FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 15:15-21
Psalm 26:1-8
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28

Prayer of the Day: O God, we thank you for your Son, who chose the path of suffering for the sake of the world. Humble us by his example, point us to the path of obedience, and give us strength to follow your commands, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink…”

Saint Paul, Romans 12:19-20.

“I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

President George W. Bush to a crowd in New York following the attack on the World Trade Center, 2001.

“God bless America. God damn Afghanistan. You bastards are all going to die.”

Spray painted on the side of a van parked in Ridgewood, New Jersey the Sunday after September 11, 2001.

Vengeance has been with us from the dawn of our species. Cain vengefully murdered his brother, Abel, and was driven into exile by fear of vengeance. A generation later, the first love song recorded in the Bible is laced with boasts of vengeance:

“Lamech said to his wives:
‘Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
   you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
   a young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
   truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.’” Genesis 4:23-24.

Paul reminds us, however, that vengeance is not a human prerogative. God alone is entitled to execute vengeance. The Hebrew scriptures make this point repeatedly. The psalmists cry out for God to execute vengeance against their enemies. They are not shy about telling God exactly how they would like to see their enemies punished. Often the psalmists’ expressions of their desired vengeance are spelled out in appalling detail:

“Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
   the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down!
   Down to its foundations!’
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
   Happy shall they be who pay you back
   what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
   and dash them against the rock!” Psalm 137:7-9  

Nevertheless, the psalmists leave the business of actually doing vengeance in the hands of God where it rightly belongs.

As it turns out, God is usually not inclined to carry out vengeance. God imposed neither the death penalty nor incarceration without possibility of parole in sentencing the first murderer, Cain. Moreover, God put God’s mark of protection on Cain so that no one else would take it upon themselves to seek revenge against him either. As the prophet Jonah had to learn, God’s ideas about who deserves to be punished for what and how and when are often very different from our own myopic views on the subject, colored as they often are by the pain of our wounds. Unlike ourselves, God is,

“is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
   and relents from punishing.” Joel 2:12-13.  

Revenge is sweet in the imagination. In real life, not so much. The vengeance promised and, to a large degree, delivered under President Bush did not bring back the victims of the 9/11 attacks. It did, however, lead to a baseless attack on a nation that was not involved in those attacks resulting in the deaths of 4,492 Americans and countless more Iraqi civilians. The war in Afghanistan resulted in the death of 2,402 American soldiers and, again, the death of civilians in multiples of that number. The Iraq war opened the door for the rise of ISIS. Afghanistan ended in a calamitous retreat leaving that country war torn, poorer and in the hands of the very ones who made it a haven for terrorists in the first place. The lust for revenge, our seemingly deep seated need to “settle the score” and “end it once and for all” draws us like moths to a flame into endless cycles of violence and death. What we ought to have learned from history is that revenge is a dish best foregone.

Jesus understood this well. That is why he declined the devil’s invitation to usurp the glory of the world’s kingdoms-and the raw power to crush one’s enemies that comes with it. That is why Jesus teaches us to “turn the other cheek” rather than return blow for blow. That is why he firmly commanded his disciples not to use the sword in his defense. That is why, instead of retaliating against the world that rejected and crucified the only begotten Son, God raised the Son from death and offered him again to this recalcitrant world. In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God breaks once and for all the cycle of vengeance. God proves too strong to be sucked into that toxic cycle.

This strength of God appears as weakness to those still caught up in the cycle of vengeance. But to a world convinced that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, Saint Paul counters that the only way to stop a bad guy, with or without a gun, is to refuse his invitation to engage on his terms. We will not give to the enemy power to ignite hatred in our hearts or to stain our hands with blood. To lose our lives in this way is, as Jesus points out in Sunday’s gospel, to gain our lives. To preserve our lives at the cost of becoming the mirror image of what we hate is to lose them. Of course, this “weakness of God,” to use Saint Paul’s term (I Corinthians 1:25), is nonsensical to those who have been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the creed of retribution or, again to cite Saint Paul, “conformed to this world,” (Romans 12:2) that they lack the conceptual tools required to imagine any way other than vengeance or the threat of it to repel evil.

