Sounds of Silence

MEMO For Those Who Preach

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Sunday, June 23, 2019

1 Kings 19:1-4,(5-7), 8-15, Psalm 42, Gal. 4:23-29, Luke 8: 26-39

    This is one of those Sundays when the assigned lessons are rich and the temptation is to do too much. We find Elijah hiding from Jezebel in a cave.  But Yahweh loves caves, so caves are not good places to hide. Just ask Jacob. The Lord God invites Elijah out of that cave to watch a little li a still small silence. How indeed does one hear a silence? In a moment of silence, a word now comes to the surface of mind and heart? Later perhaps it will be written on subway walls. Anyhow, Elijah finds his courage that day – finding one’s courage, especially one’s voice, is a very good thing.

    Paul in the Galatians’ letter reminds us that if we truly belong to Christ, there is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male nor female; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus. We have just come from Annual Conference, where that word was on everyone’s mind. Now if we could only convince the heart.  

    Luke’s Gospel is about Jesus and the demons. What to do with those demons? This man filled with demons confronts Jesus. Jesus calls them out of the man and sends them into a herd of swine and they are driven over the cliff into the sea. The demon-possessed man then is found in his rightful mind. We might ask, what is right mindfulness for us Methodists these days?  Perhaps the Psalms will tell us.

     Psalm 42 finds a person who thirsts for God: “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (Psalms 42:2). Ah, yes, the hunger and the thirst. 

    I sat in Annual Conference during the service for those who had died since we last met. I waited for the names of my good friend Bill Steward and his wife Nancy to be read. One of the most difficult things that I have done was to speak at Bill Steward’s funeral. The load was lifted a bit when their son Josh was elected to be a delegate to General Conference. Josh, a chip off the old block, hungers and thirsts for justice, like his parents. And so the mantle was passed, and the march of the saints goes on.  

     As the results come in from across the connection, it would appear that a new wave of leaders is emerging — and we may well be on the edge of birthing a new church. I continue to live by hope, because in my 85 years it has seldom failed me. So come out of the cave, cup the ear, perhaps you will hear it, too.

Dear God, 

     Help us gather up the fragments from your Word to us, bind us together into a crazy quilt of faith—We are alike, we are different, we are faithful and unfaithful, we are afraid, we are brave-hearted, we are impatient, we are kind, we feel lost, we feel found. Lord in your mercy, bind us together anew.  Amen.

The Rev. Bill Cotton of Des Moines is a retired clergy member of the Iowa Annual Conference. He and his friends and colleagues produce MEMO for Those Who Preach and distribute it by email. Click here to subscribe.