Emotions Stirring on Election Day 2016

Yesterday was very busy by my standards.  I was doing communications work for church and community organizing most of the morning.  I had a meeting that lasted an hour and one-half at noon.  Then I had to drive to Raleigh for another meeting at Shaw.  I stayed in my office after that to do some email catching up and get some preparation work done for the faculty retreat.  The next thing I knew, it was after 5:00 pm, dark outside, and the security officer was locking up the building now that all classes were over for the day.

I went on to the car and started the drive home.  The traffic fates had mercy on me, and there were only a few slowdowns with red brake lights shining, so I made good progress.  It's always tempting just to pick a restaurant and buy dinner on the way home, but nobody can afford that all the time.  On the other hand, going to a restaurant by myself gets pretty old.  I had made a plan for supper, and I knew Naomi would need to eat, too.  So I went straight home and started getting dinner on the table:  baked potatoes with Brown & Brummel's yogurt/butter spread and cheese, fresh snow peas, and corn on the cob.  I have to admit, we needed another potato to fill out the meal, so before long I was turning to the "Little Debbie food group" to reach complete satiety.

On that drive home I found myself in a roller coaster of emotions.  Listening to music or listening to news, everything was setting my thoughts off into deep reflections.  Suddenly, without any clear reason, tears welled up, and sent my investigative mind searching for "why?"  Rather than hiding, buried down deep as usual, my feelings stayed thick in my consciousness all the rest of the evening.  I did some more work on a project I'm trying to finish.  I read more up-to-the-minute analysis at the FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics websites.  I listened to the song I am supposed to sing lead on this Sunday at Mt. Level.  I read and meditated on lectionary texts from the past few weeks, especially the Prophets.  I chatted with a friend who helps hold me up.  I got a report of one of Everly's cousins' having passed away in hospice.  I listened to more music, finally getting back to one of my fall back artists, Bruce Cockburn.  And this morning, the mood remains.

Identifying why moods come and go is never as easy as I would wish.  If I could find the simple cause and effect, I guess I imagine that I could take charge of this embodied self and put me back on an even keel.  Hanging around long enough, knowing Everly for so long and her far greater familiarity with the stirrings and proddings of emotion, has taught me enough that I don't tend to react with an overwhelming effort to suppress.  My upbringing taught me to own the feelings as mine and stop looking for ways to blame them on something or someone outside of me, and I think I do a fair job of avoiding that.

A situation like this one really comes with a complex set of events and changes going on.  Naomi is in the final lap of finishing her dual masters degrees, and I feel the pressure she is under.  I'm at that point of the semester when all my unfinished work is piling up on me, with deadlines I hope I can meet.  As has often been the case, I puzzle in such times about whether what I am doing now is the best I could be doing for my calling to follow Jesus.  Naomi will be job hunting, and she may soon need to move out of the house we share to take up her calling.  W.D. is living far from all of us in Salado, and I wish there were a simple solution to his not being isolated.  It's quite a few things, and not any one of them.

The uncertainty, volatility, and hatefulness of the election season also takes a toll on me, and I can't help being afraid of what some results might lead to.  I have no delusions of American exceptionalism or divine destiny being fulfilled as the USA becomes the Kingdom of God.  I believe the opposite.  The sins of this nation, piled up, reach to the sky like a tower of Babel.  Trust in false gods of violence and wealth, oppression on every side while most of us enjoy such ease--"Woe to those who are at ease in Zion."  Almost all of the hope I can muster looks to the local possibilities of working for the common good.  At the national and state level, it too often seems like our work is defending people from the worst that leaders can do, holding off the extremes of greed, violence, and indifference.  I've cast my vote toward not stepping deeper into a cesspool of hatred for so many whom God loves, regardless of where they were born or how they pray.  One election can't transform this world into something it has no desire to be, and comparing options for least bad outcomes takes a toll on our hearts if we long for justice and beloved community.  That's my discouragement talking today.

As I write, I realize that four years ago, Everly was able to vote in the election, there in Salado, Texas.  So much has changed since then, and as months pass, the cumulative effects continue to unfold.  My beautiful David, Naomi, and Lydia keep progressing through their adult lives, passing through challenges and victories, and I wish she could touch them and tell them how proud she is and give them little trinkets of her affection.  She can't do that, and she couldn't go to her cousin's bedside, as he did for her in 2013.  His classically Southern name, Ben Tom, to distinguish him from uncles named Ben and Tom and another cousin named Ben, matched perfectly with a gentle, loving Southern way of caring for and encouraging others.  May God receive him in glory and love, and may the family know the presence of God in these days.  I am a witness--God will never leave you or forsake you!

Election days, if we can get ourselves out of the boxing ring and the horse race long enough, are days on which we think about the world that is coming: weeks, months, years ahead.  How do our choices, made in anger and rage or in lust and greed, shape the future lives of child workers in Bangladesh, fast-food workers who have to apply for welfare, and young men and women who will be sent to die for someone's profit margin and vacation home?  May we face this day with appropriate sobriety, and may our hope rest somewhere beyond the battle of Demicans and Republicrats whose record of caring for the poor and outcast, the marginalized and the worker, has been dismal at best.  May those elected catch a glimpse of the grace in which they stand, and may their endurance produce character, and may character give rise to a hope that does not disappoint.  Is it too much to ask?

While We Wait for God, How Shall We Wait? Stay Woke in Advent

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In looking back through my unfinished blog posts from the past few months, I found this sermon I preached during advent, but failed to post at that time.  It draws on the lectionary texts and the advent theme of waiting to see what God will do, but it also takes inspiration from the rising voices of young people who are no longer waiting for their elders to do the work needed to reverse the tide of injustice sweeping our neighborhoods, transferring of money from the mass of poor and middle classes to the 1%, destroying the lives of minorities through mass incarceration and shoot-first interdiction, and rising up in resentment against a perceived loss of power and privilege in white communities.  The twitter label #StayWokeAdvent got me thinking, and the Prophet Zephaniah provided the inspiration for my reflections.