Paul’s message to us this Sunday could hardly come at a better time. For the first time in our history, a former president is being indicted for serious crimes he allegedly committed before, during and after his presidency. Anybody who follows me with regularity knows that I am no friend of Donald Trump. Part of me is gleeful about his legal woes. Finally, the man who managed all his life to evade the law, abuse his power, all the while treating his employees, his country and even his supporters with contempt, is “getting his.” Part of me would love to see the man paraded out of the courtroom in cuffs to be fitted with an orange jump suit and plastic sandals. But to what end? To make him suffer? To inflict on him the pain I know he has inflicted on others? To see him “cut down to size”? However cathartic that might be for me, it will surely not end the animosity and polarization into which Donald Trump and his supporters have brought us. If anything, convicting and incarcerating Trump will only heighten the distrust of his followers for our government, its laws and its institutions. It will, as vengeance always does, evoke a hostile and vengeful response-and the cycle will continue. Make no mistake about it, I want Donald Trump and his co-conspirators to be held accountable. I want them to answer for their actions and I want their lies, conspiracies and crimes to be exposed. Most of all, I want to see them made to take responsibility for their actions.  But that is something far different than mere punishment.

I am not sure what I am proposing here. Perhaps it means making Donald Trump’s release from incarceration contingent on his agreement, under strict supervision, to work with Habitat for Humanity for the provision of affordable housing. Perhaps it means making Rudy Giuliani’s release contingent upon his agreeing to work with agencies providing legal services to those unable to afford them. Am I letting them off the hook to easily? If the objective is punishment that fits the crime, undoubtedly so. But what if punishment is not the objective? What if the objective is restitution in whatever measure is possible? What if the objective is reconciliation and peace? In short, I am not suggesting anything different for Trump and his co-defendants than what I have always advocated for persons convicted of crime, namely, that they be made to take responsibility for the harm they have caused, forgiven and given the opportunity for redemption. As an added bonus, the state would be spared the substantial cost incarcerating them.

Supporters of Donald Trump complain that the United States Department of Justice has been “weaponized” against them and that Trump is the victim of political retribution. I have not seen a scrap of evidence to that effect. Still, it is a fact that our criminal justice system in the United States is essentially punitive in nature. Those on the receiving end of it experience it as a “weapon.” A conviction frequently results in incarceration and, upon release, severely limits one’s options for housing, employment and travel. To be branded a “criminal” is to be stigmatized, loathed and excluded. Furthermore, it should not be lost upon us that the weapon of criminal justice falls most heavily and disproportionately upon persons of color, particularly young Black men. Public media reinforce this perverse concept of criminal justice. A popular police drama refers in its opening lines to police and prosecutors as participants in the “war on crime.” Our numerous police dramas regularly televised for public consumption frequently portray “criminals” as entirely depraved, dangerous and deserving of whatever fate they suffer. They are enemies deserving no pity, no mercy, no empathy.

In fact, however, “criminals” are ordinary people who, like us, make bad decisions, do and say harmful things and manage to do a lot of damage in the process. The only difference between them and us is that their harmful conduct happens to be against the law. None of us, I am sure, would want to be judged by the meanest, ugliest and most hurtful thing we have ever done. So, in the spirit of the “Golden Rule,” we ought not to withhold from persons convicted of crime the same consideration we would wish for ourselves: forgiveness and an opportunity for redemption. As hard as it is for me to say so, that goes for Trump & Company as well.

Here is a poem by George Horton Moses reflecting on the carnage of the American Civil War and the cost of retributive justice wrought by violence.

 Weep

Weep for the country in its present state,

And of the gloom which still the future waits;

The proud confederate eagle heard the sound,

And with her flight fell prostrate to the ground!

Weep for the loss the country has sustained,

By which her now dependent is in jail;

The grief of him who now the war survived,

The conscript husbands and the weeping wives!

Weep for the seas of blood the battle cost,

And souls that ever hope forever lost!

The ravage of the field with no recruit,

Trees by the vengeance blasted to the root!

Weep for the downfall o’er your heads and chief,

Who sunk without a medium of relief;

Who fell beneath the hatchet of their pride,

Then like the serpent bit themselves and died!

