Declare What God Has Done for You
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – June 20, 2010
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: 1 Kings 19:1-15a/Galatians 3: 23-29/Luke 8:26-39]

“Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him. (8:39)

I suppose it’s a “guy thing,” but are you ever given to “channel surfing”? Sometimes, late at night, I’ll do that and, inevitably, will find myself watching some preacher and more times than not – arguing with him about his theology (more likely, lack of it). Whether we’ve seen them on TV or not, I am sure that we’ve all heard of the theology of “name it and claim it.” You know what that theology is – name it and then claim it. God wants us to have it and if you have enough faith you can have exactly what you want. So name and claim that house, car, job, whatever. If you’ve got enough faith – it’s yours! Now, of course, there are tons of problems with this approach and, fear not, I’m not going to dissect those problems here this morning. However, if we approach the Scripture we’ve read together, there is a legitimate way to talk about naming and claiming, which is then to lead us to go forth and proclaim what God has done. As we read in Luke: The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.”

The fatal flaw in the name it/claim it preaching is that it assumes that what we want is what God wants for us. We come to know what God wants for us by listening for the voice of God which comes to us and most often in ways we least expect, as Elijah discovered. Listening, then, is an important part of our coming to spiritual maturity, “the full stature of Christ” Paul would say elsewhere. I believe it’s the reason that the Shema, the great affirmation of faith daily recited by devout Jews, begins with the word “hear.” “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” Hear, listen; this is what Benedict counsels in the prologue to his Rule when he writes, “listen with the ear of your heart.”

Not long ago we talked about how communication scholars tell us that listening is perhaps the most difficult part of the communication process. Remember, we talked about this not too long ago. The classic communication model of SMR – sender-message-receiver – was soon modified to include something which alters the process: noise. Noise can be many things; the sounds of traffic, machinery, the booming of a car radio or stereo, the television, the list is endless. Noise can also be voices, ideas, or situations; anything which gets in the way of our ability to listen. Our world has so many competing voices, so much noise and all of it is clamoring to get our attention; to have us focus on it rather than on something else. Noise can also be within us.

The man possessed by demons must have been suffering terribly, wondering which of the voices he heard within himself could possibly be right. When one considers that a legion consisted of four to six thousand soldiers, and this demon called itself “Legion, for we are many,” it becomes difficult to imagine the pain of this poor man. Some would say that very likely the man was suffering from some form of mental illness, perhaps schizophrenia or a multiple-personality disorder. It’s very difficult to come to a conclusion because our world and the world of the Bible are so very different. What is important is to understand that the man’s situation was real, was grave and that we can learn something from it.

Both the Old and New Testaments are consistent in their treatment of demons in that they do not see them as divine beings or connected with the spirits of the dead When one is possessed by a demon one can almost say that it’s a giving over to a baser sense of nature. This idea goes along with part of the definition offered by Webster, “an undesirable emotion, trait, or state.” The New Testament emphasizes two things: first, that the believer is freed from the fear of these spirits and, second that the focus of God’s people is to be on God. We can perhaps understand demons in a different way, but one consonant with the New Testament: demons are those attitudes or things which distract us from our proper focus on God. Or, to use our communications analogy, they are the noise which interferes with our listening for God’s voice so that we may be conformed to God’s will and carry out God’s purpose and work.

Thus Maximus the Confessor, one of the great teachers of the early Church, would talk about how the inner being of humanity was led to “think base thoughts” and to “sin in the mind and, when this has been done, they induce it captive as it is, to commit sin in action.” This is not the, and please excuse me for showing my age here, “Devil made me do it” a la Flip Wilson or Dana Carvey’s Church Lady asking “could it be, Satan?” Nor is it the perennial cartoon idea of an angel and a devil seated on our shoulders. Rather, it is a question of orientation, of focus.

