Blogging Towards Sunday, June 24th
Freedom from Fear

The Biblical Texts suggested by the Lectionary List of Scriptures for this coming Sunday include:

1 Kings 19:1-15
Psalm 42
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39

I'm focusing on 1 Kings, Psalm 42 and Luke 8 because as I study and meditate on them I hear the common themes of hunger, thirst, fear, terror, despair, memory, hope, transformation, wholeness, humanness and freedom.

1 Kings 19 continues the telling of the story of the life, ministry and example of the prophet Elijah in ancient Israel. Alone in his faithfulness to the God of Israel, he faces a multitude of competing and false prophets sent by the twisted King Ahab and deceiving Queen Jezebel. In chapter 18 Elijah takes on 450 prophets of Baal in a contest of God's power, a bit like a religious reality show "hour of power" in which the God of Israel is victorious. Elijah commands the people to kill the 450 false prophets as a spiritual cleansing of his nation which has turned to worship other gods such as Baal, through ways such as child sacrifice, as opposed to worshipping the God of Israel by caring for the orphan, widow and foreigner. Elijah's victory leads to an increase in persecution, for the sore loser Jezebel puts a price on his head, sentencing him to sure death. It's then that he is overcome by despair, fear of the future, terror of what will happen to him as he is all alone. (Edvard Munch's famous painting "The Scream" captures this moment well.) Discouraged by the limitations of his resources, he longs for death, beseeching God to put him out of his misery. God doesn't grant his prayer, but instead sends an angel to feed and nourish him. God doesn't wipe away his terror, despair, and doubt. Rather God quenches his thirst and hunger, giving strength through power food and then noursishes Elijah's faith and hope by passing before him. One of the most famous selections of scripture that presents a theophany or revelation of who God is...it still speaks novels to me today...

God said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord isabout to pass by.’ 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. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped
his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then
there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ (11-13)

God speaks in an unexpected way, in a power manifest not in violence but in gentleness, not in a scream but in whisper. But God doesn't speak to Elijah in a pacifiying or reductionist way. God reminds Elijah of who he is, of who God is and the ministry to which Elijah is called...re-energizing Elijah to be faithful to Yahweh by continuing to raise him up to lead the people of God in a time of peril.

Psalm 42 could very well be the prayer that Elijah is uttering through sobs and tears as he is on the Mountain of Horeb, fleeing from Jezebel, hungry for death. The poetry reminds us that human life depends on God; we need God. Even when we can't do anything we are invited to "remember" - remember the past, remember God's faithfulness. Remember not in a past-oriented way, but in a way in which we remember in order to live now and lean into the future. In a place in which it's easy to think - or even where we're taught - that it's all up to us, the psalm poetry affirms that human life derives from or depends upon God, a God that is not forgetful, not unjust, and not passive. One of my study books refered to the opening paragraph of St. Augustine's Confessions in which he write "the thought of God stirs the [human being] so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praise God, because God made us for Godself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in him."

Luke 8 tells the miracle encounter story of an exorcism by Jesus not of Linda Blair, but of a lone man living in the area of the Gerasenes (the pagan, or non-Jewish lands to the East of the Lake of Gennesaret). The town has sentenced this one lone man to live outside the town as the scape-goat for all the evil and ills of the town and its people. Jesus exorcises him, freeing him not only from the demon possession by Legion but also from his dehumanizing rejection, isolation, and banishment to live among the tombs and loneliness of the graveyard. Jesus' power transforms his terror to wholeness, re-humanizing him, inviting him not only to life, but new life as discipleship. Perhaps the village folks are more scared of this man being not only freed and tolerated but also included and listened to than just him being healed and made whole. One writer (Francois Bovon) commented that Jesus wants people around him that are fully human: the definition of salvation. But this salvation doesn't reduce itself to Jesus wanting us to simply be normal, like everyone else.

So what is this freedom that the 3 texts talk of? Freedom to hear God's voice. Freedom to remember in order to lean into the future. Freedom to be fully human, fully present, fully involved, and fully part of God's plan made known in Jesus of Nazareth.

Problems/Questions I have with the texts include the following:

1. What's up with Elijah? Maybe he made the whole thing up. It'd be a convenient explanation-story for why he couldn't take his own life. Yet if so why make God's presence and voice so weird - so gentle - so unexpected?

2. What's up with the psalmist? Is she simply choosing to see life through "rose colored glasses" instead of recognizing what everyone around her is asking - "Where is your God?" Is this simply a poem inviting us to the pie-in-the-sky belief that Marx and the materialists described as the opiate of the masses and that Nietzsche affirms as the reasons that Christianity is for the weak?

3. What's up with Jesus? If he's all about freedom, inclusion, and the human community why does he stick it to the owner of the herd of pigs while he saves this one lone man? Isn't he simply transfering the suffering of one person to another? Plus does this passage lift up a belief that human beings are more important than animals? And why doesn't Jesus let the man come with him? Why sentence this newly-freed town reject/scape-goat to remain and live with those that treated him so badly, oppressing and dehumanizing him for so long?

What strikes me underneath and throughout the 3 passages is the theme of hunger, thirst, and freedom. These scriptures don't describe what the materialists and modern atheists depict as the god delusion and the opiate of the masses. It's not about faith that invites the poor and dispossessed to simly accept their fate. Rather it paints the picture of a God that nourishes us, seeking a relationship with us and for us to be in relationship with one another in new ways. The God made known in Jesus the Christ doesn't simply want us to be normal but to be whole, not simply to be healed but to be saved.

Makes me think of the prayer of thanksgiving spoken over the waters before baptism (from the Book of Common Worship)

Pour out your Spirit upon us
and upon this water,
that this font may be your womb of new birth.
May all who now pass through these waters
be delivered from death to life,
from bondage to freedom,
from sin to righteousness.
Bind them to the household of faith,
guard them from all evil.
Strenthen them to serve you with joy
until the day you make all things new.
To you be all praise, honor, and glory;
through Jesus Christ our Savior,
who, with you and the Holy Spirit,
lives and reigns forever.
Amen.