Zephaniah 3:14-20

3:14 Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!

3:15 The LORD has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more.

3:16 On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak.

3:17 The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing

3:18 as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it.

3:19 I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.

3:20 At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the LORD.

Luke 3:7-18

3:7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

3:8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

3:9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

3:10 And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?"

3:11 In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."

3:12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?"

3:13 He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."

3:14 Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."

3:15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,

3:16 John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

3:17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

3:18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

While We Wait for God, How Shall We Wait?

       Stay Woke in Advent

       I’m an old dog that sometimes has to learn new tricks.  I had to learn to teach courses online, even though no one ever taught me that way.  I had to get used to carrying a phone around with me and to type out text messages if I wanted to have a chance to communicate with my grown children.  And earlier this year, I had to figure out how to tweet on twitter.  I have to believe I’m not the only one in here today who uses twitter.

       I might still not be a twitter user had it not been for a push from my dean at Shaw University Divinity School.  I don’t mean that he said, “Mike, go forth and tweet!”  But he did urge me to find a way to quickly publish a sermon that I had preached in chapel.  Not sure where to turn, I decided to check out twitter.  I already have a place online for writing.  That’s called a “blog,” and you all have heard of that.  Around a hundred people in various parts of the U.S., and a few in Europe and China read the things I post there.  And then there is facebook, something David told me about when he was a first-year student up at Oberlin College in Ohio, back in 2004.  Some people follow what I post there, too.  So I thought maybe I could expand my reach in twitter.  It’s not such a fast process to add new followers on twitter.  After several months, I have only a few more than 50 people checking out what I say there.  But all in all, it did give me another audience, if not exactly as many as Dean Forbes was intending.

       Part of twitter communication is something called “hashtags.”  That means you put one of those “pound” or “tic-tac-toe” looking symbols in front of a word or phrase.  Then if other people use the same phrase or word, twitter organizes all of those similar comments together.  This week, a popular hashtag has been #StayMadAbby.  It refers to a college applicant from Texas named Abigail, who got upset when some minority students got admitted to the University of Texas and she did not.  Her complaint became a lawsuit, and the lawsuit went before the Supreme Court this week.  Many minority college graduates have been posting pictures of themselves in graduation robes, posting lists of their degrees and schools.  Then they add #StayMadAbby to emphasize that nothing is going to stand in the way of African Americans, Latinos, and others who are striving to get an education and make something of their lives.  If it makes her mad to see minority students getting opportunities, she is just going to have to stay mad.

       Another hashtag you are familiar with is the slogan #BlackLivesMatter.  This phrase got started through the organizing work of three young women who responded to the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, by organizing people to call for police accountability.  These young women, some of whom were seminary students at the time, used twitter to help build connections with like-minded people around their region and around the country.  Those relationships and the expanding network have become very important as we have become more and more aware of the widespread violence done against young black men and women, treating them as if their lives don’t matter at all.

       One more hashtag I need to mention appeared as the Christian year began a couple of weeks ago.  It says #StayWokeAdvent.  This phrase calls on church people who are journeying through the season of advent to keep our eyes open, to keep our hearts sensitive, to keep our priorities straight, in short, to Stay Woke, as we live our faith in this season of longing for the fullness of God revealed in the teen mother Mary, in the refugee family moving from temporary Bethlehem home to temporary Egyptian home, in the vulnerable baby Jesus born among straw and dung in the barn, in the sojourning community of God’s people never quite at home in this world.

       The examples I’ve given from hashtag phrases on twitter are each reminders of the way that powers and structures of domination are always nearby, waiting around the corner, plotting in back rooms and board rooms, in order to continue to keep power and prosperity in the hands of a few at the expense of the many.  One spotlights the elite class attacking systems designed to provide educational opportunity to those who have historically faced barriers and deprivation.  Another cries out against the disturbingly callous act of leaving an unarmed young man in the middle of the road to bleed and die after a well-trained officer of the law, claiming to fear the face of a demon on an 18-year-old scared kid, took away that life.  And #StayWokeAdvent holds up for all to see that in the season in which we live, there is a collision between the Christian tradition of hope and love and a world seemingly controlled by fear, hatred, prejudice, bigotry, and violence.  Losing ourselves in a seasonal binge of overconsumption and overspending, of empty platitudes and shallow optimism, is the opposite of living in faith and hope.  Pretending for a few weeks that we can buy whatever we want, that we will all magically get along, that we can make reality out of nostalgia for a time when we were oblivious to the pain and struggle of life—these get us nowhere but farther from the God on whom we must depend.  Losing our focus, pretending—we can’t afford these ways.  We must be awake, alert, ready for what may strike.  Stay Woke in Advent!

       The lectionary takes us to the Prophet Zephaniah this week.  I have to say that I don’t think I’ve preached from Zephaniah ever.  With some of the better known prophets, I can remember when and where they did their work and what their primary message is.  I could not remember anything about Zephaniah.  Put that kind of obscure text in front of an ornery professor, and you know I’m going to take the challenge to preach on Prophet Zephaniah.  So I had to dig out some reference works.

       It seems that Zephaniah probably came along after Isaiah and Amos, and maybe a little before Jeremiah.  We recognize all their names, and some of us remember when and where they prophesied.  In that time frame, Zephaniah would have come along some time after King Hezekiah’s reign when Assyria had besieged the city of Jerusalem, causing much adversity to the people.  But God delivered Jerusalem from the Assyrians through the mighty arm and outstretched hand, and not by the military power of the armies of Judah. 

       King Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, reigned many years, gaining the reputation as one of the most evil kings of Judah.  After Hezekiah’s death, it seems that Manasseh aligned Judah with the imperial power of Assyria, cooperating with the empire in exchange for creating trading relationships.  Olive oil and other products of Judah’s agriculture became cash commodities and brought wealth into the land.  That might sound like an era of prosperity that would benefit everyone, but more likely King Manasseh cut special deals with his cronies, and a rich aristocracy became richer while the masses of the people lost their land, sold themselves into servitude, and struggled to meet daily needs. 

