Proper 4/Pentecost 2/Ordinary Time 9
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII, Cycle C
Object:
Theme For The Day
True faith always finds itself in conflict with falsehood.
Old Testament Lesson
1 Kings 18:20-21 (22-29) 30-39
Elijah vs. The Priests Of Baal
This week begins a six-week series of first lessons from the First and Second Books of Kings. In this marvelously colorful story, Elijah demonstrates the traits of both a prophet and a showman, as he challenges the prophets of Baal to a public display of spiritual power. The lectionary editors suggest that verses 22-29 of this lengthy story may be omitted, although to do so means removing a good deal of the tale's drama. Elijah challenges the Baal-prophets to build a sacrificial pyre beside his own, and to call down fire from heaven to incinerate the sacrifice. He bitterly satirizes the limping, ineffectual efforts of his opponents: "Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened" (v. 27). After nearly a day of fervent cries and entreaties, the Baal-prophets are unsuccessful. When it's Elijah's turn, he rebuilds an ancient altar to the Lord that is in that place. To even the odds, he first douses his pyre with large amounts of water (here's where his talent as a showman comes in). Elijah offers a brief prayer, after which his pyre instantly goes up in flames. The people all bow down and acknowledge the Lord as the one true God. In a grisly final verse omitted from the lectionary, Elijah presides over the massacre of every one of the discredited Baal-prophets.
New Testament Lesson
Galatians 1:1-12
Paul vs. The False Teachers
This week begins a six-week series of Epistle Lessons from the Letter to the Galatians. In the opening of this letter, Paul establishes his apostolic credentials by declaring that he has been sent directly by Jesus Christ (vv. 1-2). Having established his identity, he then greets the people using the traditional apostolic formula, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (v. 3). Paul then gets right to the point: He has heard that the Galatians have been straying from the true path, following a gospel other than the one that has Jesus Christ at its center. This heretical gospel has been inculcated in them by certain false teachers (vv. 6-7). In no uncertain terms, Paul lays a curse on all those who teach such falsehoods (vv. 8-9). Paul is no people-pleaser, he declares. The only one he is seeking to please is God (v. 10). Once again, Paul reiterates that the gospel he proclaims comes from no human source, but directly from Jesus Christ (vv. 11-12). Perhaps there is a sermon in Paul's words about seeking to please God rather than humans (v. 10) -- for it is when we seek to please others and neglect God that we get into ethical trouble.
The Gospel
Luke 7:1-10
Jesus Heals A Centurion's Servant
After a long hiatus in the Gospel of John, we return this Sunday to weekly readings from Luke's Gospel. As Jesus is passing through Capernaum, a Roman centurion sends some Jewish elders to Jesus, to beg him to come and heal a "valued" slave of his, who is near death. Given the national and ethnic tensions prevalent in Palestine at that time, the setup to the story is by itself remarkable. What sort of man is this centurion -- a military commander in an occupying army -- to be able to convince the local religious leaders to take up his case? And what is the nature of his relationship with this slave, that he would put himself out in such an extraordinary way to seek his healing? Those questions are not fully answered by the text, but the elders do tell Jesus, "he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us" (v. 5). The centurion is evidently a "God-fearer," one of the Gentiles who is interested in Judaism but has not sought to be converted through circumcision. The centurion is also a man of extraordinary humility for a military officer, for as Jesus is approaching, he sends messengers saying he is not worthy to have Jesus come under his roof: "But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed" (v. 7). He is sure that Jesus, being a man who, like himself, also exercises authority, can simply issue an order that his servant be healed. "I tell you," Jesus says to the crowd, "not even in Israel have I found such faith" (v. 9). The servant is healed.
Preaching Possibilities
Ladies and gentlemen ... step right up and see the most amazing, the most stupendous, the most death-defying wonder-worker on the face of this earth. They call him ... "The Prophet." He is ... the Magnificent Elijah!
Yes, this very afternoon right here on Mount Carmel, the prophet is going to singlehandedly take on 450 prophets of Baal. He's going to call upon his God to send ... fire from heaven! Not only will Elijah rebuild the ancient altar; not only will he pile it high with dry wood; not only will he lay upon the altar the meat of a prize bull, but Elijah's going to drench the whole thing with hundreds of gallons of water ... not once, not twice, but three times! Only then will he call upon ... fire from heaven!