Jesus goes after the chaotic, disruptive forces resident in this poor man. He restores his sense of holy desire, his focus on God, which is the “likeness” of being made in the “image and likeness” of God. Sometimes this reorientation comes quickly, as it did for the fellow in the Gospel. Other times it may come slowly as God’s love and God’s Word work their ways into a life, almost as a drip of water will wear away rock. One of the desert fathers, Abba Poemen said, “When a person hears the Word of God over and over, his heart is opened to fear God.”

Elijah was also facing competing voices. Caught up in discouragement, chaos seemed to be all around him. Here he was, the only one who had remained faithful to God -- and he was the one on the run! Elijah was so focused on himself and his problems that he couldn’t hear what God was calling him to do. He had become deaf to God. God had to get Elijah’s attention, so God came to him. God didn’t come in the manner one would expect, God didn’t come in the power and the majesty of the Creator and Preserver of all being. It was not in a mighty wind, or in an earthquake, or in a raging fire, but in silence – a silence one could almost touch. I remember listening to a conversation several years ago between the grand old man of the NACCC, Harry Butman and my major professor Belden Lane as they talked about their experiences of the desert and a “singing silence.” That’s what Elijah had to listen for and open himself to hear. To hear God, Elijah had to open himself to silence.

If we learn to listen we can begin to hear God speaking in the most unlikely places and through the most unlikely sources. The late Henri Nouwen writing about the noise in our lives said: “. . . our lives have become absurd. In the word absurd we find the Latin surdus, which means “deaf.” A spiritual life requires discipline because we need to learn to listen to God, who constantly speaks but whom we seldom hear. When, however, we learn to listen, our lives become obedient lives. The word obedient comes from the Latin word audire, which means “listening.” A spiritual discipline is necessary in order to move slowly from an absurd to an obedient life, from a life filled with noisy worries to a life in which there is some free inner space where we can listen to our God and follow his guidance.” [from Making All Things New]

What brings us to listen and to hear God is the new relationship we have. This is the relationship Jesus came to bring. Our Congregational forebears talked about Jesus as the “federal head,” in other words the one who embodied the community and brought it back into covenant relationship through his very person. Jesus represents and redeems the world and the demoniac ‘legion’ represents the state of the city from which he comes and, indeed of humanity. Jesus comes in power and brings a freedom and a focus not seen or experienced before. One that names the demon, casts it out and cleanses the earth – “for even the wind and the sea obey him.” Jesus comes so that we might know focus, peace, hope, overpowering and casting out fear.

Paul describes this new relationship in his letter to the Galatians. God, in Christ, has adopted us to be God’s children – thus the idea of Jesus as the “federal head” – but we are not to be immature children, we are not in need of a guardian. Those who have been baptized “have put-on,” been clothed, with Christ, and come as mature members of the family of God. So those who have been under the restraint of the Law as “pedagogue” –the Jews -- are so no longer. Those who have been outside the family – the Gentiles -- are now in it. And all the barriers, whether of nature, or culture, or society, are broken down, leveled – all are one in Christ. Glorious! Why don’t we live it? Why aren’t we declaring what God has done in our lives?

An invitation of this sort demands a response. If we are called to spiritual maturity it means that we have to work at growing in our faith-lives. If we are called to spiritual maturity it means that also have to work at living it out in our daily lives. Where this growth begins is in prayer; daily taking the time to be alone with God, even if it’s only for five or ten minutes. And during that time we shouldn’t be doing all the talking. Elijah had to enter into silence to hear what God was saying: it’s no different for you or for me. Practically, find a place apart, a quiet corner where you can be alone. Then read a Psalm or another verse of Scripture and listen to what God is saying to you there. Prayer is how we become obedient children of God. As Nouwen writes: “Jesus’ life was a life of obedience. He was always listening to the Father, always attentive to his voice, always alert for his directions. Jesus was ‘all ear.’ That is true prayer: being all ear for God. The core of all prayer is indeed listening, obediently standing in the presence of God.” In short, we need to listen with the ear of our heart.

