Waiting for the Revealing of the Children of God

Romans 8:19-27

19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

         From this text today, I want to reflect on the phrase, “Waiting for the revealing of the children of God.” 

Back in April, it was not my day to give words of tribute to our pastor, teacher, and friend, Dr. Turner, on the occasion of his retirement from teaching at Duke Divinity School.  But as I begin, I want to offer thanks that are relevant to this sermon today.  I could make a very long list, but I will limit to three words of thanks.

There are many things that I have to thank William C. Turner for.  I have met pastors of Black Baptist congregations before whose first reaction to me was to be suspicious of what kind of angle this white man is playing.  I don’t blame them.  They have good reason to be suspicious.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if at least part of Rev. Turner’s reaction to me when I showed up at Mt. Level was to wonder just what I might be up to.  But whatever his range of thoughts may have been, his public and official reaction to me was never anything but care and welcome.

            Some of you may think I still have a ways to go on this next matter, but I have to thank him for teaching me how to preach.  I was at best a mediocre preacher in my experience up to the time I came to Mt. Level.  I found in our conversations that Dr. Turner and I had similar ideas about what a sermon should accomplish and how it should be structured.  But I had never had such a week-by-week training school of how to make the most of the divine opportunity of standing behind this sacred desk.  While I still have much to learn, my colleagues at Shaw tell me I have become a decent preacher over the years.  You all have had to endure my training, periodically sitting while I inflict my schooling in this craft.  And you all have been very good to help me understand when I am doing better, or maybe not so much better.

            But by no means least of all, I have Dr. Turner to thank for helping me to grow into a robust and rich understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit.  I explain to my students in theology class that I come from a kind of Baptists whose doctrine of the Trinity is weak, almost replacing the Holy Spirit with the Bible.  Dr. Turner’s writings on the tradition of the holiness churches and their relationship to the invisible institution of the black church before white people would allow free public worship by enslaved Christians—these have awakened me to a lively and powerful understanding of the Spirit’s work in the church.  His insights and guidance helped me not to ignore the way other theologians pointed me toward the Spirit’s work. 

            So today on the festival of Pentecost, the high holy day of the Spirit and the church, I cannot but stand before you to offer praise to God the Spirit who comes to us, pursues us, convicts us, calls us, fills us, and drives us onward toward God’s purpose for us.  We gather today to worship God who is Spirit, and we must worship in spirit and in truth.  We cannot come trampling the courts of our God who sees deeper into our hearts than we can see ourselves.  We cannot gather with pretense of self-righteousness before the convicting Spirit of God.  We cannot fast, cannot pray loud, wordy prayers, cannot try to impress others with our vocal expertise, cannot wear fashionable displays, cannot boast of our righteousness, and expect to please God who is Spirit.  We worship in truth.  We come and offer our righteousness as filthy rags before the Holy Spirit of God.  We humble ourselves to pray with pleading for the Spirit to fill us and guide us.  We gather in this sanctuary made sacred not by our feet, but by the Spirit who sets us on our feet every gifted day that we awaken into the world God has made.

            “Come, Spirit!  Come!” is our worship cry.  “Send the power!” is our plea to the God of heaven and earth.  Like the disappointed and confused, yet hopeful followers of Jesus in the first century, we bring ourselves together into one place, and behind closed doors we await the Spirit promised to us by Jesus.  We long to be nothing less than the very body of Christ, Christ’s presence on this piece of ground, a glimpse of the glory of God enlivened by the unction of the Spirit.  The church, the household of faith, gathers in the Spirit’s power to be the church, to be God’s people, the beloved community living as God created us to be, in fellowship with one another through our shared life in the Spirit.

            This is the festival we celebrate today, and it is good and right to seek to know how the Spirit works and leads us on a day like today.  The apostles found themselves surprised to know the way that the Holy Spirit would work among them.  Empowered by the Spirit’s movement, they served God in ways that they had not imagined.  The Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the festival also encountered the surprising work of the Spirit, hearing the preaching in their own languages from dozens of lands and locales in the known world.  Pentecost reminds us that no matter how much we thought we knew about God, God will still surprise us in the work of the Spirit.

            The texts for today include the story of the first Pentecost Sunday in the history of the church.  We have already acknowledged that story from Acts and will have it in mind throughout our worship.  However, I am focusing on the epistle for today.  It speaks to the kind of experience that the earliest church gathered in Jerusalem had faced as they waited for the coming of the Spirit with power.  Even though the first Pentecost of the church had happened during the first half of the third decade from the birth of Christ, what we might call the “30s,” Paul is writing more than two decades later about a similar pattern of experience in relation to the Spirit.  Yes, the Spirit had come at Pentecost with power.  Yet the Christians in Rome found themselves also waiting to see what the Spirit might be about to do. 

            This entire eighth chapter of Romans is a study of the work of the Spirit in the life of the church.  We cannot let ourselves try to create our own way of living, to be guided by our own desires apart from God’s transforming Spirit.  On our own, we will try to earn our place with God.  We will think God owes us something.  We will try to game the system and get over on God and one another.  But the Spirit lifts us out of this self-centered, selfish way.  The Spirit sets us free from sin and death.  We who are united to Christ and one another share in the Spirit.  The Spirit who enlivened the executed Jesus now gives life to our mortal bodies and to the corporate body of which we are limbs and organs.  As a people, we learn to listen for the Spirit’s voice.  The voice of the Spirit has not been isolated in any one of us, but each of us has the Spirit working to guide and shape our lives together as God’s people.  No one has a corner on the Spirit’s leadership. 

Thus, we all listen for the Spirit’s voice in one another.  We listen to the still, small voice of God calling for us from our inmost hearts.  We pray.  We study.  We praise.  We listen.  And often, we must wait.  Paul tells the Romans that in their time, during the fifth decade after Jesus’ birth, creation waits with eager longing.  Creation…that’s a big word, a big idea.  It’s kind of like a popular word from our era, the “universe.”  Creation means everything that exists that is not God, but which comes from God.  It is stars and planets, atoms and subatomic particles.  Creation is plants and animals, rocks and rivers.  Creation is food and drink, atmosphere and soil.  Creation is humanity in community, neighborhood and countryside.

So if our era of living is anything like the era of Paul the Apostle’s living, then we might conclude that also in our time, creation is waiting.  The land on which our sanctuary rests is waiting; the trees that line our parking areas, the grass in the cemetery, and the stones carved with our ancestors’ names are waiting. The timbers that were carted down from Granville County wait with eager longing.  The congregations worshiping across the street and down the road, the neighbors busy in their yards or homes, those sleeping in on a Sunday morning are all waiting.  The residents of Mill Grove who continue generations of family in this part of town as well as the immigrants from Mexico who found this neighborhood attractive and affordable wait with eager longing.  The workers at the Circle K, at the Bojangles, at the Waffle House, and at the Advance Auto Parts are waiting.  The worn out gravel roads, the boarded windows, the wrecked cars all in rows long to be set free from decay.  The poles that support power lines or t.v. and internet cables, the yellow stripes that divide lanes where we drive, even the deep pit where gravel is quarried wait for the revealing.  The new families who found a place to raise their kids off Hebron Road wait.  The hardworking folk who walk down our streets to reach the bus stop so they can go to work are eager.  The dogs and squirrels and cats and foxes and birds who live all around us—all creation is waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.