Weep for the downfall of your president,

Who far too late his folly must repent;

Who like the dragon did all heaven assail,

And dragged his friends to limbo with his tail!

Weep o’er peculiar swelling coffers void,

Our treasures left, and all their banks destroyed;

Their foundless notes replete with shame to all,

Expecting every day their final fall,

In quest of profit never to be won,

Then sadly fallen and forever down!

Source: “Words for the Hour”: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry, edited by Faith Barrett; (c. 2005 by University of Massachusetts Press).

George Moses Horton (b. 1798 d. 1882?) was born into slavery on a North Carolina tobacco plantation in Chatham County. From the time he was a child, Horton composed poetry. Though unable to read or write, he had a remarkable memory in which he retained his verse. Horton was sold in 1815 to another owner who sent him on trips to Chapel Hill where he befriended students from the University of North Carolina. Recognizing his talent, his new friends urged him to pursue writing and donated books to assist him in his efforts to educate himself. A university professor’s wife tutored him in grammar and promoted his work to local publishers. In 1829, Horton published his first book of poetry. His hope was to purchase his freedom with his earnings on this work, but that plan never came to fruition. He subsequently published two more books of poetry gaining him the distinction of being the only enslaved person ever to publish. Early in 1865, Horton left his enslaver’s farm and joined the Union army. Following the end of the Civil War, he moved to Philadelphia. The exact date and the circumstances of his death remain unknown. You can read more about George Moses Horton at the Poetry Foundation website.

Skin in the Game

Due to numerous commitments this week, I have been unable to publish a freash article. Hopefully this reflection on Sunday’s lessons published three years ago remains timely.

TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 56:6-8

Psalm 67

Romans 11:1-2; 29-32

Matthew 15:10-28

Prayer of the Day: God of all peoples, your arms reach out to embrace all those who call upon you. Teach us as disciples of your Son to love the world with compassion and constancy, that your name may be known throughout the earth, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!” Romans 11:1.

This sentence is perhaps the most important for us followers of Jesus to elevate in this age of increasing antisemitism. Incidents of antisemitism, including assault, vandalism and harassment, increased by more than a third in just one year and reached nearly 3,700 cases in 2022. “Antisemitic incidents in the US are at the highest level recorded since the 1970s” By Krystina Shveda, CNN. Sadly, hostility toward Judaism and violence toward Jews have been prevalent throughout the history of the church. It continues to find expression in many sectors of Christianity today. Proponents of anti-Jewish sentiment often point to the New Testament and Saint Paul in particular in support of their hateful views. For this reason, I think it is essential that we understand Paul’s relationship to Judaism and the nature of his mission to the gentiles.

If you were to attempt striking up a conversation with Paul about Christianity, he would not have the foggiest notion what you are talking about. That is because Christianity did not exist during Paul’s lifetime and ministry. There was a “Jesus movement” within Judaism. Paul, though initially hostile toward the movement, ultimately became associated with it. Thus-and this is critically important-Paul was not a convert from Judaism to Christianity. He was a faithful Jew who found in Jesus’ faithful life, obedient death and glorious resurrection a deeper understanding of Israel’s covenant with its God. Paul never says “I was a Jew” or “I used to be Jewish before I saw the light.” To the contrary, he states clearly and proudly, “I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.” Asking Paul whether he was a Jew or a Christian would be like asking someone from New Jersey whether they are American or New Jersian.

Paul did not understand the church as an alternative to Israel. But he did believe that the God of Israel was also the God of all people, that is “the gentiles.” As he saw it, the salvation accomplished by Jesus opened up the covenant relationship God had with Israel to all nations. His vision was not for Jews to abandon their covenant relationship with God. Rather, his hope was for Jesus to be the open door through which the gentiles, formerly estranged from God, could enter into and become a part of the sacred covenant promises entrusted to Israel. As a corollary, Jesus was to be a porthole through which Israel would recognize God’s purpose of uniting people of all nations under a single covenant relationship. Paul never dreamed that he was starting a religion new and different from the one in which he grew up.

