Sunday, June 27, 2010

The God of Elijah

sermon by Torin Eikler
I Kings 17:1-23,19:1-19
Fourth in series: "God's People in the Hebrew Scriptures"

Though the prophet Elijah does not have a book of his own, he is unquestionably one of the most entertaining prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures that make up our Old Testament. His story is told in the books of the Kings that chronicle the time between the division of Israel into a northern and a southern kingdom in 922 BC … and 587 BC when the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem marked the end to the “golden age” of the chosen people. Elijah, himself, lived and right in the middle of that period and prophesied to three of the kings who turned the northern kingdom to the worship of the Canaanite god, Baal. In the course of the six chapters in which he appears, he experiences and accomplishes more than most of our other characters do in their whole lives.

He predicted a drought and its ending as well as the death of two kings. He carried out a duel in divine power with 500 priests of Baal and had all of them put to death upon his victory. And, he delivered general critiques on the apostasy of the nation.

As a result, he had to flee to the wilderness at least three times: once to the wilderness where he was fed by ravens and then guided to the door of a poor widow where he performs a resurrection; once to the desert where he was fed by the hands of angels before trekking forty days and nights to a cave on Mount Horeb where he encountered God in the “sound of fine silence;” and once to the hill country where he brought down fire to consume fifty hapless soldiers and their commander … twice before going to condemn king Ahaziah to death.

Finally, Elijah goes on a whirlwind tour of Israel with his successor, Elisha, and I mean that literally. The two of them were actually carted around the country by whirlwinds before landing on the banks of the Jordan. There he parted the waters with a touch of his cloak, and while the two men were walking along on the other side, a chariot of fire came and carried him into heaven.

Quite a busy guy! … But such was the life of only prophet of the true God to survive Jezebel’s rule as Queen.


Of all his adventures, the text that Jacob sang for us today is probably the one most often heard in sermons. It is the part of the story where Elijah runs to the desert to escape Queen Jezebel’s wrath after destroying her royal priests. There he laments the hardships of his life and pleads with God to let him die. In response, he is given Angel food … cakes of bread and jars of water to strengthen him for the journey to the mountain of the Lord. There he hides in a cave through a stone-splitting wind, a bone-rattling earthquake, and blood-boiling fire until the sound of fine silence coaxes him out to speak with the still, small voice of the Lord.


I imagine the whole experience was quite harrowing for the prophet. Such a hot, dry trek through the rough land of the wilderness that lasted as long as the flood could not have been easy. Throw in all the dangers of wild animals, the trauma of hunger, and the incredible sense of alone-ness, and I suspect Elijah was regretting his request for death or at least wishing that it would have been granted in a much easier fashion. And given his attitude – both at the beginning of the story and in the way he speaks to God on the mountain – one would expect a divine rebuke to come along at any moment. Instead, God accepts him as he is – anger, depression, passion, faith, and fear all rolled up together – and meets him there in his wilderness.

Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will opened to you,” and I know of many people who have experienced this to be true. In times of dire need or even in the midst of everyday life, they have asked for help from God and received exactly what they needed: angels appearing to help change a tire or the chance appearance of a stream of water in front of someone lost in the desert or a miraculous recovery from terminal disease. Elijah doesn’t even ask. He doesn’t knock. And he certainly doesn’t seek. If anything, he closes his eyes for fear that he might find. Yet he receives what he most needed: food to eat, angelic company to encourage him, and the promise of a partner to help him in his work.


In my own experience (and that of many others) thing don’t work quite that way. I’ll admit that I don’t often resort to asking God for help. I tend to trust to my own efforts or find my own way out a mess instead. Yet in the times when I have been at the end of my rope and turned to God, I have never heard the voice of an angel or felt the hand of God reach out to support or save me.

Despite what many people say, I don’t think that shows a lack of faith on my part. Nor does it imply that God is fickle or doesn’t really care most of the time. In fact, I think it’s exactly the opposite because the other side of my story is that each time I that I asked (and many, many times when I didn’t) I did receive. Friends have shown up to help me out of my depression. Travelers have stopped to offer me a ride and gone out of their way a half hour or more to get me home. Strangers opened their door to me in the middle of a "blizzardy" winter’s night while I waited for the wrecker to come and tow my car. And, in the midst of the most dangerous situations in my life, there has been a feeling of calm and peace that has settled over me, reminding me that God is with me always.

