Image and Word: Reflections on the Stained Glass in the Paul W. Powell Chapel

6. A Sermon on the Preaching Stained Glass Window

59 6 A Sermon on the Preaching Stained Glass Window # PreachingThat Really Matters 1 Kings 19:9-18;Acts 2:14-36 W. Hulitt Gloer Elijah the Tishbite was on the lam, on the run from the law, a fugitive from justice—Jezebel’s justice. Ahab the king called him his enemy, “the troubler of Israel”— that’s Old Testament for un-American! No wonder! He had predicted a drought, which was not good news for an agriculturally based economy. He had challenged 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah to a kind of preach-off atop Mount Carmel—that’s 850 preachers of the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel who had blessed Ahab and Jezebel’s civil religion. He had held Israel’s social, political, religious, and economic systems up to the light of Yahweh’s expectations, and they measured up miserably. Eight hundred and fifty to one: by any measure, the odds were not in Elijah’s favor. He was not just speaking Image and word 60 the truth to power; he was speaking the truth to all the powers—850 Baals and Asherahs—all the powers in Jezebel’s arsenal. The 850—they spent the day limping around their altar, praying, raving, cutting themselves in an attempt to demonstrate to their deities just how important it was for them to make an appearance. But there was no voice, no answer, no response—nothing. Then Elijah prayed to Yahweh, and the fire fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust; it even licked up the water that filled the trenches Elijah had dug around the altar. It would have seemed to most reasonable people a fairly clear triumph for Yahweh’s man. But Jezebel would not be done in so easily. She swore a vicious oath: “Elijah, you will die.” So Elijah hightailed it to the wilderness to hide out, hopefully to hear from Yahweh, the God who got him into this mess in the first place. I think I can hear him now: “Yahweh, you got me into this mess, now get me out, or at least make an appearance!” After forty days and forty nights of waiting, he heard God would be passing his way. It was about time. God would put on a sound and light show to dazzle the mind. Elijah listened in the rolling thunder to hear the voice of God. He watched the arrows of lightning to see if they might spell out a word from the Lord on the night sky. Instead, the Lord commanded him to stand on Mount Horeb and await the Lord’s presence. And then there was silence. 61 Preaching Not just silence, not mere silence, it was sheer silence! A silence that was palpable, a silence in which one is left alone with the great i AM, a silence in which one knows the presence of the Word, the Word that our words are incapable of containing. A sound of silence that bids us listen and hear words beyond our words. This silence bids us listen. This silence bids us bear witness. And being still, really still, we know that God is, and such knowledge must be proclaimed even when words cannot bear it. So Elijah does it. Having heard the word, which is beyond our words, he cannot help but preach. He cannot help but give voice to the silence. He just does it. The next time Elijah appears we’re surprised to find him with Jesus and Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration . Peter is also there, and by the time we meet him at Pentecost in Acts 2, Peter has had his own experience with the silence of God. Having witnessed Jesus’ brutal death, he has sat with the disciples assuming all Jesus’ words had been said, but now we find him giving leadership to the beleaguered band of believers gathered as one in an upper room in Jerusalem. Luke tells us that they had been praying and listening for God to speak when suddenly there is wind and fire, an experienceofthedivinethatrocksthemtothesolesoftheir feet, and they can do nothing less than fill the crowded streets of Jerusalem and preach the good news. In Acts 2, Luke recounts Peter’s sermon, but it’s clear that it is just illustrative in nature—for they were all out there preaching , bearing witness to the good news—what...