Our guest preacher on Zoom, Gail Sosinsky Wickman, shared a wonderful reflection on the prophet Elijah and the ambiguity of this story from 1 Kings. 

Good morning. Every time I reread the scriptures for today, Elijah’s story left me uneasy. What I’d like to do this morning is share the struggles I have had with this passage.

This week’s bit of 1 Kings starts with Jezebel making the most convoluted, difficult-to-read death threat I have ever come across in literature. Our passage ends with verse 15a, which immediately made me wonder what is in 15b, so I am going to bring in the previous action and follow through with the ending because extending the story helped me come to grips with it. 

In the action before Jezebel’s death threat, Elijah is having his big showdown with the prophets of Baal. This is a great story. We have a land suffering from drought due to the people’s wicked ways, and Elijah proposes a contest. He calls for the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Ashera to meet him at Mount Carmel. I cannot tell you what happened to the 400 prophets of Ashera. The passage never mentions them again. Anyway, the crowds gather, and Elijah proposes that two bulls be brought for sacrifice. Each side will build an altar, prepare the wood and lay the pieces of the bull on it, but put no fire to the wood. Instead they will pray, and whichever god sends fire is the one to follow. 

The 450 prophets of Baal went first. They built the altar, laid out the offering and prayed. All Morning Long. Nothing happened. 

About noon, Elijah starts with the trash talk – “Maybe he’s wandered off. Maybe he’s asleep. Maybe he’s using the toilet.” 

So the 450 prophets step up their game and start cutting themselves and bleeding all over and praying louder. Still nothing.

Then it is Elijah’s turn. First, he builds an altar of 12 stones, one for each tribe of Israel. Then he lays the wood out, then he butchers the bull and lays it out, then he digs a big trench around the altar, enough for two measures of grain, which one source says means that it took two measures to plant the area. From the context, it was a big trench. Then he adds insult to injury and has 4 jars of water poured over the sacrifice. And a second time. And a third. The passage doesn’t say it, but that’s 12 jars of water, like the 12 tribes of Israel. Anyway, the sacrifice is so waterlogged that the surrounding trench is full. Elijah says a simple prayer, and BOOM!

“Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench.”

The people fell on their faces and acknowledged God’s power. Don’t you just want to end the story there? Dramatic, observable proof of God’s power and the people being transformed? But it doesn’t end there.

⁴⁰ Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal; do not let one of them escape.” Then they seized them, and Elijah brought them down to the Wadi Kishon and killed them there.

This bothers me. The 450 prophets of Baal had just seen dramatic, observable proof of God’s power. Didn’t any of them want to convert? One of the most cherished parts of my faith is the belief in redemption. It’s not offered here. Instead, depending on the version, the prophets are killed, slain, executed, put to death, or slaughtered. 450 worn out, bloodied, disheartened contest losers. 

What comes next makes me think that Elijah was bothered by it, too. He sends King Ahab off to get something to eat, climbs to the top of Mount Carmel and “bowed himself down upon the earth and put his face between his knees.” He’s curled into the fetal position. He is so utterly worn out that he sends his servant to watch for the signs of rain. It’s like he can’t even muster the strength to go look for the fulfillment of God’s promised rain.

So Israel finally gets some rain and Ahab hurries home to tell Jezebel what happened. Now Elijah might have thought that all would be well. He had been there for that dramatic, observable proof of God’s power and the people had fallen on their faces. Why wouldn’t it convince Jezebel?

This part reminded me of the past few years when it seems like you can have 47 peer reviewed studies and 100% reproducible experimental results supporting that something is true, and you are still going to have people say, “Nah. Not gonna believe it.” Unfortunately for Elijah, this was Jezebel. She uttered her convoluted death threat and like any sensible human being, he runs for his life.

Elijah heads into the wilderness and sits under a broom tree. Not exactly an oasis of delight, but shade. And he prays. “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” I read commentaries that said no one is really sure what Elijah means when he compares himself to his ancestors. I read a commentary that says he is comparing himself to previous prophets, particularly Moses. What it brought to my mind, and this is just me, is the scorched earth policy in so much of Joshua – kill ‘em all, even the animals. Even if Elijah did not personally wield the sword, 450 deaths is a lot to feel responsible for.

Eventually, he falls asleep, only to be awoken by an angel who tells him to eat and drink. There is no surprise from Elijah, but he did just see God’s fire consume beef, wood, stone, dust and water. He sleeps again, and this time when he wakes the angel tells him to eat up because he won’t be eating for the next 40 days. Again, there is no emotion, no reaction, no words from Elijah until he gets to Mount Horeb and shelters in a cave. 

In that cave, God comes to him and asks, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

¹⁰ He answered, “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 get the sense that these thoughts have been running through his head over and over again for the past 40 days and nights. 

Then comes the highlight of this text, my favorite part. God is going to be walking past, and Elijah is supposed to come out of the cave to find him. First, there is wind so strong it shatters mountains – but God was not in the wind. Then there was the earthquake shaking the ground – but God was not in the earthquake. Then there was fire – but God was not in the fire.

Then there was sheer silence, and Elijah went to entrance of the cave because that’s where God was. 

This section, too, has a number of translations. Some call the silence a gentle whisper, a still small voice, gentle blowing, a gentle breeze. I personally like the sheer silence, that idea that there is nothing there to get in the way of experiencing God. 

This section always speaks to me, but it is especially evocative now. We live in a time of Loud and Big – military parades, 11 million protesters, AI Bots working overtime to drive everyone on social media farther and farther apart. It’s overwhelming. It’s only when I strip all the noise away that I am ready to receive God’s presence. 

Again, don’t you just want to end here? God and Elijah have this beautiful moment in the stillness?

But God asks again, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 

¹⁴ He answered, “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.”