Such a feat of daring will not be seen again. Prime rocks are still available on which to sit. Step right this way!
Well, if they'd been charging admission there on Mount Carmel, that might have been how they'd have promoted it....
On the other hand, maybe not. But still, you have to admit there's something of the showman, the impresario, in the prophet Elijah. There he is, proposing to King Ahab a contest, a battle royale that will settle once and for all the question of whose God is strongest: Baal, the Canaanite storm god, or Yahweh, God of Israel.
The great escape artist Harry Houdini couldn't have staged it better. Old Houdini would never have stopped at merely opening a pair of handcuffs or picking the lock on a jail cell. That was amateur stuff. The Great Houdini would open the handcuffs while wearing a straitjacket, suspended upside-down inside a locked safe, submerged in six feet of water! It is with the same flair for the dramatic that Elijah proposes this "Battle of the Prophets," at such incredible odds for himself.
What's at stake, for Elijah and for the Baal-prophets?
Everything. King Ahab of Israel has married the Phoenician Princess Jezebel -- and, as sometimes happens in mixed marriages, Ahab has converted to his wife's religion. The Bible tells us "Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel who were before him." It was nothing less than religious civil war. The worshipers of the Lord versus the followers of Baal. And the Baal-prophets seemed to be winning.
That is, until Mount Carmel. All day long the 450 Baal-prophets dance around their altar, intone their chants, perform their distinctive limping dance. They even cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood flows: all to no avail. They cannot answer Elijah's challenge. They cannot call down fire from heaven.
It is mid-afternoon when Elijah takes center stage. He rebuilds the ancient altar to the Lord that had been pulled down. He stacks the wood high and slaughters the obligatory bull. But when the prophet digs a trench around the altar, and has the crowd drench the altar with water -- three times, until the trench is full -- no one can believe it!
It is only then that Elijah calls upon his God to send fire from heaven. Instantly, the altar explodes in a ball of flame, burning so hot that not only the meat and the wood, but the stones themselves -- even the dust -- are consumed. Not a drop of water remains in the trench. The people fall down and worship, saying, "The Lord indeed is God, the Lord indeed is God."
Some say it was lightning, but the author of Kings would probably not have been satisfied with such a natural explanation. He clearly wants us to see it as miracle: as a suspension of natural laws. The God of Israel is powerful; Baal is as nothing before him. That's the lesson of Mount Carmel.
So what do we make of this weird mountaintop experience? Does this ancient tale have anything to teach us, in these beginning years of the twenty-first century? It seems there is one thing in common between our place and time and Elijah's: spiritual warfare. A battle is being fought for the hearts and souls of the people of our land, and even of our community, just as a contest was being waged between Elijah and the Baal-prophets.
The difference, however, is that our battle, our spiritual contest, is very subtle. There are no Baal-prophets out roaming our streets, doing their little limping dance around a campfire. No, the opponents of Christian faith in this day and age are much wilier and much more dangerous. Two of these opponents deserve particular mention.
The first great opponent of Christianity in our day is called secularism. This one has really snuck up on us. In the name of fair play, and separation of church and state, secularism has been singlehandedly responsible for massively diminishing the profile of religion in American life.
Secularism -- the pursuit of no religion at all -- is rapidly becoming a competitor to Christianity. And on many fronts, it's winning. When school American-history textbooks are prevented from even mentioning why the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock, or where the Abolitionists got their fervor, or who those Quakers were who operated the Underground Railroad (other than some fat old man on an oatmeal canister), secularism is winning. When youth athletic teams routinely schedule games on Sunday morning, and no one in our towns bats an eyelash, secularism is winning.
This is not to speak in favor of the establishment of any one religion in these United States: the way mainline Protestantism used to be unofficially established. Yet we should argue against the establishment, in its place, of this strange anti-religion called secularism. We Americans have nearly forgotten how to honor matters of faith in our national discourse; if we don't figure out a way to do so soon again, the prophets of Baal may have won.
The second opponent to faith in this day and age is a loose confederation of psychics, armchair philosophers, and peddlers of crystals and potions, popularly known as the New Age movement.
