The Cost of Discipleship (Proper 17A)

 

 

The Cost of Discipleship (Proper 17A)
30 August 2020

8:00 am Mass in the Labyrinth;

10:00 am Mass with Sung Antiphons

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Jeremiah 15:15-21; Psalm 26:1-8; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28

God, give us hearts to feel and love,
take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” 

 

Jesus here is inviting us to put first things first, to order our lives in accordance with what God intends for us.  He assumes that there is an ordering of things in the universe, that there is right, that there are first things.  Living as we do in a liberal democracy that acknowledges freedom of belief or unbelief, that places all such things conceptually in a “marketplace of ideas” where faith is seen as little more than a consumer choice, it is hard to hear Jesus’ call.  He asks us to put what our society and culture see as marginal or on the sidelines first and foremost in our lives. 

 

Abuse of this word of Jesus by fanatics or on-the-make clerics doesn’t help.  I have to admit it.  I hear someone say “Lose your life to save it!  Give all to the Church!  God demands it all, and nothing less!” and my fundamentalist feelers start wiggling.  I start listening very carefully for the catch, for the moment when the person calling for total sacrifice substitutes himself or his faction for God in the equation.  I have been beaten up by hierarchs who abuse authority.  I have suffered from pastoral abuse.  So I am wary.  I was attracted to the Episcopal Church because of its moderate and wise ways.  When it comes to religion, I am wary of too much spice. 

 

We Episcopalians tend to want to have things moderate, rational, and done in good taste.  Our besetting sin seems to be summarized in the experience of young Anglican priests John and Charles Wesley when they first began to try to preach a gospel of going all out.  The vestry and wardens of Charles’ church in Islington thought he had gone too far, and asked the Bishop to intervene.  The Bishop of London, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Edmund Gibson, called both brothers in for a chat.  After hearing one of them explain why they thought that grace was by faith alone, and how important it was to have a sense of God at work in our lives, he famously replied, “Enthusiasm, Mr. Wesley, enthusiasm! This simply will not do!”  He removed Charles from the church in Islington. 

 

But here’s the thing.  Jesus himself said “If you want to follow me, deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me.”

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his magnificent The Cost of Discipleship, summarized the idea this way:   When Christ calls a person to follow him, he calls on them to die.” 

 

The word “deny” here means disown, renounce claims to ownership. “Picking up your cross” refers to the fact that prisoners who were to be executed by crucifixion had to carry the crossbeam to the place of execution.  The Romans reserved crucifixion for revolutionaries, mutinous slaves, and bandits who fought against the established order. It was a brutal form of slow torture ending in death, where you were stripped naked, fixed in a posture impossible to hold without pain and slow suffocation, and left there to lose control of your bodily functions, and beg, moan, and gasp out mad gibberish until you stopped breathing.   All this was conducted in the most public of places, along a major highway, for instance, to make sure that the shameful punishment had deterrent effect on anyone else even thinking of challenging Roman power.

So what Jesus means is something like “If you want to follow me, you must give up any claims you may think you have of owning yourself. You’ll have to stick your head in the hangman’s noose to follow me. You must be willing to lose your dignity, to become the object of disgust, horror, and pity if you want to follow me.” 

We often misread what Jesus is saying here. We think he is praising suffering for suffering’s sake, and extolling the virtues of a stoic victim-hood, or worse, of a vicarious suffering for someone else’s wrongs. “This is my cross, and I’ll have to bear it” is the proverbial expression of the idea. Sometimes this wrong idea is actually used to encourage passivity and enabling behavior by the abused or the oppressed.

 

Or we mistakenly think that this saying presupposes a knowledge of what was going to later to Jesus, his own crucifixion.  But Jesus here has no clear idea of exactly what is going to happen to him, though he is all too clear of the risks he is running. Orthodox Christology is that Jesus is wholly God and wholly man, and that he suffered like us in all ways save for sin. That means that He shared our unknowing fear of the future.

What Jesus is calling for is this: He is calling for those who wish to follow him to actually follow him: follow God’s call, work for God’s kingdom, announce the liberation of the captive, help the sick and the downtrodden—and do this even when we know that it may very well have a high price.  He is asking us to take risks, in fact, to risk everything for God’s Reign. 

