After the Exhaltation Sermon

This is a marvelous and joyfilled day. There are very few days that compare with this,
The day of your wedding. The day you have a child. The day that child goes to school. The day they graduate High School, College, the day they come home from War. The day of your child's wedding. These are the days we live for, plan for, share with all our family and friends. Few, very few places in all the world are like Skaneateles for this, for where else can our children receive so fine an education, and dramatically demonstrate taking the next big leap of life, by taking a leap into the Lake with Cap and Gown. But tonight, or tomorrow, there is a point AFTER THE EXHALTATION.

How odd, that we have structured our lives, as if milestones of accomplishment, climaxes to attain, rather than envisioning life as a whole? For perceiving life as a series of climaxes, we struggle and strive for the fulfillment of each one, and afterwards crash a little. We are only human, we cannot maintain that level of EXHALTATION constantly. When we try to go from climax to climax to climax without ever letting down, we give up being human.

Our passages this day are among the best known, most beloved stories, yet also the most misunderstood. Each deal with what we used to call BURN-OUT and in today's Politically Correct vernacular refer to as POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER. We love the image of THE STILL,SMALL VOICE, Simon a& Garfunkel's SOUNDS OF SILENCE, but the image only makes sense in contrast to all the other noises of life.

We need to hear the DRAUGHT that lasted for month after month after month, when the heavens were closed, and the land itself was dying from thirst. When it was so dry, there was no sound from the birds, no cool breeze blowing through the trees and grasses. The people had given up on praying, given up on believing, on having faith, instead complaining in protest to the government. The Contest on Mt. Carmel between Elijah and the Prophets of Baal, was really a test of whether we put our faith and authority in God or in the State.
We need to hear the sound of SPEECHES and Royal Decrees. The Assurances, that in the end our leaders will have been right.
We need to hear the sound of RELIGIONS that stir peoples' emotions, but have only ritual.
450 Priests of Idol Worship screamed and wailed, tortured themselves to make their gods react.
Then it was Elijah's turn.
Everything Elijah did was to act faithfully. He honored the traditions that had gone before. We HEAR AS HE NAMED THE TWELVE TRIBES of Israel with 12 stones in the altar. Then he made a sacrifice of all he had, We LISTEN 12 times over ELIJAH POURED WATER over it all, until the thirsty ground was again full.
We HEAR AS ELIJAH PRAYED and with absolute commitment believes God CAN & WILL Make a Difference, God Can & Will Save the People.
And we see the lightning and we hear the thunder and the sacrifice is consumed as the rain begins to fall ending the draught.

As our daughters and sons, sisters and brothers receive their diplomas and move their tassels, we need to do more than be proud. Every year, we hear parents come to graduation, as if they have run the race, they have completed their journey, their daughter or son is eighteen years old, having gotten through from Kindergarten through High School. Only to realize, parenting does not end, the finish line we thought we knew now requires that OUR CHILDREN ACT ON THEIR OWN WITH RESPOSIBILITY and WE TRUST. The same can be said for when they take a JOB FAR FROM HOME, When they marry. Instead of simply being PROUD, being THANKFUL, we need if we have not done so before to PRAY FOR THEM. All the energy and time that went into cooking their meals, washing their clothes, begging and cajoling that they finish homework, watching their games and tournaments,
we allow them to do on their own, while we PRAY.

Elijah got to this point, (AFTER THE EXHALTATION), when suddenly he had a crisis of faith. Exhausted, emotionally spent, having been God's Instrument standing up to the forces of NATURE, the GOVERNMENT, the 450 PRIESTS OF BAAL, and all the people who doubted, Elijah had won. When suddenly he became attacked personally, and in his vulnerability he questioned, did GOD DO THIS OR DID I? All those who were pat of the RSG, the Renovation Steering Group, and all those who made contributions, many of which were very large, might wonder if we had BUILT THE CHURCH? There are times when we listen to the beauty of this INSTRUMENT of WOOD & PRECIOUS METAL and pinch ourselves at what we have done, There are times when we lift up the building of a CLINIC in AFRICA, and wonder, particularly with our own people having invested their own lives and sweat in the equity, who built this? We hear the names this day of children we baptized, those whom we taught in Sunday School, those we worried over and celebrated as they grew. And AFTER THE EXHALTATON, we like Elijah question, I have been very Zealous for the Lord!
There is a Grammatic problem with Elijah's speech. Hebrew does not have prepositions, so we are not clear whether what he is recorded as saying is “For” the Lord or “OF the Lord”. And the word Zealous can also mean JEALOUS, so what Elijah may be admitting to God is not a DEFENSIVE CLAIM: “I have been very Zealous For the Lord”, so much as honestly admitting, I Have been VERY JEALOUS OF the Lord!

But as BURNED OUT as Elijah may be, as exhausted as parents as each of us may feel, GOD does NOT dispose of people. God does not abandon them, GOD RECALLS and RECOMMISSIONS.
God has MANY MORE JOBS for ELIJAH to DO. God is not through with us yet!
There are so many stories of THE CALL in faith, the point of this one is that LIFE IS A WHOLE
a unit, ONE. When we focus too much on a single accomplishment, a wedding, a graduation, a birth, AFTER THE EXHALTATION, there can be a depression as low as ever we wre high.

The problem with our memory of this passage, is that we remember the STILL SMALL VOICE, rather than what Elijah Hears. Like recalling that NOAH SAW A RAINBOW, ABRAHAM WAS CIRCUMCISED, MOSES Saw a BURNING BUSH, EZEKIEL SAW A WHEEL. The point is not the SYMBOL, a THEOPHANY, a Symbol for God, is only supposed to catch our attention, make us leave what we were doing to see and hear something HOLY. Noah saw the RAINBOW as an ETERNAL COVENANT CUT INTO CREATION that God would never again destroy life. Abraham understood that in is most private and personal relationships he was to be set apart, literally GOD's COVENANT WAS CUT INTO HIM. The Burning Bush, was EnFlamed but not Consumed. The Wheel, Life and seasons go round and round, ever progressing. And Elijah when the Wind and Earthquake and Fire would not move him the STILL SMALL VOICE of SILENCE
Question “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, There is GOD's work to be done.”

If ever there were a passage we as a NATION needed to hear, it is this one from Luke.
The name the man gives to Jesus as an iundication of the identity of his soul is LEGION. He is Veteran of the Roman Legion, whose mind is not quiet with the still small voice, but troubled by a thousand voices from seeing too much of war. We ackowledge friends and family members going off to war, going off to college, going to travel for a year. BUT we have had little way of acknowledging when they come home. We do not know how to help them sort out all they have seen, with who they thought they were. Like the rest of us, Jesus responds to help the man. But when that does not work, as rarely can we really solve someone else's problems, instead Jesus stops and asks the man who he is, and listens.

Everyone else had tried to guard the man against himself. They had shackled and chained him, though he always broke loose and would get lost. Our responsibility for one another is not to try TO FIX THEM, not to CONTROL, or to bind and chain, all that can come of that is feeling lost. Instead, we listen and we pray, naming the fears and demons, and dealing with them.
Luke is blunt and pointed, that doing so causes other people to be afraid. Afraid because the man they had found ways to control, could no longer be controlled. Afraid, because if Jesus listened to this one and hearing him, had healed him, what might happen to each of us, if someone listened and we were healed?

The question is really quite simple.
Do we perceive life as a series of CLIMAXES OF EXHALTATION, knowing that after the exhaltation there can be a depression as great as the high,
or do we know LIFE to be ONE, to be WHOLE, and are we willing to listen to the wounded, are we willing to pray for one another, taking faith seriously, taking one another seriously?