Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (7C), June 23, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

This morning we have, in my humble opinion, too much on our plates when it comes to great readings of scripture. So in my sermon I am going to try some of everything. I’m going to say something about all three readings. In the story of Elijah – whose name literally translated is “my god is [the Holy One]” Eliyahu in Hebrew, is running from the law. Israel’s much-maligned Queen Jezebel, working with foreign allies for peace and prosperity for her people, had had enough of the insurgent Elijah and she sent a messenger to tell him that his days were numbered. Her fury had to do with the large public demonstration Elijah staged to show the power over nature of the god whose Name is too holy to pronounce. Elijah’s god produced much needed rain to end a deadly drought and famine. But then in a hideous display of aggression, Elijah had all 450 of the prophets of the losing god Baal seized and killed. He took off into the wilderness, afraid and alone, exhausted and suicidal. But twice, messengers brought him bread and water and told him to get up and eat something. He journeyed to Mount Horeb, (also known as Mount Sinai), the Holy Mountain of Moses’ encounters with the Divine. He found shelter in a cave or a rock crevice, and heard the Divine voice ask him, “What are you doing here Elijah?” Of course the inflection when that question is read out loud is up to the reader. I always hear it as a kind of “What the heck, Elijah?”

Elijah’s answer was defensive and angry – zealous and jealous and furious are all translations of the same word. He was fearful, despairing and self-righteous – always a toxic cocktail! His response didn’t mention all the killing he’d just done. The word of the Holy One instructed Elijah to come out – come out of the darkness of the cave and experience the presence of the Divine. But before he came out, there were the usual signs of the revelation of the Divine – a rock-splitting windstorm, an earthquake, and a fire, but somehow Elijah knew that the presence of the Divine was not in any of those cataclysmic events. Elijah experienced the voice of the Divine in the sheer silence that followed.

And then Elijah heard the question a second time. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And in a response to that divine question that I find so reassuring, Elijah gave the same self-indulgent litany of complaint. Even a great prophet who was experiencing the presence of the Divine, could not let go of his own well-scripted story.  I imagine a smiling, loving Holy One Who said, “Return on your way, get back to work.”  I imagine that it was in the silence that Elijah got some perspective, that he got somehow brave enough to go back home and get back to work.  This was not silence in the face of injustice; rather, this is the kind of silence we all need in order to hear that God is still speaking as they say on the United Church of Christ signs. God is still speaking. Whenever I see one of those signs, I want to respond, “Yes. God is still being very quiet. God whispers with the voice of a little girl – an echo of a voice – in sheer silence.”

Our Gospel story from Luke is a hilariously funny political satire. To get the joke you have to imagine that this was not a story that was trying to be realistic or factual or even fair.  This is a tall tale that gets at the truth of how oppressive the Roman occupation of Palestine was. To get the joke, you have to know that Gerasa was a city sacked by the Jews in the revolt against Rome between 66 and 70 CE, and then it was brutally recaptured by Rome shortly after that. (The Gospel of Luke was probably written around 85 CE.) You have to know that a legion is a unit of the Roman army comprising 6,000 soldiers. You have to know that pigs are unclean. They are gross and carry disease. Eating them is dangerous and against the law.

Jesus is negotiating solo with the spirits of 6,000 occupying soldiers about to be stopped from tormenting a poor man to the point of insanity, and Jesus agrees to the demons’ request to be put into a herd of swine and off the cliff they go. This is a story that would produce belly laughter. It’s highly subversive and thoroughly entertaining slapstick comedy. It gave Jesus’ hearers – Luke’s hearers —  respite from taking themselves and their problems and even their oppressors so seriously. Belly laughter is good medicine and good exercise especially for a community bound together by fear like the community of Jesus’ hearers; like the community of Luke’s hearers; like the communities we live and move in.¹ Once the Gerasene man has been freed from the legion of demons, Jesus’ instruction is, “go back home and declare how much God has done for you.” In other words, “go back home and get to work.”

Now, I want to spend a few minutes with you reflecting on the Apostle Paul.  (You may groan if you need to.)  I hear from many of you about how much you dislike the Apostle Paul.  At Emmanuel, we regularly have trouble getting lectors to read the Epistles.  I will concede, it’s not very popular to like Paul in progressive branches of the Christian family tree.  Paul is widely considered to be the father of anti-Semitism and misogyny.  Some just consider him a jerk. I don’t think he is any of those things.

I don’t just like Paul. I love him. You might wonder what a nice feminist like myself is doing loving an apostle like Paul. My colleagues often argue that Paul “is hopelessly inconsistent [or incomprehensible] or insane or an idiot or a rhetorically self-serving chameleon.”² I do experience Paul as prone to irritability and impatience, vulnerable to both anxiety and self-righteousness. Those are all traits that I battle in myself. Those are all traits I regularly encounter in communities of faith (although I’m not naming any names). And underneath those traits is what makes Paul so appealing to me. The through-line of Paul’s theology, the heart of his vision is a beloved community of God in which distinctions and hierarchies with their commensurate exclusions that are so important to so many human beings, make no difference at all in Jesus Christ – and must make no difference at all in the Body of Christ.

Our portion of Paul’s letter to the Galatians gives an example of his sense of the radical inclusivity of God as revealed to him by the life and teachings of Jesus. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer subservient or independent, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” This is in contrast to a common saying in Greek philosophy, “I was born a human being, not a beast; a man and not a woman; …a Greek and not a barbarian.” But this is in sync with a saying in Rabbinic Judaism: “If a poor man says anything, one pays little regard: but if a rich man speaks, immediately he is heard and listened to. Before God, however, all are equal: women, slaves, poor and rich.”³  Paul is not arguing for sameness or for removing difference. He is asserting the idea that cultural and natural distinctions count for nothing in the eyes of God. What counts, according to Paul, is the practice of love. The law is nothing without love. Faith is nothing without love. Not feelings of love – acts of love.

I wonder, how many times a day, on average, do you remember that in the eyes of the Holy One you are no better and no worse than any other person, and respond accordingly? How many times a day, on average, do you recall that no matter what our differences, the Divine is so vast and we are so small, that the differences between us are immaterial, and act accordingly? In Paul’s letter, he is reminding the Galatians that they are free. Whatever small cell or narrow place they had been in before because of religious teaching and preaching (and we all have encountered it), the door is now open, he says. “Come out,” Paul is saying. “Come out.” In Christ – that is, in the Redeeming Urge of God, there is not Jew or Greek, there is not slave or free, there is not male and female; for all of you are one.

This is an amazing statement of religious doctrine. If and when you are ever looking for a Biblical proof text for the full inclusion of women or queer folks or people of color or anyone else in the margins of society and in the margins of Church, here is one. The differences between male and female no longer matter for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. If and when you are ever looking for material to use in defense of Paul, in response to folks who just don’t like him…. Well you probably are never doing that, but I often am. Here is a fine piece of theology from the principle architect of the early Church.

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