What does that mean? How do I … how do any of make sense of experiences like those? I don’t know. I don’t know if we can make “sense” out of them because in a very real way, God resists our attempts to limit the way we experience her presence. God came to Elijah in the parching hunger of drought, in the purging fire of righteousness, in the upending power of the whirlwind, and in calm sound of fine silence. God comes to me in a sense of quiet stillness. And God, I believe, comes to all of us in the hands and hearts of those around us.


There is a joke about a devout man who was caught in a flood. He climbed to the roof of his house to escape the rising water and began to pray to God to save him. The water continued to rise, and some short time later a neighbor came by in his fishing boat. He stopped and called to the man on the roof to come down so that he could ferry him to safety, but the man refused, saying, “The Lord will save me.”

Some hours later, the water had begun to pour through the windows on the second story, and the man once again prayed to God for salvation. Soon, a small ship found its way to the house, and the people on board tossed a rope onto the roof so that the man could climb on board. The man calmly got up and threw the rope back to them, saying, “My God will save me.”

When the water had reached halfway up the roof and was just ten feet below the man’s feet, he knelt on the peak with his head bowed low, beseeching God to rescue him from certain death until the sound of an approaching helicopter caught his attention. The rescue crew lowered a ladder to the roof and shouted for him to climb up, but the man waved them away, shouting that his faith would save him. Shaking their heads in disbelief, the crew relayed the message to the pilot, and they flew off in search of others in need of help.

Eventually, the water swept the man away to his doom, and he found himself standing before God with just one question burning in his mind. “Lord,” he said, “I prayed to you for help three times. Why didn’t do anything.”

God replied, “What do you mean. I sent you two boats and a helicopter.”

In my life, God has chosen to work through others rather than through miraculous manifestations of divine power. My guess is that has been true for most of you, too. It was also the experience of the early Anabaptists. As they sought relief from persecution and the threat of death, they found the homes of others – Anabaptist or not – open to them. There are stories of soldiers and community leaders who turned a blind eye to their presence or even gave them help when asked though doing so could mean death or imprisonment for them. These experiences, together with their understanding of Jesus’ teachings led them to value the practice of caring for one another as a central part of the discipleship of the faith community. They came to rely on each other and trust that they would receive the care of the God who was always with them even if it was through the hands of strangers.

Elijah experienced that reality too. When he first found himself in the wilderness fearing for his life, the ravens fed him, but he didn’t remain there. He was sent back to civilization when his stream dried up to seek the help of an unknown widow in the town of Zarephath. The widow and her son took him in. They fed him the last of their food only to find that her stock of flour and oil was continually replenished for three years until the drought ended. And in the end, Elijah cared for the widow in return, giving her back her son who would provide for her in the time to come.


What the story of Elijah’s life illustrates … what the early Anabaptists understood … and what we recognize in our own experience when we pay attention is that God is there for us. God surrounds and supports us wherever and whenever we find ourselves in need. It may not come in the way we expect it to or even in a way that we really want it to. It may come in the form of a minor or major miracle. More often it comes at the hand of a brother or sister or friend or stranger who reaches out to us with compassion and, by their actions, invites us to reach out to others in turn

I think that’s the way God works … by bringing people together to love and care for one another. I think God knows that that is the way to heal the brokenness within and between us … to bring reconciliation and renewal to all of humanity. I think that’s why God came to us as Jesus … to show us how powerful that kind of love can be and to invite us to follow his example … to become God’s people with hearts full of compassion and lives embodying loving care for all God’s children.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

On Love and Loyalty

sermon by Torin Eikler
Ruth 1-2:13
Third in series: "God's People in the Hebrew Scriptures"

Today we continue our series with the Book of Ruth which is strangely appropriate given the current controversy over immigration policy. Though we call the book Ruth, it is as much the story of her mother-in-law, Naomi, as it is hers, and it is full of irony that we miss if we don’t know Hebrew.

Naomi, whose name means sweet, sets out from Bethlehem, the “house of bread,” with her husband because there is a famine in the land. They immigrate to Moab for relief even though Moabites were universally held in contempt by Israelites. There they settle, and their two sons marry Moabite women who Naomi loves as daughters. Eventually, all three men die, leaving Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth widowed and destitute, and Naomi, no longer sweet but embittered, decides to return to her ancestral home because just as bread has finally returned to Bethlehem.