We learn much about Paul’s ministry from the Book of Acts, which was written decades after Paul’s death and at a time when relations between the Jesus movement and other strands within Judaism, particularly the Pharisees, was becoming increasingly adversarial. Nonetheless, it is clear that Paul saw his missionary journeys as an extension of his Judaism. Wherever his travels took him, Paul consistently went first to the synagogue or other Jewish worshiping communities in the area. Sometimes, he found a receptive audience. At times, he met opposition.

It is important to keep in mind that, outside of Palestine, the line of demarcation between Jew and gentile was more attenuated. Jews in Greece and Asia Minor typically spoke Greek and were heavily influenced by the surrounding Hellenistic culture where they lived among diverse peoples with whom they joined together in civic events and conducted business. Intermarriage between Jews and gentiles was common. Gentiles were frequently involved to various degrees in the life of the synagogue. Paul seems to have had a large degree of success with gentile audiences, probably those who had had some relationship with and knowledge of Judaism.

One might get the impression from reading Paul’s letters, particularly his epistles to the Romans and Galatians, that he had a deep antipathy to Torah (translated from our Greek New Testament as “law”). But that is not the case. Paul had no problem with Jews being observant of Torah and the traditional practices that grew out if it. Indeed, he appears to have been observant himself. But he had a big problem with the imposition of these many practices upon gentile converts to the Jesus movement. Paul insisted that God’s call, both to Israel and to the gentiles through the Jesus movement, must be answered by faith, not obedience to any code of behavior. In this, Paul was thoroughly consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures:

“It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 7:7-8.

“for not by their own sword did they win the land,
   nor did their own arm give them victory;
but your right hand, and your arm,
   and the light of your countenance,
   for you delighted in them.” Psalm 44:3.

Paul also insisted that God’s mercy and forgiveness is not premised on perfect obedience. Again, this is entirely consistent with Israel’s faith. The understanding that Israel would fall short of what God commands was built into the fabric of the Torah which provided for sin offerings through which the community and individuals were given the opportunity to turn from their wrongdoing and find reconciliation with God and with one another. Torah was thus a redemptive and community building instrument of grace. However, when Torah ceases to be viewed as God’s gift to human beings and is understood instead as a requirement human beings must fulfill in order to qualify for God’s salvation, it becomes a curse. As Paul saw it, the insistence by some within the Jesus movement that gentiles received into the church by baptism needed to comply with all the religious and cultural norms governing Judaism, circumcision in particular, had precisely that effect. For some within the Jesus movement and other strands of Judaism as well, this was a bridge too far. Thus, the polemic we find in Paul’s letters does not reflect a dispute between Judaism and Christianity (which did not yet exist!), but a conflict within the Jesus movement between those who felt that gentile converts should observe all essential aspects of Torah, including circumcision, and Paul with his supporters who were convinced that baptism into Jesus Christ was sufficient.

Though the Jesus movement eventually parted company with the Jewish community, it is important to understand that this was a gradual process. We know that disciples of Jesus attended worship in synagogues well into the second century. It was not until the church became the official religion of the Roman Empire following the rise of Constantine the Great that the split became final. Armed with the might of empire, the church was now in a position to attack its opponents, Jews, heretics and pagans alike with more than theological arguments. Notwithstanding the specific affirmation in our creeds that Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate,” the death of Jesus was increasingly placed squarely and solely on the shoulders of the Jews. In the centuries that followed, Jews experienced the full weight of Christian supremacy in the form of discrimination, pogroms, inquisitions culminating in the Holocaust.

Our problem is that us disciples of Jesus, the Jew from Nazareth, have forgotten how we were once outsiders who received a gracious invitation to Israel’s covenant home. We forgot that we are guests and began acting as though we own the whole house. We would do well to heed Saint Paul’s warning that we “wild olive branches,” who have been grafted into the cultivated olive tree that is Israel, can as easily be cut away if we start putting on airs. Romans 11:19-21. We, the invited guests, have even gone so far as to evict our hosts! For centuries, the doctrine of superssessionism, the notion that Judaism has been displaced by the superior religion of Christianity, has been elevated to the level of orthodoxy. As a result, Jews in America have been targeted for conversion, pressured to “assimilate” and subjected to discrimination, defamation and scapegoating.   