Are there any children of God in Mill Grove?  How will they be made evident?  What would make anyone believe that there are children of God here?  God made this world, this vast creation, with the purpose of building love and justice for all people, for all of God’s creatures.  In all our efforts and failures, we have not managed to live up to what God wants for us and our neighbors in this world.  Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church recounts our admirable history of serving God through more than a century and a half, and yet we read Paul’s words to the Romans and understand that creation is groaning in labor pains. 

There are labor pains in our neighborhood as flood waters rise through the sewer system into our sanctuary.  We wait for clean up of a mess and for proper repairs of a drainage system unready to handle the rains of the recent storm.

There are labor pains as teachers in our state, in West Virginia, Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado, and across the land, stand up together to tell the legislature and state school board that enough is enough.  Students need textbooks.  Schools need buildings repaired.  Teachers need to be able to afford a place to live and food for their tables.  How long will politicians prefer to pay more for housing prisoners than for teaching children?

There are labor pains in Santa Fe, Texas, near the home of your own daughter Lydia Broadway who found herself driving by ambulance after ambulance on Friday morning a children with gunshot wounds were being driven to the hospital down the street from her home.  All creation groans, waiting for the revealing.  Where are the children of God?  Where are the people who live as Jesus led them to live?  Where are those who love God and neighbor?  Where are they who bind up the wounded they find on the side of the road?  Where will they be revealed.

Paul says that even we groan.  We wait as a woman in labor.  The urgency can be overwhelming.  The possibility of what may come lies beyond a struggle that we fear we may not be ready to face.  We long for our adoption into the family of God.  We know that Jesus has come to us, that we have followed him, that he has saved us, yet we find ourselves longing for the fulfillment of all that it means.  We feel in our bodies the need for the fullness of God, of the Spirit’s presence and power, of the transformation from one degree of glory to another.

All creation waits, longs, groans, for the Spirit to set us free.  Free to be what God made us to be.  Free to live as God calls us to live.  Free to share our lives with abandon, with relentless affection, with humble service toward one another.  Come, Spirit!  Rule in our hearts today!

For many of us, the calling of Vision 150 has become a sign of the Spirit’s presence.  [Vision 150 is a plan to enlarge our church’s ministry in our community, including replacing a no longer structurally sound building with a new facility that will support more community ministries.]  We have grown into the vision, perhaps initially skeptical or doubtful, waiting for the Spirit to take hold of us.  We have seen signs of the Spirit moving in new ministries and in concern for the use of the land beneath us.  We have talked about the need to know our neighbors.  We have recognized that this corner of our town has needs that we may, perhaps, be strategically situated to be able to help meet. 

And still we wait.  We wait to see an adequate down-payment toward building a facility.  We wait for the future breaking of ground and the passing of a treasured but weary landmark as it is replaced with functional spaces for ministry.  We wait with all creation to see what will be revealed.

On the other hand, if we claim to be the followers of Jesus, if we have given our lives to our Lord, if we have the Spirit living in us, then part of what this letter to the Romans is saying to us is that we are the ones creation is waiting for.  We are the children of God, or at least we are called to be them.  God has touched us, laid a hand on us, filled us with the Spirit, and we are the ones to be revealed as the children of God.

All around us, creation is waiting to see if we will step into our calling.  Will we be friends with the people who live on Denfield, Monk, Ryan, Bobs, Todd, Teel, Weeping Willow, Rainmaker, West, Sun Dried, Felicia, Summer Storm, Justice, Shay, Graymont, Melanie, Geranium, Miller, Cozart, Swanns Mill, Genlee, Magnolia Pointe, Fanning, Lillington, and more and more and more?  Will we learn from them what kind of community they long to be part of?  Will we make partnerships with neighbors to see Mill Grove flourish as more than just the houses near a fast food smorgasbord?  Will we reach beyond to Old Farm, Argonne Hills, Danube, and Dearborn, where many of our Mt. Level family live?  Will we be among the voices advocating for a just and equitable plan for improving or rebuilding Oxford Manor?  Creation all around us is waiting to see what will be revealed in us.

And creation waits because it is not clear what is coming.  Too many churches have closed themselves to their communities.  They live far away, drive to their building, dress in their fancy clothes, get entertained, make networking connections, and leave, hoping never to have to talk to anyone who might be walking near their church building.  Many churches have revealed themselves to be the latest version of a social club or an entertainment center, but not to be the children of God who are following Jesus toward God’s purpose of beloved community.  Too many churches are satisfied to share a couple of hours of the week together, but want to be left alone to make their own friends and plan their own activities without concern for the people who live across the street or down the block from where they gather to worship God in the Spirit.

What will be revealed on this piece of land?  Will it be the revealing of the children of God, the ones who love the people they meet on the street, who are willing to make new friends for the sake of the one who they have promised to follow?  Will it be the children of this world who are mostly concerned with keeping up with the Washingtons or the Johnsons and watching their favorite shows and hiding inside their houses to avoid associating with the people they don’t even care to know?  What will be revealed?  All creation is waiting, eagerly anticipating, groaning for redemption and liberation.

We don’t see it yet, but we hope.  We hope, and we wait with patience.  And in our waiting, we already start to live the way that shows what kind of world we want.  As the teachers of nonviolence have taught us, the path to the goal must take on the character of the goal.  If we want to live in a loving world, then the path to get to it is to start loving right here as we walk toward it.  If we want to live in a world with justice, then we need to hunger and thirst for justice as we seek to bring it into being.  If we want to live in a peaceful world, a world of shalom, then we have to become peaceable people making peace with one another as we walk toward our goal.  The means must be as pure as the end.  The road to beloved community is to start building a community of love.  The path to a friendly neighborhood is to start making friends with our neighbors.  We live in the hope of what we are being called to be, but do not yet see.

The Spirit drives us to be the church that Jesus called us into.  The Spirit gives us strength to make new relationships.  The Spirit gives us power to change the character of our neighborhood.  The Spirit calls us to make our home to be the foretaste of the Kingdom of God, the Reign of God in this world.  In our weakness, the Spirit helps us.  Even when we don’t know what to do first, the Spirit is way ahead of us, praying in us and with us for the fullness of God’s purpose to be revealed in us.

