You Got Your Splankna All Over My Life!

Image courtesy of http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/

Texts: 1 Kings 17:8-24 and Luke 7:11-17

If you've ever seen the movie Groundhog Day you may know where this introduction is headed.  In hearing the texts from 1 Kings 17 and Luke 7 back-to-back, or very near to one another I sometimes wonder, haven’t I heard this story before?  Doesn’t this tale remind me of something I’ve heard elsewhere, or read in a different place or a different time?  Is hearing this story something we would call Déjà vu?  Is that "I Got You, Babe" playing in the background?

Luke certainly wants to take us back to the tale of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath as he tells us about the interaction between Jesus and the widow at Nain.  He wants us to remember the last time there was a powerful prophet who demonstrated the power of God in the midst of the people; but there are more contrasts between the two texts we heard today than there are comparisons.  

Jesus is coming into town with his disciples and a crowd of followers, hangers on, fan boys and fan girls.  They have just seen an amazing display of Jesus’ power as he healed the servant of a centurion with a word and are curious to see what he will do next.   As they enter the town of Nain, a funeral procession is moving through in the opposite direction.  A young man has died, and his mother, a widow, is left with nothing.

When we say that the widow is left with nothing, it is important to understand culturally that she has no husband, so she would have been married by her husband’s brother or another male relative.  If no other male relatives were available, the widow would be relegated to society’s margins and become vulnerable to alienation and exclusion from the community and simple daily provision of familial care.  She would be someone’s problem, but not ours; and if we happen to have some alms to give, we’ll toss some her way—because that’s what charity is, right: the crumbs from our table, the scraps of what we have after we’ve taken care of our own?  

Added to the issue of being a charity case, the death of an only son would leave a widow without an heir and therefore unable to retain whatever means remained for her.  Without an heir, all her personal property reverted to her husband’s family.

The widow has, quite literally, lost everything with her son’s death.  She has no husband, no son, no legal identity, nothing.  The crowd that surrounds her, and cries out in grief with her in this particular moment, will soon fade; they will go back to their families and she will be alone with no one to share her grief, no one to take care of her.

But, Luke says, “The Lord saw her.”  In her mourning, in her grief, in her pain, in her loneliness, the Lord saw her.  And he had compassion for her.

How many people saw the widow as the procession moved through Nain that day?  Probably a lot of people saw her that day, because you can’t miss a funeral procession as it moves through town with the mourners wailing at the top of their lungs, crying louder than the widow so that her grief would be hers alone.  Many people saw the widow of Nain that day, and knew what it meant for her to lose her only son, and they probably felt bad for her.  But feeling bad, having sympathy, is not the same thing as having compassion.

Compassion is sympathy that accompanies mercy.  Compassion is what moves us to act on behalf of those for whom we feel sympathy. The phrase "had compassion for" comes from the Greek word "Splankna" which I have spoken and talked about before; Splanka means basically his gut was so twisted by what he witnessed he couldn't not act.

This moment between Jesus and the widow leads me to ask a couple of questions.  First, do we believe this of our own mourning, grief, and pain? That the Lord sees us and has compassion for us?  And second, when we see the pain of others, how do we respond?  Are we like the crowd, who sees the pain of others and does the SMH thing but does nothing about it, or are we willing to be like Jesus who feels compassion and steps in to co-suffer with those who are hurting?  And more than co-suffer, but transform suffering to joy, to make hope where none can possibly be imagined.

Jesus says to her, “Do not weep.” Not in a belittling way, or with condescension, or to say that she has no reason to grieve at all, but in a way that says he is acting on her behalf.  Then he approaches the funeral bier, he touches the cart on which the body rests, and he speaks, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”

These words are not a prayer.  This moment is not a fervent argument like Elijah has with the Lord.  It is a command, and the voice of Jesus reaches from life into death, and with a word, “rise,” the young man sits up, and begins to speak, “and Jesus gave him to his mother.”