All the while, Manasseh supported those who wanted to bring the worship of Ba’al and many other gods back to the Temple, and set up altars on hillsides all over the land.  The Bible even accuses him of practicing human sacrifice in the ways of the nations.  When supporters of Manasseh’s father’s views tried to stand up to the king, he persecuted them.  He got the reputation as the king that killed the prophets.  Some believe he even killed the persistent and outspoken Prophet Isaiah.

       Zephaniah was probably directly aware of this history.  The book places him also during the reign of Josiah, during a time when Josiah’s sons were already becoming young men.  King Josiah is probably the most virtuous and most praised of the Kings after David, and he is not known for the same kinds of great moral failures we know from David’s reign.  Then again, much less is written about any king besides David.  Josiah restored the study and observance of the Torah, the gift of law and life that God had given to the children of Israel.  He restored pure and holy worship of the one true God of Moses and Zipporah, of Abraham and Sarah, the God who had called their ancestors and had brought them out of the land of Egypt. 

       Zephaniah knew how this had happened, how Judah’s leaders had by ebb and flow showed loyalty to the Lord and had turned away from the ways of the Lord.  His prophecies give the impression that he sees that even with Josiah’s reforms, not every part of society, not everyone in power, has embraced Josiah’s agenda.  Even Josiah’s sons seem drawn away from their father’s strong commitment to faith in the Lord.  The Kingdom of Judah had not yet faced its final destruction at the hands of Babylon.  But Zephaniah was clearly able to see the possibility that judgment might not be far away.  In a time when social divisions, class unrest, and cultural conflict remained ever-present and potential flash points, Zephaniah had a message to deliver.

       Zephaniah did not beat around the bush.  He did not sugar coat his words.  Zeph didn’t warm up slowly.  He did not tell a long story about twitter and hashtags to set things up.  He cut to the chase.  He went straight to the heart of it.  He left no prisoners.  How did Zephaniah’s prophecy begin?  He speaks the message of the Lord in these words,

“I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth.”

Well, there’s not much left to say after that.  God is so sick of the corrupt, unjust, violent ways of the nations of the world, it’s going to be like the story of Noah.  Everything will be swept away.  Words like that will wake you up.  #StayWokeAdvent.

       Probably too often we find ourselves listening to preaching or Bible study with some expectation that what is going to be said is what we already know and have heard time and time again.  We think we have a pretty good idea of anything God might want to tell us.  We could just about doze off and not miss it since we’ve heard it all before.  God loves us.  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  Repent of sins.  Don’t kill.  Praise God.  Share your stuff.  Yada yada yada.  But then, just before dozing, along comes Zephaniah saying, “All of it is going away.  Everything.  The cities, the palaces, the temple, the houses, the jobs, the fields, the trees, the roads, the streams, the dogs, the cattle—everything.

       That will wake you up.  “Wait a minute, Zephaniah.  What did you say?  Did you say what I think you said?  That’s not what Brother Teacher told us last week.  That’s not what the Rev preached about on Sunday.  Can you run that by me again?”

       In the season of advent, do we expect to hear a word from God?  Do we expect that we are having the same advent observance we have every year and that all of it will be identical to last time?  Do we ever think that God might plan to overthrow everything we thought we knew in order to shed new light on the Scriptures for such a time as this?  Could it be we keep giving the same answers when the questions have changed?  Do new times bring new questions for our faith?  Does the Holy Spirit bring new life even in our time?  Are the mercies of the Lord really new every morning? 

Yet when young people come to us with their honest questions, how often are we tempted to tell them not to question what they have been told?  Do we discount their questions because we have become comfortable with our own faith and don’t want the Holy Spirit to rock the boat in our lives?  I can’t count how many seminary students who arrived at school dealing with years of guilt from being rebuked about the questions that rise up within them.  Too often, their elders and fellow-church members treated the Spirit’s stirring in them as a sign of unfaithfulness.  They are amazed to be told that God is bigger than their questions and can handle any question they have.  Is this the message of hope we are prepared to give young people in our church?

       I was blessed to hear Rev. William Barber recently, discussing the story of Jesus’ going into the temple and shutting down the shopping mall that had come to dominate the temple court.  He called it a den of thieves.  If it had been an honest and proper market giving people fair value for their money, then he probably would have called it something besides a den of thieves.  Commerce and consumption had taken over the center of worship, and it was commerce of the worst kind that took advantage of poor and weary travelers, overcharging and otherwise practicing injustice.  If merchants kept animals for sale in the temple, the house of worship had become a public dung heap.  Jesus saw it all for what it really was—abusive, corrupt, unjust economic exploitation that was perpetrated by the powerful, the religious leaders, the high council.  Those who should look out for the good of the people were using their positions to victimize the people.

       So Jesus shut it all down.  He turned over tables.  He twisted some cords and chased the animals out.  He disrupted and overthrew the systems of corruption and abuse and stepped into that space to reorder it around justice.  This was no respectability politics.  Jesus did not pull aside the head man in charge for a private and discreet conversation.  He did not set up a series of meetings to discuss possible best practices for the use of the temple court.  No, that’s not what he did.  He swept it all way.  He cleaned up the place and straightened out the right use of that space for anyone listening or watching him.  He blessed the poor and marginalized, healing blind and lame people, freeing them to see, to walk, and to run.  Jesus was sweeping away the old and bringing in the new.

       What Rev. Barber points out is a detail of the story that appears only in the Gospel of Matthew.  All the accounts of the story note that when Jesus did these and other things, the crowds in Jerusalem were amazed and astounded and mesmerized.  Mark’s and Luke’s gospels say the people were spellbound.  As you might imagine, the chief priests and scribes, the people in charge of the temple and of life in Jerusalem generally, were angry.  Their constant stream of revenue had been interrupted.  Their mechanism to take money from the poor and give it to the rich was being threatened.  They got especially mad about one thing that happened.

