Proper 7C, 19 June 2022, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.
1 Kings 19:1-15a. What are you doing here Elijah?
Psalm 42. Deep calls to deep,
Galatians 3:23-29. For all of you are one.
Luke 8:26-39. Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you.
O God of love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will
I grew up with the expectation that, as theologian Karl Barth taught, preachers should “preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” My dad always did that. It’s my intention too, but some days my hands are just not big enough and, though I have two, I don’t have as many as I need. Today is one of those days. On one hand, we have the story of Elijah on the run, of the deep calling to deep that we are to put our hope in God and give thanks to God who is our ever-present help in the Psalms. Then there’s Paul’s brilliant teaching in his letter to the Galatians that when we clothe ourselves in Christ Jesus, there is no Jew or Gentile, enslaved person or freed person; there is no male and female. And then the story of the Geresene demoniac – I could work on the study of that story for all the Sundays left in 2022.
On the newspaper hand’s side, there’s war and famine, another church shooting, this time in an Episcopal Church at a potluck supper. There’s Pride Month. There’s Father’s Day. There’s Juneteenth, our nation’s youngest Federal holiday addressing our nation’s oldest problem, celebrating emancipation and equality while it shines a light on just how much further we have to go to repair and restore what the culture of white supremacy has broken and stolen. It’s 50 years since the Watergate break-in, and we are, right now, in the midst of a constitutional crises and on the brink of an economic crisis that threaten to undo us. I haven’t even cited all of the headlines. And in spite of the noise, I can hear a still small voice, the daughter or echo of a voice (the bat kol) saying to us, what are you doing here, Emmanuel?
In the story of Elijah – whose name literally translated is “my god is [the Holy One]” Eliyahu in Hebrew, is running from the law. Israel’s much-maligned Queen Jezebel, working with foreign allies for peace and prosperity for her people, had had enough of the insurgent Elijah and she sent a messenger to tell him that his days were numbered. Her fury had to do with the large public demonstration Elijah staged to show the power over nature of the god whose Name is too holy to pronounce. Elijah’s god produced much needed rain to end a deadly drought and famine. But then in a hideous display of aggression, Elijah had all 450 of the prophets of the losing god Baal seized and killed.
Elijah took off into the wilderness, afraid and alone, exhausted and despairing. But twice, messengers brought him bread and water and told him to get up and eat something. He journeyed to Mount Horeb, (also known as Mount Sinai), the Holy Mountain of Moses’ encounters with the Divine. He found shelter in a cave or a rock crevice, and heard the Divine voice ask him, “What are you doing here Elijah?” Of course the inflection when that question is read out loud is up to the reader. I always hear it as a kind of “what the heck, Elijah?” Elijah’s answer was defensive and angry – zealous and jealous and furious are all translations of the same word. He was fearful, despairing and self-righteous – always a toxic cocktail! His response didn’t mention all the killing he’d just done. The word of the Holy One instructed Elijah to come out – come out of the darkness of the cave and experience the presence of the Divine. Before he came out, there were the usual Biblical signs of the revelation of the Divine – a rock-splitting windstorm, an earthquake, and a fire, but somehow Elijah knew that the presence of the Divine was not in any of those cataclysmic events. Elijah experienced the voice of the Divine in the sheer silence that followed.
And then Elijah heard the question a second time. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And in a response to that divine question that I find so reassuring, Elijah gave the same self-indulgent litany of complaint. Even a great prophet who was experiencing the presence of the Divine, could not let go of his own well-scripted self-righteous story. I imagine a smiling, loving Holy One Who said, “return on your way, get back to work.” Specifically, go back by way of Damascus. In Hebrew, the word for Damascus means something like the beginning of being drawn out, or a period of being drawn out, or a full turn in the pattern of being drawn out. And in Greek, the word becomes the basis of our word domesticate and it has to do with training and synchronicity. You might remember that Damascus is the city where Paul was converted from persecutor of Jesus followers to leading spreader of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
I will concede, it’s not very popular to like Paul in progressive branches of the Christian family tree. Paul is widely considered to be the father of anti-Semitism and misogyny. Some just consider him a jerk. I don’t think he is any of those things. And I don’t just like Paul. I love him. You might wonder what a nice feminist like myself is doing loving an apostle like Paul. My colleagues often argue that Paul “is hopelessly inconsistent [or incomprehensible] or insane or an idiot or a rhetorically self-serving chameleon.” [1] I do experience Paul as prone to irritability and impatience, vulnerable to both anxiety and self-righteousness. Those are all traits that I battle in myself. Those are all traits I regularly encounter in communities of faith (although I’m not naming any names). And underneath those traits is what makes Paul so appealing to me. The through-line of Paul’s theology, the heart of his vision is a beloved community of God in which distinctions and hierarchies with their commensurate exclusions that are so important to so many human beings, make no difference at all in Jesus Christ – and must make no difference at all in the Body of Christ.
