Surprised By the Word
Luke 4:14-22
by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones
Church of the Open Arms
13 August 2006

First, a story, from John Updike’s novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies.
It is 1920 in New Jersey in the home of Clarence Wilmot, Presbyterian minister.

. . . the Reverend Clarence Arthur Wilmot, down in the rectory of the Fourth Presbyterian Church at the corner of Straight Street and Broadway, felt the last particles of his faith leave him. The sensation was distinct – a visceral surrender, a set of dark sparkling bubbles escaping upward.

You see, Clarence has been reading the works of the agnostic Robert Ingersoll. Clarence is an educated, progressive man who has read many of the skeptical works of 19th century scholarship.

the minister had been reading in order to refute [agnosticism] for a perturbed parishoner; . . . his thoughts had slipped with quicksilver momentum into the recognition, which he had long withstood, that Ingersoll was quite right: the God of the Pentateuch was an absurd bully, barbarically thundering through a cosmos entirely misconceived. There is no such God, nor should there be.

. . . and so it seemed that the invisible vestiges of the faith and the vocation he had struggled for decades to maintain against the grain of the Godless times and his own persistent rationalist suspicions now of their pulverized weightlessness lifted and wafted upstairs too. It was a ghastly moment, a silent sounding of bottomlessness.

At first Clarence keeps his new condition to himself. He’s not used to living without faith, however, so he has increasing trouble with what had previously been routine actions. But, as difficult as it is, he keeps up appearances, going through the motions of his ministry.

A few weeks later a dying member of Clarence’s congregation requests that he preach a sermon on hell. This parishioner tells Clarence that they haven’t heard many sermons on hell in recent years; it is as if this congregant knows and is testing Clarence, who certainly does not believe in hell. However, out of pastoral care, Clarence decides to fulfill the wish. He plans to preach on hell.

So, that Sunday arrives and Clarence leads the early moments of the worship service. Then it comes time for him to preach the requested sermon. Clarence begins to preach. Then his voice begins to falter. And then he loses his voice – literally, he loses his voice. Clarence is unable to speak.
Clarence is not able to speak the words that he no longer believes. He cannot make it through the rituals of the liturgy. In this moment, Clarence realizes that he can no longer be a vessel for the word of God; he has himself become “a silent sounding of bottomlessness.”

So, Clarence quits the ministry. Suddenly, he realizes that he doesn’t know what to do with his life. It becomes clear that he isn’t suited for any other kind of work. He tries various professions, but he can’t handle any of them. Eventually he is at the end of his rope and becomes an encyclopedia salesman, but he isn’t any good at that either. In the process he has to move his family out of their large parsonage and into a small apartment on the bad side of town. His family’s financial situation changes
dramatically. Eventually Clarence falls ill and dies a broken man.

Updike’s story then moves through the next three generations of Clarence’s family. His son Teddy lacks drive and the ability to make much of his life. Essie, the granddaughter, becomes a movie star, but her life is filled with ephemera as she seeks transcendence and immortality in sex and stardom. The great-grandson, Clark, is a damaged human being, who has wasted his life in sex, drugs, and failed careers.

Clark finally takes up with a mountain cult which is stockpiling weapons as they await what they call “the Reckoning.” The novel ends in a scene straight from the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco.
The cult is in their compound, being assaulted by federal law enforcement. The leader of the cult sets the compound on fire. As members of the cult attempt to flee the fire, the leader starts shooting the members. Clark makes it possible for the women and children to escape the fire and then he loses his own life. The final lines of the novel are:

scared they're going to be shot, then stepping into the open, squinting, blinking as if just waking up, carrying or holding on to the hands of their children, too many to count. The children.

It is a powerful ending to a powerful novel. In an attempt to understand more fully what all Updike was trying to convey in this story, I did a little research and found an interesting insight in a review by Mark Buchanan in Christianity Today. He writes about the importance of the final lines of the novel:

The children. It takes four generations for Clarence's lapse of faith to come fully to roost. Ironically, Clarence had adopted just one creed: "Don't harm anyone." Updike suggests that Clarence's apostasy——losing his religion——was his worst violation of that creed. For what will become of his children?

Updike’s novel is a powerful story about how the loss of faith tragically affects a man and his descendants. Clarence lost the word. As a result, the next three generations were not raised within the community of the church. They do not have mentors and role models. They have not practiced what it means to be a Christian. Their life journeys lack the discipline that comes with Christian spiritual development.

Clarence’s life had become a bottomless silence. Now we see that silence taking root in his descendants’ lives. Each of them lacks something. Each of them has an emptiness that they try to fill with various things. What they seem to lack is joy, love, and hope, those qualities that they would have acquired if they had been raised in the Christian story. The bottomless silence of their lives results from the absence of the joyful surprise that is the good news of God’s word.

Now Luke’s story is also about the word of God. Jesus has returned to Galilee to preach. He has come home to Nazareth. Jesus enters the synagogue and reads from Isaiah 61 & 58. It is a Suffering Servant Song, a prophecy of the coming Messiah. It is a message of liberation and radical social change. After reading this text from Isaiah, Jesus sits and says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” You will notice that in the Gospel of Luke that these are the first words of the adult Jesus that are not quotations of scripture. This is important in interpreting the whole book of Luke. The first words of Jesus are words that identify him with the prophetic tradition of redemption, liberation, and radical change.