All creation waits, and the Spirit is drawing us forward.  The Spirit is ready to make us into the very people God wants us to be.  The Spirit works within and around us to make things happen that we are not sure can happen.  The Spirit is transforming us to be the revelation of the children of God in Durham, on Hebron Road, on this soil and among these trees, on the streets and in the homes.  Will we heed the Spirit?  Will we walk in the Spirit?  Will we let the Spirit reveal to us and to our neighbors that we can be what God has called us to be?

What a day that first Pentecost of the church was!  Peter went far beyond his own learning to proclaim a new word.  He recognized that the prophets had expected a day when a great transformation would begin.  Whatever the barriers and limits that people had put on themselves, blaming it all on God’s will and God’s plan, the word coming from Peter and the apostles on that day said that God would be shaking things up.  The young and old would all be blessed to see what God can do.  The men and the women would all proclaim the world of God with power.  On that day, Jerusalem changed dramatically, and the change had implications for dozens of cities and regions and language groups for miles in all directions.  It was not a day for narrow vision or limited possibilities.  The Spirit was doing the kind of work that would free creation from its bondage to decay.  The labor pains were ending with the reward of transformation.  The Spirit was bearing fruit that would expand and continue for millennia into the future.

Can we join that movement here in our neighborhood?  Will we join the gospel band?  Spirit, guide us!

Lord grant us the capacity to listen to your Spirit, to wait for the guidance we need, and to step out in public to reveal that as for Mt. Level and our house, we will serve the Lord.  We will be the children of God revealed as the loving koinonia, the communion of sharing our lives and our goods and our gifts with one another for the good of all creation.  Lord, send your Spirit to fill us.  Spirit, change us.  Spirit drive us forward.  Come, Spirit!  Amen, and amen!

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Benediction:

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Your love.

Send forth Your Spirit; renew the face of the earth.

O God,

Who instructed the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit,

grant us in the same Spirit to be truly wise,

and ever to rejoice in Your consolation.

Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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Barber, Like Hope, Does Not Disappoint

Last March at the Alexander-Pegues Minister's Conference of Shaw University Divinity School, one of the outstanding speakers was Rev Dr William Barber II.  Barber has become well-known for his leadership in the Moral Mondays/Forward Together movement that began in North Carolina and has spread across the USA.  He has long been known for his abilities as a preacher, and his preaching has always been linked to a concern for social justice.  Many people would be aware of his leadership of the North Carolina NAACP and the movement to bring together a coalition of groups from around the state through the annual Historic Thousands on Jones Street gathering.  Moreover, his partnership with Rev Dr Nancy Petty to resist the dismantling of effective desegregation policies in Wake County Schools displayed a new confidence and focus on taking a stand against those who would seek to undo the progress made in civil rights.

Barber has become an iconic leader in the current political situation.  When many feel that all they can do is shake their heads and wish for a day when people seemed to care for the common good and for protecting the poor and marginalized, Barber has become symbolic of a politics that says we cannot wait to start the fight for justice.  Now is the time, even if it seems the deck is stacked against us.

Barber has become ever more focused on this message of challenging citizens to read the signs of the times, to listen to the cries of the poor, and to use the strength they have to build beloved community.  That was the message he brought to ministers at Shaw last March.  His words, his sincerity, and his intensity did not disappoint.  He highlighted four biblical passages which he says pose four critical questions for every minister of the gospel.  Some of you who have heard him speak recently have probably heard some of these themes echoed.  I will briefly review these texts.

Psalm 94  Who will stand up?

This Psalm cries out for justice.  It's arguments echo the complaints of Isaiah's prophecy against the leaders and powerful people of his day.  "How long shall the wicked exult?" the psalmist asks.  They crush the people, kill widows, orphans, and immigrants.  But the psalmist knows that God sees and hears and will act.  Finally in v 16, the psalmist asks, "Who rises up for me against the wicked?  Who stands up for me against evildoers?" 

One clear answer is "The Lord."  But the implication can't be swept away that we must rise up against those who do harm to the poor, who destroy the lives of the weak.  "Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who contrive mischief by statute?"  The writer recognizes that we owe no obedience to those who use the power of government to benefit themselves and the wealthy.  A crime called a law is no less a crime against justice.  We may not sit by and watch this kind of violence take place.  Who will stand up?  If we do stand, the psalmist reminds us that God will be our stronghold and rock of refuge.

Jeremiah 22 Who will leave the sanctuary and go to the seat of power?


In case the ministers listening might believe that their task is done when they stand in the pulpit to speak a word against injustice, Barber went on to this text from the Prophet Jeremiah.  This long chapter combines a series of harsh oracles against the ruling family of Judah.  The great King Josiah, a reformer who had sought to turn back to the ways of the Lord, had ended his days as powerful empires to the north and south began to battle for dominance in the region of Palestine.  Josiah was succeeded by three sons and a grandson as the Kingdom of Judah crumbled.

God gave Jeremiah another hard task in this text.  Jeremiah seemed always to be sent to deliver a hard message to people who would not want to hear it.  Often it was full of devastating news.  That is the case in this chapter.  In it, he delivers castigating words to the rulers of Judah.  Each one he speaks of will find a humiliating end.  None will share in the blessings they had assumed would go with sitting on the throne of David.

Each of Josiah's descendants receives chastisement for his unjust ways.  Wage theft and slavery amass wealth in the royal household.  Oppression and violence toward the marginalized--widows, orphans, immigrants--accompany outright murder of the innocents by a corrupt law enforcement system.  They turned away from Josiah's ways of looking out for the poor and needy, protecting them through laws and fair policies.  This will bring all of them to utter destruction.

Jeremiah probably delivered these collected indictments together before the last of the Kings of Judah, Zedekiah.  He reminded him of the empires who took away his brother Shallum (Jehoahaz) and nephew Coniah (Jehoiachin).  He recalled the judgment against his brother Jehoiakim, who died in disgrace.  The same fate awaits Zedekiah.  A great repentance is necessary, and a change of domestic and foreign policy, but Zedekiah will not change.  All of this makes Jeremiah a very unwelcome visitor.

The chapter begins with Jeremiah getting the instructions to "Go down to the house of the king."  The Temple, where the priests did their service, was on the highest ground.  Thus, Barber reminds us, that Jeremiah's priestly work took place inside the sanctuary.  For many priests, carrying out the mandates of priestly service in the Temple seemed enough.  Jeremiah might also have wished for that life.  However, the unjust systems all around him required another type of work.  Jeremiah had to leave the confines of Temple service to go to the house of the king.  The message had a specific recipient, and this servant of God needed to deliver it.  Barber insists that we are in such a time, when the oppression and injustice of our world demand we not merely preach inside the walls of the church, but we take the message to the seat of power.

Amos 6  Who will refuse to be at ease in the world?

