"Eavesdropping on God"

"Eavesdropping on God"

Sermon for Proper 13, August 1, 1999

St. Thomas, Pittstown, NJ

Readings: Nehemiah 9:16-20, Romans 8:35-39; Matthew 14:13-21

One of the most difficult things
about visiting a parish
is knowing what to say.
You don't know me, and I don't know you,
and so it's kind of a
a wild guessing game
as to what will make connect with your lives,
and what will be completely irrelevant.
What I say
may make sense,
or you may just go to sleep.

When it comes to preparing the sermon,
I sit down with the readings
given in the lectionary,
I plough through them all
with the help of commentaries,
Old Testament, New Testament and Gospel,
and I pray for words to come.

And then, most often, I turn to the gospel.
For if we have anything in common,
it's the stories of Jesus.

Today I wanted
to preach on the gospel
today I wanted
to tell the news of Jesus
as he heard the news
of the death of his cousin John,
not just dead
but his head
served up
on a plate
for a dancing girl.

Jesus heard the news
and went off by himself in a boat
to grieve.
And then the crowds came, and he healed some,
and finally, at the end of the day,
five thousand men were fed, and their families as well,
with enough food
and some to spare.

That's the story
I wanted
to tell
today.

But its not the story
I will tell this morning.
For every time
I picked up my bible
and got ready to write,
it was the story from Nehemiah
that came to mind.
It was the Old Testament reading
that hooked me in.

Every so often
a bit of Scripture catches hold of me
and I can't do anything
but turn to face it
breathing deeply as I do,
for this
cannot
be ignored.

Ezra the priest
stands before the people,
with the book of the law of Moses held firm in his hands,
what we today know
as the first five books of our Old Testament,
Ezra stands and prays,
only what he prays is more like a sermon
than a prayer.

"16 But they and our ancestors acted presumptuously and stiffened their
necks and did not obey your commandments; 17 they refused to obey, and
were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them; but they
stiffened their necks and determined to return to their slavery in Egypt.
But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and
abounding in steadfast love, and you did not forsake them. 18 Even when they
had cast an image of a calf for themselves and said, "This is your God who
brought you up out of Egypt," and had committed great blasphemies, 19 you
in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness; the pillar of
cloud that led them in the way did not leave them by day, nor the pillar of
fire by night that gave them light on the way by which they should go. 20
You
gave your good spirit to instruct them, and did not withhold your manna
from their mouths, and gave them water for their thirst.

Ezra tells the story
once again,
the story of the people of Israel.
Ezra tells it
from the very beginning.
The creation of the world,
the call of Abraham,
the escape from Egypt,
the wandering in the wilderness,
which is where we pick it up.
As he prays, Ezra tells the story to God.
As if God didn't know.
As if God couldn't remember
the things that God had done.

Ezra prays, and the people listen in.
And as they listen in,
eavesdroppers
on Ezra's conversation with God,
what the people had come to think of as their ancestors' story
becomes God's story,
and what they thought was God's story
becomes their own.

They overhear how God
chose a man,
found him to be faithful,
promised him a new home and a new people
and kept the promise.

They overhear how God
listened to the cries
of the people in Egypt
and rescued them.

They overhear how God
saw the people
wandering aimlessly around in the desert
and led them
and spoke to them
and came down on Mount Sinai
right there in the middle of them.

The overhear how God
called the people
to obedience, to holy living
not because God wanted to tie them up
with rules and regulations
but because God wanted them
to live life
to its fullest.
Because that way, there would be less
of picking up the pieces
- though God will never stop doing that -
and more of celebrating and rejoicing.

And they also overhear
how little the people deserved
all that God did for them.
Because they were stubborn
and rebellious
and complacent
and afraid,
and...well, to be honest,
because they were human.
Because they were human
and because God was God.

The people listening to Ezra heard -
perhaps for the first time -
who God really is.

Not the cardboard cut-out
that they had constructed,
sinister and scary on one side,
gold-leafed and gentle on the other,
where the side you saw
depended on what you deserved, on whether you were bad or good.
Not the stereotype
of a God who makes bargains -
and too bad if you lose.

But as Ezra prays,
"A God ready to forgive,
gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love".
Even when...
Even when
the people
are at their most
unlovable.

They overhear about a God who breaks the rules,
who knows all about human frailty
and weakness,
and who loves the people.
A God who will not give up on them - even when
they have given up on themselves.
But a God who calls, and leads, and speaks, and promises and comes close, a
God who loves them.

I have a suspicion
that Ezra knew what he was doing
when he prayed that prayer,
when he prayed that prayer
with all the people
eavesdropping.

Because some of us
don't much like to listen
to the exhortations of preachers.
Some of us don't like
being given simple solutions
to the things which plague us.
And most of us
don't take to kindly
to being told what to do.

But when we eavesdrop
somehow
we listen closer,
somehow
our defenses are down
and we are able to hear
what we have never quite heard
before.

And maybe that's what drew me
to the Old Testament reading today.
You see, I know that the gospels are for us -
we're Christians -
and the New Testament is ours, ours alone.
But the Old Testament...
Well, to be honest, I'm less sure.
Because its something we share,
and sometimes something we ignore.
It belonged first of all
to someone else,
and there is always that feeling
that we are eavesdropping
on someone else's story.

And maybe we are,
and maybe when we eavesdrop
we might just be able to hear
what we cannot hear
when it is clearly spoken.

Maybe it is in the prayer of Ezra
that we can hear
who God really is.
Not the cardboard cut-out
of our stereotypes
sinister and scary on one side,
gold-leafed and gentle on the other, but a God ready to forgive,
gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Even when we too are stubborn
and rebellious
and complacent
and afraid.
Even when
we
are at our
most unlovable.

It's much the same as we heard in our New Testament reading today. Did
you hear it?
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers,
nor
things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:35; 38-39)

And in our Gospel, though perhaps it was hidden a little more. A story of
Jesus, who even though
he has just heard
that his cousin has been put to death,
even though the crowds
should have known to pack something to eat,
even though...
He is filled with compassion, and
gives them food to eat, with enough to spare.

This is our God:
A God who will not give up on us - even when
we have given up on ourselves.
And a God who calls, and leads, and speaks, and promises, and comes close, a
God who loves us.

But be careful
what you overhear.
Be careful,
for if what you overhear is true,
it may just change your life.
When you eavesdrop, and your defenses are down,
and you are able to hear
what you have never quite heard before,
it may just be
that God will speak to you,
it may just be
that God will call you
to take that same great love
with you
out of these church doors
and into the lives
of those who you live with
and those who you meet.

Be careful
for you may be eavesdropping
on God.
Amen.

Raewynne J. Whiteley
1 August, 1999