That this vicious and irrational hatred of Jews continues to be a powerful and dangerous force in American culture is undeniable. This calls for, among other things, a strong theological reassessment of the church’s teachings concerning Judaism. We need to emphasize the church’s symbiotic relationship with the people of Israel, the community that gave birth to our faith. I must confess that I do not fully understand the arguments made by Saint Paul in the nineth through eleventh chapters of Romans. I do not understand what Paul means by “a hardening coming on a part of Israel” (Romans 11:25) or how Paul’s “magnifying” his ministry to the gentiles is supposed to make his fellow Jews “jealous” or what he expected that to accomplish. Romans 11:14. What I do know is that, in the midst of these arguments, Paul still refers to all Israel as his “fellow Jews.” Romans 11:14. I do know that he was convinced that the “full inclusion” of Israel in God’s design meant life for the world. Romans 11:15. I do know that Paul is convinced that “all Israel will be saved.” Romans 11:26. Thus, according to the New Testament witness generally and that of Saint Paul in particular, the reign of God proclaimed by Jesus is the one proclaimed by the ancestors and the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures for the people of Israel. By God’s sheer act of grace in Jesus Christ, the gentiles have been invited to participate in that glorious, mysterious and hopeful promise.

I believe Saint Paul would be horrified if he could see what has become of the church he worked so hard make a witness of reconciliation and unity for Jews, gentiles, slaves, free, men and women of every nation. I believe that if we take seriously what Saint Paul actually taught and what the New Testament proclaims concerning Jesus and his mission, we will share that outrage and recognize not only our complicity in the historic violence against Jews, but our obligation to struggle against the vestiges of that sad legacy as it continues to rear its ugly head in acts of violence today. We need to state with clarity that it is not the mission of the church to make Jews into Christians, assimilate them into our nominally Christian culture or denigrate their faith in order to legitimize our own. When we can finally look respectfully and gratefully to our Jewish neighbors with gratitude for the spiritual legacy from which our own faith was born, acknowledge that the covenant God made with them is as valid as it ever was and recognize that the hope of the Jewish people expressed in their faithful obedience to Torah and the hope expressed in our discipleship to Jesus are one in the same, perhaps we will one day see the realization of Paul’s vision.

Here is a poem by Eve Merriam that gives us a snapshot of what it is like for a Jewish child growing up in America.

Jew

Babies have no special history.

Born, you were rosy and round, gurgled like any other,

horizon was mother’s breast and father’s chucking finger;

peeped from your bunting, saw only the friendly sky.

Crawling, the world enlarged to father’s watch

fat as a golden moon in the fairy tale;

innocent blocks spelt out no tattling word,

and even raised to high-chair the scene was cheery:

nursery walls in pink or charming blue,

Jack and Jill the only handwriting there.

While you were yet young, however, the swag was stolen.

You were blamed.

At school the children stumbled over your name;

you were never the Prince in games. Always your nose

made you Rumpelstiltzkin or the Dwarf.

Your father’s cap was queer. (But freckles are queer,

too, and red hair, and your father drinks too much!)

No matter. The money was never found, let’s call him Ike the

          Thief.

Ike, modern clubmember of the Lost Tribes of Israel:

lost, yes, but not your ancestry.

It was glittering swag: never found,

All those million years: and you’re to blame of course.

Oh I grant

they could have blamed the snake in Eden, the apple,

or even the dirty goat grazing on the garbage;

rain might have been the victim, earthquake, or suspect fire,

indigestion, dreams, roses, or constipation.

But they chose the Jew. Surely your rabbi

read you the Hebrews where God’s anointed race?

Now how would you like to take yours: mixed or straight?

We are sorry to inform you our enrollment is complete.

No Dogs or Jews Allowed. 

Someday when the swag is found, you can cancel kike

and nigger, wop, hunky, chink, and okie.

But just now the chances look very slim;

the swag is either underground too deep

to drill, or too high for the heavenliest plane.

Maybe, quite sensibly, it was never even lost,

but they myth continues, a colossal Judge Crater,

Kidd’s map, the virgin birth, life on the moon.

