Preaching as Prophetic Calling

David J. Schlafer

• Publisher: Morehouse Publishing
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9780819225429
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Preaching as Prophetic Calling is the twelfth in a series of books devoted to presenting examples of preaching excellence from parishes throughout the Episcopal Church. This volume addresses the difficult and essential area of preaching a prophetic word. What does a prophetic sermon look like without being shrill, and without being filled with "musts, " "oughts, " and "shoulds"? This collection of sermons includes examples of prophetic preaching that are visionary and that speak in ways that offer radical comfort as well as radical challenge.

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FOCUSING SPECIFIC ISSUES OF PROPHETIC CONCERN

CELEBRATING SIGNS OF HOPE

COMMUNITY SERVICES

A Table in the Wilderness

Psalm 78:14–20; Romans 8:35–39; Matthew 14:13–21
Proper 13 A
Amanda Rutherford May

THE LAND AROUND the Sea of Galilee is hardly a wilderness. It is rich and fertile country with beautiful hills and valleys and some trees. Yet Jesus speaks of withdrawing to “a lonely place.” The words translated “lonely place” in Matthew’s Gospel literally mean “a place that is like a wilderness.” The wilderness—a place of quiet, of stillness, of barrenness—a place that is wild and open, a place where we come to terms with ourselves and with God.

The wilderness experience of the people of Israel was the most formative in the Old Testament. After having been led out of slavery in Egypt by Moses, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years. Forty years of moving toward the Promised Land, forty years of trusting in God, trusting in God to protect them and to guide them, trusting in God to satisfy their hunger and to assuage their thirst. In the wilderness they experienced hardship and freedom, and they longed for comfort and slavery. They were tempted to worship other gods and to turn back to the life from which they had been redeemed. But God loved his people. He taught them, fed them, and cared for them. Finally when they were ready, God led them to the Promised Land.

The story of the loaves and fishes is the story of another wilderness experience. After Jesus was rejected in his own city of Nazareth, the disciples brought him the news that John the Baptist had been executed. For all of them it was a time of failure and fear. They left Nazareth and crossed the Sea of Galilee to a “lonely place”—a wilderness where they could again come to terms with themselves and with God. But when they arrived, the people of Galilee, like the Israelites of old, had gathered to experience God, to escape from the slavery of sin, and to seek the Promised Land, the kingdom of God proclaimed by the Messiah. Jesus taught the people, as God had taught the Israelites in the wilderness. He cast out demons and healed the sick, as God had cared for the Israelites in their wanderings. But as the day lengthened and the people began to be hungry and restless, even the faithful wondered: “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?”

On that day in Galilee, there were only five loaves and two fishes, a meal for one to feed a crowd of five thousand men, besides the women and children. Jesus took the offerings, blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to feed the people. In the Exodus, God fed the people of Israel with manna and with quails, enough for the whole company each day. But on that day in Galilee, the people were fed and there was food left over—more than enough for all to share. Like the Israelites of the Exodus, the people of Galilee and the disciples who had sought out “a lonely place” experienced God in their midst, a loving and faithful God who prepared a table in the wilderness with food and drink in abundance.

I have had the privilege for the last eight years of serving as the executive director of Episcopal Community Services. This agency provides services to the poor in San Diego and Riverside Counties, including:

• early childhood education and care

• drug and alcohol rehabilitation, education, and prevention

• housing for battered women and their children, and for women who have themselves been offenders

• emergency assistance

• services and housing for the homeless mentally ill

• employment for the homeless and for foster youth entering the workforce

• housing for those who are homeless and suffering from AIDS

• chaplaincy to all of our programs

With five hundred employees and forty locations, our programs serve about thirty-five hundred clients each day.

ECS is a place where we experience wilderness. Those who come to us are physically, mentally, and spiritually in the wilderness of their lives. Some have nowhere to sleep; some have no food; some are mentally, physically, or spiritually ill. Many are addicted or abused. All are poor. Many have been separated from families and friends for years. Some are separated from God. Like the Israelites of old, they wander, looking for the Promised Land, trying to rely on God’s providence, yet asking the question, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?”

