Sunday, November 3, 2024
Spirit of Hope Lutheran Church, Lincoln, NE
All Saints Sunday
(narrative lectionary)
watch this service online (reading starts around 27:29; children’s sermon starts around 30:51; sermon starts around 37:25)
Reading: 1 Kings 17:1-24
For the children’s sermon, I talked with the kids about All Saints Day – what’s a saint? Why do we spend all this time talking about dead people? I pointed out that we actually talk about saints every Sunday, though we might not pay much attention to it. In the last part of the creed, we confess “I believe in… the communion of saints.” We then go on to confess our belief in some truly mind-boggling things: “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” Those are some pretty bold beliefs – but we believe in them because of stories handed down to us by people we trust and love; and it’s those same people who help us remember what and why we believe on the days it’s hard for us to do so.
My two best friends in high school were a pair of twins named Amanda and Emily. They lived on a farm a couple miles out of town where their family (the Fraases) raised sheep. I spent a lot of time out at their place growing up, and it was awesome. They always had boxes of wool and yarn to play with, and we’d run all around their place dancing and playing games.
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Sometimes there would be sheep chores to do and I would get to help out (I was a town kid, not a country kid, so it was a novelty for me, haha). Mainly I remember helping when their parents were moving the electric fence around – my friends and I would run and make noise to chase the sheep into the new grazing area. (The experience definitely left me with some interesting insight into all the biblical passages about us being God’s sheep – because, let me tell you, sheep are dumb.)
I remember one time I and another friend or two were out at the Fraases’ for a sleepover, and we decided it would be fun to go outside and play hide’n’seek. We even managed to annoy my friends’ older brother Corey into playing with us! Corey was both taller and smarter than we were, and so the first round that he was ‘it’ he quickly found us all – all of us, that is, except me.
I had found myself a really good hiding spot: between the side of the garage and the garden fence, there was a long, narrow space just wide enough for one person to crouch down and hide in. And each time I heard Corey getting closer, I kept quietly scooting further and further back into the space.
Now, you might remember me mentioning just now that the Fraases had an electric fence that they moved around periodically (some of you already know where this is going 😜). As we were playing hide’n’seek that night, I had failed to notice that the fence had just recently been moved again. More specifically, I had failed to notice that there was now a length of electric fence running right along the side of the garage.
All I knew was that one minute I was inching backwards on my hands and knees, and the next minute I felt this strong, sudden jerk that literally threw me into the garden fence – a fence which, unfortunately, happened to be made of barbed wire. 😬
Heh, instead of a rock and a hard place, I was caught between a shock and a sharp place.
That was the first time – and so far, thankfully, the only time – I’ve ever touched an electric fence. Has anyone else here ever touched an electric fence? I do not recommend the experience.
Weirdly, it felt absolutely nothing like I imagined it would feel like to touch an electric fence. You know, in cartoons, you see the eyes popping out and the hair going all frizzy and wild – you expect there to be sizzling and crackling, or at the very least the smell of burnt toast. But I didn’t feel any of that.
Instead, what I felt was power.
I didn’t feel powerful – like, this isn’t my superhero origin story or anything – it was actually quite the opposite. I felt how powerful that electricity was. That power flicked me into the fence as easily as you might flick a paper football across a desk. I felt power much bigger than myself – power stronger and much more dangerous than anything my teenage body was capable of.
In our reading for today, this widow proclaims to Elijah that the word of the Lord in his mouth is truth. But it’s also clear from this passage that this word is not just truth – it is power.
This word has a power that is not unlike high voltage electricity. And Elijah, as a prophet, has been called to be a conductor of that word to God’s people. And we see the immense power of this word at work through Elijah. This word has the power to bring rain or to withhold it. It has the power to multiply food for starving people. It even has the power to call the dead back to life again.
The word of God has power. This is the same word of God that parted the sea and led the Israelites from slavery into freedom. It’s the same word that spoke the entire cosmos into being before the world began. And it’s the same word that later took on flesh and became human and broke death itself forever.
And much like an electric fence, the power of this word isn’t something to be grabbed onto lightly. Becoming a conductor for God’s word can be a risky endeavor – or at the very least, it tends to pull us out of our comfort zones. In Elijah’s case, the word that he is called to proclaim to Ahab actually puts his life in danger – he is forced to flee from his home and hide for his own safety.
Likewise, this widow who feeds Elijah is taking a real risk when she chooses to trust the word of God. She and her son are literally on the verge of starving to death when God commands her to feed this stranger who shows up at her door.
Yet Elijah and the widow both decide to trust in God and take the risk. And when they do, they discover that there’s a whole lot more to God’s powerful word than just the threat of divine electrocution. Through their hands, God’s word does marvelous things. And all the while, God tenderly takes care of them. God provides for them in ways they could never have imagined.
Like Elijah and the widow, we are now the ones being called to trust in God and to take the risk of bearing God’s word to the world. And this word has every bit as much power now as it did then. This gospel word that we are called to share has immense power in this world, and especially in these days.
Because it’s a word that proclaims the love of God as the ultimate power in the universe – a word that declares that every last person is a beloved child of God, and that it is wrong to hate and villify and mistreat those who are different from us. It’s a word that proclaims that all of God’s creation is sacred and precious and that it is wrong to pollute and destroy it. It’s a word that even in the midst of grief and loss offers us hope that with God there is life that is stronger than death.
It’s a word that still encounters resistance in this world. Proclaiming it is still a risk. And one of the things that I love most about this congregation is that y’all have the boldness and the courage to take that risk – to proclaim God’s word in what you say and especially in what you do. You intentionally chose to call a part-time pastor rather than a full-time one because you didn’t want to have to take resources away from your mission work. That is bold. (And awesome!) You choose to keep paying rent to stay in an underserved part of the city because you know that we are needed here. That is bold. You eagerly welcome everyone who finds their way here, no matter where they come from, how they identify, or whom they love – or whom that welcome might tick off. That is bold. The word of God is so clearly working through you – through us – and it is powerful. It is downright electric.
And I have no doubt that as we continue down this path, we will discover exactly what Elijah and the widow and all the saints before us did: that God’s word is trustworthy and true. We’ll discover that when we take the leaps of faith God calls us to take, God is there to catch us every single time. We’ll get to see for ourselves that God’s word truly does have power to bring us to new life; both in this life and the next.
This is the Day 
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