Nothing has changed! Elijah is still frightened for his life. He’s had a one-on-one with God, and all he talks about are his credentials and his worries. This, too, leaves me uneasy. I want to see him feel comforted, but that’s not what he says.

When we look at the last half verse, God tells Elijah to go to the wilderness of Damascus, which doesn’t sound so bad if you stop there. Maybe it’s a pleasant spot for a little respite, a little relaxation. Nope.

Remember how I was suspicious of the half verse? Here’s the rest of the story. 

¹⁵ Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. ¹⁶ Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel, and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. ¹⁷ Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill, and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. ¹⁸ Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”

Elijah is being thrown back into the political world and has a blood bath to look forward to. I want to shout, “Unfair! When does he get to rest? You were with him. You saw. You know.” As Elijah said, “Enough!” Yes, the ending bothers me.

After all the readings, this story still leaves me unsettled, but I think it is good to go over passages enough times that Holy Spirit can meet us in the reading. I think it’s important that we’re not just focusing on the parts of the Bible we like. Cherry picking is just a way of painting the picture of God we want to see. Mostly, I’ve discovered how grateful I am to be living under the New Covenant where everyone is invited to become God’s child and redemption is freely given. 

May we all be gifted this week with sheer silence and the presence of God. Amen. 

 

This was a tough week to figure out what to preach on! There’s a lot of strange and difficult stuff here. There’s beginning of the book of Job – a piece of folklore probably much older than the rest of the book, in which an unknown author living perhaps 500 years before Jesus takes this darkly funny story of God allowing Satan to torment someone to prove his piety, and uses it as the jumping-off point for a staggeringly profound and unique work of ancient theology written completely in dialogic poetry. I’ll talk more about Job next week, I promise! 

Then there’s the first bit of the letter to the Hebrews, which is interestingly preoccupied by the relationships among Jesus, the angels, and humanity. The project of Hebrews – which is really more of a sermon or theological essay than a letter – is to explore the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross through the ritual practices of worship at the Great Temple in Jerusalem. It’s interesting stuff but requires a lot of context to follow, and we are not its intended audience. It was likely written for early Jewish Christians and seekers who were trying to fit Jesus into their existing religious framework. 

There’s plenty of meat there for a sermon. But then… there’s this Gospel. Let me tell you, the temptation to just edit out the divorce talk and focus on the little children is strong! But this week I read a short commentary that convinced me to talk about the whole thing. The commentary – on the Working Preacher website – was written by Phil Ruge-Jones, who’s a Lutheran pastor in Eau Claire and a Biblical storyteller. 

Phil’s specialty as a Biblical storyteller is the Gospel of Mark. He has memorized and told the entire Gospel – there are videos online. That commitment to Mark’s voice and Mark’s witness gives Phil a valuable lens on how any given passage fits into Jesus’ overall message as Mark understands it. 

In his commentary, Pastor Phil names the elephant in room immediately. He says, “Beware this week. As soon as you read the word ‘divorce’ aloud, a whole sermon will appear in people’s heads. Some will hear… sermons that were launched at them or someone they loved… Others will conjure up [judgment] based on this single word.” 

This is exactly why it’s tempting to skip these verses! I know that talking about divorce stirs up a lot of stuff for a lot of people. Pain, shame, defensiveness, judgment, fear, and more. I know people for whom divorce has been liberation, even salvation. I know people for whom divorce has been a bitter loss, a deep wound. And many experiences of divorce are complex mixtures of hurt and healing, grief and relief. Regardless of folks’ experiences: NOBODY wants me to try to preach about divorce. 

So let’s step back from divorce to the setting for this passage. Pastor Phil notes, “Our lectionary still has us in the section of Mark where Jesus is leading the disciples toward Jerusalem. He is also trying to help the disciples find their way into what God desires. Interestingly, he is not calling them to acts of spiritual prowess. Rather, he is asking them to live well in their common human condition and in such mundane realities as family, wealth, and their gathered community. Jesus has consistently asked them to use what they have in service of those who are most vulnerable: children, the poor, those denied status.”

Three weeks ago, in our Gospel, in Mark chapter 8, we heard Jesus say, What good does it do anyone to gain the whole world and lose their soul? Two weeks ago, in chapter 9, we heard Jesus rebuke the disciples for arguing about who’s the greatest, saying, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” and reminding them that greatness looks like welcoming those who are unimportant by the world’s standards. 

Last Sunday, still in Mark 9, we heard Jesus caution the disciples against being too eager to say who’s in and who’s out – “Whoever isn’t against us is for us!” And urging his followers to stay salty. 

In today’s text, the beginning of chapter 10, he’s preaching again, and some Pharisees have a question for him. Jesus and the Pharisees had a lot in common!  They were both interested in calling ordinary people into renewed relationship with God. They clashed a lot because of the overlap in their missions. And it’s helpful for us to understand that arguing about how to interpret and apply Scripture is a really core practice in Judaism, past and present. For example: The Talmud, a core source of Jewish law and theology, consists of a block of Scripture surrounded on the page by the commentary of generations of rabbis, debating with each other about what the text means. I think we tend to read these encounters in the Gospels as hostile when this kind of religious sparring was very normal. 

I’m not sure why the Pharisees ask Jesus about divorce. Maybe it’s because they’ve gotten mixed messages about whether he’s really strict or really lenient in his teaching – he is kinda both! – so they’re trying to suss it out. Maybe it’s because divorce is a difficult, tender issue, and they want to see if they can corner him into saying something awkward that will upset people. 

What Jesus does is actually really interesting. He knows the Law perfectly well; he knows that Moses, the great interpreter of God’s laws for God’s people, allowed for divorce. But, Pastor Phil writes, “Jesus relativizes the law of God in light of the story of God. (Repeat.) Jesus argues that God’s creational desire for integrity in our relationships remains. While Moses might have made allowances in some cases, this does not nullify God’s original intent.”