Source: Poetry, (September 1941) Eve Merriam (1916-1992) was an American poet and writer. Born in Philadelphia, she was one of four children of Russian Jewish immigrants. She graduated with an A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1937 and then moved to New York to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University. Merriam’s first book, Family Circle was published in 1946. For this work she won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Her book, The Inner City Mother Goose, written in the aftermath of the urban uprisings of 1968-69, was one of the most frequently banned books of all time. It was the inspiration for the Broadway musical, Inner City. The play was revived in 1982 under the title Street Dreams. Merriam published over thirty books over her career and taught at both City College and New York University. You can read more about Eve Merrian and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.  

ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

I Kings 19:9-18

Psalms 85:8-13

Romans 10:5-15

Matthew 14:22-33

Prayer of the Day: O God our defender, storms rage around and within us and cause us to be afraid. Rescue your people from despair, deliver your sons and daughters from fear, and preserve us in the faith of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” I Kings 19:11-12.

If the phrase, “sound of sheer silence” appears to be a contradiction, it is only because we assume that silence is nothing more than the absence of sound. Saints and mystics of many different faiths know, however, that nothing could be further from the truth. Monastic communities that make it central to their spiritual practices know that silence is often the womb in which more profound wisdom, clearer insight, deeper discernment and more penetrating vision is conceived. Thomas Merton once remarked that “in silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.” He goes on to point out that:

“For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.” The Power and Meaning of Love, Thomas Merton(c.Sheldon Press 1976).

We Americans live in a silence averse culture. Our malls, doctors’ offices, and transportation stations hum with display screens and pumped in music. Radios and televisions play non-stop in many of our homes. Our parties and gatherings are permeated by endless chatter. I believe that much of this exists to spare us from the awkwardness and discomfort of silence. After all, silence is discomforting. It is every host’s duty to ensure that lively chatter flows unceasingly among the guests. If talk at the dinner table should hesitate, the host must step in to fill the uneasy silence by “making conversation.” A host failing to do so would be considered rude and inept. Silence is the antithesis of sociability.

It is not noise alone that keeps silence at bay. Much of what we digest in our reading or viewing on various media drives silence from our minds and hearts. The white heat of our politics and cultural discourse often prevents the discerning consideration of deep moral concerns that can happen only in the depths of silence. Much of our civil discourse these days comes in the form of angry and snarky posts, tweets and messaging that only illicit the same in reply. We talk over each other because we are so cock sure we know what our conversation partner is saying, that it is entirely wrong and that we have the arguments to defeat him. Before one is finished talking the other is already concocting a counter-argument. It is all reminiscent of the lines of Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence:

People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening

If ever there was a man who needed the refuge of silence, it was the Prophet Elijah. There is a back story for our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures. Elijah had been in exile for months as Israel’s King Ahab and his Queen Jezebel were systematically eradicating the worship of Israel’s God, destroying God’s places of worship and replacing the worship of God with the near eastern religion of Ba’al worship. At God’s direction, Elijah came out of hiding and confronted King Ahab. He challenged the King to assemble the prophets of Ba’al to offer a sacrifice to their god. Elijah, for his part, would build an altar for sacrifice to the God of Israel. Neither would light a sacrificial fire. Both would wait for their respective deities to do the honors. The god that answered by fire, lighting its altar, that god would be known as God indeed. To make a very long and entertaining story short, Israel’s God sent fire to consume the offering on Elijah’s altar. Ba’a’l was a no-show.

Such a dramatic demonstration ought to have settled the matter. For a short time, it seemed to have done just that. Ahab was convinced. Jezebel, the true power behind the throne was not impressed. She vowed to avenge the humiliation of her god with Elijah’s blood. Once again, Elijah was on the run. We find him curled up in a cave wanting to die. When God asks him what he is doing in such a pitiful state, he replies, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” I Kings 19:10. You cannot fault Elijah for feeling that way. He has been living all alone in exile. He alone was willing to challenge the royal household’s adultery at the risk of his life. Now, everything he thought he accomplished has come crashing down all around him and, once again, his is all alone.

