did provide me with a theological base that has sustained me and continues to sustain me. I will always appreciate the value of my classroom experiences and the presence in my life of some tremendous teachers. But on the practical side, the ministry for which I was trained has absolutely zilch to do with the ministry that I practice every day today. Like Elijah, I feel like trying to ward off a platoon of tanks armed with nothing but a well-worn pen.
All of you share with me the same experience of no longer being in the same church that we started out in years ago. The reason for the huge disconnect between my seminary preparation and the work that I do today is because of the huge changes that have taken place in our world during the past few decades.
I must admit that I can’t say God did not warn me. A few weeks before graduation from college and going off to seminary, Time magazine ran a front cover (I remember it well, no picture, a sobering all black background, with the words written in huge, shocking yellow letters) announcing, “God is dead.”
My seminary trained me for ministry in a world and a church that simply no longer exist. I was trained to be in a church where the pastorate was a position of high esteem and low stress. Today, esteem is hard to come by and stress is all over the map. I was trained to be a minister in a denomination that held a position of prestige in society. That we were a mainline denomination meant something. As leaders in our church, ministers were sought after for many services by both the community and many families and persons beyond the parish. I was trained to be a minister in a parish with the understanding that the parish encompassed a much broader scope than the confines of the membership list. Today, we are no longer ministers in parishes but pastors in congregations and the words, ‘minister’ and ‘parish’ have been lost from our language and discarded from our working vocabulary. Our once mainline church is now the sidelined church. As it did for Elijah, it all can feel as if God has taken a walk, or at least is taking a nap, while the world we once knew is all but falling apart.
But while Elijah moaned and groaned on the pity pot, God was doing a new thing. God was doing a great thing. And God came to Elijah, a servant whom he loved even if Elijah agitated him. Under the broom tree in a still small voice, God called Elijah to open his eyes and see. It wasn’t that God wasn’t speaking. It was Elijah who wasn’t listening. God is still speaking. God is still speaking to you and to me. God still is calling, calling to you and to me, to open our eyes and to behold the new thing that God is doing in us, around us, behind us and ahead of us in the days to come. God is doing a new thing.
If we do not hear God’s voice, if we do not see God’s work, like Elijah we might not be listening and looking. Like Elijah we have made mountains out of our problems and molehills out of God’s promise.
At the IN/KY Annual Meeting a week ago, I heard and saw signs of how God is doing a new thing among us. Yes, it does seem that the old mainline church and even denominationalism as we have known it all of our lives is on the wane. I am convinced that 50 years from now, maybe even less, Protestant denominationalism and the church that goes with it will be hardly recognizable to any of us who see it today and have known it yesterday. I am equally convinced that God has a hand in that. I believe that in what we are experiencing today in the church, God is tearing down old structures that new structures can rise up and come to life. We do not know what the new church will look like or feel like, smell like or sound like. But God loves the church and the church is the place for his mission. And as God made the church a place for his mission yesterday, God will make a place for the church tomorrow. Have we forgotten that when we remember the story of our church for the past two thousand years we are recalling God’s activity, not simply human effort alone? Do we think that God will not be as active in the future as he was in yesteryear? And do we think for a moment that God is not as active today, as he will be in the future and was in the past? In all the change that goes on around us, in all the upheaval of reshaping church structures and ways, God has a hand equipping the church for work tomorrow.
The central story in our faith is a story of resurrection, not death. Death is part of the story and an essential part, but the main theme is resurrection. I believe that God is moving to bring the sidelined mainline church out of the tomb and into new life. I also believe that the resurrected body although related to the earthly body is not the same body. It is a new body that God has made and will make. From our vantage point today, we can not know what the new body, the new church, will look like, for as Paul wrote, “Now I see through a glass dimly, then I will see face to face.” (I Cor. 13) We cannot know what the future will look like but our faith is not in the future, our faith is in the god who makes the future and all things new. We are called to be with God, and to listen for God in the earthquake, thunder and storm of today even as Elijah was years ago.
The earthquake, thunder and storm were not the word of God. The earthquake, thunder and storm, did not have the final word. And neither today do the things that shake and frighten us and that make the most noise have the last word. God’s word spoken to Elijah was a word of hope and resurrection and newness growing up out of the dying old.
Elijah was called to see the signs of God working in his world. Last week at conference I heard about and saw some of the signs of God’s call to newness.
The conference’s evangelism committee shared a message at one point in the meeting. There are about 5800 congregations in the UCC. The first part of the message was about the dying and sidelined mainline church. 32% of our congregations are presently losing members. 52% of our congregations have plateaued in membership statistics. It is recognized that the plateau stage is often the first step to decline. Furthermore, on the national level our denomination has been steadily losing members for forty years. 1964 was the last year when our denominational secretary was able to report an increase in membership. What is happening to our church is repeated in all the once known as mainline churches. In the midst of this report on the death and dying of American Protestantism as we have known it, there was a loud message of hope, of newness, of promise and of the reality that God can and does work and speak among us.
15% of our UCC churches are growing. These congregations have gotten no small amount of attention and study. The question has been asked over and over what are they doing? The growing churches have been examined and analyzed. A particular interest has been held in finding what is it that they are doing. Seven common traits have been found to be held by the congregations that make up the 15% of our churches that are growing.
Those traits are:
1. The people in those churches are optimistic about their church’s future and are excited about what they are doing. They do not focus on the negative, but continuously work on the positive.
2. The growing UCC churches also share the trait that they are conflict free. Their congregation’s are united in a single solid vision of who they are, why they are there, and where they are going.
3. Growing UCC churches strive to offer a variety of programs to serve the needs of the community around them.
4. Growing UCC churches are liberal and progressive in theology and outlook.
5. Growing UCC churches are open and affirming to all who would come to break bread at the Lord’s table and join in the companionship of the Lord’s church.
6. Growing UCC churches consider worship at the center of their life and strive to make their worship vital and vibrant.
7. Growing UCC churches are extremely mission oriented. They look outward much more than inward. The more global they are, the clearer their vision and the stronger their programs.
God is still speaking. God is still working. His activity has only just begun and signs of his handiwork can be seen and heard if we look and listen. God is a god of resurrection and newness, not a god of death and it is life, wholeness and newness to which we are called as a people of God.