Jesus says: the Law is secondary to God’s intentions for humanity and creation. God’s underlying purpose and desire for the cosmos is for right relationship, mutual flourishing and joy – whether that’s between nations and peoples, between humanity and the non-human created order, between members of a household or partners in a marriage. 

For all kinds of reasons: right relationship and mutual flourishing often fail, and so, God through Moses permitted divorce, among other concessions. But that doesn’t change what God wants for us: wholeness together, for many different togethers. 

One of the reasons mutual flourishing often fails is the development of social structures that give some power over others, because of wealth, anatomy, skin color, etcetera. Pastor Phil notes something about the dialogue in today’s Gospel that I had never noticed: what Jesus does with the pronouns. The Pharisees want to keep their question abstract, theoretical. They ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” They say, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”

Jesus is having none of it. He says, “What did Moses command you?” He says, “Because of your hardness of heart [Moses] wrote this commandment for you.” He refuses to let this be abstract. In Judaism at the time, a man could divorce a woman, but not the reverse. Jesus’ questioners are men.

So Jesus is saying: Moses made an allowance for divorce because dudes like you didn’t want to commit to love and to cherish, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, until you are parted by death. You want to be able to nope out if you start to find her annoying or boring or burdensome, or just spot someone you like better….  

And that’s cruel, because the way things work here and now, she has no protection and no livelihood, outside of a father or husband. So: Yeah, divorce is legal, because some of you are jerks. That’s a paraphrase and expansion of what Jesus says, but I think it’s the gist. 

Then Jesus goes home, and talks more with his disciples. So maybe this next scene with the little children is the next morning – or maybe it’s a thing that happened a lot, and this passage records what Jesus had to say about it. There’s no obvious connection with the divorce conversation… but then again, maybe there is. A social system in which women are often made vulnerable is also a social system in which children are often made vulnerable – true in Jesus’ time, true today. WayForward Resources, our local food pantry and resource center, regularly reminds us of the high numbers of children among their clients. And I think that, in both parts of this text, Mark wants us to hear Jesus’ insistence that his way is a way that cares for and honors those seen as less important, or pushed to the edges.

When Jesus holds up little children – literally and metaphorically – and says things like, “Whoever welcomes a little child in my name welcomes me,” and “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it,” he is profoundly challenging a social order in which adult men made most of the decisions affecting the welfare of others. Pastor Phil writes, “Marriage, as well as relationships between adults and children…, are proposed as spheres where we can live toward the other in the promise of our divine image.” 

It’s an election year, beloveds. I know that’s on many of our hearts and minds. I don’t talk about it a lot when I’m standing up here. I think it’s more important for us to pray through this season together, than for you to hear me hold forth about what I think. 

But our way of faith does have some big things to say, in seasons like this. And this year, here we are in our Sunday readings, deep in these chapters of Mark’s Gospel where Jesus keeps talking about the fact that wealth and power don’t mean you’re God’s favorite. About the ways our hardness of heart have distorted God’s intentions for our common life. About mercy, justice, love of neighbor, as the path to true greatness. About how a community that seeks to follow Jesus needs to look to those often pushed to the edges, and call them to the center, to care for them and learn from them. About how we can continue to live toward the other, toward one another, in the promise of our divine image. 

Jesus didn’t live in a democracy. But for us, using our votes and voices as citizens is a really important way we can practice our faith and love our neighbors. Who’s vulnerable in our world today? Where does your faith inform – or challenge – your opinions and convictions on the big issues in the public square? How does this election season call you as a person of faith, as a follower of Jesus, to show up and speak up?

May God guard us, guide us, and empower us, for the living of these days. Amen. 

Phil Ruge-Jones’s commentary on this Gospel: 

https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27-2/commentary-on-mark-102-16-6

My sermon was written as an outline this week so this version is a little sketchy, but you get the idea! 

Proverbs, the Biblical book: A collection of proverbs – sayings about life and how to live it – from the ancient Near East. There are six or more sets or sections within the book, anthologized in the time of Exile or even later. Focus on teaching and instruction. Fundamentally pragmatic sense of wisdom as something that helps you understand self and others, make good choices, and live a better life. To the extent that God is present, mostly as the originator and maintainer of a system in which good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people… even if it sometimes takes a while. 

Artfully written and poetic. Mostly couplets, two-line forms. Lots of evocative metaphors. An example: “Bread got through fraud is sweet to a man, but in the end it fills his mouth with gravel” (20:17) Using this image to say that what you get dishonestly may seem great at first, but…! 

Some are shrewd and funny; some offer genuine insight. Many boil down to, “Work hard and make good choices,” which I guess is the kind of thing parents and grandparents have always told children and grandchildren? 

Chapters 10 to 22 claim to be the wisdom of King Solomon, in particular – some of the 3000 proverbs that he composed, according to 1 Kings.

Proverbs, the thing: A proverb is a short saying that condenses some general truth, guidance, or advice. Wisdom distilled into something portable and concise. 

These past couple of weeks I’ve been noticing how many proverbs circulate in my household and our world! We learn them from our parents. A few from my family of origin: Pretty is as pretty does. That’s why God makes Fords and Chevys…  We learn them from our friends. I’m particularly fond of “Clear is kind,” from Cecilie B… We pick them up from the culture. “The morning is wiser than the evening” – Regina Spektor song.

But! It’s not that simple. Just because something makes a snappy saying doesn’t mean it’s true or wise. “God won’t give you anything you can’t handle” is one that particularly annoys me. First, because it implies that anything bad that happens to you is God’s intention for you, which I do not believe. And second, because it’s manifestly untrue. People are dealt situations they can’t handle all the time. That’s why God tells to look out for one another.

When I was in my teens – series of fantasy books popular at the time – line: “No evil ever came of a thing done for love.” I loved that; carried that around for a while.  … Then at some point in my late teens or 20s, I thought, Wait. That’s actually not true at all. Evil comes from things done for love all the time. 