Jesus is not asking us to deliberately set out to kill ourselves or to be drama queens, constantly trying to deliberately annoy people so that they will persecute us, and then whining about the persecution we have baited.  When he says “come and die” he is telling us to lose our false selves, to turn our backs on the falsehood of the past.   

 

The great Roman Catholic defender of Christian Faith for the common person,  G.K Chesterton wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and been found wanting.  It has been found difficult and never been tried” (in What’s Wrong with the World). 

 

May we find the heart and courage to follow Jesus, to go all out, to commit, to risk.  May we be willing to embarrass ourselves, to fail, to lose our false selves.  May we take Jesus at his word, and put him first and foremost above all.

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

 

Impediments and Grace (midweek)

 

Impediments and Grace

August 26

The Feast of

Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle

Today is the lesser feast commemorating the work of Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle, both priests in the Episcopal Church.  Gallaudet University in Northwestern Washington, DC, is a college for the deaf and hearing impaired.  It is named after Thomas Gallaudet.  Gallaudet’s mother was deaf, and his father the founder of one of the first schools for the deaf in the U.S.   Syle had been born to missionary parents in China, but lost his hearing to scarlet fever at age three.  Both Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Syle worked with the deaf in the mid-1800s.  Syle was the first deaf person ordained priest in the traditions claiming apostolic succession in ordinations.  Gallaudet, his teacher and friend, encouraged Syle to seek ordination to the priesthood. He was ordained in 1876.

There were then, as now, many conditions that under Church law legally barred ordination.  The technical term for these are “canonical impediments” to entering orders.   “Canon” is the Greek word for a ruler, a standard.  “Impedimentum” is the Latin word for a weight attached to the foot that prevents you from running or walking properly.

Such rules came from a desire by the Church to conform to a passage in the Holiness Code in the Book of Leviticus that describes rules for priests in the Temple of Yahweh:

¹⁶ The LORD said to Moses, ¹⁷ “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. ¹⁸ No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; ¹⁹ no man with a crippled foot or hand, ²⁰ or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. ²¹ No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the offerings made to the LORD by fire. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. ²² He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; ²³ yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary.’ I am the LORD, who makes them holy” (Lev. 20:16-22).

Following such Levitical rules, canon law had forbidden the ordination of people with missing limbs, injured genitalia, and disabilities such as blindness or deafness.  Deafness was still a canonical impediment to ordination in the mid-1800s.  Putting forward Heny Syle for ordination sparked an intense controversy.

William Houghton writes,  “Deafness was an illness, a disability, a handicap. The church had taken over from the ancient ritual laws of Judaism the idea that a priest was a sort of sacrifice to God and thus had to be perfect, in the same way that a sacrificial animal was perfect. So a Christian priest couldn’t have any physical condition that would make him an object of horror or derision. Then, too, there were the practical questions of whether or not a candidate could actually do what a priest needed to do. On these two bases, the idea grew up in church law that some physical conditions prevented a person from being a priest. ...  For instance, if you were missing an index finger or a thumb, you couldn’t be a priest, because you wouldn’t be able to handle the bread and the chalice properly. You had an impediment. And if you walked with a severe limp, or had leprosy, or just looked odd enough to attract attention--in any of these cases you had an impediment, and you couldn’t be ordained a priest. Henry Syle broke that barrier. He was the first deaf person to be ordained in any of the Protestant churches in this country, not because someone had given him a special exemption, but on the grounds that the ancient law of impediments didn’t apply.”

Just a decade and a half ago, the Vatican put out a press release saying that there were only 13 deaf Roman Catholic priests in the world, and the Church needed to do more to recruit priests to serve the deaf community “from inside.”   To this day, Roman Catholic Canon Law states that any physical condition that prevents a person from “doing what a priest does” is an impediment to ordering as a priest.  This includes missing a hand with which to hold the chalice in offering, or having ciliac disease (severe wheat gluten intolerance) that would prevent the priest from consuming the wheaten host. The current Roman Catholic ban on ordaining women priests stems from a like theological basis:  since one of the priest’s roles is seen to be physically representing Christ at the altar, a priest must supposedly have the same gender as Christ, just as he must have both hands and the ability to eat wheat. 