Barber's next text speaks to those who would be satisfied to marvel in the critique of injustice while living in comfort and waiting for change to come.  A term for this way of addressing social justice has emerged in social media:  slacktivism.  Combining slacker with activism, this term points to those of us who get great satisfaction reading about and commenting about injustices in the world without ever getting beyond pixels. 

For ministers, it could take the form of gravitas in speaking against injustice when preaching or in a gathering of church people, but otherwise enjoying the benefits of a good salary, a nice car, a comfortable home, and access to prestige and the good life.  To be "at ease in Zion" was what Amos called the wealthy and powerful people who believed God was on their side.  They had convinced themselves that they would never have to worry about losing their privileges.  But Amos reminded them they needed to be more aware of the crisis all around them.  Injustice and oppression were destroying the people, but the privileged were ignoring it.

If we really do believe that God demands justice, and that it should "roll down like waters," like a mighty torrent that sweeps away the barriers to its victory, then we cannot remain at ease.  Staying comfortable and cheering on the few who are in the struggle will not be an adequate response from those called to preach the gospel.  Barber says we must not be at ease.  We must be ready to be inconvenienced.  We have to shift priorities and rearrange schedules and show up when it is time for action.

Luke 4  Who will yield to the Spirit's agitation?

The fourth text is from the New Testament.  It is, by my estimation, the central text invigorating various theological turns toward liberation in the late twentieth century.  To recognize the position of Luke 4 in the narrative of Jesus' life and ministry challenges many of the false and distorted ways that Jesus has been proclaimed by the church.  Centering on this text portrays Jesus in a particularly liberative mode.

Jesus reads from the Isaiah scroll to say that he came for a specific purpose:  to bring good news to poor people, to set prisoners free, to liberate slaves, to bring good things to the marginalized.  He describes the kind of restorative justice that the tradition of sabbath years and Jubilee taught Israel would be the right way to make sure there was no permanent debtor class, no enduring oppression, no monopolistic enterprise, no land barons and blood-built mansions.

Jesus quotes this text to say that he will pursue this ministry because the Spirit of God has stirred him to do it.  This is his calling.  He has been agitated to act.  No wonder the listeners that day, putting aside their initial interest in his words, began to consider violence against him.  The Spirit agitated him that day to challenge the powers that be, the wealthy who benefited by not returning land to its rightful owner, the ones who did not pay a fair wage.  Rather than walking away, Jesus took the text given to him and took the calling laid upon him.  He spoke truth to power on that day.  Barber asks ministers whether we will be ready to let the Spirit agitate us to action.

After looking at all four of these texts--no it was not a brief sermonic offering--Barber pointed his challenge directly at all of us who listened.  In this time when injustice is on the rise, will we answer these four questions as we must?  Some will not, and they will end up as preachers who go to their graves with no record of standing up, going out, refusing a vacation, and yielding to the agitation.  Their greatest accomplishment will be to have stayed in their sanctuaries in comfort and made sure the praise team was good.  I like a good praise team.  Don't get me wrong.  But will that be enough for me to offer to my Lord?


I would hope that many more preachers will be listening to these texts Rev Barber has brought to our attention.  Any preacher worth her or his salt should be able to find at least four good sermons from this set of questions.  Having the discipline to study them, teach them, and proclaim them from the pulpit should also help to build up the resolve, the courage, and the companionship necessary to go out and deliver a prophetic message in the seat of power.  Continuing to be in the walls and at ease in a time of rampant injustice will not lead to a good result. 

If any of this stirs you to wonder what you should do, let me also mention that an outstanding learning opportunity is coming.  Barber and some of his co-workers in the Forward Together movement will be leading an intensive learning opportunity on October 29-30, 2015.  The Moral Progressive Organizing Leadership Institute Summit will take place at a retreat center in Whitakers, NC.  The theme of the retreat is "Repairers of the Breach," taken from one of the powerful social justice texts of the Bible in Isaiah 58.  Experts in many fields of policy along with ministers and organizers will teach and train leaders to continue the struggle for justice in this important time.  Information about the conference is available at repairersofbreach@gmail.com.

Bluebonnets for Easter

I've posted some pictures on Facebook from Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and I've made a series of comments about them which I am collecting here.  In the past, I have written about wildflowers and bluebonnets and their significance for Everly, our years together, and for our family (here and here, for instance).  We have been blessed with an abundance flowers at Everly's grave this year, and I wanted to share these pictures and reflections with those of you who have followed our story.

In winter 2013, we planted bluebonnets and paintbrush wildflowers on Everly Estes Broadway's gravesite in Salado. With pretty good rainfall, the plants emerged in the spring, but there were only a few scattered, small blooms. So we hoped for another year of root growth to bring us a better bouquet this year. Today Lydia made her way to Salado at the end of Holy Week, and we got a big surprise.

As the day waned on Good Friday, she found and sent us pictures of abundant bluebonnets all over the Broadway grave plot, and only on that part of the cemetery. A little foreshadowing of Easter on Good Friday for us who love Everly. 

Bluebonnets all over, with a few scattered paintbrush and behind the bench, several red Drummond's phlox visible in the corner of one photo. Everly will be loving these flowers. I always loved to bring her flowers.

 STEM moment: Everly will be loving to see a few atoms (possibly) of her carbon remains revitalized in this palate of color. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Dust to soil, soil to bluebonnets.

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W.D. (my dad) and Lydia have gone back to sit with Everly and place an Easter lily by her gravestone today on Holy Saturday. Last year on Easter the four of us took lilies to Everly's grave before sunrise. Later in the day we took pictures with bluebonnets as we had on our last Easter with Everly. This year we are scattered around in three states. Thank you sweet Lydia for these pictures.

Beyond my comprehension, in the complex relation of time and eternity, the mystery of Holy Saturday is a day of communion of our Lord with the dead. WD and Lydia stay there by this grave at the borderlands of this mystery, and we remember that this tomb and the Lord's tomb and so many more tombs cannot hold prisoner those who have been laid to rest.  

But on this day, Christ and those united to him (the church against whom even the gates of Hades may not prevail) participate in the liberation of "All of these [who] died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, God has prepared a city for them."

"There is a communion of the saints," as Rev Turner declared in Everly's eulogy, and like so many flowers clustered around WD's and Lydia's feet, there is a great cloud of witnesses, sitting vigil on this day, with all creation groaning in labor pains, awaiting redemption of our bodies. We hope for what we do not see and wait with patience. The Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes with sighs too deep for words. The Spirit intercedes for the saints according to God's good will and purpose for us. In this blessed, sweet communion, we await the mystery of resurrection, in hope.

Do You Want to Be Healed? Conversating Down by the Pool of Bethesda

Scholars classify the sayings of Jesus in various ways:  parables, aphorisms, dialogues, etc.  Some who have studied them have focused on conversations or "interviews" Jesus has with various people.  Preachers in our individualistic age particularly love these sorts of sayings.  In such conversations, a sermon can leverage Jesus' compassion, wisdom, or straightforward (even harsh) truthfulness into an assumed conversation between the Lord and the person in the pew.  Probably most who read this have heard a sermon on this text.

