Hold the Fireworks

Hold the Fireworks

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

October 9, 2016

Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-14

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Do you like fireworks? I mean the pyrotechnics that that we set off mostly on the fourth of July. I sort of do, and I sort of don’t. I sure don’t like it when people in the neighborhood where I live set off so many of them on July 4 that we have to take our dog and flee to Canada to get away from them. But then there are the fireworks we saw in Moscow. The Russians are really good at fireworks. They set them up at different places around the huge city of Moscow, then set them off from all the sites simultaneously. They light up the whole city. We could seem them from our dorm room at Moscow State University. Very impressive, and great fun. The first time I saw them was on what the Russians call “Den’ tankistov,” which translates to “tank soldiers’ day.” I suppose they have a tank soldiers’ day because it was mostly the Soviet tanks that defeated the Nazis. Whatever. We saw them again for the celebration in November of the October Revolution—ask me later about why they celebrated the October Revolution in November if you want. We saw fireworks on May 1, which the Soviets celebrated as international labor day. The Russian fireworks I saw were really impressive, and fireworks generally can indeed be really impressive. They’re bright and colorful. They’re loud. They streak and swirl and sparkle. Everyone looks at them and says “ooh!” and “ahh!” We like to be impressed, and fireworks are quite impressive.

Which is all very well and good, but here’s the thing. We like to be impressed by more things than just fireworks. We like to be impressed by all kinds of things. We like flashy impressive movies. We like shiny impressive new cars. We like big impressive displays of flowers. We like music that knocks our socks off more than we probably like quieter, more contemplative music. Same with art. We like to be impressed. We like to be bowled over by things we experience. We like big and colorful and impressive in all areas of life. That may not be all we like, but we do like that stuff a lot.

Unfortunately, we often translate that love of the big, loud, colorful, and flashy to God. We want God to be like that too. We want big displays of divine power. We want thunder and lightning. We want angels blowing trumpets. We want God to demand big things from us, important things, things that impress people, things that change the world. Or at least a lot of people want God to be like that. A lot of people always have. We heard about one of those people in that long story we just heard from 2 Kings, the story of Naaman, the commander of the armies of the king of Aram, Aram being the ancient name for Syria. It is, frankly, one of my favorite stories in the whole Old Testament. I’ll just recap it briefly.

Naaman is a great man, but he suffers from some skin disease that our text calls leprosy. His soldiers have taken a Hebrew girl as a slave, and she tells Naaman that there is a prophet in Israel who could cure his disease. That prophet turns out to be Elisha. So the king of Aram whom Naaman serves sends him to the king of Israel with a badly worded letter of introduction, one that gets the Israeli king all upset. When Elisha hears about it, we aren’t told how, he has the king send Naaman to him. Then the story gets really interesting. When Naaman arrives “with his horses and chariots” at Elisha’s house, Elisha doesn’t even come out to greet him. He just sends a messenger, who tells Naaman to go to the Jordan river and wash himself in it seven times. That, the messenger tells Naaman, will cure his skin disease.

Whereupon Naaman, that great man, gets all upset. “I thought that the prophet would come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me!” My rivers back home are better than the stupid Jordan!” So he stomps off in a rage. Then one of his servants says, essentially, what’s up with that?! If he’d asked you to do something difficult you’d have done it, right? So why not do this easy thing?” Whereupon Naaman goes to the Jordan, dips himself in it seven times, and his skin disease is cured.

Now, Naaman of course wasn’t just an any-man. He was a great military commander who traveled with horses and chariots and probably an armed guard. He wanted to be treated like the special man he thought he was. When he wasn’t given special treatment, he went into a huff. But he’s upset about more than the prophet’s failure to give him the reception he thought he was due. He’s upset because Elisha didn’t do anything impressive. He didn’t do any magic tricks. He didn’t make the earth shake. There was no thunder and lightning. Naaman wanted a show, and he didn’t get one; so he was upset.

I think in the way he wanted an impressive show and was upset when he didn’t get it makes him very human. After all, don’t we all sort of want God to show up and do big, impressive things? Don’t we want the blast of angel trumpets, and earthquake, though maybe a not too destructive earthquake, to announce God’s coming, blinding light and heavenly choirs singing triumphant music? After all, we’re talking about God here. God, we think, is big and powerful, “almighty” to use the adjective we so often use for God that has become a noun that is virtually God’s name for us. We want the God Who parted the Red Sea for the escaping Hebrews. We want the God of Revelation who does powerful things on earth, although probably not as violent a God as we get in that book. We want our God to be a cosmic Superman doing really impressive things.

Well, here’s the thing about all of that. Yes, there are stories in the Bible about God doing really big, impressive things. There is that story in Exodus of God parting the Red Sea. There are other stories of God doing really big things, but for the most part in the Bible God doesn’t act that way. Take for example a story from the tales of Elijah, the predecessor of the Elisha we get in this morning’s text. It’s at 1 Kings 19:11-12. In that story Elijah is running away from King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, who are out to kill him. He’s hiding out on a mountain. God comes to him and says to him that “the Lord is about to pass by.” The text reads:

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

A different contemporary translation, the NRSV, has the verse end with there being “a sound of sheer silence.” The old King James Version has it end with “a still, small voice.” That’s where the Lord, where God, was. However we translate the original Hebrew of this story, God isn’t in the fireworks. God isn’t in the big, impressive, attention grabbing things. God is in the silence, or the gentle whisper, or the still small voice.

That’s how it was with the great Syrian military commander Naaman and the prophet Elisha too. Naaman wanted the respect he was so sure was due him. He wanted a show. He wanted fireworks, and the prophet didn’t even come out to see him. The prophet didn’t put on a show. There were no fireworks. Through a messenger he just told Naaman to do something really simple. God dip yourself in the Jordan seven times. That’s hardly impressive. It certainly isn’t difficult. It’s no great heroic feat. Yet God was at work in that simple act of dipping oneself in the waters of the Jordan river. That’s where God was, in the still, small act of bathing in a river.

That’s how it mostly is with God in our lives too. I know that God has spoken to me, and I’m sure God has spoken to many of you too. Yet God has never overpowered me. God has never shown up with fireworks. God has never made a lot of noise in my life. God has spoken to me gently, quietly, silently really. God has come not as a great wind but as a sense, a feeling, a pull, a push, more as a question than an answer. Yes, I know that some people describe experiences of the presence of God in more dramatic terms, but I really think most human experiences of God aren’t like that. Most of them are like Elijah’s on the mountain, where God wasn’t in the big show but in the quietness. Or like Naaman’s, where God wasn’t in any kind of spectacular display but in the words of a prophet’s messenger and a simple act in an ordinary river. I am convinced that that’s mostly how it is with God.

So when we seek to know God’s will for us either personally or as a church, let’s not look for a big show. Let’s not expect fireworks. Let’s hold the fireworks and listen for something soft, something gentle, something indirect even. That’s where God is likely to be. Sure, it would be easier if God would just show up the way we sometimes wish God would, but for the most part God doesn’t do that. God asks us to listen attentively. To discern carefully. God usually comes in a still, small voice, not in fireworks. So let’s listen attentively and discern carefully shall we? Amen.