The people in the Anglican communion most upset about the Episcopal Church’s and parts of the Anglican Church of Canada’s welcoming of gay priests and/or bishops stems from a similar applying of the Holiness Code to modern day Christian life.  Those of us who are less inclined to pick and choose which parts of the clean and unclean rules of the Holiness Code (and the whole Law of Moses) apply today tend to see the matter differently.  The desire to ban ordinations of mutually faithful and monogamous gay priests (or even celibate ones) looks to us very much like another impediment that limits and places human bounds on God’s grace.    To be sure,  there is a huge discussion going on about the question of an appropriate “manner of life” for all clergy, whether deacons, priest, or bishops.   But in this one mustn’t fall into the error of the Judaizers in Paul's letters and the Book of Acts, who could not see the clear action of the Holy Spirit in the lives of gentile converts because they were marked as “unclean” by the tradition of scriptural interpretation that then held sway.  

The point I would like to make on this Episcopal Church Feast Day of Gallaudet and Syle is this:  Jesus always reached out to the marginalized and ritually unclean.  God’s grace is for all. Thank God for people like Gallaudet and Syle who embody this.  Thank God for all who have helped expand the scope of welcome and grace in the Church.

Grace and Peace.

Upon the Rock (Proper 16A)

 

Upon the Rock

23 August 2020

Proper 16A

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (OR)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Exod. 1:8- 2:10; Psalm 124;  Rom. 12:1-8; Matt. 16:13-20

 

Ground us in you, Loving God.  Place our feet firmly on the Rock of your Love.  Amen.   

Today’s Gospel tells about Jesus giving Peter a new name and what are called “the keys of the kingdom.”  In popular imagination, that means Peter has become the doorkeeper of heaven.  But that is not what today’s Gospel is about. 

The scene takes place in Gentile territory, near Caesarea Philippi, in the extreme north of Palestine in the foothills of Mount Hermon.  It is now known in Arabic as Banias, from its original name “Panea,” the City of Pan.  This Greek god, half man half goat, was always seen as drunk, playing happy tunes on reed pipes, and in a state of constant sexual excitement. The Temple of Pan was built on a face of exposed bedrock at the mouth of a large cave from which then flowed a spring, the headwaters of the River Jordan.  Pan’s Temple was built there because the cave opening looks like a spooky gate leading to the underworld, Hades.   

 

  

Jesus takes his closest followers with him on a day trip to a place that later Rabbis would rule as totally off-limits, a place seen as “Sin City.”  I imagine Jews at the time saying,  “What you do in Caesarea stays in Caesarea.” 

It is here that Jesus asks his followers, “Who do people say I am,” and “Who do you say I am?”  Simon replies, “You are the Messiah.  The Son of the Living God.”  Jesus says Simon’s recognition does not come from publicly available data, but rather from God speaking in his heart.   Jesus tells Simon who he thinks he is.  He gives him a new name:  Rock.  In the Aramaic they would have been speaking, the word is Qepha’.  It is where the name Cephas, one of the Greek names for Peter in the New Testament, comes from.    When you translate Qepha’ into Greek rather than just transliterate it as Cephas, it becomes Petros, our familiar name Peter. 

 

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Rock of Israel, the one reliable thing they can cling to when all else fails, is God himself.  It is also the place where God puts you when he wants you safe, “the rock that is higher.”

“You are Rock, and upon this Rock I will build my Church.”  The Greek here uses two different words, one masculine (petros “stone”) and one feminine (petra “massive outcropping of bedrock”).  Jesus here transforms the image before them: Pan’s Temple on that bedrock in front of the Gates of Hades.  It becomes the Church of God built on a firm bedrock foundation, against which Hell itself cannot prevail. 

Roman Catholics have always insisted that it is the person of Peter, the role he plays in the Church, that is the foundation stone Jesus refers to.  For them, it is the Roman Papacy, an institution that over the centuries grew from Peter being the first bishop of Rome to a greater and greater primacy with monarchical overtones. Predictably, Protestants have always said the “Rock” at issue is faith alone, apart from works—Peter’s confession of Jesus as Son of God.   The Eastern Orthodox generally say that the Rock is divine revelation (“flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my Father in Heaven”). 