Sometimes these Gospel stories portray Jesus asking a question of someone.  One favorite such question appears in the encounter between Jesus and a paralytic man by the Pool of Bethesda.  In this conversation, Jesus asks the man, "Do you want to be made well?"  The man had lay by the pool, reputed to have intermittent healing powers, for a very long time.  Read superficially, the question almost seems like small talk:  "Hi, there.  How's it going?  Are you hanging out here to be healed?  Good seeing you today!" 

But when we let the question soak in a bit, it becomes a kind of probing, even intense question.  It pushes past superficiality and goes to the heart.  Having been there so long, waiting ostensibly to be healed, was this man finally resigned to stay as he was, content with things as they are?  Certainly, even in hard situations, we often find some level of satisfaction, some reward even in our disappointment, some ease in having settled for things as they are.

It's a harsh question; perhaps, even rude.  The man answered defensively by saying that no one would help him get to the water when the healing powers were present.  One might imagine his answering in our age by saying, "You don't know me!  You can't judge me!  Who do you think you are?"   It was that kind of hard question, forcing the issue, pressing past the excuses.  If listened to carefully, it was a disorienting question.

I have thought a lot about this passage during the past month.  I have started meeting with a counselor for help in facing my life without Everly.  It is a reorienting process.  I am living in a season of uncertainty, trying to imagine a different life than continuing to serve God as Everly and I grow old together.  The rest of my growing old will be without her.  What will that be like? 

I probably "put too much of my business out in the street," but the writing itself is a very powerful process for my self-understanding.  So here I go again.

Even before Everly was diagnosed with cancer, I was dealing with some problems.  Relationships at work had gone sour in several cases.  Some colleagues were eager to see me gone from the faculty, and there was a corresponding trend of vocal disapproval by some students that was eating at me.  At my annual physical, my physician said I was showing signs of depression.  I found it hard to go to the office, and when there I found it hard to concentrate and get my work done. 

As most of us would, I came up with various plans by which I would get my life back on track.  I made regular commitments to myself to set up a schedule, to segregate my activities, to improve my habits.  Nothing that I was trying was making much difference.  Everly was concerned, but at a loss on how to help me.  Moreover, her own stressful job was enough for her to handle.  She could not carry my load, too. 

So for several years, I floundered, trying to recover the productivity of my earlier years.  I accomplished some big things during that time.  I helped lead some statewide organizing work among theologians and IAF groups dealing with the economy.  I became involved in the same work on a national basis, even chaired some major national meetings among PICO, IAF, and other local organizing groups.  I received honors for this work.  I wrote and delivered theological papers which received praise from many scholars.  I helped rebuild a robust faculty senate at the university. 

But in between the big events, I often found it nearly impossible to make progress on daily work.  It became my new mode of life.  I got used to it.  I was not sure things would ever be different.  I wondered why I was staying in my profession.

The first big question I needed to face in counseling was this:  "What are the rewards I get by avoiding my daily tasks and putting off work that I need to do?"  It was a surprising question, a way of looking at the problem from a different angle.  Anxiety, regret, guilt, disappointment in myself, little hope for change--these were the ways that I would have described my situation.  They are not what one would normally call rewards.  But it seemed a worthy question, and I mulled it over for days. 

What began to emerge was a sense of the way that occasional anxiety and guilt mixed with longer periods of ignoring and denying other things I needed to do was a kind of reward.  I could avoid the more intense anxieties that came up when I pressed into my work--the philosophical struggle with the validity of grades, the disappointment of occasional plagiarized work, the marginalization within the office politics.  These rewards had become the minimal compensation that came from not dealing with the harder matters in my life.

So it is no surprise that my life did not make a sudden upturn when we discovered Everly had cancer, and we struggled through those fifteen months of fear and hope and loss.  Our focus shifted toward supporting her through pain and treatments.  We had to think about the possibilities of her death and its effect on the children and me.  We had our ups and downs, and we had even begun to think that she might be able to live with the cancer for several more years.  But all of that gave me very justifiable reasons not to deal with my own problems at work. 

The grief of losing Everly has been immeasurable.  I have spent much of my energy working on grief, writing about grief and faith, telling the story of what Everly meant to us and to the world, and trying to keep taking one step after another.  Recently, however, a pastor friend told me, with some insistence, that it was time for me to seek some counseling help.  I had made good headway in dealing with grief, but the enormity of the loss and the complexity of my other problems would probably greatly benefit from someone who could help guide me through the process.  Since I had asked for his opinion, I thought it right that I would follow his suggestion.  And so far it has meant trying to unravel the knots in which I have gotten myself over many years. 

Having started working on that first question about what rewards I might find in continuing the way I have been living, we pretty quickly moved on to a second question:  "Can you imagine a situation in which you do your daily work without dread, without it causing you so much anxiety?"  And there again I was with another door to open, another knot to untie.  Knowing how things are and what gives me an overwhelming sense of dread, could I see a way to face those things with creativity and energy to see the possibilities for good, not just for more pain? 

Ultimately, I realized I was being asked the question Jesus asked the man at the Pool of Bethesda.  "Mike, do you want to be healed?"  Or was I satisfied that nothing I do would make things better, that the mess I was in was inescapable, that I was destined to be a diminished version of what I once was.  In recent months, I had been talking to close friends about a similar question I was posing to myself.  "Somewhere under the layers of disappointment and frustration, avoidance and waning hope, was the person still in there who once was known always to take initiative, to press through problems, to bear the load when needed, to lead when others faltered?" 

I remember being a different sort of person at home, at work, at church.  But the memory was fading.  I could not untie the knots that bound my energy.  I could not find and assemble the pieces that could that happen again.  I knew that Everly had admired that person.  I feared I had disappointed her as I shrank into a smaller person.  And I no longer had her beside me to hold me up and believe in me when it was hard to believe in myself.  Could those virtues I once displayed ever return?  Could new virtues take seed and grow?

So I don't think I am just parroting "positivity" or "visualizing a better life" when I say that I realized there can be a situation in which my work does not cause me pain and anxiety.  The joy has never left some parts of the work.  It has even grown and flourished as I taught this year, forced by my grief to be more publicly "real" as a person and not just a professorial persona.  Seeking out the comfort and guidance of friends has helped me feel less alone in the world.  Drawing near to my children has reminded me of much of my purpose for living and the fruit that my life already has borne.  Taking on myself the task of continuing a beautiful life that I lived with Everly has inspired me to get serious about how I spend the remainder of my years.

Yes.  I do want to be healed.  Even though the sociality of existence means that others have played a role in my frustrations, I can't continue to leave my destiny in the hands of people who have gone on to other things.  There is a door that has opened, and some strings hanging from the knots have been pulled loose and are longer than they used to be.  Small steps, small accomplishments, small satisfactions--this is the path I am on. 