On a deeper level, this story is set in opposition to the book of Judges. As we have heard from the previous two stories in our series, the time of the judges was not Israel at its best. Though the era started out fairly well, the Israelites began to turn away from God, and by the end, as Carrie pointed out, “all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” They lived selfishly and ignored the needs of those around them rather than following the Law that had held them together as a people. Over time that lack of loyalty and kindness led to division and death.

In contrast, Ruth chooses the way of kindness and loyalty. She leaves behind her home, her family, and her country to follow Naomi. She leaves behind a certain amount of security and a future with some hope for a “normal” life. She sets out into an uncertain future in a country where she is sure to be despised for the sake of love, and her faithful love reaches beyond the obligations and requirements of duty to bring a scattered family together in the promise of new life.


Jesus told his disciples, once, that following him might well mean leaving behind mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and all the comfort and familiarity of home to make just such a trip into the unknown. Of all the instructions that he gave his followers, that has always seemed the most difficult to understand.

“Sell all you have and give it to the poor.” That’s a hard one, and I haven’t heard of anyone actually doing it – even the disciples. Still, it makes sense.

“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Even apart from certain interpretations of this as an act of resistance to the Roman Empire, I can get behind this one. I can even put it into practice from time to time.

But … “I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother …. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children for my name’s sake, … will inherit eternal life.” That’s one that gives me pause.


I remember when I was preparing for my baptism about a year after Carrie and I were married. That scripture came around in the lectionary cycle, and it hit me hard. I have no recollection at all of the rest of worship that day. I was stuck, wrestling with the thought that God might require me to leave my family behind. That’s not how I understood God, but it seemed to be a hard fact … right there … staring me in the face.

A few days later, I broached the topic with Carrie and shared my fears that my vows to God might, one day, have to take precedence over my vows to her. To her credit, she responded calmly and compassionately. We talked for awhile, and she reminded me that Jesus’ words were spoken to people who might have to leave their family if they chose to become disciples of Christ not to families who were already committed to that path. She also agreed with my belief that God would not choose to pull families apart … at least most of the time. So, I continued down the path to my dunking with only a manageable amount of anxiety.


Yet, what I shied away from as a possible duty of discipleship (well … ran away kicking and screaming might be a better description), Ruth embraced wholeheartedly. She left behind everything – even her gods – not because she had to, but because of her love. Having known Naomi for 10 years while she was true to her name – that is pleasant and sweet, she stays with her even when the turns of life have twisted her heart, turning her into Mara - bitter and resentful. Perhaps she was motivated by compassion. Perhaps it was something else. Whatever the reason, she models the steadfast love of God and becomes a stranger in a strange land.

Now, the Israelites were not known for treating Moabites - or any other foreigners – very well, especially during the time of the judges. And Naomi didn’t do very much to make the situation any better. She didn’t introduce her to the women of Bethlehem … didn’t explain the situation … didn’t even acknowledge her presence there beside her, turned in on herself as she was. But it seems that things weren’t too bad for Ruth.

She was confident enough in her safety to go out gleaning – to follow along behind the harvesters and pick up any little bits of barley that had fallen to the ground. Gleaning was a sacred right preserved in the Law of Moses as one of the few ways for widows and orphans to sustain themselves, but it was hot and tedious work without any protection from the sun or, apparently, the unwanted attention of the harvesters. So, it was particularly fortunately that Ruth found herself in fields that belonged to Naomi’s cousin, Boaz, who chooses to honor Ruth’s steadfastness with a blessing where others would have ignored and mistreated her as an unwanted immigrant.


When I was in sixteen or seventeen, a boy named Ricardo attended high school with us for a couple of years. He was Guatemalan by birth though he had spent much of his life living in the United States. His parents crossed the border in the 70s trying to escape the harsh realities of civil war. They hoped to find good work and make a better life for Ricardo and his brother and sister, and they were able to do pretty well for awhile.

That was before public sentiment began to turn so strongly against illegal immigrants in the 80s.

When that happened, the hostility of the people around them and increased pressure made life hard for Latino immigrants in the southwest. Ricardo’s family was one of those who responded by picking up and moving on … and on … and on … and eventually to rural Indiana where they lived in a house owned by our church.

I like to think that my circle of friends would have included Ricardo anyway, but the truth is we probably took him in simply because he was a part of the congregation. And I expect, though I don’t actually remember that our youth pastor made a request of us to welcome him. So, he became a part of my daily life, and getting to know him and the story of his life gave me a perspective on immigration that I wish more people would have.

