Help along the way

Scripture Lesson: 1 Kings 19: 1-15a, OT page 326 Sermon Title: Help along the way Preached on: 6/19/16 Today, being Father’s Day, I want to say that I’m proud to be a father and I’m thankful to have a father, but I’m also mindful of the reality that fatherhood brings with it such an interesting challenge because a father can do harm, both by not doing enough for his children and by doing too much. And I say I’m thankful to have a father, and more than that, I’m thankful to have a father who was there on Saturday mornings to make me chocolate chip pancakes all throughout my childhood. I’m thankful to have a father who wanted to celebrate after I hit a two RBI single to give my High School Baseball team the lead, and so he took me out to a steak dinner at the only restaurant that was still open and serving steak after the game – Waffle House – but he insisted that I order the T-Bone because he thought I deserved a T-Bone. I’m also thankful to have a father who taught me how to drive a car. That wasn’t always a pleasant experience for either one of us, but what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is the day I drove out of the driveway for the first time as a 16-year-old by myself, because just last month my Dad told me that was both a moment of pride and a moment of sadness, because as I drove away my Dad was thinking, “Well there he goes.” Father’s know about this kind of moment, and I never thought about what it was like for him that day I drove out of the driveway, but now that I’m a father this is the kind of thing that I think about all the time. Am I there for them enough? Or am I there for them so much that I’m overbearing? When do I let them decide and when do I make the decision for them? When do I let them fight their own battles and when do I fight for them? As many pancakes as my Dad cooked for me and as many T-bone steaks as he treated me to, there came a time when I had to leave the driveway to go out into the world – and this is the part that I’m learning little by little even now because I watched a little girl climb out of my car and walk right into McDowell Elementary School all by herself. Fathers and mothers both, we only get to hold those little hands for so long – and little by little they go off and we stand in the driveway thinking, “Well there she goes,” and we stand there hoping and praying that we’ve given them enough of what they needed to make their own way in this world. I think that’s a hard thing, but I know it’s also a wonderful thing. I heard a story about a little girl off to Kindergarten. Her grandmother asked if she was nervous and the little girl said that she’d been waiting to start Kindergarten for her entire life. I remember so well these words from a mother after she sent her oldest off to college: “The only thing worse than seeing him go off to college is not seeing him go off to college,” and that kind of sums it up – that success as a parent means seeing the chicks fly from the nest, but it’s still a little hard, and I think part of the hard thing is trusting that our children will receive the help that they need along the way, even if that help along the way can’t always come from us. We can’t cook all their meals for them, and Sara and I have learned that lesson already. Now our oldest daughter’s favorite food is something called Beefy Cheesy that comes from the McDowell School cafeteria. In our house it’s this meal prepared by hands that aren’t ours in a kitchen that’s not in our house that we’ve grown to celebrate, because at our house this meal is the sign that while we are still giving her as much of what she needs as we can, Lily Evans is starting to make her own way in the world one plate of Beefy Cheesy at a time – and as she makes her own way, there are gifts provided by a hand that is not ours. Plenty of parents have trouble trusting in such provision – trusting their children’s teachers or camp counselors with the child they love more than anything - and I’m not trying to toot my own horn here this sermon. I have no right to. Right after the first time I had to drop our little girl off at McDowell School I parked the car in the parking lot so I could sit in the car and cry. What I’m trying to say is that when those children go out into the world parents don’t always know where help is going to come from, but not knowing where help will come from along the way in no way means that help will not come. For Elijah help came; and it was a meal even more miraculous than Beefy Cheesy for it came not from the kind hand of a cafeteria lady – this help came from the unseen hand of an angel from heaven. The help that came along his way as he fled for his life going far from home was a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. The angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” His way, the way that surely his father wished his son would be spared from, had been a difficult journey. A dangerous journey. He had been running from the King of Israel, King Ahab, who had had enough of the Prophet Elijah always messing in his affairs and putting limits on his power, calling the cult of Baal idolatry and keeping the king from owning Naboth’s vineyard, so Elijah fled, first a day’s journey, then another, then after the second cake baked on hot stones and jar of water he went “in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights,” and made it all the way to Horeb, the mount of God. And there he found a cave and went to sleep. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to that kind of place before – but I know Elijah’s not the only one who’s gone off into the world having to make his own way only to find that the way God is leading him down is absolutely terrifying. