The Power of God

January 13, 2008
Psalm 29, Acts 10:34-43
Sermon by Torin Eikler
Epiphany 1

Every day that I come to the church during the work week, I unlock the office and turn on the lights and the computer. I check the phone for messages and deal with anything that can’t wait. I light a candle and the oil lamp that Carrie brought me from the Taizé monastery in France, settle into the arm chair, and read a devotion from one of our books and several Bible verses. Then, I get up again and I leave.

I leave the office and all the work there behind. Carrying the verses with me – sometimes just in my head and sometimes with a bible in my hand – I walk out the back door of the church (the one just behind the sanctuary there) and I spend some time in meditation. There is a little space there between the building and the neighbors’ yard that is carpeted in pine needles and bordered by tall hedge trees and ivy. In the summer it is warm and green and noisy with life and growth. In the fall, the color of the light changes as leaves turn colors and fall, and the sounds of life change as birds leave their nests behind and children return to school. In the winter, it is cold and stark, but the ivy never loses its color though it is sometimes covered by snow. I haven’t seen spring there yet, but I look forward to watching the buds open and discovering the sounds of nature waking from its sleep.

We all have our rituals – as different as we are different from one another. In the morning we may have breakfast with the paper, listen to our favorite radio show on the drive to work, or stop at the Starbucks where they know our name and fill our order without asking. In the evenings we may watch our favorite drama, relax with a book, or open mail and prepare for the next days’ work. And holidays, of course, are so full of ritual that we sometimes can’t find space or freedom to breath. This daily trip to the “back yard” is my ritual for finding peace and connecting with God in preparation for my day.

And, I am by no means the first person to find God in this way. People from the beginning of time have found nature inspiring. Native American traditions sent boys and men into nature on spirit quests to find the aspect of nature that most evoke the divine for them. Hermits, monks, and mystics from all religions have often chosen to live rough lives in the wilderness in order to commune with God. Our own tradition is filled with images of the power of God revealed in nature – from the creation stories of Genesis to Job’s encounter with the whirlwind and its recital of God’s might and from the rainbow’s promise to the plagues on Egypt. Even the disciples stood in wonder of the power of God as it stilled the storm. And Jesus, himself, often retreated to the wilderness to find renewal and inspiration in the midst of his ministry.

The Psalmists, too, are part of that tradition. Their writing is filled with images of fire and lightning, peaceful pastures and replenishing rains, wild beasts and timid deer and young lambs – all serving the will of the Lord. Most of us, at some time or another, have felt delight and awe as we gaze at immense mountains or intricate spider webs, and if we haven’t, it is only because we have not stopped to look at or listen to the world around us.

And yet… and yet, there is something that I find disconcerting about this hymn:

The voice of the Lord is over the mighty waters…
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars…
The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire …
The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness …
The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl and strips the forest bare …
And in his temple all say, “Glory!”

This time, the Psalmist chose neither soothing, comforting metaphors nor inspiring images. Floods and whirlwinds and fires and earthquakes… These are the parts of nature that bring fear and destruction into the lives of those who happen to be in the way. I am much more comfortable with the God who comes in the small, quiet breeze than the God whose passing plunges the world I know into chaos….


In my first year of BVS, I worked for the Church of the Brethren disaster response directing a rebuilding effort on the island of St. John. Three quarters of the homes there were severely damaged by a hurricane. I saw people who were still living in tents or the equivalent with nothing but leaking blue FEMA tarps serving as roofs. They couldn’t afford to rebuild and there was virtually no help available for them. While I was there, another hurricane hit the island – the second in two years but only the third in a century. My volunteers and I were living in a concrete home with a “hurricane-proof” roof. We boarded up the windows, stocked the pantry and brought in gasoline for the generator. Even with all these preparations, water can in through the doors and windows where the winds it the house with the most force, and we ended up sweeping it all the way across the tile floor and out the door on the other side of the house. We only felt the edge of the storm, but its power knocked down hundreds of trees and changed the shape of the beaches. Exploring the island the day after the storm, I was overwhelmed with a sense of awe at the power of nature and the One who created it all.

In her book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston describes another, much more terrifying experience of a hurricane. It happened in the late 1800s near Lake Okeechobee in the middle of Florida where Janie and her husband lived in a shack among the sugar cane field right in path of the storm.

“Sometime that night the winds came back… By morning Gabriel was playing the deep tones in the center of the drum. So when Janie looked out of her door she saw the drifting mists gathered in the west [to] arm themselves with thunders and march forth against the world. Louder and higher and lower and wider the sound and motion spread, mounting, sinking, darking.

It woke up old Okechobee and the monster began to roll in his bed. Began to roll around and complain like a peevish world on a grumble. The folks in the quarters and the people in the big houses further around the shore heard the big lake and wondered….

They huddled closer and stared at the door. They just didn’t use another part of their bodies, and they didn’t look at anything but the door. Through the screaming wind they heard things crashing and things hurtling and dashing with unbelievable velocity, [and] the lake got madder and madder with only its dikes between them and him.

The wind came with [again] with a triple fury, and put out the lights for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes staining against the crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”

And so it is…. As much as we prefer to think of God in terms that provide comfort and reassurance, there is no doubt that the power of God is clearly and terribly displayed in midst of the storms and upheavals that we call natural disasters. I do not understand why such disasters must touch the lives of so many people. No theologians that I have read have presented me with an adequate reasoning. And the explanation of pastors like Pat Robinson who claimed that New Orleans’ suffering was punishment for sinful living do not fit with what I know of the forgiving mercy of Christ. What strikes me, though, is the response of people who have lived through disaster, losing homes and loved ones. They most often offer thanks and praise to God for saving them rather than railing against God for their suffering. In their eyes, it seems, the power of God is more deeply and truly evident in the way she protects so much and so many from destruction. And, I think it is faith in that power that leads the Psalmist to raise a voice in praise to the God who sits enthroned over the flood and the wind and the fire and all the earth.

The power of God is wonderful and terrible. It called the universe into being out of the void. It raised a flood to wash it clean and brought life to the earth again. It raises mountains and gives birth to volcanoes. And yet it created and cares for delicate _________ and moths that float on diaphanous wings. It is the power of life and more. And beholding the wonders it cradles inspires us to offer praise and name its glory.

In faith, we worship the God who holds such power and that power becomes strength for us. We need not fear, for what power is greater than God’s? In Christ we have the gift of peace because we have been assured that the love of God is there to sustain us. Indeed, the love and power of God is a free gift to all, for as Peter’s words tell us, God shows no partiality.

The grace of peace and the freedom that comes from knowing that we are never without God is open to all. All we must do is embrace it. And when we do – when we find that peace and step into the freedom that comes with it, we are filled with strength and confidence. Our lives become more and more the lives that God intends for us to live, and we become the presence of Christ in the world, reaching out to others to offer them the love and grace that we have received.

May it be so.