Sunday, May 29, 2016

Limping About the Altar

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May 29, 2016
1 Kings 18:20-39

Ahab sent to all the Israelites, and assembled the prophets at Mount Carmel. 21 Elijah then came near to all the people, and said, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” The people did not answer him a word. 22 Then Elijah said to the people, “I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets number four hundred fifty. 23 Let two bulls be given to us; let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it; I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. 24 Then you call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord; the god who answers by fire is indeed God.”

All the people answered, “Well spoken!” 25 Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many; then call on the name of your god, but put no fire to it.” 26 So they took the bull that was given them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, crying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no answer. They limped about the altar that they had made. 27 At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” 28 Then they cried aloud and, as was their custom, they cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed out over them. 29 As midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice, no answer, and no response.

30 Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come closer to me”; and all the people came closer to him. First he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down; 31 Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came, saying, “Israel shall be your name”; 32 with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord. Then he made a trench around the altar, large enough to contain two measures of seed. 33 Next he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood. He said, “Fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood.” 34 Then he said, “Do it a second time”; and they did it a second time. Again he said, “Do it a third time”; and they did it a third time, 35 so that the water ran all around the altar, and filled the trench also with water.

36 At the time of the offering of the oblation, the prophet Elijah came near and said, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. 37 Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” 38 Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench. 39 When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.”



Sermon: “Limping About the Altar”

I wish I could go back in time to that day: the day Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal.

Because, while there are some things he got really right that day, there are some things he also got really wrong.

The demand for a sign was a bit showy, truth be told, but if he’d have let God do what God does and leave it at that, it might have been better.  Instead, he challenged those 450 prophets of Baal to a fiery, dramatic showdown. 

They brought their A-game.  They did all that their god, the Canaanite god of fertility, demanded.  That god wanted blood, so they bled.  Their oblation, or offering, was self-mutilation.  So when our text says they were “limping about the altar” it was no exaggeration.  They were in pain, desperate for their god to show up.
Here’s where I wish Elijah had been less of a jerk.  He saw their pain and limping and jeered a slew of snarky attacks:
“Speak up! Maybe your god is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.”

Elijah reveled in the silence of that god and the pain of his worshippers.  This was wrong.

Then, he did something right.  He had the altar set for Yahweh, with 12 stones representing the 12 tribes of Israel.  And rather than soaking that altar in human blood, he soaked it with water.  There’s a beautiful connection with baptism we can’t help but notice here.  He called to Yahweh not through life-taking blood, but through life-giving water.  He prayed for God to answer and “turn the hearts of these people back.”  And God did.  That holy fire burned up the saturated wood, and the story goes that, “when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, ‘The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.’”

Elijah did something right.  And then he did something very, very wrong.

The next verse, conveniently left out of our lectionary reading says he had every last one of those 450 prophets of Baal killed.  Never mind that they were part of all those people who said the Lord is God in the end.  He let the fire and show and drama get the best of him, the blood lust, and gave human blood to the God who did not demand it, thus seeming a lot more like a Baal worshipper in that moment. 
I’ve pondered this choice of his a lot this week.  Why would he do such a thing?  Why did he ask those people to choose Yahweh or Baal but end up choosing Baal’s violent ways himself?  And why was he still threatened by those Baal prophets after Yahweh had silenced them with fire? And then, an answer emerged.  Perhaps not the answer, but an answer, nonetheless.  Why do any of us feel threatened by another?

Usually that threat is when something they do or say hits too close to home.  “They limped about the altar they had made.”  I think these prophets reminded Elijah of his own limping, his own suspicions that God wanted blood from him, that Yahweh required suffering as a prerequisite to faith.  (After all, he was living through a terrible drought and a bitterly divided kingdom.)  I think those Baal prophets reminded Elijah of his own need for blood, his hatred and anger and rage and hunger, and so he silenced them.

Now, before we get too high-and-mighty and think we’d never do the same, we should pause and reflect.  How are we limping about the altar, seeking to worship God through our wounds?  How do we crave revenge and retaliation against people who hurt us, often speaking as if we’re doing it on God’s behalf?  How do we repeat past hurts again and again, opening the wounds anew with bitter words or indifferent silences?  How do we make faith a status we earn through our piety, our pain and our self-righteousness?  These are not easy questions.  Which is perhaps why Elijah didn’t bother to ask them, but acted on violent instinct instead.

