“Closet Christianity” Text: 1 Kings 19:9-13
Elpis Christian Church
April 26, 2009
Last week in my sermon, you might remember, I asked the pointed question, “Does Easter Matter?” And of course I suggested it does – and it should – and talked a little bit about how it matters.
Well this week I want to begin of series of sermons that I hope is going to add a little flesh to the bones, so to speak, and explore with you what this thing called the Christian life ought to be about. Along with the scriptures themselves I’m going to be sharing with you the wisdom of some of the truly great Christian souls from ages past. I’ll be drawing on a wonderful resource, edited by Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith, called Devotional Classics. And I hope when our journey two things will have happened. First, you’ll have a deeper appreciation for those aspects of the Christian life with which you are already most familiar. And second, you’ll have been introduced to some areas that you’re not so familiar with and which would be good to start exploring more.
The Christian life that is full and productive and growing and healthy has six aspects to it. And here they are:
1. The Prayer-Filled Life
2. The Virtuous Life
3. The Spirit-Empowered Life
4. The Compassionate Life
5. The Word-Centered Life
6. The Sacramental Life
I’m going to suggest to you today and over the next six weeks that if you are unfamiliar with any of these – you are really missing something. Does it mean your eternal salvation is at risk? No, probably not. Does it mean that you are incapable of making a good living, or having a happy marriage, or raising your children? No, probably not. But – if you are unfamiliar or unskilled at tapping into and drawing from the wisdom and strength you can find by daily living the prayer-filled or virtuous or spirit-empowered or compassionate or word-centered or sacramental life – well then, at the very least you are crippled somewhat. Because God is there, ready to be a part of your life, in all these different ways. And you’re missing that opportunity. And that’s what I want to help correct.
You know, just yesterday Elizabeth and I were talking about the fact that in our physical lives – we might know what is for best for us. We might go to visit our doctor once or twice a year. And he or she will look over our chart, ask a few pointed questions, check on how well we’ve been sleeping or eating, and how much coffee we’ve been drinking. And then, usually, as we leave the office we are given some helpful advice – or maybe even a prescription or two – so that we can improve the quality of our physical condition. And sometimes, maybe more often than we would like to admit, following that advice or filling those prescriptions may mean the difference between life and death.
Well, spiritually, it’s the same. If I am your spiritual doctor, so to speak, and you only come to visit me once or twice a year – or even if we visit regularly – the occasion will surely arise for me to ask some pointed some pointed questions. I’ll ask how well you’ve been eating or sleeping. I may even ask how many cups of coffee you’ve been drinking lately. More to the point – I may ask how your prayer life is going or if you’ve read that book I recently recommended you read. And little by little – we will determine together – how healthy you are spiritually – and what to do about it. Well, that’s what I hope to do with this sermon series ahead. And I pray it’ll benefit us both. So let’s get started.
1. The Prayer-Filled Life
This is touching on what is known within the life of the Church at large as the “contemplative” tradition. Think about that for a moment – that word “contemplate.” What do you spend most of your waking hours, and more than a few of your sleeping hours, contemplating? Is it your family life; your bank book; your career; your physical health? Do you spend most of your time contemplating whether or not you’re happy; whether or not you are accomplishing your goals? Or do you spend most of your time, and most of your life, contemplating the day to day issues and problems you must face – your bills, your kid’s homework, what your boss said to you recently, or how your garden has been looking lately? This is the stuff of life, isn’t it? And it weighs heavily on us.
Well – the prayer-filled life – is the life that assumes that God cares about these things too. And it is the life that assumes and promises that if you will bring each of these concerns to God, on a regular basis, God will guide you and strengthen you and equip you so that you can deal with these things effectively and in a life enriching way. Moreover, the prayer-filled life assumes that – in addition to being, literally “self-centered” about all of this stuff – we need to do something else. We need to be “God-centered” first and foremost. We need to fill our days with praise and thanksgiving and worship and appreciation for all that is holy in creation. We need to get our minds off ourselves on a more regular basis. And we need to get our minds and hearts focused on the very source of life. The prayer-filled life says we need to stop talking so much – and spend more time listening. Not just to our fellow human beings – but to God.
Now there’s a problem. The world in which we live is very, very noisy place. It demands of us almost constant attention to a thousand different things. And each one of those things – big and small – scream at us, “I’M MOST IMPORTANT! PAY ATTENTION TO ME – RIGHT NOW!!” From our family life, to our work life, to our civic life, to our life as members of the world wide human family – we are pulled at, and badgered, and called upon to respond. The world is a very, very noisy place.