Some of the proverbs we’ve inherited might be a little conditional in their application. For example: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” – That’s meant for situations like discouraging gossip, or not telling your friend that her new dress looks awful. But it can be misapplied to discourage people from speaking up about actual bad stuff. Contrast that with Proverbs 10:10: “The one who rebukes boldly makes peace!” 

Turning back to the Biblical book of Proverbs… it’s really interesting to read through! There are proverbs that still work, all these centuries later… Robert Alter: some of the proverbs “appear to derive from shrewd and considered reflection on moral behavior and human nature.” (351) 

One of my long-time favorites: “Better a meal of vegetables with love than a fatted ox with hatred.” (15:17) – better to live simply with love, than to have material plenty but no peace in your family or heart. One I read this week for the first time: “Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or pours vinegar on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.” (25:20). Now, singing to someone sad could be nice, but I think the implication here is of somebody being aggressively cheerful at someone else who’s really burdened or struggling. We’ve all been there, and yeah, it’s rough. 

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion.” (18:2) – We all know one of those… 

We had a youth retreat on relationships, last winter – Proverbs (and Sirach, another Biblical Wisdom book) had a lot of useful material! Proverbs 17.9: “One who forgives an affront fosters friendship, but one who dwells on disputes will alienate a friend…. 18: Some friends play at friendship, but a true friend sticks closer than one’s nearest kin…” Working with the youth: lots we could relate to! 

There are proverbs that we maybe CAN’T relate to so much, but that give us a glimpse into life 3000 years ago… “Cheating scales are the Lord’s loathing, and a true weight-stone His pleasure” (11:1) – several versions. Reflect a time when weighing things out was a key part of any transaction, and false weights was a major form of economic dishonesty. “If you find honey, eat just enough – too much of it, and you will vomit.” (25:16) Probably about more than just honey, but still makes me curious about the backstory.

And there are proverbs that make us grateful that times have changed… 11:22 – “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without good sense…” OK. 13:24 – “Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them…” Meaning: You have beat your children to raise them right. Some of y’all were raised like that. But that’s not how most folks choose to parent today. 

And of course there’s a whole boatload of stuff that only sounds wise, but doesn’t actually hold up if you give it a hard look. A biggie: Proverbs’ confidence that if you work hard and do what’s right, you’ll get ahead in life. Robert Alter: “[Proverbs]… evinces great confidence in a rational moral order that dependably produces concrete rewards for virtue and wisdom.” That is just… not reliably true!! But we still speak and act as if it were, sometimes – thereby adding to human suffering.The book of Job, which comes along later this fall, will bring us some wonderfully complex wrestling with the idea that good people always have good lives.

Let me pause here for a brief detour into the book of Ecclesiastes, or Qohelet; I’ll use the Hebrew name because it’s less confusing, since there’s another Biblical book called Ecclesiasticus. Every adult here has heard a few verses from Qohelet: To every thing there is a season… Let people finish the sentence. That’s a lovely passage and some durable wisdom, I think. That life has different seasons can be a helpful reminder sometimes. 

But the book as a whole is interestingly ambiguous in terms of what lasting wisdom it offers. Qohelet written centuries after King Solomon, but presents itself as the voice of Solomon, late in life, reflecting back on life – and forward towards death. 

There’s a core word, throughout the text, that’s traditionally translated as Vanity – not in the sense of excessive pride in one’s own appearance, but in the sense of something futile or pointless. Listen to part of the first chapter… 

“The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What do people gain from all the toil
at which they toil under the sun?… 
I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.

I said to myself, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’… [But] I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.
For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow…”

It is a loss that Qohelet is barely in our Sunday lectionary. It’s such a human text. Many of us have those thoughts and feelings at times. What is the point of it all? Where is the deeper meaning? And yet we might quickly find ourselves arguing with Qohelet’s sense that because death comes for us all, nothing matters and everything is pointless. I would love to do a study on Qohelet. I think there’s a struggle at the heart of that text with which we could be in fruitful conversation. But for now, let me just hold it up as another example of something that feels or sounds wise… and yet is missing something, at its heart. 

Proverbs are meant to distill wisdom – and there are different things that we call “wisdom.” Last week, we saw that Solomon’s “wisdom” included prudence, political savvy, strategic effectiveness. 

James – wonderful, vivid passage today on how much our tongues and our words can get us in trouble – follows that immediately with a passage we’ll hear next week, in which he says there are two types of wisdom: An “earthly, unspiritual, devilish” wisdom that has to do with envy and selfish ambition. And a wisdom from above, that is pure, peaceful, gentle, obedient, filled with mercy and good actions, fair, and genuine. You can recognize that kind of wisdom, says James, in a good life, and a spirit of gentleness. A person formed by this kind of holy wisdom will sow the seeds of justice through their peaceful acts. That sounds like somebody I want to be around. 

If we are lucky, and pay attention, we may meet a few people in life in whom we can see this kind of wisdom… and we might stumble upon and gather a few proverbs that capture that kind of wisdom. Bits and pieces we can carry with us to ground us and guide us. 

Beside my desk in my office, I have a cork board that’s covered with a lot of things – some proverb-length, some longer – that I have found to be true and reliable enough to use as touchstones, and that contain something of which I need to be reminded – something that’s not already built into my worldview and way of being. For example, there’s a simple prayer of gratitude and openness from Dag Hammarskjold – you can learn about him on our prayer table today: For all that has been: Thanks! For all that will be: Yes! 

There are other thing I carry inside me as sayings or songs – like the one that goes: You don’t have to know the way; the Way knows the way. These things meaningfully capture something important that helps me be a better priest and a better person. 

