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 and 10 a.m.
Sung Mass
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. I always added the detail in my
mind that they doused the wood with way too much charcoal lighting fluid as
well, like my Dad starting a barbecue.
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 sounds strangely contemporary and familiar. One scholar summarizes it thus:
“The supreme good, the good life, consists in satisfaction of human material needs. This is all we ask of the gods, and this is all they can give us. They bless us in full when we they satisfy these needs not only in the minimum necessary for survival, but in abundance, so that we enjoy not only the simple life, but also the material comforts of life. We ask of the gods more than meat and drink; we ask wealth, to that degree which will enable a man to purchase every satisfaction which he craves. The highest of pleasures is the pleasure of sex: life offers nothing finer, nothing which raises a man to the level of the divine. Consequently, the difference of the sexes exists only that the male may have this supreme satisfaction; woman is his possession, and her noblest function is to satisfy his sexual appetite. When she does this, she is a goddess; otherwise, she is a high-grade domestic animal, a drudge, not fully a human being. Society exists, under the patronage of the gods, to create the conditions in which this good life may be attained. We must have law, order, restraint, but only to that degree which will prevent human crime from corrupting the good life of the group; the important thing is that law and government should protect wealth, material goods, and should make it possible for every man, within the limits of his capacity, to enjoy himself as he desires. But the power which puts these good things within a man’s reach should not be restrained, and law and order should not protect the weak; for ultimately it is power that makes the good life possible. Such is the life of the gods, and such, when the gods are well disposed, is the life they offer to men.” (John L. McKenzie, SJ, The Two Edged Sword: And Interpretation of the Old Testament [Milwaukee: Bruce, 1956], p. 54).
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, perhaps even have gold-plating
on your bathroom fixtures. 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, including big families and a lively economy. 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.”
But YHWH was the God of all, not
just the powerful. YHWH took care of the
widow and orphan, the alien and sojourner, and raised the poor from the
ashes. YHWH was also seen as the source
of blessing and prosperity as well as woe, but this was not based on
partisanship or support of privilege.
Things that displease YHWH included oppressing the poor, cheating others,
dissembling and lying, and practicing 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 and support of the powerful,
the rich, and the lustful, with the Holy One of Israel, who demands justice and
compassion from all.
On Mt. Carmel, Elijah dares his
opponents to a contest to see whether it is YHWH or Ba’al who, after all, is
the true giver of blessing. 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 was bestowed
by their god, 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 the Lord, but the Lord was no longer in the whirlwind. Then an earthquake, but the Lord 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 that this is where God
was.
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 him on par with the petty idols of all those about us.
photo credit: The Christian Century
“God blesses us materially when we
do what’s right and curses us materially when we do not”—this is the great
heresy of the “Prosperity Gospel” taught in many of America’s evangelical
churches today. It is, simply, Ba’al
worship, idolatry. Look at those white
supremacists in Charlottesville VA this week: many say they are Christian even
as they bully others, chant neo-Nazi slogans, and shout that they want their
(!) country returned (!) to them. Many white
Christians in the last election voted for a candidate who models bullying
behavior toward women, the poor, and aliens, boasts his wealth as a sign of his
competence to rule, and declares without a whiff of irony that he has nothing of
which he should repent, confess, or regret.
In the degree that they support
him because of these misdoings rather despite them, they fall down at the altar
of Ba’al trying to “make America great (white?) again.”
But God 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 true 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 translates as “a 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. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.”
As 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. God does not favor one race or nation over another. As the Gospel says, the flash and awe of seeing Jesus
walking on the stormy sea is not enough to keep us on top of the waves. Flash and awe 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 worship of Ba’al with his flash and fury. Amen.
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