 

Jesus follows this with an affirmation of Church authority (“what you bind on earth, God will bind, what you loose, God will loose”) and ultimate success (“the gates of Hell shall not prevail against you”).  This leads most modern scholars from all these traditions to agree that the story in Matthew is indeed about the leading role of Peter in the early Church rather than about later papal presumptions, salvation through faith alone, or Eastern Christian mysticism.  

Within three decades of Jesus’ death, Christians were divided between Jewish congregations who saw James the Brother of Jesus as the heir to Jesus as leader, and gentile congregations who saw this in Paul, the missionary who had converted them. Matthew’s Gospel takes as leader Peter, the “compromise candidate” who was a companion of Jesus but who also supported the Gentile mission.

 “You are Rock.”  “Rocky” is more like it: Peter is impetuous, and usually follows his over-the-top extremes of devotion by abject failure.   In Mark, immediately after the confession of Peter, Jesus does not give him the keys to the kingdom, but rather criticizes him for trying to talk him out of his dangerous trip to Jerusalem: “Get behind me, Satan!”  (Mark 8:27-30; 31-33).   We read a couple of weeks ago of Peter’s silly misunderstanding of the Transfiguration.  Last week, we saw him walk for a couple of seconds on water through faith and then immediately, faith faltering, sinking into the waves.  During Holy Week, we see him sleeping through Jesus' prayers at Gethsemane, and then denying Jesus three times. 

 

But finally, after the risen Jesus has appeared to the women, Peter is the first male disciple (at that misogynistic time, the first legally acceptable witness) to see him.  One of the earliest fragments of early Christian tradition is preserved in St. Paul’s formulaic recitation, written just 25 years after the crucifixion, “For I passed on to you what was first passed on to me, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared, first to Cephas and the Twelve, . . . then to James and the apostles” (1 Cor. 15: 3-7).

 

All of us are like Simon standing with Jesus in front of the Temple of Pan.  We may be in awe and fear of what we see.  But what we see in front of us is not all there is.  Jesus is asking us, even today, “Who do people say I am? And who do you say I am?”  He offers us new names and the true identities for which we were created, but far from which we have wandered.  Listen that voice our heart, he says, promising victory against evil, confusion, disorder, and death itself. 

 

Faith is trust in unseen truth, and looks beyond the visible, beyond the temptations and distractions around us, beyond the Temple of Pan, the Gates of Hell, and our messed up lives.  Faith allows us to look at the wickedness and hatred all around and say, “This is not my circus, not my monkeys!”  Faith looks even beyond suffering and Death.  If we rely on our Rock, and build upon the firm foundation of God speaking truth in our hearts, then our unstable, unsteady selves, our “rocky” selves, will be transformed.  And together, as a beloved community in Him, we will be unstoppable in charging up the rocky slope, breaking down the gates of Hell and Death, and changing ourselves and the world.   

 

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

 

The Sin of Racism (Midweek Message)

 

The Sin of Racism

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

August 19, 2020

(updated from a posting in 2017)

 

“Take away from me the voice of your songs

I will not listen to the melody of your harps.

But let justice roll down like waters,

And righteousness like an everflowing stream” (Amos 5:23-24).

 

The Church teaches clearly that racism is sin.  White supremacy is sin.  Hatred of Jews and of foreigners is sin.  Oppression of women is sin.  Hatred of gays and oppression of them is sin.  Privilege and unfair discrimination are sin.  In recent years, we have heard voices in our nation that have said somehow that these are not sin, but something needed to preserve the nation.  We have heard some say, while reluctantly confessing racism is wrong, that fighting against it is equally wrong. 

 

When we talk about things that are controversial or that trigger emotions, it is all the more important to be very clear in our use of language.  People often confuse and conflate “prejudice,” “discrimination,” and “racism,” but these words refer to very distinct, though related ideas.   “Prejudice” is a judgment or opinion about others made before all the facts are known, often unfairly applying stereotypes or caricatures of groups to individuals based on some label or group identity.    “Discrimination” simply means making a distinction, but in this context means making an unfair distinction, usually an action depriving a person of their commonly held human or civil rights.  “Racism” is the systematic oppression or exclusion of one group of people based on race, national origin, or skin color.  It is when those who enjoy a position of dominance use their power to discriminate on the basis of their prejudices. 