But I have wrestled a little, in these weeks of exploring the theme and the literature of Wisdom, with whether all this is God-y enough. Have I ditched my responsibility of calling us to turn our hearts towards the Love at the heart of the universe, in favor of insightful aphorisms and good advice? 

And yet! There is ALL THIS wisdom literature in the Bible. It’s a big chunk of the book, if you add it all up. And there are repeated reminders that Wisdom – true wisdom –  is a gift from God, even an emanation or aspect of God; and that the pursuit of wisdom is a holy and righteous path. 

God says through the prophet Isaiah, My thoughts are not your thoughts; but the Wisdom texts of the Bible suggest that there’s at least some overlap in the Venn diagram of God’s thoughts and our thoughts! 

And the fact that God gives us this capacity to become wise – to recognize and to share wisdom – true wisdom, the kind of wisdom James is talking about that’s peaceful and gentle and merciful and fair and genuine and just – the fact that God gives us that capacity is just such a beautiful sign of the intimacy and partnership that God wants with us. We were never made to be puppets or subjects, unquestioningly following divine degrees. We were made to be children, and co-workers, and friends of God, in the holy work of ordering all things well. 

Banquet Parable Parallels

Please click the link above to get the document referenced in the sermon!

1. Matthew’s parable 
   1. Why read this today? Revised Common Lectionary. 
      1. We get Matthew’s version of this parable, which is also in Luke, and I believe Matthew’s version is pretty distorted – – why it sounds like such a terrible party!  
         1. A wonderful paper I found exploring this parable, by Ernest van Eck at the University of Pretoria: “Almost all scholars agree that the Matthean version of the parable is secondary.” 

2. Look at page – comparisons. 
   1. Matthew and Luke are two of the four Gospels (explain). 
      1. Mark is the earliest written Gospel. 
      2. Most Biblical scholars agree that Matthew and Luke both draw on Mark, AND seem to have had access to another source that seems to have been a collection of Jesus’ sayings and parables. (Q source)
         1. There are debates about that hypothesis but it’s held up pretty well over time. 
         2. So when we see something in both Mt and Lk, that isn’t in Mark, we might guess that they got it from Q; & then they both maybe put their own spin on it & worked it into the narrative in their own way. 
   2. And then there’s Thomas. 
      1. Gospel of Thomas – discovered in 1945 as part of a cache of ancient documents found in Egypt. 
      2. Dating uncertain; probably sometime in the 2nd century, later than the canonical gospels, but built on/contains some earlier material. 
      3. It is a sayings gospel – no narrative, just teachings. Overlaps by about 2/3 with the things Jesus says in the canonical Gospels. 
         1. Some of the other stuff is … real weird. 
            1. “Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man.”
            2. “Whoever has come to understand the world has found (only) a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world.”
            3. Or my favorite – simply: “Become passers-by.”
         2. Thomas likely the work of early Christian sect – a group that had split off from the mainstream church – had this set of their own teachings (“secret” teachings of Jesus), reflecting a more gnostic perspective. 
            1. Gnostic – spell it. Gnostic movements or wings within many religious traditions. 
               1. Characteristics: Emphasis on secret knowledge; intentionally cryptic; usually a strong sense of dualism between body and spirit, this world and another divine world. 
         3. The point here is: Thomas is weird. I think early church leaders were correct in deciding that this gospel did not belong in the Christian scriptures that would be carried forward as our holy text. 
            1. But, when it also has a parallel text to something that’s in our Gospels, it can be interesting and informative to look at it alongside!

3. So, let’s look. 
   1. We’ve already heard Matthew. Will someone read Luke’s version? Skip the part in italics; it shows us how Luke puts this parable in the context of a dinner party. 
      1. [Have somebody read it]
      2. Now let’s hear Thomas.  [Have somebody read it]
   2. Comparing these texts… 
      1. All the really scary stuff in Matthew – the king sending troops to murder the invited guests and burn their city! The guests who weren’t dressed correctly being thrown into outermost darkness! – that is JUST in Matthew. And there’s strong reason to believe that’s Matthew’s editorial voice. 
      2. As I’ve said before: Matthew lived through the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70, after the Jewish revolt that started in 66. He makes sense of that trauma by blaming it on the Jews who rejected Jesus as Messiah. 
      3. Sending troops to kill the guests and burn their city is describing what happened to Jerusalem. 
      4. The wedding garment part is just weird. But it’s very clear that this is also Matthew’s addition. 
         1. “Where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” appears SIX TIMES in Matthew; ONCE in Luke; nowhere else in the Bible. 
      5. So: Matthew has stamped this story, as he received it presumably from Q, with his own trauma and rage. Why I’m mad that the RCL gives us his version!
   3. Comparing Luke and Thomas… 
      1. A lot more similar – quite recognizably the same story. 
      2. Luke’s framing of this parable: Jesus is at dinner at the home of a person of status. He criticizes the way people invite “friends and relatives and rich neighbors” who will invite you back in return – so your hospitality only seems like generosity when it’s actually part of a system of honor and reciprocity where you gain status by hosting an event, and will be given favor in return. 
         1. Jesus suggests pointedly that people try having a dinner party for people who can’t invite them to an equally nice party in return. 
      3. Van Eck notes that some scholars say the inviting of the poor, crippled, blind and lame is something Luke has added to the parable, because it’s the kind of thing Luke likes to emphasize. However, says van Eck, you can also flip that: “Because eating with the poor, crippled, blind and lame was so important for Jesus, Luke included it [here].” There are other passages that support that conclusion! 
         1. Luke – third invitation – “roads and lanes” – the host wants to fill their home. 
            1. Social geography of first century Palestine. People in your neighborhood, likely invitees, would share your social status. The farther you go out, the bigger the social drop in who you’re bringing into your home. A big deal, in a very status- and honor-conscious society. 
            2. This third invitation feels very Lukan. Even though I think Luke is right to understand the inclusion of the marginalized as central to Jesus’ message and mission, it also seems very possible to me that Luke added on that final invitation to really drive the point home. 
      4. Thomas – More elaborate and specific excuses, and an explicit anti-business slant. Those making excuses are too busy making money off the backs of their neighbors to come to this party. “Buyers and traders will not enter the places of my father!” 
         1. Thomas is not interested in who *does* end up at the party. That part is totally absent here. 
            1. Lots of stuff in Thomas that does have parallels in the Gospels is shorter, abbreviated. 
            2. But also: In gnostic thinking, defining who’s out  can be as important as defining who’s in. So it tracks that Thomas frames this story as a story about how terrible business people are. 
         2. What Thomas’s text does, though, is possibly add weight to Luke’s version as being more likely closer to the original. A lot more like Luke than Matthew. 