We also need to listen more deeply to each other. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together, “The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them.” One needn’t be trained in communication studies or psychology to be an “active listener.” What is needed is compassion and patience – two virtues that God demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes we come to a conversation already knowing what we’re going to say (and, by the way, this can also apply to prayer). We’re so focused on what we’ve got to say, on the agenda that we’ve got to promote and looking for the right moment to make our point, that we’ve missed what the other person is saying. It very well could be that if we’ve grown dull in listening to God we might need to listen to others in silence to see if perhaps it just may be possible that God is speaking to us through them. Listen again to Bonhoeffer’s wisdom, “Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself, and for his own follies”

I had occasion to be at the Congregational Library in Boston not long ago and was doing some research. I came across an address that the Reverend Dr. Harry Butman gave to the annual meeting of the NACCC back in 1961. It was called “The Creative Years” and in it he addressed the need for fellowship, describing its enemies and its friends. I lit up when I read this passage: “The first foe of fellowship is one of the seven deadly sins, sloth. The medieval theologians (those vastly underrated thinkers) had a special name for sloth: ‘acedia,’ a sin often evident in the monastic life. Acedia derives from the Greek “a kedos” – ‘not caring.’ The monk afflicted with acedia simply didn’t care about anything – his soul, his vows, his work. He fell into a state of spiritual torpor and indifference, which, all authorities agreed made him a fit candidate for damnation. To put the definition in psychological terms, acedia is boredom, a malignant disease of the lonely soul. We ourselves have offended against fellowship in years past by the sin of sloth, acedia: we didn’t care, we were lazy, sluggish, withdrawn; and organization men who did care and were not lazy drove in and took over.” [p.18]

When I was novice back at Saint Vincent Archabbey we learned about accidie, acedia and that it was called the “noon day devil,” because it crept in when you’re sleepy and sluggish and pulled you away from what really matters. Six years into our life as an association and we were already confronting the “noon day devil” – along with the other enemies of fellowship Harry described: selfishness, contempt, pace and space. And you know what –it’s forty-nine years since Harry spoke those words and we’re still confronting ALL of those enemies! And it’s not just the National Association of which this Church is a founding member confronting them, the First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa is confronting them, too. There are over 800 people who list this as “their church,” but many don’t even bother to show up. Some are feeling stressed because of the changes going on – governance and now my departure – and complacency, even accidie is evident.

So today I challenge each one of us at this worship service to name the demons that are keeping us from being focused on what God has to say to us and being the people that the Lord has called us to be. I challenge us to name those demons, bind them through the power of lives tuned-in to God’s voice and cast them out, so that we might live in the freedom of the children of God; a freedom TO love, to serve, to be in responsible, accountable fellowship and to make a difference in the world around us and in so doing to go and declare to the world what God has done for us, by living and being the people we’re called to be. As Francis of Assisi said: “It’s no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

So, hold fast to the “freedom wherewith Christ has made us free.” Don’t give in to the demons, the distractions and disruptions and fears which hide in phrases like “we don’t have enough people to do this,” “we can’t afford it,” “we’ve never done it that way before,” “we’ve always done it that way before” or “we tried it before and it didn’t work.” Cast out the demon of pettiness, along with all the rest. Claim the victory and declare what God has done for you!

We are the children of the God who made the heavens and the earth. We are the children of the God who has drawn us into a new life. Listen for God’s voice; listen with the ear of your heart. One last story, this one from the Apothegmata, “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers” that I think makes the point. Abba Lot had spent years seeking God in solitude. One day he decided to go visit Abba Joseph, who was renowned for his holiness. Abba Lot came and said to him, “Abba, insofar as possible I keep my rule of life. I study. I pray. I fast. I work. What more can I be doing?” [the story can be found in The Paradise of the Holy Fathers E.A. Wallis Budge, editor and translator (Seattle: St. Nektarios Press, 1984), p. 67 or in The Apothegmata: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers] It is said that Joseph rose up from where he was sitting, looked at Abba Lot, spread out his arms and that his fingers became like ten torches. He then said, “If you will….you can become all flame!” That, dear ones, is the promise to us….that is the message we have to offer….name the demons….claim the victory…..be wholly flame….be the Lord’s free people and declare what God has done for you.