Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

2/5/06 - 5 Epiphany

The Rev. Sarah Ball-Damberg

2 Kings 8-37; Mark 1:29-39

"Never let truth get in the way of a good story."  That's what a college friend of mine used to say. He was talking about the way the fish we caught gets bigger every time we tell about catching it. But whether he meant it or not, I think he was onto something. Sometimes we get so hung up on facts and figures, measurements and dates, we miss the point of the story all together.

Stories can tell us a different kind of truth, a truth that has more to do with who we are and how we understand the world rather than with the weight and length of a given fish.

I've been thinking about stories a lot this past week because I've been wrestling with the story of Elisha and the Shunammite woman we read today. What an incredible story! It's so vivid and complex and, well . . . long, if you happen to be the lector for today.

So I went poking around in some Bible commentaries to see what they had to say. Each commentary noted that the boy in the story had probably suffered from sunstroke-important to get those facts straight!-and also that this is the second of four stories, all strung together, which are meant to enhance Elisha's authority as a prophet by showing him working miracles.

Well, that may be, but Elisha doesn't actually come off all that well in this story until the very end. Remember how he starts off trying to repay the woman for all the trouble she's taken on his behalf? He offers to put in a good word for her with the king or with the commander of the army. She turns him down by saying, "I live among my own people" -- which is polite code for, "Gosh, thanks, but I don't need your help with wealth or status. I'm good."

It's Elisha's servant, Gehazi, who helpfully points out that the thing the woman lacks is the one thing money and influence can't buy-a son.

In due time, the woman has her son and all is well until one day when the child suffers that sunstroke and dies in her lap. When she makes her way to Elisha, he again miscalculates and dispatches his servant to go help. The Shunammite woman refuses to settle for the servant and insists Elisha himself come with her. Elisha gets there and miraculously restores the child to life -- but it was the woman who got him there.

So it may be that this story highlights Elisha's incredible miracle-working powers. But what really strikes me is the Shunammite woman and her fierce faith. As soon as her beloved son dies, she acts. She doesn't explain what she's doing to anyone, but only says, "It will be all right." Or at least that's how what she says is translated into English. What she says in Hebrew, twice over, is "Shalom."

In one sense, shalom means "peace." Shalom is used as a greeting, as in "Peace be with you," but shalom-peace is more than just "hey, how are ya." Shalom means "wholeness," "order," "completeness," and "well-being." Shalom means all is well with the world and that all of God's creatures stand in right relation with one another and with their Creator.

It's really hard for me to imagine saying, "It will be all right" just after my son had died in my lap. It breaks my heart to think of the Shunammite woman doing just that. She takes an enormous leap of faith. In the face of death, she insists on shalom.

You all know, I'm sure, that Coretta Scott King died this past Monday. In one of the tributes to her on the news, I happened to hear a recording of a speech she gave at an anti-Vietnam War rally three weeks after her husband had been assassinated. She took up the notes he'd made for that speech and delivered it herself. She refused to let his death or fear for her own life or her children's lives stop her from calling for peace. In the face of death, she, too, insisted on shalom.

Just a few mornings ago, I ran into someone I know whose mother died recently. I stopped to say how sorry I was. I knew her mother had lived a long, full life, and that her death wasn't unexpected or untimely, but I still assumed my friend would be sorrowful and grieving. What I discovered is that she isn't grieving so much as she is peaceful. She said that in the last several years, her mother hasn't been able to speak, so she'd learned to be with her mother in ways that didn't involve talking. She has felt grief and loss along the way, but as she described it, her mother's death now felt like a transition and a fulfillment, not an end.

There I was, standing on the sidewalk, listening to the woman in front of me bear witness to peace in the face of death. She made me realize how easy it is for me to forget that for Christians, death isn't the final word. There's no shortage of death in the world - or of war or hunger, violence or sorrow, poverty or environmental degradation. It can seem remarkably naïve to insist on shalom - on peace, wholeness, and order - in the face of very persuasive evidence that the world is a seriously broken place.

But those of us who are disciples of Jesus Christ are anything but naïve. We can't be -- our lives as Christians begin when, in the water of Baptism, "we are buried with Christ in his death." Christian life begins with Jesus' death on the Cross. As much as we might be tempted to skip over it, there is no Easter without Good Friday.

But we aren't left there. By that same water of Baptism, we share in Christ's resurrection and are reborn by the Holy Spirit. In our baptisms, we too become those who insist on shalom in the face of death.

We all find different ways of doing this insisting. Some of us join in feeding the hungry at the Community Kitchen next door. Some of us go and visit prisoners at the Durham County Jail. Some of us will travel to Mississippi to help rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. And some of us help welcome new babies by taking meals to their families. All of these are ways of not only bearing witness to God's peace, but of helping to bring that peace to the world.

Being a people, like the Shunammite woman, who insist on shalom in the face of death does not mean everything's going to suddenly feel and be all right. I don't imagine for a minute that taking her husband's place at an anti-war rally made Coretta Scott King feel all better. That would be naïve.

But I do imagine that Mrs. King's grief and anger was part of what made her call for peace in the face of death, just as I imagine the depth of the Shunammite woman's  grief is what drove her to insist that Elisha, the holy man of God, make her world whole again.

We are not naïve enough to think that the life of faith will be free of pain, sorrow, anger, or grief. But in the lives of the faithful even grief and anger can be drawn into a witness to God's peace. What was true of the Shunammite woman was true for Coretta Scott King and for my friend whose mother has just died. Each of these women, in her own way, pointed to shalom -- to God's peace -- in the face of death.

That is the truth of the Shunammite woman's story. And the truth is that her story is our story, given to us by a God who loves us beyond all imagining and who will remain with us even when it seems that darkness and chaos will overwhelm the light. Because the truth of our story is that in Christ, God's peace has come into the world and through Christ we have been and will be gathered into that peace. It has been given to us to bear witness to God's peace in a world that desperately needs to know the truth of that good story. By the grace of God, we, too, are called to insist on shalom. Amen.

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