This is the time of year when I schedule various kinds of check-ups for myself – with doctors and the dentist. My work slows down enough that I can pick my head up to make calls to schedule appointments (and actually keep appointments).  I am anticipating the check-up kinds of questions that my physical health practitioners ask. Do you wear a seatbelt when you’re in a car? What kind of exercise are you getting? Is your living situation safe? Are you getting enough vitamins? How often do you floss? They’re all questions about disciplines that protect and promote physical health.

So as I reflected on our scripture lessons today, I noticed that they highlight disciplines that protect and promote spiritual health. I thought about my role as your spiritual doctor and the responsibility I have for asking you questions to check on the well-being of your soul. I thought today would be a good day for a check-up.

My first question for you is, “are you getting enough belly laughter?” Our Gospel story for today is a hilariously funny political satire. To get the joke you have to know that this is not a story that is trying to be realistic or factual – this is a tall tale that gets at the truth of how oppressive the Roman occupation was. To get the joke, you have to know that Gerasa was a city sacked by the Jews in the revolt against Rome between 66 and 70 CE, and then it was brutally recaptured by Rome shortly after that. (The Gospel of Luke was probably written around 85 CE.) You have to know that a legion is a unit of the Roman army comprising 6,000 soldiers. You have to know that pigs are unclean. They are gross and carry disease. Eating them is against the law. Jesus is negotiating solo with the spirits of 6,000 occupying soldiers about to be stopped from tormenting a poor man to the point of insanity, and Jesus agrees to their request to be put into a herd of swine and off the cliff they go. This is a story that would promote belly laughter. It’s highly subversive and thoroughly entertaining. Belly laughter gives respite from taking ourselves and our problems and even our oppressors so seriously. Belly laughter is good medicine and good exercise. Are you getting enough belly laughter in your spiritual diet?

My next question is, “how many times a day, on average, do you remember that in the eyes of the Holy One you are no better and no worse than any other person?” “How many times a day, on average, do you recall that no matter what our differences, the Divine is so vast and we are so small, that the differences between us are immaterial?” In Paul’s letter, he is reminding the Galatians that they are free. Whatever small cell or narrow place they had been in before because of religious teaching and preaching (and we all have encountered it), the door is now open, he says. “Come out,” Paul is saying. “Come out.” In Christ – that is, in the Redeeming Urge of God, there is not Jew or Greek, there is not slave or free, there is not male and female; for all of you are one. This is an amazing statement of religious doctrine. If and when you are ever looking for a Biblical proof text for the full inclusion of women or LBGT folks in the Church, here is one. The differences between male and female no longer matter for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. If and when you are ever looking for material to use in defense of Paul, in response to folks who just don’t like him…. Well you probably are never doing that, but I occasionally am. Here is a fine piece of theology from the principle architect of early Christianity.

So how many times a day, on average, do you remember that in God’s eyes you are no better and no worse than another person when it comes to how you are or are not, or what you have done or failed to do? How many times a day do you turn off your better than/worse than calculator and remind yourself that we are all one? My advice is that you aim for a number that is too high to count.

And my last question, for today, is “how do you practice silence?” Now I am well aware of the great irony of preaching about the importance of the practice of silence. It’s like lecturing on the importance of staying hydrated to a thirsty person who just needs a drink of water. We Episcopalians are such a wordy bunch – I just can’t keep quiet about the need for silence to experience the presence of the Holy One that’s taught in this story of Elijah.

In our reading for today, the prophet Elijah, whose name literally translated is “my god is [the Holy One]” – Eliyahu in Hebrew, is running from the law. The much-maligned Queen Jezebel working with foreign allies for peace and prosperity for her people, has had enough of the insurgent Elijah and she sends a messenger to tell him that his days are numbered. (If this were a historical narrative rather than literature, she would have simply sent an assassin.) Her fury had to do with the large public demonstration Elijah staged to show the power over nature of the god whose Name is too holy to pronounce. Elijah’s god produced rain to end drought and famine. But then in a hideous display of aggression, Elijah has all 450 of the prophets of the losing god Baal seized and killed.

He takes off into the wilderness, afraid and alone, exhausted and suicidal. But twice, messengers bring him bread and water and tell him to get up and eat something. He journeys to Mount Horeb, (also known as Mount Sinai), the Holy Mountain of Moses’ encounters with the Divine. He finds shelter in a cave or a rock crevice, and hears the Divine voice ask him, “What are you doing here Elijah?” Of course the inflection when that question is read out loud is up to the reader. I always hear it as a kind of “what the heck, Elijah?” Elijah’s answer is defensive and angry – zealous and jealous and furious are all translations of the same word. He is fearful, despairing and self-righteous – a toxic cocktail! His response doesn’t mention all the killing he’s just done. The word of the Holy One instructs Elijah to come out – come out of the darkness of the cave and experience the presence of the Divine. But before he comes out, there are the usual signs of the revelation of the Divine – a rock-splitting windstorm, an earthquake, and a fire, but somehow Elijah knows that the presence of the Divine is not in any of those cataclysmic events. Elijah experiences the presence of the Divine in the unspectacular silence that follows.

And then Elijah hears the question a second time. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And in a response that I find so reassuring, Elijah gives the same self-indulgent litany of complaint. Even a great prophet who has experienced the presence of the Divine, cannot turn on a dime his own well-scripted story, I imagine a smiling Divinity which says, “return on your way, get back to work.” Our portion of the story stops short of the next verses that reassure Elijah that he is going to find seven thousand people in Israel who have not bowed to Baal. He’s not going to be alone. He’s going to have lots of companions.

I imagine that it was in the silence that Elijah got some perspective, that he got somehow brave enough to head back to his work, that he got some clarity about what would come next. This is not silence in the face of injustice; rather, this is the kind of silence we need in order to hear that God is still speaking as they say on the United Church of Christ signs. God is still speaking. Whenever I see one of those signs, I want to respond, “yes, and God is still being very quiet. God whispers.”

Silence when alone is very good, but it’s even more powerful, it’s deeper, more moving, in a room full of people. The folks on the worship commission know that I am always pressing them for more silence in our liturgies – silence between readings, silence within our prayers. It’s extremely countercultural. When we don’t have much experience with silence, we can feel uncomfortable. We think someone has forgotten what they’re supposed to do next – maybe something is wrong. Some people associate silence with punishment, which just makes my heart ache.

Silence: it’s the rests in music, the quiet protected by our legal system in both the right to remain silent and also the right to enjoy the lack of noise. It’s the tradition of commemorative stillness out of respect for the dead. A Jewish sage once wrote, “The fence of wisdom is silence.” (1) Religious or spiritual silence is not just the absence of sound but inner peace that brings enlightenment, the inner growth, the calm in which the whisper of the Divine just might be heard.

Thomas R. Kelly, Quaker mystic in the last century wrote, “There is a divine abyss within us all, a holy infinite center, a heart, a life who speaks in us and through us to the world. We have all heard this holy whisper at times.” (2) And while I agree with Kelly that we have all heard this holy whisper, I don’t know that we have all recognized the Voice. Recognizing the Voice takes practice and community and more practice and more community.

The poet David Whyte wrote a piece called “Sometimes.” (3) In it I hear some of the things that I want you to know, as your spiritual doctor, about the urgent need to practice silence – especially communal silence -- for the healing of our souls. I’ll end by reading Whyte’s poem to you. Let’e say that the “you” in this poem is plural.

1. Chapters of Fundamental Principles or Ethics of the Fathers 3:17 (Pirkei Avot in the Talmud).