“Why God Never had a lot to Say to Mother Theresa”
A Sermon for Baptism of the Lord
January 13, 2008
Isaiah 42:1-9, Acts 10:34-48, Matthew 3:13-17
Rev. Larry Lange
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Congregation
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Newscaster Dan Rather, in a once in a lifetime opportunity to interview Mother Theresa, asked her what she said to God when she prayed.
Mother Theresa responded that she didn’t say anything, but that she just listened.
Dan Rather seized on this response with a follow up question, the answer to which would have been the closest thing to getting a quote from God himself that any journalist could hope for. “And what,” pressed Dan Rather, “what does God say to you?”
Mother Theresa’s response? “God doesn’t say anything. God just listens.”
Now I’m not sure exactly what this sort of silent prayer exchange between Mother Theresa and God was like, but given Mother Theresa’s spiritual stature, you’d think God would have slipped in a helpful word or two for her somewhere along the line.
Apparently not.
What does God’s silence mean? To me it indicates God reserves direct speech with human beings for world changing moments—which are exactly the kind of moments we heard about in the lessons today.
In the Old Testament lesson, God promises the prophet Isaiah a new thing is about to spring forth. God promises Isaiah there will be a servant who will be a covenant and light to all nations, a servant who will begin to bring all nations into God’s family. God first made that promise in a direct conversation with Abraham. It was a world changing moment promise then. It was a world changing promise to Isaiah.
Still, it wasn’t for almost 500 years that some members of God’s family finally came to believe that this promise had been fulfilled.
The story in which it appears that members of God’s family first understand that this promise has been fulfilled in Jesus is today’s second lesson. It’s one of those world changing moments and so, an angel from God and God himself speak directly to Peter’s host and Peter in the course of their prayers to get this world changing moment to happen in today’s story from Acts. Even the Holy Spirit is there using Peter’s retelling of Jesus’ storyto inspire people from nations other than Israel to speak in tongues and extol God.
Compared to how often Mother Theresa heard God speaking in her life, God is shouting at the top of his lungs in this story in Acts. Yet if God did not shout at the top of his lungs for Mother Theresa, how could we expect God would do so for normal folks like us? So God’s silence in our own lives should not distress us. It certainly would be nice if God could call us up on the phone and speak to us directly to guide us and help us make difficult decisions and prove to us beyond a doubt that he exists, and so on.
But today the scriptures say God reserves such direct speech for world changing moments.
Now, there are people who believe God has talked to them and told them some specific things to do or say. Today’s lessons give us a way of evaluating these claims.
When people make claims that God is talking to them, Dan Rather’s question is the question to ask, “What does God tell you?” And for me, unless it has to do with God’s promise to begin to bring people of all nations into God’s family, it’s probably NOT God talking.
Bringing people of all nations into God’s family: that’s on the top of God’s list of stuff to do; that might be the ONLY thing on God’s list of stuff to do.
Some people who claim that God is talking to them get a lot of attention for doing so, and often gain a lot of credibility and power for making those claims. But God is not in the business of allowing people to gain attention and credibility and power for themselves unless it is for the fulfillment of God’s promise to bring people of all nations into his family. If people claim God is talking to them for any other reason, I would simply ignore them.
Don’t let the silence of God bother you.
There are four ways that God speaks directly to his people in the story in Acts that we can still count on: Number one: God uses baptism to communicate to us that we are part of his family and therefore, loved by God as parents love their children.
Number two: God the Holy Spirit uses Jesus’ story to inspire confidence in God’s continued forgiving love for them and to inspire worship and loyalty to God.
Number three: In the lesson from Acts, Peter reminds his listeners that Jesus ate and drank with the disciples after he rose from the dead, and Jesus is with us still in Holy Communion.
And four: Jesus commanded disciples to do certain things. Jesus commanded disciples to preach, to testify to their faith, to share their faith so that others might also believe, so that people of all nations would continue to become members of God’s family.
We hear Jesus making this command at the end of the gospel of Matthew where Jesus tells them to
“go…make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
There is one other command important to Jesus that’s not in today’s story of Acts: the command to keep the commandments as Jesus taught them and summarized them, the command to love: to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This command and the command to make disciples of all nations and baptism and the gospel story of Jesus, and Holy Communion: these things are the heart and essence and center of our faith; these are the things that matter these are true and sure communications from God.
All kinds of people make all kinds of claims about what God commands and about what God is telling us to do and what God is telling them to do, and all kinds of religions here and around the world are telling us we have to do this and we have to do that, and the whole world is filled a lot of noise and angry arguing about all of it.
Yet in baptism, in the gospel story of Jesus, in Holy Communion, and in the commands to love and to bring people of all nations into God’s family: this is where God speaks, this is God’s agenda. Every other religious dispute or message is a distraction.
God’s agenda is the measuring stick for what we do with our time and talents.
God’s agenda is the measuring stick for what your church does with your time and talents.
In baptism and the gospel and Holy Communion, God speaks very clearly every week about his love for us. In God’s commands to love and make disciples, God has spoken very clearly about his agenda. Maybe that’s why God never had a lot to say to Mother Theresa. Maybe Mother Theresa felt blessed just believing there truly was a God who truly was listening.
The question is: are we, like Mother Theresa, listening as well?
Amen.