4. Jesus’ “original” parable? 
   1. Everybody takes whatever Jesus actually said, and tries to make sense of it and re-tell it reflecting their concerns. 
   2. Is it possible to peel away the layers and get to Jesus’ original teaching – and what Jesus meant by it? 
      1. Somebody hosts a party – a banquet. They start by inviting the usual suspects – people with existing connections and relationships, people of comparable social standing. 
      2. But those people don’t want to come. 
         1. Van Eck’s paper: A new idea for me – The excuses are snubs. I always kind of saw that, but had never thought about it. But the universal refusal of the first round of invitees means something. 
            1. The invited guests in the story feel like this party is not the place to be. Van Eck says: “Attendance was socially inappropriate.” Maybe they don’t want to be beholden to that host – to feel like they owe them a favor. Or maybe that host is not generally socially esteemed. 
            2. A surprising and provocative idea for me because this is one of the parables where it seems like the central figure is a stand-in for God.
               1. I can understand feeling cautious about owing God a favor, or getting drawn into God’s social circle! God is weird and unpredictable, keeps strange company, and often makes big demands! And in our time and place, being known to be a friend of God does not generally boost your social status!

4. 2. 3. The rejection of the first round of invitees ties in with a lot of the passages in the Gospels about people who feel like they don’t need what Jesus is offering. It’s easy for me to see this as part of Jesus’ story. 
      4. But the host really wants to have this party. Everything is ready! The food, the drinks, the music! They need some people to join their celebration. So they send out their slave to invite literally anyone they can find. 

1. 1. 1. 1. People who are usually not invited to the party, get invited to the party. It becomes a wild chaotic gathering of misfits, outsiders and weirdos. Presumably they eat and drink and dance and have a grand old time. (And let’s be clear, nobody accuses them of wearing the wrong clothes and throws them into outermost darkness.) 
      2. It makes me happy to think about what this means for the guests. Lots of us know what it feels like to not be on the A-list of invitees for something or another. Joyful to think that God’s party isn’t like that. 

4. 3. Van Eck: Not just what this means for the guests but what it means about the host. 
      1. This host rejects the expectations of their time and their social class, and instead gives to those who cannot give back; breaks down social norms about who does and doesn’t belong, status and class, purity and pollution; and treats everybody as family. (Van Eck, paraphrased) 
      2. The glimpse of God’s way of doing things that we get through this parable, as Jesus likely told it, is a glimpse of a world in which those with social standing and power do not “ostracize or marginalise the so-called unclean or expendable.” 
      3. And, Van Eck points out: “Like the host in the parable, Jesus regularly associated with the so-called ‘impure’ and ate with the so-called ‘sinners’ of his day.” And seemed profoundly unconcerned about how this might affect his own social status – choosing instead to care about those with whom he spent his time, their needs, their hopes, their hearts and souls. 
   4. That’s the core of this parable, which it’s almost impossible to pry out of Matthew’s terrifying anti-party. That’s the message of a Savior I want to follow – and the vision of a holy banquet I’d like to attend. Amen. 

Source:

VAN ECK, Ernest. When patrons are patrons: A social-scientific and realistic reading of the parable of the Feast (Lk 14:16b-23). Herv. teol. stud.,  Pretoria ,  v. 69, n. 1, p. 1-14,  Jan.  2013 .   Available here. Accessed on  10  Oct.  2023.

In Genesis chapter 16, Abram and Sarai get tired of waiting for God to fulfill the promise to give them a son, and take matters into their own hands. Sarai tells Abram to spend some private time with her enslaved Egyptian servant, Hagar.  Hagar gets pregnant, and tensions arise between Sarai and Hagar. Sarai treats Hagar so harshly that she runs away into the wilderness. But the Angel of the Lord finds Hagar, sitting near a spring in the desert, and tells her to return to Sarai and submit to her. The Angel also promises Hagar that she will have many descendants, more than can be counted – which sounds a lot like the promise to Abraham! The angel gives Hagar’s son a name: Ishmael, meaning, God has heard you. And Hagar in turn names the being who addresses her,  “You are El-Roi” – meaning, The god who sees me. 

Wait – isn’t it an angel who addresses her, not God? Yes and no. Often in these early parts of the Old Testament, there is not a clear distinction between God and angel. Chapter 18 begins, “The LORD appeared to Abraham…” and goes on to describe the visit of three men. Those strange visitors are later described again as the (singular) Lord, and then as messengers or angels (which are the same word; “angel” or “messenger” is a translation choice). So: We think of angels as separate and lesser beings, but for this part of the Biblical text, it’s not that clear. Hagar knows she has encountered God, and she’s not wrong. 

We need that story to fully understand today’s Genesis reading, from chapter 21, which takes place when Isaac and Ishmael are children. Let me say that we’re taking things out of order – the binding of Isaac, which we heard last week, happens after this – and that the editing in this part of Genesis is a little sloppy; a few verses earlier it said that Ishmael is thirteen years old, but here it sounds like he’s a very small child again. 