Dr. Bonnie Thurston, former New Testament professor of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, writes of this: “The widow of Nain is both an individual woman for whom Jesus had compassion and a silent representative of all who have been deprived of personal worth, all who have been defined in terms of social relationships (to men.)”  She then asks if restoring her son, while compassionate, keeps the widow in a place where she is defined by her son.  I can’t help but wonder if this action does not solidify her identity as one for whom God has seen and acted.

The widow is seen by Jesus.  She does not approach him.  She does not cry out to him for mercy as so many others have done.  She does not send others to ask for his intercession, she is seen by the Lord, and is the recipient of compassion.

And perhaps this is precisely where the rubber hits the road for us this week.  The people respond to Jesus’ action by glorifying God and saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably upon his people!”  Another translation says, “God has visited us…God has come near to us, to save and rescue us! This is the time we have been waiting for!” 

So what I would ask you to do is to quiet yourself for a moment, and think of the thing you most dread that may be coming this week, this month, this year…something you know about…or something that is unknown but which strikes fear into you…feel the sorrow, the frustration, the bitterness, the anger, the disappointment, the grief…and then watch Jesus join you in the middle of it.

Hear him say to you, “Do not weep; do not fear; put away your anger.”  And then see him speak life into that moment, feel him speak peace into that moment.  And know, trust, believe, that God has visited you.  God has come near, to save and rescue, and that this moment of Emmanuel, this moment of God with us, is the time we have been waiting for.

An Altared State of Living

Text this week--1 Kings 18:20-39

When I made the transition from the local church to military chaplaincy, one question was on the mind of a lot of people: “Do you play well with others?”  They weren’t asking about my social skills, but my ability to work in a setting that requires facilitating for the religious practices of other people; they wanted to know—they being my Religious Organization/Church and the Navy—whether I could function in a pluralistic setting.

So I became fairly adept at telling the story of my circle of friends back in the states.  It sounds like I’m setting up a joke as I tell it.  “A Christian Pastor, a belly dancer, an atheist, a Muslim, and a Wiccan walk into a coffee shop…they embrace one another, shake hands, share a meal, and—shockingly-nothing blows up.”  I love my friends. I can't wait to have coffee with them this summer.

So, then, as I met the text this week from 1 Kings, I found myself doing a lot of reflecting, a lot of prayer, a lot of searching.  What do we do with this kind of text in a world where religions are literally at war with one another?  What do we do with a text full of religious mockery when we live in a time of religious extremism?  How do we faithfully, and respectfully, treat it?

We start by remembering that this is not about Elijah versus the Prophets of Baal.  And as difficult as it may be to grasp, this text is not about religious war.  This text is about God’s calling his people back into faithful relationship.  Rarely are prophets sent to convert the nations (those stories do arise, perhaps the most memorable being Jonah and the people of Nineveh...but I sometimes wonder if that story is about the conversion of the people of that city or the conversion of the prophet...); more often than not, prophets are called to convert the people already identified as the people of God.  This text is one of those cases.

For three years there has been a drought.  For three years the crops have withered and died, and with the crops the trust of the people has also withered and died.  They have prayed and they have made offerings, and yet there is still no rain.  They have prayed and made their offerings but still the crops wither and die.

But there is the Canaanite god, who goes by the name of Baal.  This god is the god of agriculture, the giver of rain and the grower of crops.  So the people of God, set their chips somewhere on the line of red and black, hedging their bets between YHWH and Baal.

Isn’t that what we do when things get thin, though?  We may not relinquish our identity of faith, but we certainly try to juggle multiple identities in order to hedge our bets.

For example.  After the terror attacks on September 11th, I led a prayer vigil at my home church.  We opened the building for prayer and led a service of hymns, with scripture passages for mediation, and we prayed.  One of the texts for the evening service was from 1 Peter 3, “Don’t repay evil for evil or insult for insult.”  We also used Romans 12:20-21: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink. By doing this, you will pile burning coals of fire upon his head. Don’t be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good.”  After the service was over, a member of the church came up and said, “Those texts were just un-American. We can’t do that or we’ll become doormats for the world. As Americans we just can’t live that way.”