       Barber points out that after Jesus challenged corruption and took on injustice, and only after, did the young people start to pay attention.  Young people had likely been going along with the festivities.  They were used to seeing the religion of their parents and neighbors.  They also knew their parents and their neighbors well enough to have doubts about whether all this religious talk was real.  Their eyes and ears were pretty good hypocrisy detectors, and they were hanging off to the side, waiting to decide whether they should jump in the flow of things or maybe just toss it all out.

       But when these young people saw Jesus align his preaching directly with his actions, they joined in.  When they saw him actually challenge and battle injustice and corruption and not just give speeches and strike a pose as a defender of justice, their personal faith was activated.  They started crying out, “Hosannah, to the Son of David.”  They may even have been singing a familiar psalm of worship.  This integrity of talk and walk was what they had been waiting for.  Now they had hope that he could save their lives and their world from the evil so deeply embedded in them.

       Some people fear that our children have left the faith.  They think the young people have given up on God.  But more careful study is showing us that young people are drifting out of our churches not because they are losing faith in God, but because they are losing faith in existing churches’ ability to stand up to injustices in the world.  Churches have become bastions of respectability.  They are fortresses to keep out the riffraff while those inside congratulate ourselves for being such upstanding citizens.  Young people “ain’t got time for that.”  Ain’t nobody got time for that.  It’s time to be awake to the world in which God is active and powerful.  We need to stay woke, because Jesus is steadily standing at the doors of the churches, knocking, asking to be let in, while we continue in our same old way, never realizing Jesus is outside trying to get in and we are inside ignoring the people outside the door. 

Out in the streets, young people are challenging injustices with all the vigor and passion of youth.  And Jesus is also in the streets.  Don’t you think Jesus would have us join him in the streets?  Don’t you think the struggle to end police killing of unarmed black men and women could use the experience of elders alongside the energy of young people?  Isn’t there a way for the bold words of youth to and the wisdom of age to teach one another a thing or two?  Or will we stay inside because we think we don’t need what those outside have to offer us?

       Too often we think we have everything we need already.  Zephaniah spoke about people like that.  He said that among the comfortable and the powerful there are many who are self-satisfied.  They are sure they can thank themselves for all the good things they have in their lives.  He says that they sit on top of their piles of stuff and say, “God is not going to do anything good for us, and God is not going to do us any harm.”  In other words, they count on themselves, not on God.  They don’t look for God to be in their world.  They take God to be irrelevant.  Everything comes back to their own actions. 

But Zephaniah says they have it all wrong.  They may build fancy houses for themselves, but they will not get to live in them.  Instead, the Day of the Lord is coming.  In the tradition of Amos, Zephaniah says that we ought not expect that the coming of the Lord will leave things as they are.  The Day of the Lord will shake us up; it will shake things up.  So we had better stay woke.  We had better be ready rather than ruling God out of our lives. 

The New Testament lesson for this third Sunday in Advent tells about the work of John the Baptist, whose preaching woke many from their sleep.  He told them that “the axe is at the root.”  God was ready to dig up the whole plant, all the way down to the root, to cut it off below ground and leave no evidence on the surface that anything had been there at all.  Like Zephaniah, John discerned that God means to go to any length to get the world right.

Zephaniah said that after God swept away everything, there would be a new beginning.  After wild animals and birds had become the only occupants left where once great cities and civilizations had stood, then God would send in a remnant of the people.  Where devastation has brought down the wealthy, the powerful, and the haughty, God would send in the lame, the outcast, the ones who had been shamed by the world. 

Zephaniah said that all the leaders had failed their purpose.  The officials and rulers had failed to establish and maintain a just, peaceful world for people to live in.  They must be swept away.  The judges had failed to uphold the law and make sure that everyone is treated according to justice.  They must be swept away.  The prophets had spun tales and preached sermons to support the status quo and gain favor with the wealthy and powerful.  They must be swept away.  The priests had sustained religious practices built on injustice and oppression, offering only empty hope to the masses.  They must be swept away.

Yet Zephaniah could see that the same God who swept away oppression would reposition the weak and powerless into a place of praise and renown.  God will gather them.  They will not make it all happen.  They who had lost all hope were not sure whether they should hope at all.  But Zephaniah proclaims above all the despair and uncertainty that God will do it.  Won’t God do it?  God will do it.  All that we have dared to dream or hope for, all the justice and peacefulness and joy that we have waited for—God will do it.

That’s something to stay woke for.  In this advent season of awaiting the birth of Jesus, how shall we wait?  Mary waited through an unexpected pregnancy, through all the bodily struggles of pregnancy, all its uncertainties, all its dangers, for what she could only hope against hope to be true.  Joseph waited in his confusion and shame that he had been the greatest fool in the world to marry this pregnant girl.  The shepherds waited out in the fields, doing the dirty work of the world, wondering if and when their time would ever come. 

And in our day we wait for the time when the love of learning and longing of every soul to achieve matters as much as the anger of the privileged, a time when everyone can gain access to education at any level.  We wait for the time when people in authority won’t shoot first and tell lies later, when black lives matter equally.  We wait for the time when violence toward any is understood as violence against all.  We wait for a time when politicians cannot build a following through stoking the fires of fear and hatred toward people whose skin or religion is different from our own.   We wait for the time that a preacher cannot get cheers and applause for telling his congregation to get a gun and be ready to kill the enemy of the moment.  We wait for a time when the refugee, the homeless, the jobless, the orphan, the hungry, the weak, when every one of God’s children has a place of honor, love, and safety in this world. 