How does the congregation respond to Jesus? “All spoke well of him and were amazed.” It is only later in the story that the crowd turns on Jesus and seeks to throw him off the cliff. They are not offended that he claims that the messianic age has begun. They only get offended later when he tells them that they, his hometown, will receive no special privileges in his kingdom.

What I want to focus on is that this congregation in the synagogue of Nazareth was amazed by a word from God. Professor Tom Long writes that the crowd had turned out to hear the local boy who had become famous as a preacher and healer. They expected a sermon, what they didn’t expect was actually hearing something that was obviously a word from God. A word from God is disruptive, demands response, it changes things, it is news, and it cuts us sharper than a two-edged sword.

This was not just a sabbath sermon. This was a word from the Lord. News. God come close, become present. Now. In your life. The world was now changed, the word was present in all its demanding fullness, and you could fight it or follow it, but you couldn’t ignore it.

Today, that’s what stands out for me in this story -- the amazing surprise of hearing the word of God. This story from Luke reminds us that the word of God can invade our lives when least expected and startle us. At first it startles these folks with joyful amazement and later it startles them with anger and resentment. The word of God can do that to us. It can elevate and cut deep and often both at the same time.

Despite the fact that we are people of faith, we get used to the fact that we aren’t surprised by the content of our religion or our faith. We come to church and hear the words that we are used to hearing. We go about our daily lives and are dulled by the routine busy-ness of them. Even though we believe that God speaks to us through the Spirit and its manifestations in scripture, the church, nature, etc., we just aren’t usually prepared for it or looking for it. And so when we do get a word from God, it often catches us by surprise.

I think that Updike’s novel is illustrative. The characters have become used to their lives the way they are. They are not looking for a word from God. They seem to miss God’s speaking to them. These characters reveal how the absence of God’s word, that bottomless silence, can tragically affect us. I think Updike is trying to warn us contemporary Americans that we are possibly headed down a tragic path because we have lost something essential.

That’s one significant reason that any of us Christians gather together. We are learning from each other what is necessary for this adventurous journey that is the Christian life. It is a life that requires discipline and practice, and we’ve got to learn these things, they don’t come naturally for us. And we learn them together and from others who have already walked this road ahead of us.

One thing that we must practice and get better at is hearing the word of God. How is God present to us each day? Is it in the trees outside? The laughter of a child? The faithful example of selfless giver? The hymns you sing to yourself while driving in your car? The words you read for your daily devotional? Yes, it all these and many more. God’s word comes to us in abundant ways.

Today, every day, the scripture is fulfilled in our hearing. Today, every day, God’s word is spoken and interrupts our lives. We must learn to listen for it and be ready for it. And be ready to respond to it by changing our lives to lives of obedience to God.

If we fail to notice God’s surprising words speaking to us, we run the risk of become people who lack a full sense of joy and beauty and adventure. People whose lives become empty and silent.

One of my very favorite poets is Wendell Berry. In his poetry I often hear the word of God in surprising ways. Berry is a Kentucky farmer who is an essayist and poet. He has spent his life disciplined by the land and attuned to how it speaks and in it he repeatedly encounters God.

In the poem Meditation in the Spring Rain, Berry has been walking through the fields during a rainfall, listening to the water. While doing so, he remembers the story of crazy old Mrs. Gaines, a story from his grandmother’s childhood. Mrs. Gaines wondered the town singing a hymn she had created entitled “One Lord, one Faith, and one Cornbread.” The town would sometimes lock her up when they got too worried about her safety, but they usually let her go free. Berry writes:

When her poor wandering head broke the confines
of all any of them knew, they put her in a cage.
But I am glad to know it was a commodious cage,
not cramped up. And I am glad to know
that other times the town left her free
to be as she was in it, and to go her way.
May it abide a poet with as much grace!
For I too am perhaps a little mad,
standing here wet in the drizzle, listening
to the clashing syllables of the water. Surely
there is a great Word being put together here.
I begin to hear it gather in the opening
of the flowers and the leafing-out of the trees,
in the growth of bird nests in the crotches
of the branches, in the settling of the dead
leaves into the ground, in the whittling
of beetle and grub, in my thoughts
moving the hill’s flesh.
. . .
I think the maker is here, creating his hill
as it will be, out of what it was.
The thickets, I say, send up their praise
at dawn! One Lord, one Faith, and one Cornbread
forever! But hush. Wait. Be still
as the dead and the unborn in whose silence
that old one walked, muttering and singing,
followed by the children.

For a time there
I turned away from the words I knew, and was lost.
For a time I was lost and free, speechless
in the multitudinous assembling of his Word.

Let us pray:

God of grace and beauty. Let us be aware of how the absence of your word can lead to the bottomless silence of shallow lives. May we be people with eyes open and ears tuned to the assembling of your word. Amen.