We just can’t live that way, so I’ll set my chips somewhere on the line between this and that.

So Elijah sees this hedging of bets, he feels the ache of God in his heart for a faithful people, and he takes on the prophets of Baal in dramatic display, much like Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop-Shopping outside of Target or Starbucks.  The showdown is full of flair and it must have been something to see, one of those places where we would like to be a fly on the wall or have a hidden camera recording the whole thing so we could put it on YouTube.

But before Elijah challenges the prophets: he challenges the people: “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”  What an amazing question.  How long will you let your indecisiveness ruin your lives?  We cannot sustain that kind of living.  We cannot be fully committed to two different belief systems; how does the saying go “jack of all trades, but master of none?” So whatever it is that we choose, we need to live it fully.

It is a reckoning back to Joshua exhorting the people of Israel: “choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

The choice is always there.  God will never force us to love him, because a coerced love is not real love.  But if you have vowed to love, then stick to it.

I have always counseled individuals and couples regarding vows.  I take vows very seriously, whether they are vows of marriage, ordination vows, or vows of church membership.  If you promised, in the presence of God, by the Spirit of God, to give yourself to something, then do it.  And do it fully.  No one is forcing you to take these vows--no one is saying you can’t wrestle with them.  I wrestle with my ordination vows on a frequent basis--my promises to be faithful to Christ and my promises to be faithful to the Church and my promises to be faithful to the Bishops and the Book of Discipline do not always intersect with ease.  But I have made those promises.  I have made my choice.

The same holds for the youth I have confirmed and the adults I have baptized.  No one forces you to participate in these rites.  These are not rites of passage but covenant relationships we enter into, hopefully with full knowledge of what they require of us. 

To self-identify as a child of God is a choice.  But it is a choice that brings responsibility with it.  (Anyone else hear a little echo of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben?)

The drama that unfolds between God of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, is not about warring religions; it is about calling the people of God back to a faithful relationship.  And while the Church could always stand to have a few more committed hearts, the world does not need any more extremists--of any religion.

In a three year drought, there is no logic to wasting water. 12 jugs of water in total are dumped on the altar as Elijah prepares for his prayer.  And while each of the 12 stones and each of the 12 jugs of water has a certain symbolism, I’m not concerned with that at this point in time.  If you dumped 12 large jugs of water--a scarce commodity in a time of drought--onto the wood for a bonfire, you don’t expect anything to catch.  You don’t foresee a spark, or a black smoldering mess of smoke, you don’t expect anything to happen.  AND you are looking at the prophet who has ordered this to happen like he is the biggest fool on the face of the earth; how and why waste all that water?  And yet, in the midst of foolishness, God still lights a fire for his children.  God lights a fire so that we might believe.  

In the least likely of places, in the least likely of circumstances, in a situation where you least expect to find a spark, God pours out the fires of heaven.

This gives me hope.  This gives me encouragement when so many people are talking about decline.  Where we least expect it, fires are being lit like the warning beacons of Gondor.  In small country churches, altars are catching on fire.  In small urban churches full of addicts and prostitutes, altars are catching on fire. In house churches around the world, full of people who have given up on the institution, but not on the Church, altars are catching on fire.  Where we least expect to see God at work--that’s where it’s happening. 

The drought did not end after Elijah’s high drama, not for a while at least. And, sadly, the people of God still have not stopped hedging our bets.  But the good news is that God is still God, and we always have altars that are looking for flames to be ignited from.

I will always remember what the president of my seminary said one day in Chapel.  Dr. Zeiders said the altar is the place where we are called to alter our lives.  The altar, whether set with candles, flowers and a Bible, or with the Holy Meal, is a place ripe for transformation, the place where, with the people of Israel, we can say, “The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.”  As it was true for Elijah and the people of Israel, may it be so for us today.

Amen.