In the June 15th issue of Christian Century, the editors quote Jeffrey Kaye in their discussion of the current immigration dispute. “Immigration is not a problem to be solved; it is a fact of life. For millennia, humans have been migrating in search of a better life.” In his work on the issue, Kaye often asks people, “If you had to support your family on $3 a day or less, but had the opportunity to cross a border illegally to raise your living standard, would you migrate?” The response, consistently, is “yes” … even from the most vocal anti-immigrant advocates.

People cross borders, legally and illegally, for all different reasons – some good and some bad. And while our faith doesn’t easily translate into public policy suggestions in this area, we do proclaim a Christ who welcomed strangers … who directed his followers to reach out in love to all they met … who went as far as to die in order to offer fuller, deeper life to all. Knowing that and knowing that many, many people get caught in crossfire of American immigration politics simple because their love for their family drove them to leave home and search for something better should at least lead us to listen and respond to the stories of the foreigners we find among us.

And lest we forget, we Anabaptists were strangers in our own lands once upon a time. Our ancestors answered a call to a different way of living, and they were forced to give up houses, family, and all they had known for the sake of their faith. They became immigrants, wandering from country to country and wondering where they would find welcome – or at least acceptance. Now we are all but natives of this country if not this land, and the question for us has become, “How will we treat others who leave behind home and family to come live among us?”


When the time came for Ricardo and his family to move on to Canada, the youth group had a little goodbye party for him. It was nothing big, and I don’t think it would have meant much to me since I wasn’t very close with him except for the fact that at one point Ricardo broke down into tears. “I just want to thank you for everything,” he said…. And, like Ruth, “I hope you will all remember me like I will remember you. You have been so kind to me…. I’ll never forget you.”


There is a lot about love in the scripture we heard today. From Naomi and her daughters we can learn how love binds us together and care for one another. From Ruth we can learn about the power of being steadfast and loyal in love even when it takes us out of our comfort zone. From Boaz, we can learn how we are to love the least of these who are our neighbors without regard for their origins. Each one reaches beyond duty for the sake of love, and that love brings a richness, a fullness to the lives of the others they touch.

Among Jesus’ last words to his disciples were, “by this [the world] will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another.”

It makes you think about how the world sees us….

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Deborah: Judge and Warrior, Sitter and Singer

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Judges 4:1-10
June 13, 2010 (3rd Sunday after Pentecost)
Second in Series: God's People in Hebrew Scriptures

“The book of Judges is one of the most exciting, colorful, and disturbing books of the Bible.” So says commentator Dennis Olson . “It combines stories of political intrigue and assassination, lies and deception, rape and murder, courage and fear, great faith and idolatry, power and greed, sex and suicide, love an death, military victories and civil war.” (New Interpreters Bible Commentary) At the beginning of the summer blockbuster season at the theaters, it almost feels like we should be serving up popcorn in the back of the church, as we brace ourselves for this Biblical Blockbuster.

But before the feature presentation, let me back up to the previews a bit. Remember last week when I gave an introduction to the lectionary—that sequence of scripture readings that guide weekly worship? If you remember, one reason I said I liked using the lectionary was that it tied the Christian community around the world by hearing the same scriptures on Sunday morning, no matter where we are. Well, there’s another reason I like using the lectionary that helps mediate myself a little bit. By giving me four options of scriptures to choose from, I’m encouraged to encounter texts that may be less familiar to me, scriptures I’d rather not deal with.

In short, it forces me to wrestle with a variety of scriptures that I might too easily dismiss simply because I don’t like the story. It’s too tempting to preach on the scriptures that I like and I think others will like and that make writing sermons a whole lot easier. Lots of lilies of the fields and blessed are the peacemakers would be coming from my lips.

Unlike last week’s story about Balaam and the talking donkey, today’s scripture actually is in the lectionary, but not on this specific day. And I’m sure if I came upon it, I would feel torn. It is about a woman in leadership, but our introduction to Deborah paves the way for a grisly description of war and murder. Hmm…I think I’ll skip over that. Too challenging. Not peaceful. Let’s see what else the lectionary suggests…

But here I am, our second Sunday in our series on Old Testament characters—and let me tell ya, there are a lot of characters in the Old Testament—and I’m presenting to you the story of Deborah. Deborah the judge. Deborah the prophetess. Deborah the woman whose name was familiar to me but whose influence on the Israelite people and Biblical literature I was largely unaware of. A fate, unfortunately, of many Biblical women: if they are lucky enough to be given a name in scripture, they are unlucky in that we don’t often remember who they were and what they did.

