The 10th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14B)
August 13, 2006
Texts: 1 Kings 19:4-8, John 6:35, 41-51
Pastor Harold Nilsson
Since Thursday we have another reason to be afraid. Once again a threat to air travel has raised the anxiety level around the world. The plot revealed in London challenged any complacency about security we may have settled into. Now hair gel and toothpaste are suspect.
Historians have talked about our “national philosophy of optimism.” Americans are encouraged, even programmed to be optimistic, to think positively, to eliminate the negative, to believe that we can overcome every obstacle if we put our minds to it, that our way is predestined to win. Our officially optimistic society insists that we always be hopeful—even as the lead stories on every newscast seem designed to make us fearful—of criminals in our neighborhood, of public officials, of the weather, and now again of those who sit next to us on airplanes. Fear wins—at least much of the time, doesn’t it? Perhaps fear isn’t at the center of our consciousness; it’s not paralyzing us. Like the air travelers interviewed who dealt with the newest inconveniences and went on with their trips. But perhaps in quiet moments, when our guard is down, in a sleepless moment the middle of the night, the hidden fear of what is happening around us and to us comes out of hiding. And we can’t easily push it back and return to sleep.
After talking with you a couple of weeks ago about fear and faith in the wake of the war between Israel and the Hezbollah, I vowed to myself that I would leave that topic alone for the rest of these Sundays that I’m before you. But I find that I can’t. Over the years that I’ve been privileged to be in the ordained ministry I have believed preaching to be a conversation between the ancient texts and events of the day, and in that conversation the gospel will emerge. Fear of a new assault using airplanes and the effect that would have on the world is the major event that we bring to the texts this weekend, looking for a word from God. So once again let’s try to listen for that word.
One of the readings is an excerpt of a story about Elijah. He lived more than 800 years before Jesus. In our reading you get just a hint that Elijah’s depressed: he wants to die. There’s more to it. Elijah is a prophet, one who speaks for God. And what he says is that the Northern Kingdom, Israel, will be safe and thrive only if it worships Yahweh, the God of Israel. But the king at the time, Ahab by name, has married a woman from the Lebanese coast where some of the heaviest destruction of the current war has taken place. Jezebel is from Sidon. She is a follower Baal, the Canaanite storm god. Her husband, in the interest of strengthening his interfaith marriage, builds a Baal worship site in their capital town of Samaria. Elijah is incensed. (In his mind there was no place for interfaith dialogue.)
The consequence of the king’s failure to uphold the exclusive worship of Yahweh will be drought and famine in the land, said Elijah. And there was. Severe drought. Widespread famine. To convince the king and the people of Baal’s impotence and Yahweh’s might, Elijah proposes a rain-making contest on top of Mt. Carmel, just above the modern-day city of Haifa. You may recall the contest. Four hundred fifty prophets of Baal dance around an altar all day long pleading for rain while Elijah stands off at the side making cynical comments. No rain came. Then Elijah pours water on his altar and the sacrifice on it, and prays for the “fire of the Lord” (a lightning strike?) which came. And then rain.
The ethically troubling part of the story of course is that Elijah kills the 450 prophets of Baal. That disturbing incident requires its own full consideration another time. Meanwhile Jezebel vows that Elijah will pay for his act with his own life. As the text then recounts, “He was afraid; he got up and fled for his life.” You might think this prophet, this hero, confident days earlier that he was doing the work of God, would trust God and stand up against Jezebel’s threat. We don’t like our heroes, ancient or modern, to have clay feet. But Elijah turns out to be like most of us. Scared. Driven by fear.
In our reading this morning he’s on his way south to the Negev desert and eventually to the Sinai, far away from Jezebel’s reach. Along the way God feeds him, and an angel soothes his fears. Later Elijah will meet the very self of God at Mt. Sinai in the “sound of sheer silence” or as we used to say, as “a still, small voice.” In the silence or the quiet voice, he was assured of the presence of God and was encouraged to go back and continue with his job. The story makes no excuses for Elijah. He has clay feet. He is afraid of threat. He runs away from confrontation. He travels without confidence, which literally is “without faith,” con fide. But in the midst of his fear, in the midst of his flight, God is there for him. To encourage. To restore confidence. The threat remained, but Elijah was changed.
This is what God is about with us—moving within us so that we will trust God more than we trust threat. Instilling faith, so that we will believe God’s good intentions for this world and believe that God can bring them about.
Let’s also try to listen for a word from the gospel reading. What I want to say about this text is premised on the fairly recent discernment of scholars about the Gospel of John. It has long been thought that John was the last of the gospels to be written, maybe 50, 60 or even 70 years after Jesus’ time. More recently students of John have wondered if the author of this gospel wrote at a time of a particular crisis, and selected the materials he had about Jesus accordingly. The crisis was that Jewish Christians were being forced out of synagogues where they had co-existed with traditional Jewish believers. A reason for suggesting this is that a number of times in John the author has Jesus referring to a time “when they will put you out of synagogues.” This view also makes sense out of the pejorative use of the term “Jews,” as we have an example today. Rather than being an anti-Semitic rant as so many have used this gospel through history, it is a sermon to and for Jewish Christians who were oppressed by fellow Jews. Seeing John’s gospel as a message first intended for folks in this crisis may give us another insight into it.
Put yourself in the shoes of a person who has been expelled from a familiar community, one you’ve been part of all your life. You’re driven out of a church, a group of friends, your own family—because of what you believe or how you live. Or your way of life is disrupted by those who see you as an enemy. How might you react? With anger? Fear? Anxiety? Doubt? When you’ve found your friendship and love and purpose in a group and that is forcibly taken away, what reassurance would you seek? Would this speak to your heart? “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” “Whoever believes has eternal life.”
The truth the gospel tells this weekend is that God in Christ shares the life of God with us. Now. Eternal life is life with God (and John is clear that’s here and now, not just off in the future.) The hunger we have for that which will transcend our fears is met by the bread of life. No human crisis is more powerful than God’s care and mercy embodied in Jesus.
If we stop here and fail to listen further, however, we will have neglected an essential element of these texts. It begins with an observation. Thousands upon thousands of people had their plans disrupted by the plot disclosed on Thursday. The new security precautions will probably not change such inconveniences anytime soon. But the majority of the world’s population will not be affected by them. Because they don’t fly. They’ve never been on a plane and never will. They are the poor whose fear is not that they will be victims of a bomb but that they will not have anything to eat this evening or tomorrow. They fear that their children will die of disease or malnutrition. They see no end to a life of poverty.
We cannot in good faith feast on the bread that assuages our fears without sharing that bread. Elijah came back from Sinai to continue his work. Those who received John’s gospel cared for needy. This well-known verse guided the community of John: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
It is very biblical that we are celebrating the 115th anniversary of this congregation by lifting up the mission projects we’ve engaged in and continue to support – the Storehouse, Friends Feeding Friends, Adopted Families, Calico Preschool, Survivors of Suicide, Cuidando Los Niños, Women’s Shelter, the list goes on. To that we should add our support of the Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry and Albuquerque Interfaith that seek to modify the very structures of society that leave people vulnerable and in poverty. God’s call to us who have eaten well of the bread of life is to share that bread.
It has been said that the quality of a church, of a denomination, even of a religion, is measured by how it treats the poor. Let St. Paul continue to be known as a high-quality church. And let this be our response to the new wave of fear in the skies.