Anyway: Isaac is born, a baby half-brother for Ishmael, and Abraham and Sarah dote on him. But Sarah’s jealousy smolders. One day Sarah sees Ishmael and Isaac playing together and gets angry. She tells Abraham to cast them out – “for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” 

Abraham is distressed about this! But God tells him not to worry, and that Ishmael, like Isaac, shall become the father of a nation. So Abraham gives Hagar some bread and a canteen of water, and sends her and the child out into the desert. Bye! Good luck! 

When the angel of God speaks to Hagar, as she sits weeping and waiting for death, they are meeting again – not for the first time. God repeats the promise that Ishmael’s descendants will become a great nation. And this time God does not send Hagar and Ishmael back to Sarah’s abuse, but lets them start their own lives as free people. 

I love the story of Hagar and want to make sure it’s told, every three years when we cycle through the book of Genesis in our Sunday readings. I think it’s important for me because – very early in the story of God’s people – the Biblical text is already laying out some central, holy paradoxes that will carry through. Yes, God calls Abraham and Sarah to be the parents and grandparents of a special, set-apart nation, God’s covenant people; Yes, God also claims Ishmael and makes him part of God’s larger plan.  Yes, God appears to Abraham, making him the honored faith-ancestor of three world religions; Yes, God also appears to Hagar, an enslaved woman of another ethnicity. 

Hagar names God as “The one who sees me.” God as the one who sees – and cares about – those at the margins, the pushed out, the excluded, the vulnerable and those in need, is a strong theme throughout our Scriptures, Old and New Testament alike. 

Many of the founding figures of the United States – and many people today – talk about America as a Christian nation, a country that should enshrine and embody the values and ethics of the Bible. I wonder what it would look like to build a nation on a foundational commitment to this core Biblical value: seeing, honoring, caring for and uplifting those who are poor, vulnerable, excluded, and at risk. 

When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.

In our calendar of Sunday scripture readings, we’re in the year of Matthew’s Gospel. But this is one of the Sundays when we get a little chunk of John’s Gospel for some reason. 

Next week we’ll hear Matthew’s version of the calling of Jesus’ first disciples. That might be more familiar: Jesus walks along the shore of the sea of Galilee and calls these young men away from their nets and their boats. 

John’s version of the calling of the first disciples isn’t really a calling at all. It’s more of a sending. 

Andrew is a disciple of John the Baptist. He’s already left home and work and family to follow a rabbi, a teacher. 

But then his rabbi, John the Baptist, tells him that Jesus is the real deal. The Lamb of God. 

So Andrew and another guy go follow Jesus. 

And Jesus, naturally enough, sees them following him and asks, What’s up?

Actually, he asks: What are you looking for? 

This question makes a lot of sense when we realize Jesus surely knew that these men – who may have been quite young, teenagers even – have literally just walked away from John the Baptist to start following him. 

This rabbi-hopping suggests that they were seekers, looking for someone to offer them meaning, purpose, hope, a way to spend their days. 

So he asks: What are you looking for? 

And they don’t know how to answer. 

I love that; it’s so real. I wouldn’t have an answer ready either.

I’ve had those moments, when somebody asks an unexpectedly profound or intense question, and I just stare at them and say, “Um. Huh.”  

And then maybe I say something like, “So where are you staying while you’re in town?”

Which is what Andrew and the other guy do. 

And Jesus says, Come and see. 

So they go with him to where he is staying. Some cheap first-century AirBnB or hotel room in a nearby village, probably. 

It’s clear that the where isn’t really that important.

The who is what’s important. 

The text notes that it was about four o’clock in the afternoon. Maybe that means it was coming up on dinnertime by the time they arrived, so they decided to stick around. 

Some commentators think we’re meant to assume it was a Friday, so sunset and the Sabbath were approaching, and that these disciples ended up spending the Sabbath with Jesus – Friday evening and all day Saturday. 

I wonder what happened, during those hours. Was Jesus preaching or teaching? Were they just sitting together over some simple food and a little wine and talking, talking, talking about the world? 

Were they doing ordinary everyday things? Was Jesus, whom Mark describes as a carpenter, doing little woodwork to earn his keep? Maybe building a bench, or a storage box, or a cradle? 

Who knows? Just being around him, being near him, listening to him, awakened something in Andrew. 

Curiosity. Hope. Love. Loyalty. 

We meet someone like that, now and then, in life… Someone who earns our esteem or our devotion very quickly, for reasons it’s hard to put a finger on.  

And sometimes it turns out that our first instincts were wrong. Sometimes charisma misleads us; sometimes people who are compelling, who draw others to them, turn out not to have much substance, or worse, to be selfish, exploitative, abusive. 

But other times, when you keep abiding with that person, you find that they are what they seem to be, and more. Not perfect, but true. Not perhaps always nice, but good. 

A person who looks at you and you can see in their eyes that they really do love you just the way you are, but also, they’re not going to leave you that way. And you want to step up to being the person they know you could be. 

A person who you just want to hang around because they are going to make something happen, something that matters, and you want to be there to see it. 

Andrew finds something like that, in his hours abiding with Jesus.

Something that makes him give Jesus a particular name, when he describes him to his brother Simon: We have found the Messiah. 

John offers us a translation of Messiah, a Hebrew word. It means, the Anointed. (In Greek, that’s Christos – the source of the word Christ, which is a title we give Jesus, not part of his name.) 

What would that word have meant to Simon – to Andrew? To say that Jesus was the Messiah? 

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg wrote a piece just this week about the history of the idea of the Messiah. The practice of anointing someone with oil as a sign of their taking on a new special, sacred role begins in the time of Moses, during the wilderness journey, with the ordination of Aaron and his sons as priests to serve God in the tabernacle, the sacred tent.  

Anointing as a mark of a new status came to extend to kings as well as priests, in the following centuries. 