Do we worship Baal, a god who demands blood in greater and greater amounts, or do we worship the God who blesses through overflowing, drenching waters of grace?  This question can’t really be answered with simple words.  It answers itself in how we live: whether we limp about the altar, making our relationship with God one of toil and pain, or joyfully pray to the God who we trust will answer, in whatever way God chooses to do that. 

Whether we hold on to anger and past hurt, or release them to the God who has long-ago forgiven. 

Whether we believe that people can never be changed for the better or believe that, with our loving God, change is always possible. 

Whether we spend every waking moment of our days in anxiety and worry, fretting about what we cannot control, or whether we try our best, and trust that this is enough for God.

As I read this text again and again this week, a favorite poem kept floating to the surface of my memory.  For me it captures what faith is meant to be, when it’s not an exercise in harming ourselves or others to get God’s attention.  It’s called Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


God does not demand blood or perfection, friends.  Neither should we.  God announces our place in the family of things – in sun and rain, in prairies and trees, in wild geese and despair shared, and of course, in love.   Amen.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

From Babel to Pentecost

May 15, 2016 - Pentecost

Genesis 11:1-9
 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Acts 2:1-13
1When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
5Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”


Sermon: “From Babel to Pentecost”
It was a cool, winter’s evening in July.  Winter because I was in the Southern Hemisphere.  South Africa, to be exact.  I was there for three weeks as part of a reconciliation project with Northern Irish Catholic and Protestant teenagers.  We spent 10 months building relationships, working on tearing down the walls between their communities, and then we went to South Africa, to learn that Northern Ireland isn’t the only conflicted space.  We heard their stories, and invited those teenagers to share their own.  And slowly, painfully, courageously, peace was born.

On that chilly, winter evening, I sat outside at the camp where we were staying, before a roaring campfire. Two Zulu women sat there as well, having a very animated conversation in a series of guttural sounds and clicks.  I stared into the glowing embers, doodled in my little notebook, and tried to understand them.  I couldn’t.  But then, all of a sudden, a familiar word emerged: “boyfriend.”  They used the English term.  And then, a few minutes later, another familiar word peppered their language, “computer.”  How bizarre and yet, comforting, it was to recognize a couple of words.  And I’d imagine, it was comforting for them to speak in their native tongue.
This is something we native English speakers don’t often think about.  You see, our language is the dominant language of the empire, like Aramaic or Greek in New Testament times.  We think nothing of the fact that we don’t need to learn another language to communicate with most of the world – it’s just an assumed truth that most people will speak our language.  And we conveniently forget the historical realities of conquest that have led to our language becoming the dominant one in the world. 

But language is never an accident: the stories of Babel and Pentecost remind us of that.  We begin with the Babel story, where humanity seeks to make a name for itself, building a tower into the heavens, speaking one language, and using that language for power.  God intervenes, confusing their speech, scattering humanity over the face of the earth.     

And in Pentecost, the sister tale to Babel, we find that God brings confusion once more, having people speak in other languages, and yet hear in their own native tongue, through the power of the fiery Spirit.   
As Catherine and Justo Gonzáles assert[1], “In Babel, God intervenes to confuse the unity of a rebellious humanity. In Pentecost, God's intervention confuses the unities that empire has built. What is new about Pentecost is not that they all speak the same tongue. They do not. What is new about Pentecost is that God blesses every language on earth as a means for divine revelation, and makes communication possible even while preserving the integrity of languages and cultures.”

The Holy Spirit brings the blessing of chaos and confusion.  And it’s really interesting to notice who recognizes that as a blessing.  Again, Justo and Catherine say,

“The miracle that is taking place is that God is taking all these people, whose native tongues and native cultures make them outsiders, and bringing them inside, making them insiders. They, the Medes, the Elamites, and the Phrygians, can understand that something extraordinary is taking place. But those who are already insiders, those who expect to hear their own language, those who are already at home, those who expect to understand, can do nothing but sneer.”

The empire builders, who might have been the ones to think a tower into the heavens to challenge God was a good idea, do not find Pentecost to be a blessing.  The Spirit doesn’t bring order.  She doesn’t baptize their institutions with authority, or keep those on the margins in their place.  The Holy Spirit makes everyone hear in their own language, something those who have had to speak a different language with their heart and their lips understand well.