Good people have agreed to support me with regular conversation and prayer.  I'm not walking alone.  Another crowd of witnesses, a communion of saints, encompasses me.  Loved ones and friends are pulling for me.  My students are a great well of refreshing as they also learn about holding their faith in struggle and about understanding the depths of pain and grief through my teaching.  I cannot help but be aware of the work of the Holy Spirit to guide my feet, order my steps, and make a way out of no way. 

Jesus asked the man a question that got to the heart of the matter.  In this season, I've once again taken up that inquiry. 

There Might Still Be Hope for That Little Seminary Down the Road

Today at the Shaw University Ministers' Conference, we heard from a young preacher who was new to our gathering.  Rev. Chalice (pronounced shah-LEASE) Overy, youth minister at Baptist Grove Church in Raleigh brought a message.  She is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill with a bachelor's degree in Public Policy and African American Studies.  From UNC she went to Duke Divinity School, that little seminary down the road from us here at Shaw University Divinity School.  The message she delivered with great power made me (tongue in cheek) say that there might be hope for that school.  As many of you know, my fellow Mt. Level members and close friends teach at Duke Divinity School, and I also earned a Duke degree.  I would say they are doing fine.  But still, hearing Rev. Overy gave me great encouragement for the type of student who has studied and learned in those halls of divinity.

She selected the text, Acts 8:26-39, which is the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.  She paired it with a few verses from 2 Corinthians 5 about the new creation and the ministry of reconciliation.  As she began to tell the story from Acts, she made note of the barriers to admission to Jerusalem worship that the eunuch must have encountered.  There were physical walls, steps, doors, and curtains constructed in the Temple of Jerusalem, all designed to keep certain people far away from what was considered the holy place of God.  No doubt, the eunuch had been held at bay and unable to participate in many aspects of divine worship while in Jerusalem.

When Philip asked him whether he understood the Isaiah scroll he was reading, it is not surprising that he said he did not.  Who among the religiously accepted would have been willing to teach such an outsider and outcast?  Overy said that it was good that they were on a wilderness road for this conversation, because Philip himself might have been worried about associating with this man if other religious folks were looking.  Not only was he an outsider from Ethiopia, but his physicality as a eunuch might have raised many questions for those who would watch the two men converse.  The sexual undertones are not hidden, even if unspoken.

Overy brought the 2 Corinthians text as a contrast to the likely experience of the eunuch in Jerusalem.  Then she asked why our churches have turned away from the ministry of reconciliation and taken up the regime of death by setting up barriers to keep people out of our congregations.  She described the ways that church people try to be the respectable people and keep out anyone who differs or questions or challenges or diverges.  She implied that the entire regime of death that the law brings had become the playground of domination systems (my term) in Jerusalem and now in our churches, so that some of us become the gatekeepers and protectors of God from the rabble and the outsiders.

Overy shook us all up with a message about the gospel that lets the Ethiopian's rhetorical question need no answer--what's to keep me from being baptized?  No legalism, no wall, no steps, no evil-eye, no harumph, no gate, no curtain--no that was torn from top to bottom.  It was a powerful sermon calling on churches to be welcoming communities and to get out into the streets to let people know that our God receives them in all their variety and diversity.

Thank you Rev. Chalice Overy, for your care in reading the text and listening to the Spirit.  Thank you to her teachers for contributing to a powerful ministerial formation.  And thank you God for the immeasurable gift of the Good News.

Everly's Blessing

 Originally posted on CaringBridge.org

Today our pastor, Dr. William C. Turner, Jr., took his text from Isaiah 44:2-3.  It is a promise of water in the desert, of the Spirit of God upon the people.  He pointed out a significant distinction that many of us may miss.  When God blesses us, the blessing is not for us.  God blesses us that we will bless others.  This particular text says that the blessing will be for the offspring and descendants of those who first receive it.

The sermon sent me to thinking about the blessing of Everly.  A little more than thirty-six years ago, in the fall of 1976, Everly arrived in Waco, Texas, to start her higher education at Baylor University.  Within a few days we met one another as part of a leadership group recruited and sponsored by the Baptist Student Union.  Everly had been recognized by her peers and teachers at the very large J. Frank Dobie High School as perhaps the strongest leader in her graduating class.  She was expected by them to go far and accomplish great things.  I was a small-town boy with an over-estimation of my importance in the world.

It was a couple of months before Everly and I began to get to know one another.  She endured what women in our culture often endure--listening to men talk excessively about themselves (in this case, I was the blabbermouth).  Even with that, she detected something in me worth sticking around to discover.  I was especially drawn to the joyfulness she brought when we were together.

As we grew to be a couple, we had lots of long talks.  One of the early memorable conversations had to do with Everly's calling to teach.  She did not begin her university studies with plans to be a teacher, and some important people had steered her away from it because they thought she could aim for something "better" or "higher."  However, her first year of studies was leaving her with a feeling of something missing.  She was becoming sure that she should be an educator.  Everly did not see a need to separate high achievement from a vocation that would allow her to serve the community and use the gifts to teach that had already appeared.

Most of us who have lived long enough know that the actual path our lives take is far more complicated than we might have imagined at the outset of adulthood.  Everly finished Baylor with little inclination to ever go back to school again.  She immediately became a teacher, and in the course of a few years taught math at most levels from middle school to high school seniors.  It only took about a year of teaching--a year of wondering how it is that some children learn a concept and others don't, puzzling why some strategies work with one child and not another, reflecting on the processes children develop on their own to figure things out--before Everly started recognizing her drive toward further study.  A masters degree in math education from the University of Texas followed.

Then more years of teaching took Everly through Irving, Texas, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Durham, North Carolina.  As a lead teacher, a department chair, a Presidential Award Winner, and a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina, Everly's vision of better classroom teaching expanded and began to make its mark.  Eventually she moved to district-level curriculum leadership in Durham Public Schools, gaining national recognition for her work, including the Outstanding Young Alumni Award from Baylor University.  And during those years she began work on her doctoral degree from the University of North Carolina.

From Durham she advanced to state leadership as the Director of Mathematics for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.  Having made a lasting mark on that state, she most recently moved to lead mathematics curriculum for the Texas Education Agency.

This is a story that many of you already know.  But for me it is a way of showing how Everly has understood deeply from a very young age that the blessings she has received are for others.  She had dedicated herself to understanding young minds, developing strategies for instruction, and uplifting all students to realize success in mathematics.  Her bountiful intelligence, enthusiasm, organizational insight, and compassion are blessings she received to share with others.