 

Imagine a weak person surrounded by strong bullies: he is on the ground on his back; they are all standing and kicking him.  This person, in desperation and self-defense, tries to use his feet to get the people around off of him.  Both the bullies and the person on his back are kicking.  But they are not doing the same thing at all, and there is no moral equivalence between them.   The difference is that one is from a position of privilege or power and is aimed at building or continuing oppression.  The other is from a position of the downtrodden, and simply seeks to escape oppression.   This does not mean that the downtrodden are free to practice violence.  As Jesus taught, those who live by the sword often die by the sword.  But it does means simply that we must not say it is the same as violence of the oppressor. 

 

This is why talking about “reverse racism” or equating the intentional violence of white supremacists and anti-Semites with efforts to resist such violence is so wrong.   The inability to see the difference is a mark of enjoying privilege and of having the system of oppression working on your side.  If a person sees a “Black Lives Matter” sign and sees it not as a statement that “Black lives matter too!” but rather as a “White lives don’t matter,” it is clear they are blinded by their privilege.  Again, these things are sins. 

 

Last Sunday’s Gospel lesson includes Jesus’ revolutionary teaching that defilement and impurity does not stem from what we eat or drink (clear group identifiers in his culture), but from what we say and how we act.  “It is what comes out of the mouth that defiles, not what goes into it.” It also tells a story of Jesus trying to exclude a woman from blessing because she was not of the chosen people.  She gently reminds Jesus that dogs under the table, though excluded from the meal, get to lick up the crumbs fallen to the floor.  He hears her, marvels at her trust and faith, and then welcomes her to the banquet by healing her daughter. 

 

Jesus calls us to follow him in opening our hearts to those different from us, listening to them, and serving them.  There was nothing that made him quite so upset as the hypocrisy of people claiming righteousness, justice, and purity even as they ground others into the dirt.  He calls us to non-violently struggle against unfairness and crushing people under foot to maintain or reclaim our own group’s advantage.  

 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+

 

A Spirituality of Truth (midweek)

 

A Spirituality of Truth -- Florence Nightingale

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

August 12, 2020

 

In the Episcopal Church, today is the Commemoration of  Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing, statistician, prophetic advocate for women’s rights, and mystic.  She died on August 13, 1910, but since our saints’ kalendar already remembers Jeremy Taylor that day, we honor her today.    

 

She was born in Florence Italy to wealthy English parents, who named her for the city of her birth.  Before her, “Florence” was not a name given to women in English.  She was raised Unitarian, but after several deep religious experiences where she said she “heard the voice of God,” she became an Anglican, though she continued to have doubts and reservations about part of the Creed until her death.  She also pursued a career outside of the home (unusual for middle class and noble women of that era) as a nurse, inspired by women religious “deaconesses” in the German Lutheran tradition. 

 

Her experiences as a field nurse during the Crimean war (1853-56), where most fatalities came not from battlefield deaths, but from infections transmitted in the field hospitals where the wounded were taken, led her to campaign for medical reform throughout the U.K.  These included building an infrastructure supporting hygienic and effective treatment, with provisions for uncontaminated food and water, regular cleaning of bedding, adequate nurse-calling mechanisms to boost nurse visits while reducing needless and exhausting walking and stair-climbing, pre- and in-service training of nursing staff, as well as—especially noteworthy to us now in the era of Covid-19—regular  use of facial masks and hand-washing to reduce cross-contamination. 

 

She gave speeches and seminars throughout the U.K. using graphic displays of the statistics and science behind the practices she advocated.  For her, spirituality supported science and science supported spirituality, because all true spirituality was based in considered truth, not wishful thinking.  Her speeches are the among the first recorded use of pie charts and bar graphs.  Reducing the death rate in Crimean war field hospitals from 42% to 2%,  she became such a beloved public figure that “Florence” forever after has been a commonly used name for women in English. 

 

Some object to her inclusion in the sanctorale because of her “heretical rejection” of some clauses of the Creed.  I believe her inclusion is right and just, since it underscores that holiness is not something bestowed by the opinions one holds, but rather, by our willingness to follow the voice of God speaking to our hearts and serve others. 