Sometimes, the story of Babel is seen as God’s curse upon humanity, that God feared people’s potential if they all spoke the same language, and so limited them with a diversity of languages.  This makes one fatal assumption, of course: that God fears us, or needs to.  God doesn’t.  Babel was not a curse.  A curse would have been God taking out those tower engineers.  No, God didn’t “take them out;” God sent them out, with many languages.  And soon afterwards, God made a covenant with Abraham to bless all peoples of the earth. 

The blessing at Babel was fulfilled in the blessed language of Pentecost.  The foreigners and outsiders were baptized with fire, as were the powerful and insiders.  The former immediately were amazed and astonished, trying to figure out what it all meant.  The latter scoffed and labeled the whole event as some sort of drunken accident.  And their need to explain everything in their carefully constructed boxes means they missed it all.
I wonder what fresh work of the Holy Spirit we might miss because we think we already understand it all?  I wonder if our very language limits our ability to hear the Word of God with fresh ears and fiery hearts?

If we want Pentecost to be more than a nice fairy tale and a fun excuse to wear red, we will have to change our ways of empire.  We will have to pay attention to those who speak a different language from us, and understand that this is because of God’s blessing. 

We will have to stop our hyper-organized, overly-rational ways long enough to just sit by a roaring fire, and let the Spirit enflame our hearts with foreign words. 

We will have to stop that age-old exercise of making a name for ourselves through building our own little towers of achievement, and instead scatter ourselves into all the forgotten corners of our community and this world, and listen, not just speak. 

The Spirit who birthed the church at Pentecost is still on the loose, leaving holy, empire-challenging confusion in Her wake.  Are we listening to those who speak in new ways, or are we too busy sneering?  Are we speaking with courage, or are we too busy politely playing it safe?  Are we working with those on the margins of the empires of our time, or are we too busy tending to our old towers of pride? 

It really is one or the other, friends.  Babel or Pentecost.  Pretending we all speak the same language, even when that’s not good for us, or opening ourselves to the Spirit who speaks equally to and through us all.  Seeing diversity as a threat or the intended blessing of God.  Leaving when we don’t understand, or sitting by the fire patiently, straining to grasp even one word of connection.  Babel or Pentecost. 
Which will we choose?
Amen.



[1] González, Justo L., and Catherine G. González, "Babel and Empire: Pentecost and Empire, Preaching on Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-12," Journal for Preachers, 1993.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

A Costly Freedom

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May 8, 2016 - Seventh Sunday of Easter
Sermon: “A Costly Freedom”

Acts 16:16-34
16One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. 17While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation." 18She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, "I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And it came out that very hour.
19But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. 20When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, "These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews 21and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe." 22The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. 23After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. 24Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
25About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 26Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened. 27When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. 28But Paul shouted in a loud voice, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here." 29The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30Then he brought them outside and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" 31They answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." 32They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. 34He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.


Sermon: “A Costly Freedom”
I once took part in an accidental exorcism.  I fear this sentence needs some explaining!

I spent one of my summers in seminary doing Clinical Pastoral Education at Grady Hospital, a large inner-city facility in Atlanta.  As part of this training, we seminary students visited folks throughout the hospital, prayed with families at the loss of a loved one, accompanied doctors to share that sad news, and provided pastoral care to hospital staff.  On one of my first days there, I was called to visit a man who wanted prayer.  He was recovering from gallbladder surgery. 

From the moment I entered his room, this rather imposing fellow began preaching to me.  He knew his Bible.  He wanted to walk the halls, so we did, and he quoted scripture loudly and boldly with each step.  Another patient overheard us talking, and requested for us to go see him, so we did. 

We entered the room to pray, and when I closed my eyes, my new preacher friend began loudly saying, “Evil spirits enter by the feet, come out now in the naaame of Jeeeesus!” and running his hands over the man’s body.  I didn’t really know what to do.  I mean, we Presbyterians get uncomfortable with clapping sometimes!  This was way out of my comfort zone.  I just stood there, a bit shocked, and soon enough, the impromptu exorcism was over.  The patient in the bed was crying quietly, but looked somehow at peace.  My new preacher friend patient said sternly to him, “You know you have to live differently now, right?”  He nodded.  And that was that.  The accidental exorcism.