Bob had enjoyed a successful career. As a young man he had graduated from Stanford, then completed an MBA at Harvard. He had become a marketing executive in a succession of companies, with a significant income, a house, and a bright future—bright, until the clouds started to form. He was unable to perform at his usual high standards and eventually didn’t go to work at all. His company terminated him. He found himself unable to search for a new job. As money got tighter and tighter, his wife left him, defeated by his undiagnosed disease. Bob lived in his house for two years, spending all his savings, until the bank foreclosed, the utility companies cut off services, and his friends deserted him.

As he will tell you, one day he was carrying a bucket of water from his swimming pool to the bathroom to flush a toilet, because the water had been turned off. He said to himself, “Bob, this is crazy! And if this is crazy, you must be crazy too!” Shortly thereafter he was forced out of his house and was forced to live in his car. When his car was finally repossessed, Bob found himself homeless and living on the street. For Bob it was the wilderness, a time of powerlessness, desperation, fear, and loneliness. He could not overcome the situation, and he could not escape. It was all he could do to survive.

Eventually Bob found his way to the ECS Friend-to-Friend Clubhouse, where he could shower and eat and talk to others who were mentally ill. Bob suffered from a form of clinical depression so severe that at times he could not function. After he was diagnosed and the appropriate medications were prescribed, Bob began to return to a shadow of his former self. He started by working at the ECS Downtown Work Center for minimum wage. He then joined the ECS staff, working as a counselor at the Friend-to-Friend Clubhouse. From there he became the manager of the Work Center. But he was still too fragile, and he sank into depression again. It was a low point for all of us who had great hopes for Bob’s recovery. But, he returned to his job at the Clubhouse and slowly has been restored to health. About three years ago, he accepted a new job at his old salary scale, doing marketing on the Internet.

On his last day at the Clubhouse, Bob gathered together the members to tell them his story and the good news. Now those who are members of the Friend-to-Friend Clubhouse are homeless (or nearly homeless) and mentally ill. They hear voices, they are depressed or manic, they are paranoid or delusional, but they come together at the Clubhouse to form a community. There is a great bond among the members of the Clubhouse. They know they are fragile. They know they are outcasts. They know that their futures are uncertain. But they also know that at the Clubhouse they are respected and treated with dignity, valued because they are children of God.

Bob told the members that he was going to a job that paid a hundred thousand dollars more than his job at the Clubhouse. They thought he was delusional. Then he told them that he was buying a new industrial strength washer and dryer for the Clubhouse. That was enough to convince everyone!

The going-away party was joyful, festive, and full of hope. In the midst of the wilderness of fear and loneliness, oppression and degradation, God had prepared a table for Bob and his friends at the Clubhouse. Bob told me as he was leaving that he would never forget what ECS had done for him: that we had helped him and believed in him, but most of all that we had convinced him that God had not forsaken him.

To be in the wilderness is to be apart. To experience the wilderness is to experience separation. It is a place stripped of amenities. It is a place forsaken. And when we enter into a wilderness experience, we take on the nature of the place. The comfort of our daily lives is removed. We feel suddenly very alone, very vulnerable, and very much in the presence of God.

All of us spend time in the wilderness. Perhaps we have been homeless, addicted, or abused. Perhaps we have been depressed, despairing, in mourning. Perhaps we have felt worthless, useless, or ineffectual. Perhaps we have felt abandoned or betrayed by friends, family, or by God. But that time we spend in the wilderness is a time to be cherished, for it is a time when we come face to face with God. It is a time when pretensions are stripped away and we come to know that indeed God will provide for us—and that we cannot provide for ourselves.

Several years ago I went to the Holy Land, and in the course of visiting different places in Israel, I went to the small monastery where the miracle of the loaves and fishes is commemorated. It is a wilderness, not without water or greenery, as it sits on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, but a place where there is silence and the presence of God. On the floor of the sanctuary is a second-century tile floor with the symbols of the loaves and fishes. Around the sanctuary are the Eucharistic words describing Jesus’ action as he was given the meager offerings of bread and fish. “Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the crowd,” the words of the Last Supper and the words said every Sunday in our Eucharist together.