But in truth, Elijah was not alone. Once he managed to get beyond the noise of his enemies, the noise of his seeming failure, the noise of savage winds, earthquakes and fires, he learned that there were seven thousand people left in Israel that, like him, were “very zealous for the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel.” He also learned that God had more work for him to do. Most importantly, he learned that he will no longer be alone in his work. He is to anoint Elisha as his companion and successor. This is no rosy forecast. The redemption of Israel is going to be a long, difficult and violent road. It is obvious that Elijah will not see the end of that road in his life time. But in the shelter of holy silence, with all distractions without and within put aside, Elijah is finally able to see a way forward for himself and his people.

Saint John of the Cross reminds us that “it is best to learn to silence the faculties and cause them to be still, so that God may speak,” Once you get over your discomfort with silence, you find it liberating. There is comfort in knowing you cannot and need not control the powerful currents sweeping around you. There is peace in knowing that you need not have all the answers to all of your questions. There is freedom in knowing that you do not have to have an opinion on everything and that it is not always necessary that you speak your mind. There is huge potential for healing, reconciliation and peace when you finally learn that it is often enough just to listen and understand without passing judgment or giving advice. There is power greater than any earthquake, wind or fire in the sound of sheer silence.

Here is a poem by Billy Collins about silence, the many contexts in which it occurs, its power and its fragility.

Silence

There is the sudden silence of the crowd

above a player not moving on the field,

and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase

before it strikes the floor,

the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

The stillness of the cup and the water in it,

the silence of the moon

and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

The silence when I hold you to my chest,

the silence of the window above us,

and the silence when you rise and turn away.

And there is the silence of this morning

which I have broken with my pen,

a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house—

the silence before I wrote a word

and the poorer silence now.

Source: Poetry (April 2005). William James (Billy) Collins (b. 1941) is an American poet. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He was a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York from which he retired in 2016. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 to 2006. In 2016, Collins was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Since 2020, he has been teaching in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton. You can read more about Billy Collins and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.         

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 55:1-5

Psalm 145:8-9;14-21

Romans 9:1-5

Matthew 14:13-21

Prayer of the Day Glorious God, your generosity waters the world with goodness, and you cover creation with abundance. Awaken in us a hunger for the food that satisfies both body and spirit, and with this food fill all the starving world; through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Ho, everyone who thirsts,
   come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
   come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
   without money and without price.” Isaiah 55:1.

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Timothy Beal’s book, “When time is short.” (c. 2022 by Timothy Beal, pub. by Beacon Press). Beal is a professor of Religion at Case Western University and the author of several books and essays on religion and culture. Calling to our attention the warnings of climate change scientists to the effect that our degradation of the earth’s oceans, forests, atmosphere and ecosystems has reached the point at which it is impossible to reverse the consequences of global warming, Beal invites us to reflect soberly on the very real possibility that we have engineered our own extinction as a species. Given that very real possibility (which Beal at some points seems to press as a certainty), we must face honestly the evils of racism, colonialism and nationalism that brought us to this point. More importantly, we need to accept the inevitability of our collective extinction (whether immanent or not) and consider how we will spend the rest of our collective existence “doing what matters” as a species on the brink of oblivion.

I have some reservations about this book. Beal speaks eloquently about humanity’s inescapable participation in the web of life characterized as “the wild.” Eating and being eaten, birth and death, evolving as a species and passing into extinction are all inextricably bound together in this mystery we know as life. As much horror as it inspires, this is all “perfectly natural” and presumably good. I wonder, however, whether Beal has thought through the implications of what he is saying. Does he understand what human extinction would look like? Can he really imagine the horrors that would engulf the globe as vast swaths of the earth become uninhabitable for human beings and millions of square miles of previously fruitful soil can no longer produce the food on which we rely? Does he realize that the first to die will be those whose lives are already so thoroughly focused on living from one day to the next that they can scarcely afford to ruminate on our collective demise? How do we focus on “what matters” when what matters is the wellbeing of our neighbors whom we cannot help any more than we can help ourselves? Can we in any sense see human extinction for what, in reality, it will mean and call it “natural” or “good”?  