Now to call Deborah a judge is accurate, but perhaps a little misleading if we think about her in our contemporary understanding of a judge. We might be tempted to see her, sitting under her palm, dispensing justice like some ancient Israeli Judge Judy. She did settle disputes, but judges during this period in Israel’s history were the rulers, the warrior leaders who led Israel in fighting oppressive enemies.

Deborah is the only female judge we know about, but is the only judge to be called a prophet—a mouthpiece of God! The judges early on, including Deborah, were successful and faithful, but as we read further in the book of Judges, as we encounter more and more violence, the leaders became more unsuccessful and unfaithful. By the final chapters of Judges, Israel has fallen into anarchy and it says “all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” The makings of another blockbuster.

Our scripture starts with a bit of political background. The Canaanites had captured the Israelites and it says they “had oppressed the Israelites cruelly for twenty years.” And then we are introduced to Deborah, judge, prophetess, sitting under a palm, people bringing disputes to her. Wisdom being dispersed. Resolution being offered. Seeking calm and giving leadership in a time of war.

Scripture translates her name as Deborah, wife of Lappidoth, which is actually one of three possible translations from the original Hebrew. It could mean Deborah, wife of Lappidoth. It could mean Deborah, woman of the town Lappidoth, or it could mean, “woman of torches” or… “fiery woman” ! It sure seems as though given the situation surrounding the Israelites at the time, it would be less important whose wife she is, or where she is from, but the character of this judge—this fiery woman, this judge Deborah, this prophetess!

And here is the plot background of our summer blockbuster, (just imagine it being recited with a big booming, Hollywood voice): Fiery Deborah summons Barak to be her general, and tells him that God has commanded him to take ten thousand men to Mount Tabor to the battle against the Canaanites. Barak will only go if she will as well, and she agrees to go, but tells him that he will get no glory from the victory for the “Lord will deliver Sisera (the enemy leader) into the hand of a woman.”

And that woman is not Deborah, but another woman named Jael. Sisera comes to Jael’s tent because his people and her people have a peace agreement. She welcomes him in, makes him a bed, gives him warm milk, covers him up…takes a tent peg and a mallet and hammers it into his temple…

No you can see why I have a problem with this scripture, and generally the book of Judges because it is filled with violent images and actions, often done by people motivated by God’s voice. But I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I’m not going down that road. There is enough to wrestle with this text, and I’d rather do it as a conversation and beside, it feels like there is something else troubling here. A word we don’t like to use very much. Something we’d rather not hear, or give, sermons about: leadership.

Some of you would rather now go back to the tent peg through the temple scene, I imagine.

After Jael killed Sisera, and the Israelites are again freed from slavery, Deborah sings a song. It is a song recounting the entire oppression, the battle, the death of the enemy. She sings out of her memory, a story for her people. It is actually one of the oldest writings in the Bible, Deborah’s song. What, as people who pursue peace and question violence even in the Bible, what can we see as admirable, as worthy in this story. How can Deborah challenge us into faithful leadership? As 19th century women’s movement leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton asks in her commentary on Deborah, can we “slay the enemies” of our time, which to her were ignorance, superstition, and cruelty in order to restore peace?

Church of the Brethren and Mennonites are part of an Anabaptist theology which emphasizes the priesthood of all believers. We are all leaders, and not just in the church. Our lives blur the line of who we are called to be as Christians and who we are “out” in the world. Our call to lives of discipleship, as a priesthood, is also a call to be leaders where we are, with what we have, “out there” as much as “in here.”

It doesn’t matter if you have leadership positions or not. It matters that you bring to the world God’s light. To me, that’s discipleship, and that’s leadership. And I think that fiery Deborah can teach us a lot about that life. Now I know it is hard to think of ourselves as leaders. Those are often “other people” people “trained,” people who have that special something that makes them worth following, right?