 

She was in the vanguard of promoting women’s rights, something reflected in letters she wrote in 1851: 

 

“Women don’t consider themselves as human beings at all.  There is absolutely no God, no country, no duty to them at all, except family…  I have known a good deal of convents.  And, of course, everyone has talked of the petty tyrannies supposed to be exercised there.  But I know nothing like the petty grinding tyranny of a good English family.”

 

“What I complain of the Evangelical party for, is the degree to which they have raised claims upon women of ‘Family’—the idol they have made of it.” 

 

She applied in 1852 this last criticism not only to the Evangelical party, but to the larger Church as well:

 

“The Church of England has for men bishoprics, archbishoprics, and a little work…   For women, she has—what?  I had no taste for theological discoveries.  I would have given my head, my hand, my heart.  She would not have them.  She did not know what to do with them.  She told me to go back and do crochet in my mother’s drawing room:  or, if I were tired of that, to marry and look well at the  head of my husband’s table.  You may go to Sunday School if you like,  she said.  But she gave me no training even for that.  She gave me neither work to do for her, nor education for it.” 

 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+   

 

Silence in the Heart of God (Proper 14A)

 

Stillness in the Heart of God

Proper 14A 

Homily delivered at

Trinity Parish Church, Ashland OR

By the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

8 a.m. Said Mass on the Labyrinth;

10 a.m. Said Mass with sung antiphons live-streamed from the Chancel

1 Kings 19:9-18; Psalm 85:8-13; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

 

One of my favorite Bible stories as a boy was the story in 1 Kings 18 about Elijah’s conflict with Ba’al worshipers. He challenges Ba’al’s priests to a great “Who hears our prayers?” contest on Mount Carmel.   He dares them to go face to face with him and build competing altars:  whichever God sends fire from heaven and consumes the sacrifice, he is the true God.  The Ba’al worshippers, favorites of King, Queen, and all the rich and powerful, build theirs, put all sorts of dry tinder around it, and begin praying.  Their noisy, self-flagellating prayers lead to mere silence.  “Is your God sleeping?” taunts Elijah, “or perhaps gone to the restroom?”  The priests of Ba’al pray all the louder: again, nothing.  Then Elijah builds his altar, sacrifices a bull, and even pours water all over the wood. He prays, “Show ‘em what’s what, Lord!”  His prayer is immediately answered by a flash of lightning and fire from heaven that consumes his sacrifice.  Elijah wins, and the outraged crowd of spectators chase and kill the priests of Ba’al. 

 

I think I liked the story so much because it was dramatic, at points funny, and had all the color of a Hollywood Western.  Elijah beats the priests of Ba’al just like Sherriff Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday beat the Clantons and McLauries at the O.K. Corral.  Law prevails; the bullies are defeated.  Heady stuff for an 8 year old boy.  

 

It was only later, when I was 10 or so, that I learned the sequel to the Mt. Carmel story, today’s Hebrew Scriptures lesson.  And I was an adult before I learned that unlike in the film, the OK Corral did not solve anything, but only deepened and enraged the conflict in Tombstone.  

 

In the Elijah story, Ahab and Jezebel retaliate for the murder of their priests, sending soldiers to massacre the prophets of YHWH, and Elijah flees for his life.  He hides in a cave on Mt. Horeb or Sinai, where Moses had received the Law.   And there, in one last great epiphany before he prepares to end his ministry and turn it over to Elisha, he learns that maybe he had misunderstood things on Mt. Carmel. 

 

Archaeological digs have turned up dozens of small representations of Ba’al and his bedmate Asherah, as well as texts with prayers and liturgies from the Ba’al cult.  The picture we get from these looks strangely contemporary and familiar. Ba’al was a god of wealth, power, and pleasure.  He was seen as backing the winners and abandoning losers.  With Ba’al on your side, you could treat subordinates with impunity, cheat those with whom you did business, take advantage of the poor and downtrodden, treat the objects of your sexual desire as mere things to be graded and scored, use bullying and force to have your way with others, with conspicuous consumption as a sign of your social rank bestowed by the gods.  You could enjoy unjust privilege with impunity and not a whiff of shame or guilt.  Ba’al devotees were “quality,” winners,” and the “best, smartest, and strongest” of all.  Ba’al is described as a thrower of lightning and thunder, an earth shaker, and source of all great wealth.  For his enemies, he sent woes such as whirlwinds and wild fires.  His name, Ba’al, means “master” or “husband,” and so he was often confused and conflated with YHWH, whose regular use name was Adonai, or “Lord” or “master.” 

