August 11, 2002
Commentary by Paul Nancarrow |
See also [2008] [2005] |
1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33
One of the things I find most engaging about process-relational theology is its understanding of the relationship between God and the world. The technical term is “panentheism”—meaning “all in God”—but the essential insight, beneath all technicalities and terminologies, is that the world is not separate from God, the world is distinguished but not divided from God, the world and all its creatures are immersed in God like fish in the sea. This means that God’s influence in the world is deeply woven into the very fabric of the world. God’s presence does not come into the world “from outside” as an intervention or interference that waylays natural processes; God is not like the great Clockmaker who occasionally sticks a finger in the works to reseat a gear or reset the time. Instead, God’s influence pervades the world, working as lure and as ideal to shape natural processes toward divine purposes. God’s work can be found as much in the small as in the great, as much in the ordinary as in the remarkable, as much in the everyday as in the spectacular—and perhaps God’s work can be found even more in the former than in the latter. That extraordinary presence of God in the ordinary events of life is a running motif in today’s lessons.
That is certainly one of the key messages in the passage from 1 Kings, the story of the theophany to Elijah on Mt Horeb. God causes four manifestations to pass by Elijah—a great wind, an earthquake, a fire, and a sound of sheer silence—and it is only at the fourth, only in the silence, that Elijah wraps his mantle about his face and knows he is in the presence of God. Part of what makes this passage so striking is the fact that the first three manifestations are all time-honored and traditional First Testament forms of theophany. God appears in fire and storm on Sinai; God mounts on the cherubim and flies on the wind in Psalm 18; God shakes the earth and makes the nations tremble in Habakkuk. Elijah himself was known to manifest God’s power through fire; the whole reason Elijah is in that cave on Horeb is that he’s hiding there from Ahab and Jezebel after calling down fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice and destroy the priests of Baal on Mt Carmel. Wind and fire and earthquake are ways in which Elijah might expect God to appear; when God appears as silence, it comes to Elijah as a surprise. And that sheer surprise is what sets Elijah free from his fear and doubt: where Elijah thought he was the only one of the faithful left and his life was on the line, the silent speaking of God informs Elijah that there are yet seven thousand faithful left, and Elijah is to go and anoint leaders who will succeed him, leaders who will rise up against Ahab and bring justice to Israel. God’s will for justice here will not be brought about by spectacular interventions, but by the still, small, insistent work of still, small, insistent people against the powers of oppression. God’s extraordinary strength is woven into the fabric of their ordinary lives.
Peter, in the Gospel, also gets a lesson in perceiving the extraordinary presence of God in an ordinary place—and his experience may be even more surprising than Elijah’s. As Matthew tells the story it is late at night, the night (or early morning) after the feeding of the five thousand; Peter and the disciples are in the boat, battling against a storm to cross the lake, while Jesus has remained behind to pray; at the height of the storm, Peter and the others look up and see Jesus walking toward them across the water. At first they are terrified, thinking they are seeing a ghost; but Peter is willing to try to believe it is the real Jesus that he sees. And even that is not too much of a stretch for Peter: Peter has seen Jesus do extraordinary things before, Peter has seen Jesus heal people and cast out demons and calm a storm on this very lake, Peter is close to realizing that Jesus is the Messiah, the Holy One of God—and if it is extraordinary for Jesus to walk on water, then it is no more extraordinary than things Peter has already seen Jesus do. Peter knows his scripture: how it is written that God shows power over the sea and the deep and the chaotic abyss; and, once he gets over his initial shock, Peter is prepared to accept that divine power is shown forth in Jesus as well.
What Peter is not prepared for is when the divine power is shown forth in him. Jesus calls to him and he steps out of the boat—and Peter finds himself walking on the water toward Jesus. Commentators often note at this point how Peter begins well, but falters at the sight of the wind and the waves; but what really strikes me as signficant here is that Peter should begin at all. It is one thing for Peter to see divine presence made manifest in the extraordinary person of Jesus; it is something else again for him to recognize divine presence made manifest in his own very ordinary, very tentative, very faltering, very human person. For Peter in the midst of the storm, God’s stabilizing power is actualized in a spectacular way, but through a most un-spectacular actor. Here too, God’s extraordinary strength is woven into the fabric of a very ordinary life.
The stories of Elijah and Peter say in a narrative way what Paul also says in a more aphoristic way in the passage from Romans: that God’s word, God’s utterance, God’s presence, is not too distant or difficult for us. It is not down in the abyss or up in the sky, but is close at hand, in our hearts and on our lips, in the faith we bespeak and the good news we believe. And, Paul continues, it is precisely because the word is so close to us, precisely because God’s presence is with us, that we are energized and impelled to share it, we are sent to proclaim again the word that has been proclaimed to us. “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news,” Paul quotes Isaiah—and the surprising thing is that that beauty is meant not only for prophets like Isaiah and preachers like Paul, but for everyone who has known the extraordinary presence of God in the fabric of ordinary life.
The recognition of the all-pervasive presence of God is a comfort (especially in the older sense of “comfort” as “strengthening, fortifying”)—but it is also a challenge. Because if God is present with ordinariness, and not only in the spectacular or supernatural, then we must be ready and willing to participate in God’s work in our own ordinary ways, and not simply to wait for God to act in ways that are beyond us. As long as Elijah was sitting in his cave, waiting for God to do something spectacular, he was off the hook; as soon as God spoke to Elijah in ordinary silence, Elijah had to get up and act. As long as Peter was sitting in the boat, awed and wondering at Jesus’ miracle, he was off the hook; as soon as Jesus called him to let his ordinariness be sustained by God in the chaotic abyss, Peter had to get out of the boat and act. And so it is for us: if we believe we can only wait for God’s supernal action, we can think we’re off the hook; as soon as we recognize God with us in the ordinary work of life, we know we have to get up and act to realize the ideals to which God lures us. And those ideals are not too high or too deep or too difficult for us; they are the most basic things of life; and in their very ordinariness they open us to the extraordinary power of grace.
Where is God’s word near to you, or to the people to whom you preach? What sound of sheer silence in the midst of wind and fire, what ordinary step in the midst of chaos and storm, is God’s invitation to you to participate in the realization of God’s gracious purpose, here and now?
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