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tells the story of such an experience. For him it wasn’t a long night in a secluded cave but a long night in Birmingham, AL. His life and the lives of his wife and children were threatened because of the words that he had said and the changes that he supported, and his father was about 150 miles away. Dr. King got up and made a cup of coffee, pondered the brick that had been thrown through the window of the house his wife and children were sleeping in and he began to pray, praying for what he said may have been the first time he had ever really prayed in his life. The old saying goes that the Lord doesn’t have any grandchildren – and what that means is that developing a relationship with God isn’t something that parents can do for their children – those children must learn what it means to be the children of God on their own – and so I rejoice to hear our daughter Cece sing the Kyria and pray the Lord’s Prayer all by herself because it is not nor will it ever be enough that she has a father who does these things professionally, she has to have her own relationship with God. The same was true with the prophet Elijah to an even greater degree. He is there in that cave up on that mountain absolutely on his own and his daddy wasn’t there to hold his hand. The word of the Lord came to him and said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces, which made sense and would have made sense to Elijah because he had heard about God being present in the wind – back in the time of his forefathers God had been present in the wind many times. There was the wind that drove back the waters of the sea giving the Hebrew people dry land to cross as they fled Pharaoh’s army. King David believed he had seen God in the wind when “[The Lord] rode on a cherub, and flew; he was seen upon the wings of the wind.” But this time, the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind came an earthquake, and his forefathers had known God through the earthquake – earthquakes that caused the earth to reel and rock, “when the foundations of the heavens trembled because the Lord was angry”, but this time, the Lord was not in the earthquake. Then after the earthquake was fire – and the Lord had made himself known to the ancestors of Elijah in fire – in the burning bush that called to Moses, the light that shined in the darkness leading the Hebrew people to the Promised Land, but this time the Lord was not in the fire. Where then was God present? How then would God be known if not in all the places where God had been before? In this instance for the Prophet Elijah, God was made known in silence. For the first time, God made himself known in silence. Elijah had been very zealous for the Lord and he knew the traditions of his ancestors, but the traditions of our ancestors, like the aid of our fathers – can only take us so far and after that we are called to go places where they have never gone before – even walking out in faith that we will know God’s presence even where God has never been before. The question that we are faced with today is “where is God present now?” These are uncertain times – times that our ancestors could not have predicted. Times that our fathers prepared us for but not times that they can face for us. I think about technology. A few years ago I saw Christian Corbin reading Call of the Wild by Jack London on a Kindle, and I remembered how my grandfather told me that when he was young he was so entranced by the same book that he would sneak out of bed and read it to the light from a candle on his dresser, carefully listening for his mother’s footsteps for she would have been disappointed to see him out of bed. In just a few decades we’ve moved from candle light to the glow of screens, and knowing that so much has changed and fearing so much of it, I called him lamenting the internet not long ago. I told my grandfather that I was thinking about having the internet disconnected from the house, what with child predators and everything else that I didn’t want to expose our daughters to. Not expecting him to have any advice at all, having little experience with computers, he said, “Well Joe, you’re their father and it’s your decision, but there’s a lot of dangerous information in the library too, so while you’re protecting them so well maybe you should make sure they never learn how to read.” These are new and challenging times that can no more be avoided than Elijah could have avoided his escape from King Ahab, but on the foundation laid by our ancestors, we will figure this out. Maybe these are new and challenging times, but stepping out in faith, trusting that God will be present in new and different ways but present just the same, I say we will make it through. For while these may be new and challenging times – just as God held the whole world in his hands yesterday, so our God holds this whole world in his hands today and will hold it tomorrow. I don’t have to tell you that there is much to be afraid of. Thinking of Orlando, FL and the long list of other places we once thought of as safe I don’t have to tell you that there is much to be afraid of, and so much that our fathers on earth or our Father in heaven must wish they could protect us from - but as we go, as our children go – can we be bold enough to trust that God will still be God and will still see us through? As we all go on our way – can we still trust that there will be help and provision? As we go out on our way can we be bold enough to sing that our God who was our help in ages past is also our hope for years to come? That our shelter from the stormy blast is still our eternal home? As we go out on our way and as we watch our children go out on theirs our God will not be far, for he has led us this far and he will lead us farther still. Do not be afraid – for fear will deliver you right into the hands of the evil one. “Go, return on your way” for hope is far from gone and even the future rests in the powerful hands of our Lord. Amen.