And in response, the prayer-filled life, calls us to do something very, very important. We are called, as the Psalmist puts it, to “be still and know” that God is God.
The Prophet Elijah was in a tough spot. A little crooked minded, mean-spirited lady by the name of Jezebel was out to get him. And her threats were no idle threats. She had already summarily dispatched – that is she had killed – a whole bunch of other guys who had gotten in her way. And so Elijah was on the run. And where does he run but to that sacred place where long ago God met with Moses – Mount Horeb, better known as Mount Sinai.
We find him, in today’s scripture, just hiding out there in a cave. And God comes to him and asks him a question, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Well, it’s almost as if Elijah can’t believe his ears. He responds as if to say, “What do you mean, ‘What are you doing here?’ Don’t you know what’s been happening to me God? They’re out to get me – they’re all out to get me!”
Elijah is scared, and frustrated, and angry, and feeling pretty darn sorry for himself. So God tells him to go outside the cave – God wants to talk further with him. But here’s the real clincher. How does God come to him? You know the answer.
God comes to him – not in an earthquake, not in the fire that follows, but in a gentle whisper. God whispers to him. And in that whisper, God asks him again the question that really matters. And this time Elijah hears the question differently. There’s no condemnation here. There’s no threat or accusation. There’s just a loving reminder, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And God goes on – in that moment of prayerful conversation – to reassure his prophet, and strengthen him, and send him back into the world again with the reminder that he is not alone as he goes.
Prayer does that for us. In the midst of the earthquake, and the fire, and in the face of those who would like to have our head on a platter for one reason or another – we run and hide in the cave. And God finds us there. In his mercy and grace God finds us there. How sad it is that so often God has to come running after us. How much better it would be if each day we made a point to quiet our souls and minds and let God whisper to us as He will.
Father Henri Nouwen, writing in a book entitled Making All Things New, reminds us,
“The spiritual life is a gift. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit, who lifts us up into the kingdom of God’s love. But to say that being lifted up into the kingdom of love is a divine gift does not mean we wait passively until the gift is offered to us.”
“Jesus tells us to set our hearts on the kingdom. Setting our hearts on something involves not only serious aspiration but also strong determination. A spiritual life requires human effort. The forces that keep pulling us back into a worry-filled life are far from easy to overcome.”
“Here we touch the question of discipline in the spiritual life. A spiritual life without discipline is impossible. . . .our lives have become absurd. In the word absurd we find the Latin word surdus, which means ‘deaf.’ A spiritual life requires discipline because we need to learn to listen to God, who constantly speaks but whom we seldom hear.”
“When, however, we learn to listen, our lives become obedient lives. The word obedient comes from the Latin word, audire, which means ‘listening.’ A spiritual discipline is necessary in order to move slowly from an absurd to an obedient life, from a life filled with noisy worries to a life in which there is some free inner space where we can listen to our God and follow his guidance.”
I think what Nouwen talking about so eloquently is that we need to live a life of “closet Christianity.” Not closeted in the sense that we are totally shut off, out of touch, uncaring, unreachable. But in the sense that we daily go into that secret place, what the old King James version of the
Bible calls our ‘closet.’ And there – we need to shut the door for awhile and talk with God. More importantly – we need to shut the door – and listen to God as he whispers a message of love to us.
You can’t live a spiritual life without it being a prayer-filled life. And a prayer-filled life is one where you are in prayer not just once a year, or once a month, or once a week – here at church. A prayer-filled life is not even one where all through the day you half-heartedly ask God for a little help. A prayer-filled life is one where you submit to the discipline to spend dedicated time in a closet, or down by the pond, or in your bedroom or work shed or out walking or somewhere – just communing with God. And if you don’t do that – life will often seem absurd and out of control.
I know many of you do this. I know some of you don’t. I can’t make you pray in a disciplined way on a daily basis any more than my doctor can make me take cholesterol medicine and lay off the hamburgers. But I know that if I don’t do that – my heart is eventually going to have something to say to me. And it isn’t going to be pretty when it does.
Live the prayer-filled life. Find that inner, secret, quiet place where God can whisper to you – before the next earthquake or Jezebel comes along. Be still and know God is God. And when you go back out into that noisy, noisy world – you’ll know just what to do. And more importantly, you’ll know Who goes with you into the day.
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