If we wait carelessly, sleepily, and without expectation, we may miss it when God shows up.  While we wait, we must wait as awake people.  We need our eyes wide open.  We need to stay woke.  God is moving here and now.  If I don’t receive the refugee while I wait, how will I recognize God’s showing up in the life of a refugee family trying to save the life of their baby?  If I don’t get into the streets with young people crying out for justice, how will I know when the King of Heaven goes walking down those streets and alleys to lift up the lowly and outcast.  If I am not where Jesus is walking, how will I hear the call to follow him? 

I must be awake, ready, anticipating the mighty work of God.  When John preached, people from all walks of life came out to hear and listen.  They were shaken by his message.  Awakened, they asked him what they should do.  In all cases, he pointed them toward a life of justice.  He told them to wake up to justice in living with their neighbors.  He told them to stay ready to do the right thing.  He told them to trust in God and not in the ways they could game the system in their own favor.  And the Gospel of Luke says that even though he told them they had to change their ways, they heard the good news in that message. 

God has a better way for you and for me.  We are waiting for it, and we can’t afford to sleep through it’s coming.  We don’t know just when God will sweep away the structures of injustice, but God will do it.  We don’t know what the means will be, but God will do it.  We want to be about the right work when it happens.  When a new heaven and a new earth start to appear, we need to be in God’s vicinity.  We need to be awake doing the work God has given us.  While we wait, we need to stay woke.  Let’s do this together.  Let’s stay woke in advent.  Let’s stay woke, because God will do it.  Amen.

Maybe you are here today and realize you have never awakened to God’s call to unite your life to God’s way.  You have not taken your first step to follow Jesus.  God is present here in this place, with us, ready to embrace you will the deep love that only can come from the one who made you for love.  If you need to wake up to God’s calling and purpose for your life today, the doors of the church are open.  We join with God ready to receive you into the reconciling power of God in Jesus Christ.  Come today and profess your desire and commitment to stay woke to God in your life.

Maybe someone here today finds yourself drifting along half asleep as the world passes by.  Maybe your hope and trust in God have faded over time because of the cares of the world.  Just as Israel waited through oppression in Egypt and through exile in Babylon, we wait this season for the God who liberates the oppressed and feeds the hungry.  If you are in Durham but not part of a congregation, know that God has called this gathering of pilgrims together in this corner of our city to be a people of love and care for one another and for our neighborhood.  If the Holy Spirit is prodding you to be part of our striving for faithfulness, there is no better time than now to unite your life to ours as we try to stay woke for what God will do.

As we stand together, as the musicians lead, let this be the day we commit to stay woke in advent and walk in readiness for what God will do.

Simeon's Story

This is a narrative sermon delivered in the Shaw University Divinity School Chapel service on March 23, 2013.  It is both an preaching text and a teaching exemplar.  In this particular instance, I had to create imagined characters who could give first person accounts as observers of the events in the biblical account.  

While narrative preaching may not be the bread and butter of the pulpit, it can be a valuable contribution in a number of ways.  In this case, a narrative sermon provides an imaginative alternative for high holy days such as Palm Sunday when the preaching text may be similar from year to year.  The different approach allows a preacher to enliven a text in new ways across many years of ministry.  

Secondly, a narrative sermon series can offer a unique way to develop sermons on a set of characters from scripture or a series of stories in a book of the Bible.  

Additionally, preachers will find that occasional narrative preaching can also assist them as readers to see more deeply into texts, as for instance the very brief comments made by the gospel writer about the disciples coming to pick up the colt with the simple statement, "The Lord has need of it."  What sort of background made that easy to do?  Alternatively, was it more complicated than the gospel account explains?  Asking these probing questions assists preachers to seek richer and fuller understanding of the text.  

Finally, I would also say that retelling a scripture narrative as a sermon also opens the door for teaching scripture in context.  The retelling can weave surrounding chapters and pericopes into the text being examined, using cultural, geographical, and social background as well as including details from other adjacent stories to elaborate the more focused narrative.

Luke 19:28-40  (Liturgy of the Palms)

I started the day looking for that son of mine.  He went outside early, as expected, to do his chores.  It is the day after Sabbath, so there is a little extra work to do with the animals—a little extra cleaning the messes they make, a little extra stocking the mangers with feed, a little extra spreading of straw on the ground.  

I was saying morning prayers, planning my day, waiting for Elazar, that’s my son’s name, to share breakfast with me.  When he did not come inside, I finally stepped out to see whether he was having a problem with his chores.  To my surprise, he was nowhere to be found.  And the donkey’s colt he loves so much was gone as well.  I wondered if the colt had run away.  Maybe Elazar had to go searching.  The mother donkey was happily chewing her food and did not seem to be bothered at all.  I decided I had better start looking for them myself.

I stopped by my neighbor Asher’s house first.  Asher is a tailor who makes and repairs fine cloaks and other garments.  Of course, most of us do our own basic sewing and make our everyday work clothes as best we can.  Still, Asher makes a good living selling fabric and garments for all the special occasions when people may not have time or skill to make their own.  

Asher said, “Peace be unto you, Simeon.  Come into my home.  It’s very busy now as so many travelers are coming to Jerusalem for the Passover.  In these festive seasons I make much of the income I need to feed my family for the year.  But I always have time for my good friend Simeon.” 

I got right to the point to ask if Asher had seen Elazar this morning or might have any idea where I might find him.  Asher said, “I did hear some conversation outside in the early morning.  I thought Elazar might have been talking with you, Simeon.  But if it were not you, then I suppose some other man must have stopped to talk.  Simeon, I’m sorry, but it seemed normal, so I did not bother to check.  Wait, my boy Zachary is helping me this morning.  Maybe he saw something.  Hey Zach, come speak with Simeon and me for a moment.”

A small boy appeared carrying a large stack of folded fabric.  Peeking over the top of the cloth, he listened to his father ask, “Did you see Elazar going anywhere this morning?  Simeon can’t find him or the young colt.”