 

In contrast, YHWH is the God of all, not just the powerful.  YHWH takes care of the widow and orphan, the alien and sojourner, and raises the poor from the ashes.   YHWH was seen as the source of blessing and prosperity as well as woe, but this was not based on partisanship or tribe.  Things that displease YHWH included oppressing the poor, cheating, dissembling, and lying, and malice against the powerless.  YHWH demanded trust and ethical behavior from his people, and ethics meant first and foremost fairness, honesty, compassion, and integrity.  And these things were constraints upon how one enjoyed the blessings, how one took one’s pleasure.     

 

Elijah does not want anyone to confuse Canaan’s petty fertility fetish, enabler of powerful, rich, and lustful men, with the Holy One of Israel, who demands justice and compassion from all.  His name means YHWH is my God. 

 

On Mt. Carmel, Elijah dares his opponents to a contest to see who is the true giver of blessing—YHWH or Ba’al.  The flash, fire, and fury vindicates Elijah and he massacres the priests of Ba’al.  But perhaps as satisfying as this story is as a Western, it does not end here.  Elijah’s opponents, the ones with power and might they say were bestowed by Ba’al, turn the tables.  Elijah learns, as Jesus later teaches, that those who live by the sword die by the sword.   Apparently, all that fury and fire on Carmel didn’t really give Elijah what he needed to defeat the great bully god. 

 

The text in Hebrew of this story is subtle in its use of verbal forms, and when you render these in English it becomes clear that the point of this story is YHWH and Ba’al are not at all alike.

 

“A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crushing the rocks, before Yahweh, but Yahweh was no longer in the whirlwind.  Then an earthquake, but Yahweh was no longer in the earthquake.  And then a fire, but God was no longer in the fire.  Finally, there was a still breeze, and the sound of sheer silence.  And when Elijah heard this, “he hid his face in his cloak” because he knew Yahweh was now present. 

 

The power and love of God are not found in God’s ability to give us what we want.  God is not a supporter of privilege and abuse of the down-trodden.  God is not in the flash, the fire, and fury.  We sully God by putting God on par with the petty idols of all those about us. 

 

“God blesses us materially because we do what’s right; the poor and marginalized deserve their lot because they have not—this is the great heresy of the “Prosperity Gospel” taught in many of America’s evangelical churches today.  It is the great error behind white supremacy, the doctrine of discovery and disinheriting first nations, and patriarchy.  It is, quite simply, Ba’al worship, idolatry.  

 

God, however, is in utter silence, not the sound and fury.  Listening to silence, contemplating quietness, waiting for subtlety—these are the hallmarks of a life devoted to pursuit of the spirit.  Noise and flash might on occasion happen, but usually God speaks to us in the silence of our stumbling hearts, seeking coherent expression and understanding, in what the King James Bible calls “the still, small voice.” 

 

St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, “In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you…  Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.”

Today’s Epistle says the justice that comes from trusting God is not far away, high in the heaven or low in the abyss, but is at hand, in our very heart.  Today’s Gospel says the flash and awe of seeing Jesus walking on the stormy sea are not enough to keep us on top of the waves: they do not drive out the fear that sinks Peter.  To walk, we must fully trust Jesus.  Trust comes in moments of silent reflection, not in noise and fury. 

 

May we learn to sit in silence.  May we learn in that silence to hear the voice of the God who is love itself.  May we cast away our idols and Ba’als with their flash and fury.  Amen. 

 

Practice Resurrection (midweek message)

 

Practice Resurrection

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

August 5, 2020

 

In honor of the 86^th birthday of Wendell Berry today, I share here one of his poems, a favorite of mine.    

 

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

 

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

 

“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from The Country of Marriage, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1973. Also published by Counterpoint Press in The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1999; The Mad Farmer Poems, 2008; New Collected Poems, 2012.

 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+