Another way of saying this is that Everly is our blessing.  We have received her into our lives as she has poured herself out, doing good.  She has done good to teachers by recognizing their centrality and power in education.  She has done good to students by never giving up on their capacity for higher math.  She has done good to bureaucrats and politicians by helping them direct their ambition and power toward better curriculum and schools.  She has done good to her colleagues by finding their best qualities and helping them to grow in those ways.

I guess I got the best of the blessing.  I got to live with Everly and share my life with her all of these years.  She is my supreme blessing.  From the time of her first years of teaching, the two of us have had an unending conversation about math teaching.  She has hammered out her ideas, her experiments, her theories, and her resolve in long talks as we drove to work, did the laundry, picked up the kids' toys, sat down in the evening, and just about any time or any place. 

As I said earlier, I probably started out with an over-inflated sense of my own importance.  We intellectual and academic types are prone to such delusions.  I have had a very satisfying and enriching career as a professor, so I'm not belittling that. 

But I also have come to understand that God blessed me with Everly not to have her only for myself, but so that I could play a part in giving her the strength to bless the world.  Reading so many of the comments on CaringBridge has further confirmed this is true.  Everly's influence is deep and wide, and the people she is touching, working with, and serving are blessed beyond measure.  Wherever she has gone, people and institutions have changed for the better.  I'm thankful that I am sharing in such a powerful life of blessing in this world.

For I will pour water on the thirsty land,
and streams on the dry ground;
I will pour my spirit upon your descendants,
and my blessing on your offspring.

I am a witness.  This is what God has done and continues doing through Everly.  All praise and glory be to the Holy One of Israel!  Amen.

Elijah in the Cave: Encouragement, or Maybe Not

I recently heard a very good sermon on 1 Kings 19:1-18.  Delivered to a couple thousand people engaged in front-line ministries, the preacher found in the story "teaching, reproof, correction, and training unto righteousness" that could encourage the hearers in their work.  I am not going to reproduce that sermon here, but it was a well-structured exposition of the text.

It is not uncommon for me to have a sermon and a biblical text set my mind to racing in various directions.  This was one of those times when I was listening and reflecting on the sermon at the same time that I was puzzling over the text.  My imagination kept pushing me to look at other paragraphs in this section of 1 Kings, sections which this particular sermon did not highlight.  I'm not criticizing the hermeneutical decisions or homiletical strategies for the evening.  I appreciated the message I received from a pastor worthy of my admiration.  But an impeding thought kept interrupting my concentration.  A divergent trajectory kept pushing its way around my reading of the stories.

I can thank some of my former students like Sam Ewell and Vincent Chun-Pang Lau for helping guide me onto this trajectory of biblical narrative.  As good readers of James W. McClendon and John Howard Yoder, they facilitated my deeper understanding of these theologians on whose shoulders I stand.  Particularly in For the Nations, Yoder describes a way of reading the biblical narrative that locates a critical interpretive key in two events which bracket the Bible's historical presentation of the Israelite monarchy.  These events are

1. the people's demand that Samuel appoint a king over them, with Samuel's warning of their folly, and
2. Jeremiah's presiding over the end of the failed monarchy with a theological "told you so."

This framing of the monarchy helps to offer a counterhistorical arc of the biblical narrative, embedded in a historiographical presentation which maintains a dual agenda:  it is constantly critical of the monarchy's failures while at the same time it retains an element of conventional histories with their heroic kingship story lines.  Against this dual agenda, the counterhistory places front and center the conviction that power structured by domination, violence, and economic oppression will never achieve what God intends for humanity in the world.  For Israel to be the pilot project of human social existence, it must not give in to the temptation to be like the other nations.  It must understand power in a different way and live in different forms of social structuring.

This is not an easy hermeneutical place to arrive for cultures shaped in the mission of European world domination and the white man's burden.  Leading theologians who helped to provide grounding for modernity (even our beloved Jean Calvin) came to believe that, with all its flaws, the Israelite Monarchy and its legal system should be the model of human society in the temporal world.  (Modern Reconstructionists still hold this, perhaps more literally than Calvin himself.)  In the wake of such reasoning, God remains, for so many of our churches, the political manipulator, willing to assassinate rulers, starve cities, and demand genocide in the name of some higher purpose.  You know I'm not exaggerating.  Many of you who attend Bible studies and listen to preaching regularly have heard people explain why God would do such things in biblical times, and perhaps now.  Pat Robertson has certainly made much of his beliefs that any particular disaster can be interpreted as a direct act of God to bring judgment on Pat Robertson's enemies and call the world to Pat Robertson's agenda.  Of course, Pat saw them as God's enemies and God's agenda, because it all fit neatly into his narration of the character of God.

So how does this pertain to Elijah near the end of 1 Kings?

The standard interpretation I have heard over the years when preachers have spoken or written of Elijah's flight to the cave takes the following path.  In the time of terrible drought, Elijah arranged to do battle with the false prophets by calling for a demonstration of God's power.  After the prophets of Baal prayed, shouted, and otherwise acted out to no avail, Elijah made a show of calling for God to send fire and burn the sacrifice on the altar.  Once this great challenge had gone his way, Elijah incited the crowds, and together they killed hundreds of prophets of Baal.  Jezebel grew angry, and her threats struck fear into Elijah.  Therefore, Elijah fled far from the antagonistic rulers to a cave to hide and feel sorry for himself.  It is told as a story of Elijah's greatest triumph suddenly followed almost immediately by his deepest despair.  Many a preacher characterizes Elijah's defeat (killing) of the prophets of Baal as his greatest triumph.

This story arc is what was troubling me that evening as I kept rereading the passage.  So I went looking for any textual clues that the reader should think of this event as Elijah's greatest triumph.

The first thing I noticed was that God sent Elijah to meet Ahab, but God did not specify anything about having a contest against the prophets of Baal.  While we appropriately conclude that God blessed Elijah's demonstration of YHWH's power and supremacy by sending down the fire to burn the wet sacrifice and evaporate all the standing water, there is no recorded command to take up this strategy.  I'm not saying that people seeking to serve God, whether Elijah or someone today, must have a direct command in order to take any action.  Certainly it could be that Elijah was acting in accord with his understanding of the calling of God.  He sought to publicly demonstrate what God had often shown in smaller venues:  God has power over all.  God can keep the hungry fed in times of famine.  God can raise the dead.  So why not call a convocation and demonstrate that God can light a fire on an altar, unlike the impotent false gods that the royal family has helped to promote in the land?

On the other hand, Elijah may not be much more pure than the rest of us in calling forth this great public demonstration.  It certainly made him look like the hero he imagined himself to be.  Through several chapters, Elijah repeatedly refers to himself as the only one left who is faithful to God.  He repeatedly finds out that he is exaggerating his significance.  Obadiah, a servant of Ahab, has risked his life to save many persecuted prophets of YHWH.  Even having been told that, and having won the crowds on his big fireworks demonstration day, Elijah still describes himself as the lone faithful follower of God.  This ongoing discrepancy ought to raise our suspicions.  Perhaps it should remind us of the counternarration.  It certainly shows a kinship between Elijah and Samuel, both of whom get a little confused about whether the people should follow them or follow the God they serve.  Both have to be reminded by God of their place in the larger scheme of things.

