Elijah's Holy Barbecue and Having Faith When Jesus Is Not Physically Present

2 Pentecost Cycle C Proper 4 June 2, 2013
1 Kings 18:20-21, (22-29), 30-39 Psalm 96

Galatians 1:1-12  Luke 7:1-10

Lectionary Link

  Our lessons appointed for our reading today highlight the clash of people in their religious thinking and in their beliefs about God.

  In the reading from the Hebrew Scripture we read about the prophet Elijah issuing a challenge to all of the prophets of Baal.  He was pitting the God of Israel against the god Baal.  The challenged involved building altars upon Mount Carmel, placing the offerings upon the altars and then the challenge was to see if Baal or the God of Israel would respond by zapping the offerings upon the altars with fire from heaven.  Now in Texas we used to be awfully proud of our competition barbecue but never anything like this.  Yes, the winner often thought his barbecue was divine, but there has never been anything like this holy barbecue showdown on Mount Carmel.

  And Elijah was confident and maybe a little cocky don’t you think?  He insisted that water be poured upon his altar just to make it harder for the God of Israel to start a fire upon the altar.   And sure enough, the God of Elijah and the God of Israel came through and zapped that offering on the altar that had been soaked in water.  And the prophets of Baal could get no response from their god  who could not even flick his Bic.

  And the God of Israel won this Holy Barbecue and a message was sent to the rotten King of Israel, Ahab and his wife Jezebel who had gone after the god Baal.  Jezebel is perhaps one of the most infamous woman’s name in history.   She was the daughter of the king of Tyre who Ahab married for political reason but she also brought with her the worship of Baal.

  We have legendary super heroes today and many children use those heroes to inspire their imaginations of doing the impossible.  Elijah was one of those super heroes whose place in the writings for Israel was to accentuate the power of the Lord God of Israel and to warn them not to forsake the Lord God for other gods.  The Hebrews Scriptures are realistic in portraying that the God of Israel had competitors in the gods and goddesses of Canaan.  And sometimes the God of Israel was not their choice.  Much of the writing in the Hebrew Scriptures blames the bad luck of the people of Israel upon their infidelity to the God of Israel and their running after other gods.

  The legendary event of the holy barbecue with Yahweh sending fire from heaven was a super story with an obvious message about God’s greatness.

  St. Paul also makes reference to a religious clash within his communities.  He has some very strong words for some Gospel competitors.  Apparently some other prophets arrived in Galatia after Paul left and they preached the Gospel differently than Paul did; it was different enough for him to issue a curse upon those who preached a Gospel different from Paul.  This isn’t quite as impressive as the Holy barbecue showdown of Elijah and the prophets of Baal but it does reveal to us that there must have been quite a diversity of preachers of the Gospel within the early Christian communities.  And Paul disagreed with Peter and others about how the Gospel should be lived and preached.  We should not put the past on a pedestal of purity as if the people of the past were exempt from all sorts of religious disputes and disagreement which seem to be characteristic of our age.

   We probably too should remember that the Nicaea Council was the beginning of the effort to remove all religious disagreement and diversity from the church.  What the Emperor was for the Roman Empire the Pope and Patriarch were to become for a Holy Empire Church with a central authority removing all disagreement from the worldwide church.  Such has never worked and it still doesn’t.

  The Gospel lesson for today has a rather interesting religious judgment upon the faith of Israel.  A centurion was a Roman military commander for 800-1200 soldiers.  He was loyal to the Caesar and would be required to venerate the Caesar as a god.

  But someone a certain centurian loved and cared for was ill; he had heard about the wonder worker Jesus and so as a patron for a synagogue, he asked some Jews to arrange an audience with Jesus, and Jesus agreed.  But then the centurion thought, “If I issue a command, I don’t have to be present with all of my troops for it to be carried out, surely this Jesus can do the same.”  So this centurion, who had to be loyal to his Caesar god, paid homage to Jesus by saying, “I am not worthy to have you in my home; just say the word and my servant will be healed.”

  And this is what Jesus said about the faith of the centurion and about faith in Israel: “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

  Remember that this Gospel is being recounted within a Lucan Christ community, after followers of Jesus have been dismissed from the synagogue and had curses read against them in the prayers at the synagogues.  The followers of Jesus had increasingly become gentiles and Roman citizens and were people who did not have eyewitness contact with Jesus.  They were like us; “They and we have not been in the worthy situation of  having eyewitness encounters with Jesus.”  They had to believe and we must believe that the salvation power of Christ works apart from his physical presence.

  Like the centurion, we say, “We’ve not been worthy for the presence of the historical Jesus within our home, but just let the words of Jesus be said and his saving health can still be known to us.”  And our faith can be as real and as valid as the faith of the eyewitnesses in Israel in the time of Jesus.

  Elijah was involved in a religious dispute; so was St. Paul, and so was Jesus, but I prefer the judgment of Jesus.  Jesus affirms the faith that is great and possible even when we don't actually see him.  Jesus does not seem to be concerned about controlling a community, he seems to be concerned that we have faith and that we be affirmed in our faith when we believe in a saving health that comes without ever seeing him.

  We probably will never cease fighting in the church and out of the church about God, faith and religion.  It might be good for us to step back and realize that Jesus saluted the faith of one who was already committed to venerate the divinity of an Emperor.  It is a good witness for us not to rush into sectarian judgments based upon our own preference; rather, let us rejoice when we find faith in people to embrace the saving faith of Christ.  Let us remember the words of Christ before the Christian religion was even born;  “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”  Let us hold to Jesus who honors faith from all sorts of persons, and he honors our faith too.  Amen.