"When God Talks Back - or Doesn't"

23-Jan-2011

“When God Talks Back – or Doesn’t”

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

828.328.6196 corinthtoday.org

Faith is the evidence of words not heard.

Luke 9:28-36

January 23, 2011

The risk of intervention

Today is the third in a series of sermons about the prayers of Jesus. I’ve told you on a couple of occasions that the sermons were inspired in part by a question that a twelve year old boy asked me. Today I want you to meet Dawson Place so he can tell us in person about his questions on the subject of prayer.

Pastor Bob: Dawson, tell us a little about you – about your family, where you go to school, etc.

Dawson: My parents are Lynne and Kip Place. My Nanny is the librarian (Teresa Gilchrist), and my Granddad is an usher (Jeff Gilchrist.) My brother Tanner and my friend are in the balcony. I go to Blackburn Elementary and am in the sixth grade.

Pastor Bob: It’s pretty unusual for a kid your age to be willing to talk to a large group like this, or even to come to the pastor with a question like the one you asked me. Is that in keeping with your overall personality?

Dawson: I really like to talk, but not usually in front of all these people. When I was little, my Mom said I always liked to make noises.

Pastor Bob: So you liked to talk even before you could talk. What was the main question you asked me when we talked in my office a few weeks ago?

Dawson: “Why doesn’t God talk back whenever I pray?”

Pastor Bob: Do you remember why you asked that question? Have there been times when you wanted to hear God talk back but he didn’t?

Dawson: I would be beside my bed and I would pray, and that would be it. It started when I was about ten years old. I always thought God’s voice would be deep like Pastor Bob’s.

Pastor Bob: This is putting you on the spot a bit, but do you remember anything I told you that night in my office?

Dawson: Yes, you said you have had the same experience but it could be a good thing. Maybe we wouldn’t like what we heard.

Pastor Bob: Have you thought about your own question anymore and come up with any ideas?

Dawson: If God did talk back, maybe he would seem like a normal person, like your Dad or something – not what he should be, God. He should be praised.

Pastor Bob: Thank you for having the courage to ask me in the first place and then for coming up today in front of all these people. I don’t know if anything I say today will help you, but I want you to know you’re not alone in asking questions like that and I want Confirmation to be a “safe place” to be really honest about the things that are on your mind as you get ready to profess publicly your faith in Jesus Christ.

Departures

To address Dawson’s question today, I chose a story about Jesus and prayer where God does talk back. I did so on purpose because it begs the very question Dawson asks. If God talked back when Jesus prayed, why doesn’t he talk back when we pray? It seems like Jesus would need that audible voice much less than we do? Or is the fact that God doesn’t talk back to us another reminder that we’re not Jesus-like enough?

At first glance, today’s Scripture says little about prayer. It would be easy to read the passage and hardly notice that prayer is part of it. The intriguing part of this event is its uniqueness among all the stories about Jesus – that God’s glory appears physically in the person of Jesus. He glows, like E.T. It’s the way medieval artists pictured Jesus.

Our chancel stained glass window shows Jesus with a red and yellow halo and a surreal white glow to his skin most visible at dawn. By contrast, there’s no indication in the Bible that Jesus had any kind of halo or glow after his resurrection. He looked rather ordinary to Mary that day, to two disciples on the Emmaus Road, and to Peter and the other fishermen on the lakeside sometime later. The only time we are told that Jesus’ physical appearance reflected something other-worldly was on the Mount of Transfiguration. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include the story. It left a lasting impression on those who witnessed it.

Jesus’ original purpose for the mountain hike was prayer. Sometimes when he prayed he went off by himself, but other times he wanted companions. Whether he wanted them to pray with him, watch for him, learn from him, or just be there as friends we’re not told. But a week after Peter had confessed Jesus as “the Christ of God” (Luke 9:20), Jesus invited Peter, John, and James to join him on an exclusive outing for the purpose of prayer.

It’s funny – I always pictured this at night. But two different people this week, both of whom spend more time in the mountains than I do, said they imagine the Transfiguration story a daytime outing. First of all, why would you climb a mountain in the middle of the night? Second, this whole scene of a heavy cloud enveloping all of them is quite familiar to mountain dwellers.