I appreciate what pastor Talitha Arnold had to say on the matter. Here are her words: “As a seminarian, I was impressed by Deborah's many roles and responsibilities. She was a leader of men when women could only be wives, sisters and mothers. A judge, when a woman's testimony never counted as much as a man’s. On the front line, when a woman's place was in the home. I am still impressed by all that. But 20-plus years later, as a minister with a considerable number of roles myself, [or you could insert here…a teacher, a bus driver, a lawyer, a student] I'm equally impressed with the phrase: "She used to sit." I think it's the most radical thing she did, especially as a leader. We leaders organize, plan, execute, strategize. We lead. We don't sit.

“My mother used to sit. As a widowed parent to four children, a science teacher and a volunteer for church and 4-H, she had little time to sit. Yet every morning before we got up, she'd sit in her chair in the living room, a cup of coffee in one hand, the Bible in the other. If the afternoon permitted it, she did the same, although a cup of tea or a can of beer (if the day had been really long), and with the newspaper instead of the Bible. We kids knew the time was sacred and did not disturb her with "What's for dinner?"

“I think we knew that sitting made all the other activity possible. It didn't solve all our problems as a family, of which there were many, or guarantee order out of chaos. But sitting offered my mother a chance to catch her breath, to remember life was more than the task at hand, and to tap into some sense of peace in the midst of the maelstrom.

“I suspect that was true for Deborah as well. Leaders need wisdom and courage and can't find those qualities if they're always out front leading the charge. Sometimes they need just to sit.” (Christian Century, 2002)

And when Deborah stopped sitting, she started singing. That song of encouragement. That song of memory, of recalling who we are as a people and God’s presence among us through the opression and victory, joys and concerns, the times when we feel deeply blessed and deeply depressed. We sing by sharing the story with one another. We think of leaders like Barak (the general, not necessarily the president) and the bloody work, the adreniline pumping work, the glorified work.

But Deborah, fiery Deborah. She’s a leader for me. Maybe for you. Not because we are lazy, but because we know that it is a blessing to sit so we may love others. To sing our encouragement to others. Deborah doesn’t give us permission to breath a sigh of relief because all we have to do is sit there and do nothing. She says we sit so we listen for God so we can then sing the words of God to our people.

The late Catholic priest and theologian Henri Nouwen wrote about his move from the ivory towers of Harvard where he was a well established professor, to L’Arche, an intentional community of people with mental and physical disabilities. In his book In the Name of Jesus, he reflects on Christian leadership out of his life with those who are considered marginal in society’s eyes. He became convinced that Christian leaders, and that’s not just me, but that’s you, too, need to make a move from being moral judges, what is right and wrong, to becoming mystics.

Nouwen reflects that when we are securly rooted in relationship with God, the source of life, we will be leaders by remaining “flexible without being relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses without being manipulative.” (A mystical leadership yet a fiery leadership. A leadership rooted in sitting and singing, like Deborah.

Again, the glitch is that many of us don’t want the responsibility of title “leader.” Too much will be asked of us. We already did our time as leaders. It’s time for others to step up and do it. I’m not a leader, I’m a follower. For Anabaptists, we understand the call to discipleship and the call to leadership as one in the same. Through our baptism we have taken on the mantle of leader in our own special ways. By quietly sitting and listening for God’s word. For bravely leading the people into the struggles of church structure. For singing the song of encouragement. For being a warrior in prayer.

It is mystical work for a fiery people, we Pentecost people. “The central question is,” asks Nouwen, “Are the leaders of the future”—are we-- “truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God’s presence, to listen to God’s voice, to look at God’s beauty, to touch God’s incarnate Word, and to taste fully God’s infinite goodness?”

Claim it. Accept it. Deal with it. You are a leader because Christ’s light burns within you.
Sit with it. Sing it out. How will you let it shine?

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Balaam and the Donkey

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Numbers 22:1-35
June 6, 2010 (Second Sunday after Pentecost)
First Sunday in Series: "God's People in Hebrew Scripture"

I can remember vividly, one of the most freeing days I had in seminary. As any seminarian would tell you, at least, if they are not those arrogant, pompous, know-it-all kind of seminarians, one of the biggest fears many of us have is preaching…every week (or every other week)…in front of (gulp) people. The idea of it all seemed so overwhelming to me, the Bible so big and dense, the things to say on one hand being so mind-blowing, and on the other hand, so obscure that it was enough to make me want to hide in the bathroom before my first preaching class, feigning illness.