I also have to take issue with Beal’s characterization of western Christianity as “death denying.” Granted, there is plenty of anthroprocentric hubris and contempt for the natural world that has infected the church of the west. But I would place that more at the feet of the Enlightenment and its enthusiasm for colonialization. You can hardly call the church of the middle ages, much less the New Testament church, death denying. During our Ash Wednesday service we impose ashes on our foreheads with the words: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” That is about as frank a declaration of human mortality as can be made. You can argue that a lot of Christians do not take it to heart, but you cannot fault our liturgy, hymns and preaching, which are not lacking when it comes to the topic of human mortality. So, too, Christian dogma has always acknowledged the finitude of our species and our planet. We do that with a vengeance on the first Sunday of Advent where the “little apocalypse,” found in various forms in all three of the synoptic gospels, is front and center. Beal’s call to focus on what matters finds expression in the second epistle of Saint Peter:

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?” II Peter 3:10-12.

Finally, I am not convinced that climate change, however severe, will result in human extinction. I am convinced that somehow, in some fashion, our species will survive. The question is, who among us, in what form and at what cost? How will we respond to millions of climate refugees whose homelands are no longer habitable? As far as my own country is concerned, I know the answer. We will meet them with barbed wire. We will set traps across the rivers bordering our land to drown them and boot those who still manage to get through, men, women and children back into the waters to die in order to protect our turf and our way of life. How do I know this? Because that is precisely what we are doing now, when we can easily absorb the refugees coming to our shores, when we could actually use these people and the skills they bring to supplement our shrinking work force. Imagine, then, what we will do when accepting refugees will call for sacrifice, for a change in the level of comfort in which we now live.

The people of God are called to a different response, however. They are called, the prophet reminds us, to offer food, water and sanctuary without cost. That is a difficult word to speak in today’s antiimmigrant climate and will become increasingly so as the consequences of global warming become ever more severe. If you are among those who think that we cannot hope to meet the flood of climate refugees with the resources we have and that we will only end up overfilling the life boat to the point where it capsizes and we all drown, you are not alone. Jesus’ disciples felt the same way when they were confronted with a crowd of five thousand hungry people and had on hand only a few loaves and fishes. Quite understandably, they reasoned that parting with what little food they had would not satisfy the hunger of the crowd, but it would surely impoverish them. Yet remarkably, the disciples discovered that when they were able to let go of their meager resources and place them into the hands of Jesus, they accomplished more than they imagined possible. That is the answer we make to the Trumps, the DeSantises, the “America First” crowd espousing the survivalist mentality.

I think Saint Peter hits the nail on the head. In view of all that is coming upon the earth, what sort of people ought we to be? On the other side of the climate crisis, will it be said of the church that we sat wringing our hands, issuing preachy-screechy social statements and sending relief packages to those dying on the other side of our border while trying to carry on with ecclesiastical business as usual? Generations hence, will the ELCA (assuming there still is such a thing) be issuing an apology for its complicity with “the destroyers of the earth”? (See Revelation 11:18). I continue to pray that the church in this country will finally recognize that it is more than a chaplaincy service to the United States; that it will give up on its misbegotten mission to christianize America; that it will finally discover that being the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church spanning every national border is enough. I hope that we will find the spiritual maturity, the moral courage and theological depth to be the Body of Christ in the midst of a culture bent on crucifying him anew. I hope that we will not be conformed to the ways of our politics, civil religion and culture but be transformed into a people willing to “offer up our bodies as a living sacrifice” in defense of those condemned to death by the frantic violence and neglect of a nation bent on preserving itself. Romans 12:1-2.

Here is a poem by Robert Frost raising in a simple way the question of how humanity might meet its final hour.

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost, (c. 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.) p. 33-34. Born in 1874, Robert Frost held various jobs throughout his college years. He was a worker at a Massachusetts mill, a cobbler, an editor of a small town newspaper, a schoolteacher and a farmer. By 1915, Frost’s literary acclaim was firmly established. On his seventy-fifth birthday, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in his honor. The State of Vermont named a mountain after him and he was given the unprecedented honor of being asked to read a poem at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. Through the lens of rural life in New England, Frost’s poetry ponders the metaphysical depths. His poems paint lyrical portraits of natural beauty, though ever haunted by shadow and decay. You can learn more about Robert Frost and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.