Otherwise, I am sure you know the story. As Jesus is praying, his disciples are in a deep sleep. They awake to a dramatic scene. (Even though the section is titled “The Transfiguration” in the NIV, Luke doesn’t use the word that Matthew and Mark use – that Jesus was “transfigured” [Matthew 17:2; Mark 9:2]. It’s the Greek verb from which we get our English word “metamorphosis.”) Luke simply tells us Jesus’ face was changed and his clothes were as bright and white as lightning.

As if that is not enough, Moses and Elijah show up on the mountain, representing the law and the prophets. They also look like they’ve been soaking in a little heavenly glory. They have a chat with Jesus about “his departure” (the word is “exodus” in Greek, a further connection with Moses and the story of redemption) – his impending death in Jerusalem, which Jesus had already foretold to his disciples. Their inclusion in the story is evidently to reinforce to the disciples who Jesus is.

The suddenly awake disciples are awed by the scene, with the verbally impulsive Peter wanting to erect a memorial on the spot, a la the annual Festival of Booths. (Forgive him – he was just blurting without thinking.) A cloud then envelops all of them as an unexpected, presumably authoritative, voice, says, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” In other words, God talks back, out loud.

The voice departs, the visitors depart, the cloud departs, and the glow within Jesus departs. Three disciples are alone with Jesus on a very ordinary looking mountain again. Matthew (9:9) and Mark (9:9) tell us that Jesus tells them not to tell anyone until after his resurrection. Luke only says they didn’t do so.

Lessons on prayer

Prayer is not the quarterback of this passage. It’s more like the offensive line, doing some lower profile work in the trenches. Good football coaches and analysts know a team’s performance is about much more than the quarterback.

Let’s go back and draw a few general lessons about prayer from the familiar story of the Transfiguration. Then I will come back to Dawson’s question.

First, prayer requires intentionality. Like Jesus climbing the mountain, you must choose a time and place that lets you center on God. There’s nothing wrong with praying as you go through your day, but if all your praying is during multi-tasking, don’t expect it to satisfy you any more than if all your time with your spouse is while you’re doing something else. You need face to face time, you need dates, you need getaways, with the one you love. You do with God as well.

Second, prayers are meant to be shared. I don’t mean all of them. Jesus often withdrew by himself to pray. But on this occasion, one of his most significant, he wanted to share the experience with his closest disciples. Not all prayer is private prayer or public prayer as in a worship service like this one. Praying with a small group can greatly deepen your experience of prayer and awareness of God.

Third, sometimes great things happen with prayer. I said last week that I have a lot to learn about prayer, and often I don’t feel different or think anything happened. But sometimes prayer does make a dramatic difference. Every time I see Barbara Robinson at church, I see a miracle in answer to prayers – not once, but twice – almost a decade ago. I’ve seen financial provision for my family – and most recently for Corinth – rather dramatically at the end of 2010. Just last night our recent church intern, Josh Moore, texted me, frightened to death because his baby girl had a temperature of 105.9 and they were at the hospital. Linda and I prayed twice out loud and much more silently. By the end of the evening, through prayer and some good medicine, the Moores were able to go home and the baby’s temperature was 101. I’ve seen marriages healed and children brought into the world in response to prayers. Sometimes great stuff results from prayer, as it did on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Fourth, it’s easy to miss God’s presence because we’re sleeping. The nap the disciples took is clearly a metaphor for our failure to “watch and pray” and not see what God is up to because we’re not paying attention. Fortunately, God was gracious in this instance and gave a second chance. He doesn’t always, and he doesn’t have to.

Fifth, sometimes God talks back. Jesus and the disciples heard an audible voice from the Father on this mountain. I’ve never heard an audible voice, but I have definitely had strong impressions about a direction to take. For example, on a fairly frequent basis I have no idea where a sermon is going. I’m stuck. Sometimes it’s a counseling appointment. I really don’t know what to do next, and breathe a prayer. Seemingly out of nowhere, something comes into my mind that gives focus. Isn’t that God talking back, spirit to spirit? Sometimes it happens.