After the time of King David, the peak of Israel’s political and economic power, expectations that God would send an Anointed One focused on a King, a political leader who would bring back the good old days. Ruttenberg writes, “The hope for a Messiah was a hope to get back to how things should be soon in the current timeline.”

But as first the Northern Kingdom, then Judea, are conquered by the great empires of the time, hopes for an earthly king start to feel more and more distant. 

The Messiah becomes e a more otherworldly figure. Someone who will bring in the World-to-come, the coming Age. 

Our Isaiah text this morning hints at that turn: extending the vision for God’s Holy One beyond restoring Judah to its pre-conquest state, to bringing Light and Salvation to all nations of the earth. 

That’s the vision of Messiah that would have been circulating in Jesus’ time – someone sent by God to transform the world. 

That’s the name Andrew puts to what he is hearing and seeing and experiencing as he spends time with Jesus. 

That’s what motivates him to bring Simon along – Simon Peter, who will become one of Jesus’ closest friends and, later, the central leader of early Christianity. 

I want to turn back to Jesus’ words in this Gospel passage. 

What are you looking for? 

Come and see. 

I think John kind of means for Jesus to break the fourth wall, in theater terms, when he asks: What are you looking for? When he says: Come and see. 

I think John’s Jesus is looking directly into the camera when he says these lines. 

The Gospel writer we know as John is well aware that the readers of his Gospel will not have a chance to abide with the earthly Jesus. That’s why he’s writing a Gospel: to try to pass on something he finds so important, so compelling, so transformational, that he urgently wants to share it, to pass it on. 

He wants his readers to be drawn into this scene. To hear Jesus speaking to them. To us. 

And both of the things Jesus says – the question, the invitation – point towards an important word that’s hiding in today’s Gospel. 

The word is Abide. 

Well: In New Testament Greek, it’s meno. 

In reading about this passage, I saw somebody say that it’s a very Johannine word – a word typical of John’s Gospel.

Well, I didn’t take their word for it – I looked it up. There are tools for this kind of thing! 

That word is used three times in Matthew’s Gospel.

Twice in Mark’s. Six times in Luke’s. 

And somewhere in the ballpark of forty, in John. 

So. Okay. Fair to say this word matters to John.

In John’s often poetic and mystical writing style, there are lots of words that mean more than they mean. 

(That’s one of the reasons I wish we had a John year in the lectionary is that we could really explore that and follow through!)   

So Meno means remain. Also translated as dwell, stay, and abide. 

It’s an important term for John, somehow. 

I wonder if John chapter 15 is the key text for understanding what “abide” means. This is part of Jesus’ long speech at his last supper with his friends. 

Jesus tells them, Abide in me as I abide in you. 

I am the vine, you are the branches; the branches can only be sustained by the vine if they abide in the vine. 

As the Father has loved me, so I love you; abide in my love. 

I like that the NRSV, the Bible translation we usually use, chooses the word Abide here. 

It’s not an everyday word and it makes us pause and perhaps think about how abiding is different from just staying or remaining. 

“Remain in my love” just doesn’t have the same feel. 

But I wish that our translation used abide other places too, to make it clearer that this is a core word for John. In fact, by the time we get to the disciples staying with Jesus in chapter 1, verse 39, John has used meno three times already.

John the Baptist twice says that he saw the Holy Sprit abide on Jesus at his baptism. And the disciples’ question uses meno too – Where are you abiding? 

I find Abide to be a beautiful and evocative word. 

“Abide” is related to “abode”, a place where you live; “dwell” also captures this sense of really settling in somewhere with intention, not just hanging around between other things. 

For me “abide” – as opposed to “stay” or “remain” – has overtones of slowing down, being present, belonging, putting down roots. 

And even though John’s Jesus won’t talk about the deeper meanings of abiding until much later, his words in this Gospel text invite abiding. 

What are you looking for? 

The question takes our outward-bound energy and turns it inward: what’s this really about? What feels unfulfilled or insufficient in you, that’s driving your busy-ness, your seeking and striving? 

What do you really need? What do you want, deep down inside?

I don’t think it bothers Jesus at all that they can’t answer. 

That I can’t answer. 

It’s a question to sit with – to abide with. 

But in the meantime, while we’re asking ourselves, What am I looking for?… in the meantime, John’s Jesus says, Come and see. 

Next week we’ll hear the call of Simon and Andrew again. 

In Matthew’s version, Jesus’ first words to them are: Follow me.  

Follow me. A command, an invitation? A little of both?

Here, instead, John’s Jesus says: Come and see. 

It is a command, grammatically speaking. 

But it’s an interesting contrast with Follow me.

Follow me calls for movement: get up and go.

Come and see invites arrival followed by attentive presence. 

Follow me means decide, commit, NOW. Immediately. 

Come and see calls the disciples closer – calls us closer – but leaves the next step in our hands. 

In Greek as in English, the meaning of “see” spreads out beyond literal sight to mean understand, comprehend, experience, know. 

If we come and see – if we abide a while with Jesus – will we find something there that deepens our love, our loyalty, our curiosity? Our hope?  

There’s a lot to wonder and a lot to say about what it means to abide with Jesus when we can’t sit down for a meal or watch the sunset with the living breathing man, as Andrew could. 

But I’m grateful to know John’s Jesus.

I do strive to follow Jesus, with all the energy and direction that implies. 

But it is a balm to my soul to be reminded that movement and activity isn’t the only thing – or in John, even the primary thing – that Jesus asks of us. 

I’m grateful for Jesus’ invitation, here, to abide with my own deep self, to wonder what I am really looking for. 

And I’m grateful to be reminded that in my life with Christ, when I’m not sure where to go, it is sometimes okay to just be.

 

 

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg on the Messiah idea: 

https://lifeisasacredtext.substack.com/p/anointed