Zachary replied that his mom had sent him outside early to sweep off the threshold and the front yard. He added, “I saw Elazar and my big brother, David, talking with two men.  The men had come to borrow the colt.  When Elazar asked why they wanted the colt, they said, ‘The Lord has need of it.’  Right then, Elazar and David got so excited.  They did not even think to come in and tell anyone what was happening.  They just asked those men, ‘Can we come along?’  That’s when they all left, heading back into the direction of Bethany with the colt.”

I looked at Asher, and he looked back at me.  We paused a moment to collect our thoughts.  Then Asher said, “Simeon, we knew this day was coming, but we did not know when.”  

You see, Asher and I had been following the news of Jesus of Nazareth.  Not so long ago, we had gone out into the wilderness by the Jordan to hear the preaching of John.  We were convicted by his words, so we were baptized for repentance from sin.  Later word came around that John had announced Jesus as the promised one that we should follow.  Ever since, we began to take whatever opportunities we could to see him, to hear him, and to learn about him.  

For a few months now, a small group of people here on the edge of Bethpage and Bethany met together occasionally to tell each other what we have heard and seen.  We talk about the things Jesus is teaching and the mighty works he has done.  Recently, some of his close followers dropped by our meeting to let us know that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.  They said that when he came, he would need our help to carry out his plans.  They asked us to be ready to do what Jesus would ask us to do.  So our families had agreed to be ready.  Elazar is still a by, but at his age he is also a son of the law.  Like his elders, he has been drawn to Jesus.  That’s why this morning, he knew to be ready.

I felt a rush of joy to know that our humble family could now be of service to Jesus.  We are simple people.  We keep animals.  I hire out my service to haul goods with my donkeys.  This young colt had never been ridden and never carried a heavy load.  He was almost ready for joining the working stock.  Yes, he was ripe for work.  But why would Jesus need this colt?

Remember Asher pointed out that next week is Passover.  Of course, that is the time when our children ask a question at the Passover table, “Why is this night different from every other night?”  I have to say the question came a few days early for me.  Why was this first day of the week different from any other day?  

For a long time it seems, Asher and I stood together pondering this news.  But soon we began to hear the sounds of a crowd coming out of the direction of Bethany.  We went outside to get a view of what was happening.  In the distance, there were people walking in the road, and more people walking along beside the road.  They were shouting and laughing.  Some seemed to be singing.  As they got closer I could make out what they were saying.

“Hosanna!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hail the Son of David!”  People were cutting branches from the palm trees and waving them.  It was as if a sea of green banners were waving and washing down the road--green waves of hope, waving above our heads, signaling that change is coming.

In a way I was confused about the words people were saying, even though I knew about Jesus and had high hopes for what he might do.  What marvelous words these were!  Who would say such things as these?  Of course we all hoped for the Messiah.  Asher and I grew up studying the Torah and the Prophets, and we had sometimes disputed what signs of the Messiah’s coming we should be watching for.  Now, all of a sudden, right by my humble home, people were shouting as if the Messiah was about to pass by.

Then, as I peered at the approaching tumult, lo and behold, I saw Elazar, walking along leading our colt.  On the back of the colt sat the great teacher Jesus.  Just as the Prophet Zechariah had said, he was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt.  I was so proud to see Elazar there with him.  And David, Asher’s older boy, was running back and forth with many others, placing their outer garments on the road as a carpet in front of the colt.  It was a kind of moving carpet, as they waited for the donkey to pass, then gathered the garments and ran carrying them again to put them on the road ahead of Jesus.  

I burst inside to get Rachel, my wife.  I told her to grab her tambourine, come to the street, and join the people celebrating as Jesus rides into Jerusalem.  When we got back outside, we found Asher and Zachary, and Asher’s wife Sarah, carrying beautiful garments to spread on the road in front of our simple little colt.  

In the crowd I saw familiar faces of the fishermen, scholars, workers, and of course the women of every status, disciples who had traveled with Jesus, had followed along to learn and assist him in his work.  Right beside the colt was a beggar, shouting loudest it seems, calling Jesus the Son of David and telling everyone that on this very morning he had been blind, but Jesus gave him sight.  Running along behind was a very short man in the finest of clothes, trying to keep up.  I heard someone say he was a tax collector who was giving back the money he stole from people.  Women were playing their finger cymbals, jingling their bells, and beating their tambourines.  Children ran and played in all the excitement.  It seemed that everyone was joining the great parade of people praising God and following Jesus.

We made our way into Jerusalem, and the crowd continued to swell into a great multitude.  Those who realized what was happening would join in the celebration.  Others followed along to gaze at the spectacle, mostly out of curiosity.  Such a scene attracted the attention of everyone, including the authorities.  Roman soldiers watched suspiciously, and I saw them send a messenger toward the Prefect’s court.  I’m sure Pilate was not pleased to hear what was happening.  Soon from the direction of the temple I could see officials of the Sanhedrin and their temple guards hurrying in our direction.  That made some people afraid, and the crowd thinned out a little.

Those Pharisees and Sadducees went straight up to Jesus and told him he should make all of us stop saying what we were saying.  They had hated him for a long time, and this big show of popularity and symbolism made them livid.  As usual, Jesus had a strong response ready.  He said if the people stopped shouting these things, then the very stones of the road and the stone blocks of the structures would take our places crying out in praise to God.  What a thing to say!  He never seemed afraid to get right in the faces of those pompous windbags.

I kept thinking about the other times I had seen and heard Jesus.   There were many times before that it seemed Jesus did not want to be called the Messiah.  But for some reason today was different.  He did not hush it up.  He did not deny it or give some kind of vague and confusing explanation.  He was willing to accept the title.  He was even acting it out from the teaching of the prophets.

Some were shouting, “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”  It was like the story they tell about when Jesus was born.  They say shepherds heard angels saying those very same words.  So much of what had gone before seemed to be coming to fruition on this day, in my town, in front of my house, and including my little donkey.