Having let suspicion urge us to look behind the veil of the triumphal narrative, an even more disturbing element pushes itself upon us.  Having seen the glorious work of God, Elijah's ecstasy does not lead him to sing a praise song as Miriam did, or to dance before the altar as David danced before the Ark.  He does not call the people to prayer as Solomon did, nor does he instigate  a festive celebration of God's goodness as the Torah prescribes for many annual feasts and other holy days.  What does Elijah do?  He incites mob violence.  He lets the ecstasy of seeing God's power demonstrated become warped into blood-lust.  He leads a mass execution of those he deems his enemies.  He exterminates the officials who stand for his arch-enemy, Jezebel.  As the story is told, he leaves no quarter.  His thirst for blood is not sated until all lie dead.

Again, we have to notice that there is no command from God to kill these false prophets.  Was Elijah acting out of his conscientious devotion to YHWH, or was he acting out of his human desire for vengeance against those who had usurped his "rightful place" as the prophet and judge of Israel?  There is enough uncertainty in the narration to incline me toward the latter conclusion.  Elijah got carried away with his victory and gave himself over to violence.  Now many would argue that Elijah was simply following the trend of the biblical narrative in which God metes out reward and punishment upon the faithful and unfaithful.  Humans become God's instruments of punishment through violent acts in many of these narratives.  Of course, many other violent acts are judged to be outside the divine will.

It is a complex narration of theme and antitheme, story and counterstory.  In the midst of the historiography, one may discern that the people of Israel, their prophets, their griots, their chroniclers, their historians, their compilers and editors, are passing through moments of recognition and misapprehension, of vision and blindness, of enlightenment and opacity.  Like their forebear Abraham, who began his pilgrimage not even knowing who this God is who sent him to a strange land, they live in the midst of a slowly unfolding understanding of God.  They compare God with what they have heard, what they know about the gods of the nations.  They assume who God is, and experiment with God's expectations.  Often they are wrong.  Amazingly, they often are right.  But the truth and falsehoods about God remain mixed in their faith.  Perhaps Elijah mistook the God of Israel for a god of bloody revenge.  Perhaps he glimpsed another possibility, but chose to cling to the vengeful idol.

Am I second-guessing the great prophet?  Of course I am.  But what else is expected of us as we grapple with the word of God in Scripture?  Moreover, if we believe the word of God is in Scripture, we must also remember that our primary confession of the Word of God is the eternal Son, incarnate in Jesus Christ, revealing the true and full picture of the Holy One of Israel, the Triune God who is Alpha and Omega, superabundant in goodness and love from everlasting to everlasting, the Prince of Peace.  Is this the God whom Elijah longed to know and diligently sought to serve?

Yes this the same God, but Elijah had not the benefit of Jeremiah's backward look upon the failure of the monarchy.  He did not see the vision of the suffering Servant of Isaiah, of Ezekiel's fantastic glimps of the Majestic On enthroned on a chariot throne to reign over any and every land.  He had not come to see that it would not be in magnificent spectacle, but in a minor village of Bethlehem that God's salvation would arise.  He did not yet realize that the longing would outlast the monarchy and be replaced by a hope for a servant-king, riding on a colt of a donkey.  Yes, Elijah listened for the word of God, but in all his faithfulness also remained far off from knowing what it would take his people centuries more to begin to discern.  Standing in the dawning of the prophetic line, he did not yet see what his descendents would come to know.  They stood on his shoulders, and from that height they saw even greater vistas of divine revelation.

So where does that leave me in reading the rest of this story of Elijah.  It is worth noting again that in his flight from Jezebel, Elijah repeatedly whines about his mistreatment.  He claims that he only has been faithful, and challenges God for not rewarding him in the manner he thinks that he deserves.  Having made this claim once, he has a long time to meditate on what God has done to take care of him, only to repeat the very same whining complaint again.

How does God respond?  Many a preacher or teacher would have us think that God comforts Elijah in his despair.  That may not be completely wrong, but I think it is a pretty big stretch to let that be one's primary conclusion from the text.  What does God say to Elijah?  God does not praise Elijah for massacring the prophets.  God does not tell Elijah not to worry, that Elijah will have many more years of fruitful ministry.  The text explicitly says that all the spectacle and whoopdeedoo are not the place to look for the work of God.  Should one conclude that God is more interested in a steady faithfulness, obedience to the Torah, neighbor love, and justice rather than frenzied acts of violence in defense of a God who needs no human defender?  That is part of what occurs to me in this text.

A harsher reading is certainly defensible.  Has God listened to this whiny prophet who is too full of his own desire for status until God has had enough?  What are God's words to Elijah after the last time the prophet claims to be the only faithful one?  They are final instructions:  Go anoint a king of Syria and a king of Israel.  Then go appoint your successor.  I have no more need of you.  Pass on the work.  You have become an instrument of violence rather than a healer of my people.  You took up the same strategy as Jezebel--killing the prophets.  You have cared too much for your status and too little for the building up of the faithful.  Don't you realize there are thousands more who are faithful?  The prophets Obadiah saved, of whom you are well-informed, are just a drop in the bucket.  YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE!  So Elijah, let's call it a day.  Wrap it up.  The mess in Israel was not fixed by your frenzy of violence.  The people you anoint will continue their violent ways, killing each other in a cycle of violence that never seems to end, unless someone has the courage and love and devotion to say no to violence.  It's a wrap, Elijah.  You gave it your best most of the time, but this last debacle has worn me out.  It's time to give someone else a chance.

Now maybe that harsh reading is not the best one.  My mom certainly thinks I've pushed it too hard.  She listened to me talk this through for long time over the kitchen table.  She was not convinced.  She might be right about that.  Mom is a good Bible teacher who has never led me astray.  So let's say God was not that harsh.  Even so, God did not offer comforting words.  At the most, God told Elijah things will not get better anytime soon, so why not let someone else carry the load.  Come on over and let's have a cup of coffee together and remember old times.  Even if they were hard times, we were in them together.

Frankly, trying to understand scripture has become both harder and easier over the years.  I have reason to hope that I have come to know and love God better through the years, but I have also come to know my limitations better.  I have no imprimatur to offer on this textual reading, but I also do not offer it without some degree of confidence that it sheds light on the Scripture.  I also have come to trust that when the text of Scripture troubles me, I had better try to pursue that troubling Spirit to see where it leads me.

May the Holy Spirit illuminate and guide our reading in community, that the Spirit and Word may bear witness together to the mysteries of God and our calling to live as God's people.  Amen.