Sixth, sometimes you feel left out. We tend to focus on Peter, James, and John, who went with Jesus up the mountain. But what about the nine others who stayed behind? They didn’t even know what happened for months or longer after this experience. All they knew is that Jesus took the inner circle with him, and they weren’t in it. They would later find out that God talked back, but they didn’t get to hear him. At this moment, in fact, the other nine were struggling with an unanswered prayer, an unsuccessful attempt to drive out a demon (9:37-43). Like everything else in life, nobody promised prayer is always fair.

Seventh, God doesn’t always talk back. Even for Jesus, Peter, James, and John, hearing God’s audible voice was the exception, not the rule. The same is certainly true for you and me. I want to spend the rest of my time addressing Dawson’s question directly.

When God doesn’t talk back

Let’s just agree right away that it wouldn’t be a good thing all the time for God to answer our prayers in the way we wanted at the time we wanted. That would put us in the position of substituting ourselves for God. If you’ve ever thought you wanted that role, watch the film “Evan Almighty” and you’ll get over it.

Let’s see if some of the lessons we’ve seen about prayer actually help my 12-year-old friend who was so honest with me. His struggle is not that God answers sometimes and doesn’t answer other times. It’s that God never talks back to him at all when he prays – at least not in an audible voice.

I have been asking that question of friends and also checking some of my books and resources. Before I attempt to make a few comments about it, let me just say that I think it’s perfectly OK for any of us to say about some things, “I don’t know.” We are all twelve years old in this world – old enough to ask the questions but not yet experienced enough to grasp the answers.

One important way to answer Dawson’s question is the same answer I gave him in my office. You’re not alone. Let me poll the audience. How many of you have heard God talk to you out loud? A few. Even those probably haven’t shared the story too often because people might think they’re crazy. Yet the vast majority of people have found reasons to believe in God and believe in prayer even though he doesn’t speak audibly.

I think my favorite answer so far is the one my pastor friend Kelly Barefoot gave last night in the car while he, Linda, and I were driving back from Ohio. Kelly said, “Not all speech needs words.” Even a twelve-year-old understands that a certain look from his father, a hug from his mother, or a gift from his grandparents is a way they communicate.

To say that God never talks back is to miss the ways he communicates to us in nature, the gifts he gives us, in that Spirit-to-spirit non-verbal communication.

Another good way to look at the question might be with an analogy. I do not understand most of what my laptop computer does. It’s way over my head. Linda and I were watching a movie the other night about the creator of Facebook, the online social network. The amount of code someone has to type in to make a computer program work is way beyond my understanding.

The truth is, I don’t even want someone to explain everything about how computers work. My mind is too small. Maybe some of why God doesn’t talk back is because the answers to how God works or thinks are infinitely more complex than what it takes to make my laptop do what it does.

Finally, I think the answer has something to do with faith. The writer of Hebrews says, “Faith is the evidence of things not seen.” Let God be God. If I may paraphrase, “Faith is the evidence of words not heard.”

In Philip Yancey’s book on prayer, he says that someone once counted 183 times where Jesus was asked a question, and only three where he answered the question directly. Sometimes he didn’t say anything at all. Often he answered with a question, or maybe a story. Yancey says, “Evidently Jesus wants us to work out answers on our own.”

The best teacher I ever had was the one who frustrated me most often with his unresponsiveness. He would never tell me something he thought I should be able to figure out. I would e-mail him and get nothing back – not even a “You should know this” or “Look it up.” Just silence. I’m not always sure why God wants us to figure things out on our own. But prayer is mainly about our humility and our dependence on God – it’s not an easy fix that substitutes for thinking, wrestling, even agonizing.

To Dawson – and anyone else who has struggles about prayer – I just want you to know that your questions matter. Why? Because you matter. If you have a question, I will think about it, wrestle with it, ask others about it, and struggle with you. So even if my very best answer is “I don’t know,” I want you to know that what you care about matters to me.

I think God would want to say the same thing to you. This sermon is God talking back to you. It’s God saying to you, “You may not hear my voice out loud in the way you think you want to, but I have people. I’m talking to you through Pastor Bob, through your parents and grandparents, through the church, through the stories in the Bible, especially those about Jesus.

“Just don’t think that I’m necessarily going to talk back to you in the way you expect. If I did, I wouldn’t be God. I will surprise you, but if you will keep listening, you will hear me.” Amen.