For each of us the Eucharistic words are reminders of that encounter with God in the wilderness, for it is there that we offer ourselves to God, and there that he takes up the offering of our lives. God blesses us, and calls us his children. He breaks apart our worlds to conform our wills to his. And he gives us to the world for service in the name of Christ.

It is hard to say what it was about that monastery that influenced my own spiritual journey, but it was from that time and place that I mark my adult commitment as a disciple of Christ. Perhaps it was that my intellectual resistance to Christianity was finally broken down by the historical reality of that simple place. But looking back over the years, I know that God called me from the wilderness of my life at that time to experience his presence, the presence of a loving and faithful God. For me, God prepared a table in the wilderness, and it was in those simple Eucharistic words written on the walls of the sanctuary that I found my life in God.

“Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?” The stories of the Old and New Testaments and our own experiences echo with a resounding “yes!” For each of us the time in the wilderness is a time of struggle, a time of waiting and watching, a time of vulnerability. But it is in the wilderness, where all is stripped away, that we know the power of God’s love.

As Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans: “For 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.” It is in the wilderness that the table is prepared for us, and it is there that God gives us the Bread of Life.

Amanda Rutherford May is executive director of
Episcopal Community Services, San Diego, California.

LITERACY

Finding a Voice

Luke 18:1–8
Proper 24 C
Margaret A. Faeth

DURING A RECENT family vacation, I caught a cold that turned into laryngitis. For an entire week I had no voice. It became a long and lonely week as I was progressively isolated by my inability to speak. For the first day or two, my children still expected some response from me. I clapped as my son bravely attempted his first back dive. When my daughter asked for a Popsicle before dinner, I was able to get my message across with a shake of my head and a raised eyebrow. But I missed a lovely bike ride because nobody heard my response to the invitation. Before long we were all tired of the extra effort it took to communicate. Nobody wanted my germs, but I really missed my daily dose of hugs and kisses. I became more isolated as the children began to look to their father as the sole source of permission, affirmation, and response.

I became very dependent upon my husband. I couldn’t introduce myself in the church we visited. I couldn’t ask directions or use the telephone. I couldn’t even make my own doctor’s appointment. In restaurants, after much gesticulating and pointing, I finally had to have Paul order for me. I began to understand what it must feel like to be invisible. I really don’t know what I would have done without my husband. In my voiceless state, he was my advocate, the one who bridged the chasm between society and me. In the midst of my frustration however, I realized that my condition was only temporary. I knew that soon I would be able to speak for myself.

Two thousand years ago, women did not have the luxury of speaking for themselves. In ancient Palestine, women relied exclusively on the men in their lives for permission, affirmation, and response. Virtuous women lived in isolation, venturing out into public only under swaths of veils designed to protect their modesty. A good woman was not seen and not heard. Jewish folklore explained that the mother of the Maccabean heroes had been blessed with so many valiant sons because even the beams in her ceiling had never seen a hair of her uncovered head.

In a society so unaccustomed to the sight and sounds of women, widows posed a special problem. A woman fortunate enough to have sons became dependent upon them after her husband died. Some women were taken in by male relatives. But the widow without a male advocate lived on the outskirts of society—without voice and without hope. The Greek and Hebrew words for widow reflect this isolation. The Hebrew word for widow, almanah, comes from the word that means mute or voiceless. The Greek word for widow, chera, is derived from the word chasma, which denotes a chasm or deficiency.

Voiceless, deficient, isolated by an impossible social chasm—this was the widow’s reality. The big surprise in today’s Gospel is not that the judge grew weary of the widow’s persistence and relented. The big surprise is that the widow found her voice. She sought justice and mercy when she had no right or reason to expect it. Under Jewish law, she had no right to be heard. Had she been wealthy, or the mother of sons, she would have found an advocate to present her petition. But this was apparently not the case. In her desperation, she cried out across the chasm of social norms that isolated her. If we listen carefully, we can still hear the echoes.

My friend Ginny knows the pain of isolation. Without an advocate in the public school system, she advanced from grade to grade without learning to read. In the eyes of her teachers and classmates, Ginny’s...