But before that unfortunate event ever occurred, (and honestly, I never hid in the bathroom), before any preaching or worship classes. I remember asking a fellow seminarian, who was also a pastor, “How do you know what scriptures to choose when preparing your sermons?” How many of you ever wondered that? How do they choose their scriptures? And like a breath of cool wind she spoke the beautiful words: “The Lectionary.”

“The what?” I asked. “The Lectionary” she repeated.

“What is the lectionary?” I shyly asked. Even though I was not one of those arrogant, pompous, know-it-all-seminarians, I did want look like I knew what she was talking about. But I asked anyway. What is the lectionary?

She proceeded to tell me that the lectionary is a list of scriptures, broken up into weekly readings for a cycle of 3 years. So for any given Sunday, I can go to my minister’s manual, find which year we are in (a cycle of year A, B, or C—we’re in year C by the way), and it will give me four options to choose from for the day I’m preaching: a Hebrew Scripture, a Psalm, a Gospel reading, and an Epistle (those are basically all the other books of the New Testament that aren’t Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). If you look at the back of your bulletin you will see “bible readings for today” and “for next Sunday.” Those are lectionary readings.

Torin and I, for the most part follow the lectionary to guide our worship planning. Historically, Brethren and Mennonites haven’t followed the lectionary. By following the lectionary, we know that what we hear in scripture here, in Morgantown, WV is likely also being heard in a small church in Brooklyn, NY or along the Eder River in Germany, or in the Sistene Chapel in the Vatican City, or in a gathering of Christians in Samoa. I like how taking readings from the lectionary can tie the breadth of the Christian family together in worship.

But there are definite draw backs. In case you haven’t noticed, the Bible is huge. There are so many things in it that could not possibly be explored in such a system of three years rotation. And like many things in church history, the choice of what got put in the lectionary, and what got left out of the lectionary, had a lot more political motivations than we would like.

But for we Anabaptists how have chosen this preaching path of the lectionary, we have to supplement much of the Sermon on the Mount that gets forgotten, and other scriptures that are vital to the living discipleship we believe we are called to.

Stories are neglected in the lectionary rotation, particularly stories about women. Strange stories are left out, beautiful yet perhaps too challenging of stories are left by the wayside. The lectionary leaves lots of gaps so we are encouraged to stray a little bit, and like wanderers in an unknown land, we pick up the unknown, turn it over in our hands, look at it from this way and that way, and present it, to the community of faith…in all it’s beauty and challenge, and gore and strangeness.

So…speaking of strangeness. This is not just a worship planning 101 an introduction to the lectionary. It’s kind of a lead up. Now that you know a little bit about what the lectionary is, are you not surprised that today’s scripture…about a talking donkey…is not included in the lectionary? And just image all those poor souls whose pastors only preached from the lectionary, who have never heard this story. Maybe you have never heard it. If not, I’m so glad Torin and I decided to do something different this summer!

It makes one stop and think, what we might miss if we aren’t open to hearing something out of the ordinary, in places that aren’t part of our ordered way of hearing the word of God…All those stories…go unheard.

And yes, this is a doozy of a story. We don’t hear many stories out of the book of Numbers either, so let me quickly catch you up. Moses and the following generation of Israelites have been wandering in the desert these many many year It’s been a pretty rough go, as you can imagine, but God has been faithful to God’s promise and has begun multiplying the Israelite people—this is really a wandering nation we’re talking about here. And they become so big that kingdoms nearby begin getting a bit nervous: after all, a large number of people, without a place to call home can seem pretty threatening. This could be a matter of severe national security.

Which is exactly how Balak, the king of Moab responds. He wasn’t just a bit nervous, he was “overcome with fear” as it says, he was in “great dread” it says--Balak was shaking in his sandals and he uses a colorful metaphor: “This horde will now lick up all that is around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field!” So King Balak calls his messengers to take a message to a man named Balaam who we gather was a diviner—someone who can predict the future. Balaam was from the land of Mesopotamia. Balak asks Balaam to curse these people, to do the king’s dirty work.

But Balaam, for all the bad things we are supposed to believe about diviners (divination was considered evil to the Israelites) this man pauses and says—I have to talk to YHWH about this. And that night YHWH says no don’t do it. But King Balak doesn’t take no for an answer and with even more desperation, returns his messengers—more messages, more distinguished messengers, no government lackies, these are heads of state here—and again implores Balaam to curse the Israelites.