However, I noticed as we got right up to the city where Jesus could look out across the temple, the buildings, the streets, and the people, that Jesus’ face clouded up.  He seemed to be weeping.  Elazar later told me that Jesus had said something about the people not knowing the way to peace.  They were crying out peace, but they did not know peace.

After taking a few moments of reflection and resolve, Jesus gathered himself and went into the temple itself.  He began to confront the merchants and the temple staff.  He quickly took charge of the place.  Many of the crowd continued to cheer his actions.  Others watched in amazement or fear for what the guards might do.  Jesus activity on that day was relentless, it seems.  But the moment was passing, the excitement waning.  

People got tired or hungry.  Slowly, the crowds of people began to go back to what they had been doing.  Rachel and I gathered the family and the colt, and we headed back home.  We found Asher and Sarah preparing to wash the garments from the road and getting back to their work.  But none of us could keep from stopping in the midst of our work to talk about what had happened.  We kept puzzling over what it might mean.  

Jesus did not gather weapons and utilize the crowd to rush the centers of power and take over Jerusalem.  Some thought he would do that.  I don’t know why he didn’t.   But he also did not send us away and say we had gotten him all wrong.  I think he was accepting the title Messiah, but just what kind of Messiah is he?

I keep thinking about that moment when he stopped to survey the city.  What hurt him so bad that tears filled his eyes in the middle of his great day of triumph and celebration?  I would have expected him to beam with joy and to bask in all that glory.  But Elazar said Jesus was feeling sad for the way that God’s blessing for Jerusalem and for the people would soon be thwarted.  He was seeing that these enthusiastic crowds would be disappointed.  He said that the people did not understand or recognize the visitation of God.  He incited a multitude, yet he was disappointed by the response he got.  What a strange reaction to the day’s marvelous events!  I just don’t understand.

Jesus had asked for the colt so he could ride into town.  That must mean that he wanted to stir the crowds to action.  Yet he is showing no sign of organizing his forces for battle.  If not battle, what kind of action does he want to see?  I wish I could understand what this man has planned for us.  I am sure that he comes from God.

The words I’ve heard him speak stir my heart.  They make me yearn to know God better.  They raise hope for a better life and a better world.  What will the next days bring?  Will he now show us the way?  What does he want from us?  If not taking up arms, then what means  does he plan to use for transforming the world?
       As this day is closing, God, I am calling out to you.  Show us the things that make for peace.  Visit us and make yourself known.  Make us ready to follow Jesus wherever he may lead.  Make us ready to become who you want us to be.  Amen.

Advent Aspect

When I was growing up, I did not know about Advent.  It had been swept away centuries before in the iconoclastic fury of the late reformation, bundled together with an inchoate bundle of artifacts and traditions under the category "Popery."  Any so-called Protestant still willing to hold on to such things fell into the class of "false churches," most notably because they continued the practice of infant baptism.

As a seminarian in my younger twenties, Advent came as a breath of fresh air.  It was a way of getting ready for Christmas that departed from the cultural liturgy of Santa praise, affluenzic consumption, and trumped up cheeriness.  It gave us more ways to be drawn back to the scriptures and the stories.  We learned that it was a time of waiting, a pre-celebratory season, a time to remember the difference between certitude and hope.  There were centuries in which tropes of Messianic promise took form in polyphonic harmony and dissonance (thanks Barry Harvey for this language).  The bluesmen and blueswomen that were prophets played and replayed these riffs as improvisational jazz (Jon Michael Spencer, Cornel West, and many others here).  It was music and language for meditation and imagination of God's presence and plan.

During the thirty or so years since that time, many Advents have come and gone.  In the intensity of graduate school, new jobs, and grading papers, the shine wore off for me and I just wanted to get the season over with.  Moments of interruption, when the Spirit would break into the monotony and stress would sometimes remind me what a gift the season of Advent could be.  Of course, other parents will remember with me, that in those years when Everly was pregnant with our three children, Advent took on a certain aspect, a recognition of the struggle of Mary who had fled her hometown embarrassed yet hoping for the word of Gabriel to be fulfilled.  And in the subsequent years when our three little infant children had their first Christmas, the wonderment of an infant child full of promise and blessing brought another aspect to Advent.

In this fifty-fourth Advent of my time in this world, there is a new aspect.  We have been doing lots of waiting this year.  We wait for the report on medical imaging scans.  We wait for the drugs to trickle into Everly's bloodstream.  We wait for the symptoms to start after each treatment.  We wait for the symptoms to subside again.  We wait to hear what the next step will be.  And we wait for a possible respite from this harsh mercy known as chemotherapy.  Shadows lurk in our going out and coming in.

Everly's work as an educator, a leader, and a world-changer has been intense, with long hours.  Now she waits to feel good enough to put in a couple of hours of activity during the day.  She waits for doctors and pharmacies to return her calls.  She waits for me to have the focus and drive to be her partner in all she is facing.  Whatever the future holds, she waits with confidence that she can share it with her loved ones.  Her siblings, her parents, our children, my parents, my sister and brother-in-law--we all stay close, treasuring the gift she is for each one of us.

Some of the triumphal theology of Americanism has eroded:  good riddance.  The idea that everything will always be the same as it has been sank into the sea.  It makes a little more existential sense why someone would ask, "How can we sing the songs of Zion now that all this has happened?"

So it is a good time to start anew in the Broadway household.  It is a good time to remember the stories of others who longed for redemption's song.  And it is a good time to remember that after waiting, the Word became flesh and moved in next door.

Another Look at Elijah

I was listening to a Rich Mullins song this morning.

The Jordan is waiting for me to cross through.
My heart is aging I can tell.
So Lord, I'm begging for one last favor from You:
Here's my heart--take it where You will.

This life has shown me how we're mended and how we're torn;
How it's okay to be lonely as long as you're free.
Sometimes my ground was stoney,
And sometimes covered up with thorns.
And only You could make it what it had to be.
And now that it's done,
Well, if they dressed me like a pauper,
Or if they dined me like a prince,
If they lay me with my fathers,
Or if my ashes scatter on the wind,
I don't care.