Our portion of Paul’s letter to the Galatians gives an example of his sense of the radical inclusivity of God as revealed to him by the life and teachings of Jesus. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer subservient or independent, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” This is in sharp contrast to a common saying in Greek philosophy, “I was born a human being, not a beast; a man and not a woman; …a Greek and not a barbarian.” But this is in sync with a saying in Rabbinic Judaism: “If a poor man says anything, one pays little regard: but if a rich man speaks, immediately he is heard and listened to. Before God, however, all are equal: women, slaves, poor and rich.” [2] Paul is not arguing for sameness or for removing difference. He is asserting the idea that cultural and natural distinctions count for nothing in the eyes of God. What counts, according to Paul, is the practice of love. The law is nothing without love. Faith is nothing without love. Not feelings of love – acts of love.
I wonder, how many times a day, on average, do you remember that in the eyes of the Holy One you are no better and no worse than any other person, and respond accordingly? How many times a day, on average, do you recall that no matter what our differences, the Divine is so vast and we are so small, that the differences between us are immaterial, and act accordingly? In Paul’s letter, he is reminding the Galatians that they are free. Whatever small cell or narrow place they had been in before because of religious teaching and preaching (and we all have encountered it), the door is now open, he says. “Come out,” Paul is saying. “Come out.” In Christ – that is, in the Redeeming Urge of God, there is not Jew or Greek, there is not slave or free, there is not male and female; for all of you are one. This is an amazing statement of religious doctrine. If and when you are ever looking for a Biblical proof text for the full inclusion of women or queer folks or people of color or anyone else in the oppressive margins of society and in the oppressive margins of Church, here is one. The differences between male and female no longer matter for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. If and when you are ever looking for material to use in defense of Paul, in response to folks who just don’t like him…. Well you probably are never doing that, but I often am. Here is a fine piece of theology from the principal architect of the early Church.
Our Gospel story from Luke is a hilariously funny political satire. To get the joke you have to imagine that this was not a story that was trying to be realistic or factual or even fair. This is a tall tale that gets at the truth of how oppressive the Roman occupation of Palestine was. To get the joke, you have to know that Gerasa was a city sacked by the Jews in the revolt against Rome between 66 and 70 CE, and then it was brutally recaptured by Rome shortly after that. (The Gospel of Luke was probably written around 85 CE.) You have to know that a legion is a unit of the Roman army comprising 6,000 soldiers. You have to know that pigs are unclean. They are gross and carry disease. Eating them is dangerous and, for Jews, against the law. In this tall tale, Jesus is negotiating solo with the spirits of 6,000 occupying soldiers about to be stopped from tormenting a poor man to the point of insanity, and Jesus agrees to the demons’ request to be put into a herd of swine and off the cliff they go. This is a story that would produce belly laughter. It’s highly subversive and thoroughly entertaining slapstick comedy. It gave Jesus’ hearers – Luke’s hearers — respite from taking themselves and their problems and even their oppressors so seriously. Belly laughter is good medicine and good exercise especially for a community bound together by fear like the community of Jesus’ hearers; like the community of Luke’s hearers; like the communities we live and move in. Once the Gerasene man has been freed from the legion of demons, Jesus’ instruction is, “go back home and declare how much God has done for you.”
What I hope you will remember from today is that no matter what the newspapers report, no matter what the size or number of your hands, you are no better and no worse than another person when it comes to how you are, who you are, or what you have done or failed to do. I urge you to disable or at least dial down your better than/worse than calculator and remind yourself as often as necessary that we are all one. Give thanks to God (aka Love) and remember that Love is our ever-present help. What are you doing here, Emmanuel? Go on your way, return to your home by way of Damascus, tell what God has done for you, and love one another for Jesus Christ’s sake. In other words, return to your home by way of being drawn out by what Love has done for you and do the works that Love in Jesus has placed in front of us and is always urging us to do.
- Pamela Eisenbaum, Jewish New Testament scholar outlines her defense of Paul in her article, “Is Paul the Father of Misogyny and Anti-Semitism?” in Cross Currents 50 no 4 Wint 2000-2001, pp. 506-524; and later in her book, Paul was not a Christian, (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2009). This quote is from the journal article, p.510.
- These comparisons are elucidated in Doug Heidenbrecht’s article, “Distinction and Function in the Church: Reading Galatians 3:28 in Context,” in Direction 34 no 2 Fall 2005, pp. 181-193.