I went back to the chaplain’s lounge in a daze, wondering if I might somehow become known as the exorcism chaplain.  My colleagues noticed my bizarre disposition and asked what was up.  I told them, and most looked pretty shocked.  Not Winston, though.  Winston was a pastor from Jamaica.  He just nodded and said, “Ah yes, that’s no big deal.  Happens all the time. In Kingston, every Thursday is exorcism day!”

Exorcism is not often part of the faith experience of many American Christians.  We are nothing if not rational, and often reject the idea of possession because we do not have a scientific explanation for it.

But scripture is full of stories of exorcisms.  In fact, for Jesus, it seemed “exorcism day” was any day ending in y!  And we have something of an accidental exorcism in our Acts reading this morning.  A slave girl – lowest of the low because she was a child, she was a slave, and she was a she – was possessed.  She was given an unnatural talent for divination, or fortune telling.  Which made her a profitable slave to own.  Until she started following Paul and Silas around and shouting, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation!”

This annoyed Paul.  I do wonder why, really.  Because her message seemed to bolster their claims.  She wasn’t arguing with them; she was a walking commercial!  Who knows why Paul got so irritated.  Perhaps the “thorn in his side,” a mysterious ailment he often referred to, made him extra grumpy that day.  Perhaps he just got tired of the noise.  Who knows, but finally, impulsively it would seem, he had himself an accidental exorcism. 

The unnamed young girl was free from that spirit.  Pastor Daniel Rakotojoelinandrasana from Madagascar raises an important point[1] here, writing: The text does not say whether the slave girl was given her freedom by her owners, nor does it say whether the other prisoners were liberated. Perhaps not. But genuine liberation took place here in the power of the Spirit, and full liberation remains the ultimate goal of the gospel according to Jesus himself. Jesus and his Spirit have come to set all people free from any forms of bondage.

She was free in spirit, but not necessarily in body.  And those slave owners who had bought their timeshares on her fortune telling tricks were none-too-pleased that she’d lost her special talent.  They dragged Paul and Silas before the authorities and in that carefully-crafted dancing around the issue that often happened (and happens still) with slavery, they said this: "These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe."

See what they did there?  They didn’t name the real issue (that they lost out on their income from a slave).  Instead they first called it a civil disturbance.  Then they drew attention to the ethnicity of these troublemakers – Jews.  Which is, of course, racism. Then they made clear that these Jews were not following Roman (their) customs.  They couldn’t have drawn the lines between us-and-them more clearly if they were using red spray paint! 
Funny isn’t it, how we human beings, especially those in power, don’t say what we really mean.  We often don’t name our motivations for things, especially when money is involved.  We don’t name the oppression we’re complicit in.  Instead, we cry for “order” and threaten those who disturb our understanding of it.  It often works.  Paul and Silas had their freedom taken from them for setting a slave girl free of her demons. 

It was a costly freedom: it cost those slave owners their unjust income; it cost Paul and Silas their freedom, for a little while anyway.  Freedom and liberation always come at a cost –Jesus certainly knew that. 

And we all know that some things are worth the cost.  We may not have all experienced exorcisms – accidental or not – but we know what it is to be possessed by something that is not of God.  That spirit might be called jealousy. It might be pride, or greed, or insecurity.  It might be loneliness, or grief, or regret that is especially poignant on this Mother’s Day.  We all need to be set free from something.  And Jesus, who made every day ‘exorcism day’ is still about that important work of liberating this world from all that holds us captive, no matter what the cost.

It might come when we least expect it; I have a feeling exorcisms do.  But that sort of wholeness is on its way.  The God who made a slave girl free, putting her person before a profit, is still at work. 

Trust me, from my experience at Grady Hospital, I can say there’s nothing comfortable about an exorcism.  It’s a messy business: shouting, tears, way more physical touch than we might be comfortable with.  But the work of liberation, of being freed by God from all that holds us captive, should never be comfortable.  Chains to the past must be broken.  Motivations of greed must be exposed.  And we, all of us, must become a new creation, with God’s help, until no child knows slavery, until we are set free from the need for power that threatens us all.  Until we feel God’s holy change in us, and hear God’s voice speaking to us, very simply saying, “You know you have to live differently now, right?”
Alleluia!  Amen.


[1] Rakotojoelinandrasana, Daniel, "The Gospel in Adversity: Reading Acts 16:16-34 in African   Context," Word & World, 2001.