But when I leave I want to go out like Elijah
With a whirlwind to fuel my chariot of fire.
And when I look back on the stars
It'll be like a candlelight in Central Park.
And it won't break my heart to say goodbye.

There's people been friendly, but they'd never be your friends.
Sometimes this has bent me to the ground.
Now that this is all ending,
I want to hear some music once again
'Cause it's the finest thing that I have ever found.

But the Jordan is waiting,
Though I ain't never seen the other side.
Still they say you can't take in the things you have here.
So on the road to salvation,
I stick out my thumb, and He gives me a ride.
And His music is already falling on my ears...

It is an insightful reflection on the uncommon life of the prophet.  It suggests the roller coaster of emotional and mental states the itinerant messenger of judgment must have faced.  Of course, Mullins intermingles his own life with Elijah's, bringing them together in the refrain by saying he wouldn't mind going out like Elijah.


At the heart of the lyrics (the quote above is only partial--for more click here) is the weariness Elijah must have felt after so many difficult years spent in isolation, under threat, and bearing the heavy weight of a message it seemed no one wanted to hear.  He felt like a pariah, and he wondered whether he had a friend anywhere.


But Mullins also captures what must have been a deep assurance in Elijah's being.  "Only You could make it what it had to be."  That abiding hope in God would allow Elijah or Mullins to ask one last favor:  take my heart, and take me where you will take me.  It is the basis on which he can say that his hope for salvation means risking it all on God:  "I stick out my thumb, and He gives me a ride."


Having turned the screws on Elijah recently by employing the hermeneutics of suspicion, let me come back to him with a sympathetic reading by means of Mullins's theological imagination.  Elijah bore the burden of unwanted leadership in one of the most difficult episodes of the history of Israel.  It is understandable that he resented how he was treated and that he wondered why he got stuck with this gig.  

Whatever else one might say about him, he stuck with it and pushed back the darkness to let in the light.  He set a standard of boldness (even though he sometimes ran away) that nourished the subsequent prophetic tradition to stand against the crowd.  So with Little Brother Rich, I think I can feel the old prophet.  Going out on a chariot of fire, looking back on a world that treated him bad--that's a pretty fine poetic ending.

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.

Isaiah and Economic Justice 4: Misleaders

Isaiah 3:12b-15

O my people, your leaders mislead you,

….and confuse the course of your paths.

The Lord rises to argue his case;

….he stands to judge the peoples.

The Lord enters into judgment

….with the elders and princes of his people:

It is you who have devoured the vineyard;

….the spoil of the poor is in your houses.

What do you mean by crushing my people,

….by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts.

Isaiah 3:18-24

In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarfs; the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; the signet rings and nose rings; the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; the garments of gauze, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils.

Instead of perfume there will be a stench;

….and instead of a sash, a rope;

….and instead of well-set hair, baldness;

….and instead of a rich robe, a binding of sackcloth;

….instead of beauty, shame.

Isaiah 3 continues to point out the instability of the conspicuous wealth of the powerful in Israel. One part of the chapter comments on the wealthy women who love to show off their finery while constantly shopping for more. But this is not strictly a criticism of women. It is about one of the visible features of a system in which the wealth of has grown so far beyond the level of human need that it becomes primarily a measuring rod within a competitive structure of status and power.

In this text, it is the most powerful, the same ones who by social delegation should be most responsible, who receive the greatest attention. The leaders have brought about this problem. The elders and princes have brought the nation to this desperate economic situation, yet they do not even see the problem. They lie to themselves and to everyone else to justify a system organized around fulfilling their insatiable greed. Of course, what they are doing is right since it is working for them; moreover, if what they are doing is right, it is by their logic good for all.

At the heart of their sin is deception. They mislead the people, and ultimately come to believe their own deceptions. They foment confusion about economic matters which anyone should be able to understand. They create technical language and lengthy regulations full of caveats and qualifications in order to conceal their intentions. They work in backrooms to strategize the path to their self-interest, then dress it in empty platitudes of the common good. We might recognize this in the marketing of subprime mortgages. We might hear echoes of their deceptions in the cunning secrecy of credit default swaps. We may know of what they speak in the hidden fees and traps of consumer credit. We may continue to hear the deception in the claim that capping interest rates will make it impossible to loan money to lower-income people, as if high interest rates are transforming them into becoming more creditworthy.

The prophet does not mince words. The vineyard image bears rich significance here. First, it is a symbol of a prosperous and good life. To have a thriving vineyard is to be blessed with wine at one’s table as well and with a valuable product for trade. But equally importantly, a vineyard is an image of Israel as the Lord’s planting and cultivation of a people (5:1ff). God has tenderly and conscientiously cared for the vineyard. But rather than Israel blossoming and bearing rich fruit as a people, the ones who should have cared for the vineyard have stripped it bare and left it in ruins.

The image gives way to a very concrete indictment. After saying they have devoured the vineyard, the prophet explicates the symbolic language. Their fullness and fatness comes from despoiling the poor. Their wealth is the product of oppression. Their mansions are framed and decorated by the rightful possessions of the poor. Their wealth is not derived from their virtue. Their only expertise is in being good criminals and hiding their crimes. This is what God despises.

Ultimately, the prophet claims that their appearance of greatness is ephemeral. They will lose it, and this oracle spares no detail. Perfume, sash, hairdo, robe, and all other trappings of beauty will soon be gone. In their place will come a stench, a raggedy piece of rope, a hairless head, sackcloth for clothing, and shame. This kind of economic system cannot sustain itself. Moreover, God demands justice. A prophet must rise up to speak the truth.

One last quotation from the Bruce Cockburn song, “Call It Democracy,” may help us see.

See the paid-off local bottom-feeders

Passing themselves off as leaders.

Kiss the ladies. Shake hands with the fellows:

Open for business like a cheap bordello,

And they call it democracy.