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First Presbyterian Church, Bridgeton, NJ
Richard E. Sindall, Pastor
Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2008
Lessons: I Kings 17:17-24 and John 14:15-21,27-28
Advocate
If as his church, we strive to represent Jesus Christ faithfully to people in our world, we will face Elijah’s situation with the widow. No wonder the church finds it easier to take refuge in the sanctuary where it controls the rituals of divine mystery. The world outside is in tumult even when it appears calm on the surface. People hide their thoughts about life and feelings about God. The world vibrates with desires and ambitions even as it shudders in fear and sags to the ground under the weight of its disappointments and griefs. Calling him “man of God,” the widow accuses Elijah of coming into her house to do her harm. The prophet embodies God’s welcome but also unwelcome presence. Christ’s church can likewise embody God’s welcome but also unwelcome presence in the world, and so we need to understand what we are doing when we confront the world with the hope we believe God has given it in Christ.
Remember the primary sentence of our Vision Statement: “We believe there is hope for the world because Christ suffered and died for it.” Offering hope is unpredictable work that arouses suspicions. It brings people’s fears to the surface and turns them defensive. How we respond to that defensiveness can make a very big difference in the outcome.
In the part of her story prior to our lesson, this widow experienced God’s grace in what we would term a miraculous way. A pervasive drought had left her with only enough grain and oil to make one last meager meal for her son and herself before they starved to death, which was what she expected. By being hospitable and sharing their last meal with Elijah, she opened herself to God, and so the grain and oil lasted until the rains came.
But Elijah stayed in her house, and the presence of the “man of God” clearly made her uneasy, as the mention of God makes many people uneasy in our society today. The question is, What comes next? or, What has God to do with me? With God, people expect judgment, and often Christians reinforce that expectation. When her son becomes ill and nears death, the widow blames Elijah as God’s human presence. “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” She speaks for many people who know they have sins and flaws and so are open to judgment by an all-seeing and perfect God. Who wants to stand in the presence of perfection? It’s worse than having a brother or sister who always gets top grades and does everything well. Who wants to be the deficient one, the star that doesn’t shine, the lesser? If we think that hearing of God brings hope to most people, we are mistaken; it brings guilt, fear, and shame. Many people feel much more comfortable when God is not mentioned.
Elijah’s response to the widow’s accusation offers a model for what the church of Jesus Christ can be and do in this world. He takes the heat of her distress, accepts her accusation, and becomes her advocate with God. As she has accused him of bringing God’s judgmental and vindictive presence into her house to kill her son, so Elijah asks God, just as accusingly, “O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” So he takes up her cause with God.
We might expect God to get a bit huffy about that kind of talk, but Elijah is doing exactly what God wants a prophet to do. Prophets represent God to people, but they also must represent the people back to God. That’s the job description for a prophet. It is also the job description for the Messiah, and now for his church. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus cries from the cross shortly before he dies. In that cry, he becomes the embodiment of broken, defeated, and seemingly God-forsaken humanity.
Abraham stands up to God for the legendary evil city of Sodom. Moses stands up to God for the rebellious and shamefully idolatrous people of Israel whom God had so recently delivered from slavery. The fiery prophet Amos and even bitter Jeremiah stand up to God for the people, arguing that God should not carry out the judgment the people deserve. If prophets were sometimes the bearers of God’s wrath pronouncing judgment, they were also the people’s advocates pleading for compassion.
We hear much talk these days about “spirituality,” which seems to have as many definitions as people talking about it. I am drawn to Abraham Heschel’s portrait of prophetic spirituality, which hears and feels God’s word, then takes that word out into the marketplace where human lives are bought and sold. Prophetic spirituality advocates for God but also for the people. It steps into the middle, as a mediator who understands both sides. Prophetic spirituality does not flee from earth and flesh into mystic experience. Neither does it take shelter in rituals or doctrines. Not content to be safe or correct, this spirituality goes where the body is wounded, the people bleeding. It does not go with power to heal all the wounds, but it stands with the people and advocates for them with God. Prophetic spirituality cares about God and the people, both, and so affirms what the people have become and what God created them to be.
Jesus has promised those who follow him “another Advocate.” He himself is our prime Advocate; he who gave himself for us is the one who represents us to God. The word translated “Advocate” speaks of a counselor or attorney. Jesus is our defense attorney, our representative before the judgment of God. He has promised that our personal Advocate with God will be God’s own Spirit. Paul says that now our knowledge is partial and quite imperfect, but the day will come when we see face to face and know as fully as we have been known. The great miracle is that we are fully known with compassion rather than scorn.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says to us, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” I believe that as Christ’s church, we need to stop being the world’s scornful judge and start becoming the world’s advocate with God. A friend who advocates for teenagers and children reminded me recently that such work cannot be done only at convenient times and guarded comfort levels. It draws the advocate into the life and world of the student where ambitions can be confused, needs tangled, and obstacles to progress hard to overcome. We human beings are walking self-contradictions. As Paul puts it, the good we want to do is not what we end up doing, and what we most desire in our deepest selves, we fail to get around to pursuing. We don’t follow up on our own dreams or on our beliefs, either.
The Bible offers, sometimes thrusting upon us, new self-understandings that lead toward healing and freedom. After we have experienced some of that healing and newfound freedom, we may realize God does not give us such gifts so we can keep them to ourselves. We need to share what God gives, but we need to share it in the way God gives it. The world is not waiting for our doctrines and salvation formulas. What Christ has given us to share is the grace, the understanding and compassion, that brought us to healing and continues to heal us, that opens our eyes to the love and mercy of God. The world needs fewer preachers and more advocates.
When she sees that God’s presence in her house has brought healing and life, not judgment and death, the widow speaks of God in a new way: “Now I know,” she confesses to Elijah, “that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth.” Many years ago, a young woman struggling with her fundamentalism told me she liked something she had read: “Truth without love is judgment.” She was right, and the truth is that God has no truth without love. Only we conceive of such an ungodly thing as truth without love.
We have an Advocate among us, even within us: God’s own Spirit, who is greater than your guilty conscience or mine. Our eight directions for developing and pursuing our beliefs and hopes as a church include sharing our vision with others outside our church and reaching into our communities with ministry and service. Such goals will require that we become Christ’s advocates for God to people, but we cannot do so unless we also become advocates for the people to God. The church needs to stand in the middle, not off to the side, and like Elijah, we need to start by listening and taking the heat. Amen.