And Balaam, this man, who never even heard of a people call the Israelites, uses the Hebrew’s special name for God YHWH—he says YHWH said no and not for mansions full of gold or silver will I curse them. God came to Balaam that night and said that he should go with these men, but do only what I tell you to do. So Balaam got up in the morning, saddled his donkey, and went with the officials of Moab.

Now. Here is where it gets strange. I know you haven’t forgotten about that talking donkey, that’s strange enough. But, also, I can’t understand why we just hear God giving Balaam permission to go, and in the next line it says God’s anger was kindled because he was going.” What? Can’t a guy catch a break? And here is where it all begins, what Thomas Dozeman calls “a burlesque, slapstick story about a clairvoyant animal who speaks a word of common sense to a seer.”

An angel stands in the donkey’s way and the donkey goes off the road. Balaam hits him and brings him back. Two more times the donkey tries to divert the path and Balaam hits him until the donkey lays down in front of this angel thatwe can only assume Balaam does not see, even though it is standing right in front of him.

And then… “the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and it said to Balaam”…and forgive me, but I can only image the voice of Eddie Murphy coming out of this donkey: “Hey! What did I do?” and without hesitation, without a look of horror or a double take, Balaam answers him. And a dialogue takes place, the donkey wins an argument, and Balaam’s eyes are opened to actually see what is in front of him, an angel. After criticizing Balaam for the abuse of the donkey, he repeats YHWH’s command, to go and speak only the words of YHWH, which we know would be words of blessings for the Israelites, and not curses.

It is widely understood that this section of the story, this talking donkey section, was another story, added in at another time which is why the entire story seems so disjointed, why YHWH says go in one breath and is angered in the next breath. This is a bit of folklore. But folklore doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from it. But, I’ll admit hearing God’s voice in folklore, or myth, may seem as strange to us as—hearing God’s voice coming from a donkey. or witnessing divine revelation from someone outside the fold, a Mesopotamian diviner rather than a Hebrew prophet.

But I think therein lies a message for us. We can tell each other “listen to God’s voice, or for God’s voice” seek it out! Open your ears, your eyes! Search for it! We make “listening” a sport that we are told to practice and practice so we can win the game. The end goal.

Yet theologian Renita Weems, reminds us that life isn’t full of donkeys telling us what to do all the time. She says ".we rarely recognize what we ought to recognize at the moment we ought to recognize it. It usually takes us hours, days, weeks, months, perhaps years for most of us to realize, that we were visited by an angel. We are usually too preoccupied with our own thoughts, own prejudices, own self interest to notice."

If you are anything like me you likely dance between the two Balaam’s in this story. Earnestly seeking God’s direction, God’s voice, going to God in the depths of the night asking what should I do and sometimes—oh, sometimes if we are lucky—God speaks to us in that clear voice that we know is of God.

And then, the next day, only one scripture verse of our lives later, we’re riding that path we think we’re supposed to be on and we can’t see the angel in front of us. We don’t understand that what is moving us off this path is actually saving us. Too preoccupied with our own thoughts, own prejudices, own self interest to notice.” What don’t we notice…what don’t we hear?

How do we negotiate with these two parts of ourselves? The ready and willing with the too-often preoccupied donkey abusers? I think we introduce the two in a practice of willingness. Of openness. Of receptivity. Being open to hear. Being willing to see. Be present and mindful enough that when the voice of God does come, we will hear it faintly but compellingly.

Somehow, I don’t think it is the active listening that allows us to hear God, the work of straining our ears or our eyes to catch any divine breath. It seems like when we actively search for God’s word we let our own thoughts, own prejudices, own self interests into the quest. The focus is on the end message, not the listening, not the gift that we can receive when we realize that what we are doing is not clamoring or searching, but listening.

If we become open, simply opening ourselves through prayer, silence, witnessing God’s work around us, maybe we don’t have to strain to hear as much. Perhaps we are preparing ourselves to receive. It makes one stop and think: what we might gain if we are open to hearing something out of the ordinary, in places that aren’t part of our ordered way of hearing the word of God…All those stories…available for us to hear.

In these moments of waiting worship, don’t strain to listen, yet don’t fly away on the thoughts of your own self interests. Prepare yourself. We have often heard the phrase, “Don’t just sit there, do something!” How about for just a moment we “Don’t just do something…sit there.” What happens when we prepare ourselves to hear? What stories might God share with us?