“Teaching of the Week”
Worship Notes for Service of Word and Sacrament

June 23 2013

Westminster Presbyterian Church Tiburon, California

 

Visit the church website: www.wpctiburon.org, 415-383-5272
240 Tiburon Boulevard, Tiburon, California 94920

 

This weekly study guide seeks to help members, friends, and visitors prepare for the upcoming Sunday service and teaching.  Questions about worship can be directed to the church office at: 383-5272, ext. 10 or secretary@wpctiburon.org.   

 

 

SERMON FOCUS

We fill our lives with so many things, often not realizing that for which we are truly yearning. Our streets, not to mention our souls, are disquieted.  We look for God in the earthquakes, in the commotions, only to find God in the quiet.  Quiet is seen as weakness in our society, but quiet is a form of resistance to the idolatries of our culture.  When we turn to the quiet, we find ourselves far more fulfilled and able to bring clarity and peace into the commotion.  When we are unable to reach agreement, we can reach unity by holding silence together.

 

WORKING TITLE                

                                The Silence that Will Keep Us Together

“…and after the fire a sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:12)

 

SCRIPTURES 

First Reading

Psalm 42

1As a deer longs for flowing streams,

so my soul longs for you, O God.

2My soul thirsts for God,

for the living God.

When shall I come and behold

the face of God?

3My tears have been my food

day and night,

while people say to me continually,

"Where is your God?"

4These things I remember,

as I pour out my soul:

how I went with the throng,

and led them in procession to the house of God,

with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,

a multitude keeping festival.

5Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my help 6and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;

therefore I remember you

from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,

from Mount Mizar.

7Deep calls to deep

at the thunder of your cataracts;

all your waves and your billows

have gone over me.

8By day the LORD commands his steadfast love,

and at night his song is with me,

a prayer to the God of my life.

9I say to God, my rock,

"Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I walk about mournfully

because the enemy oppresses me?"

10As with a deadly wound in my body,

my adversaries taunt me,

while they say to me continually,

"Where is your God?"

11Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my help and my God.

 

Second Reading

1 Kings 19:1-15a

1Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, "So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow." 3Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.

 

4But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." 5Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat." 6He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7The angel of the LORD came a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you." 8He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. 9At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.

 

Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 10He answered, "I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away."


11He said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; 12and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 14He answered, "I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away." 15Then the LORD said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram.

 

QUOTE(S)  

Best of any song
is bird song
in the quiet
but first you must have the quiet.

              -Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir:  The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997

 

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man [sic] is he who, in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

              -Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

 

“       “ –Pope Francis

 

 

 QUESTIONS & PROMPTS FOR CONTINUED REFLECTION, MEDITATION, AND PRAYER

Try spending 5 minutes in silence every day this week.  What changes about you?

 

In the 1 Kings passage, God is not found in the wind, not in the earthquake, and not in the fire.  Where do you look for God to no avail?  Where does our society look for God?

 

What is the relationship between silence and production?

 

What is your definition of power?

 

Children and Youth  

This week, our children and youth will hear a story from 1 Kings about Elijah hearing the voice of God - not in the loud wind, but in the silence.  They will discover, with Elijah, how the experience of stillness opens us to the voice of God’s Spirit.

 

 

Up Coming Events

Rev. Rob McClellan’s Installation, June 23, 3:00pm

Don’t miss this exciting celebration of the beginning of Pastor Rob’s ministry at Westminster.  This is an event for the entire community.  Invite your friends and neighbors!  Child care will be available.