We need to be very clear that not everything that travels under the banner "New Age" is wrong, or intrinsically un-Christian. There is much that is helpful, loving, and life-affirming in New Age philosophy -- and also much that is merely silly, like using crystals for healing and fortune-telling. Yet much of the goodness of the New Age movement is all but obscured by an unfortunate, eclectic tendency to dabble in other religions. Here are a few common "New Age" beliefs:
"We are all gods!" some New Agers say (well, so do the Mormons, but at least they have the decency to believe we don't become gods until after we die!). Remember what the serpent told Eve in the garden: "God doesn't want you to eat the fruit, because he knows if you eat it, you too will become a god!" This kind of thinking is merely the lie of the serpent revisited. Sin is always about trying to be God.
"All is one and all is God," say other New Agers. The ancient Greek philosophers had a name for that belief: pantheism. God is in everything, say the pantheists: in every tree and rock, in the ecosystem, in the stars in the heavens. All we need do to commune with the eternal, they say, is to immerse ourselves in nature, to find our true place in the cosmos. Of course, if God is in everything, then God is no place in particular -- and we have no one to call upon for salvation, when it becomes evident that not everything in the universe or in ourselves is good and pure and loving.
"Death is not real," say still other New Agers. They dabble in reincarnation and spiritualism; they speculate about past lives and the ever-rotating wheel of karma. "Sin is not real," they declare; "you can be your own savior." There's no room, in such a way of thinking, for death or sin -- or new life or salvation, either. Everything spiritual is do-it-yourself, pull yourself up to heaven -- or nirvana, as the case may be -- by your own bootstraps. People do not need a Savior, say the apostles of the New Age; they need enlightenment, heightened knowledge of their own potential. (Of course, the consequence of this is that Jesus died on the cross for absolutely nothing and that he was a pathetic bumbler who just didn't understand the cosmic mysteries.)
"The message about the cross," says the Apostle Paul, "is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18).
"How long will you go limping with two different opinions?" asks the prophet Elijah. "If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him."
Choose this day whom you will serve.
Prayer For The Day
Lord, we pray for the gift of discernment.
There are so many voices that cry out for our attention:
each one claiming to speak wisdom,
each one claiming to speak for you.
In an age of relativism,
may we never forget that
it is truth that you cherish;
and that truth is embodied for us
in Jesus Christ,
in whose name we pray. Amen.
To Illustrate
Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, a theologian and a preacher, think they know when secularism began to turn the tide against religion in our culture. Reflecting back on their own experience, with a touch of humor, they write:
"Although it may sound trivial, one of us is tempted to date the shift sometime on a Sunday evening in 1963. Then, in Greenville, South Carolina, in defiance of the state's time-honored blue laws, the Fox Theater opened on Sunday. Seven of us -- regular attenders of the Methodist Youth Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church -- made a pact to enter the front door of the church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the Fox.... On that night, Greenville, South Carolina -- the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world -- served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the church. There would be no more free passes for the church, no more free rides. The Fox Theater went head to head with the church over who would provide the world view for the young. That night in 1963, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish....
"We in no way mean to imply that, before 1963, things were better for believers. Our point is that, before the Fox Theater opened on Sunday, Christians could deceive themselves into thinking we were in charge, that we had made a difference, that we had created a Christian culture."
-- Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989)
***
In a speech to the Religious Communication Association, Quentin Schultze quoted Soren Kierkegaard, who once suggested that, "the majority of people are not so afraid of holding a wrong opinion, as they are of holding an opinion alone."
Schultze observes, "In other words, we human beings are social creatures who tend to go along with what other people believe rather than venture courageously in an unpopular direction. We are more fearful of being thought crazy than wrong, as long as we have the comfort of being mistaken with others. Ignorance loves company. We are creatures of fashionable, even if sometimes foolish, ideas."
-- The Journal of Communication and Religion, March 2005
***
A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.
-- Edgar J. Mohn
***
The gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question mark against all truths.
-- Karl Barth
***
There is some remarkable video footage from 1993, shot on top of Mount Galeras in Colombia. Galeras is an active volcano, and the video shows a scientist who specialized in the study of volcanoes standing by the crater, responding to the question, "When would Galeras erupt?" He responds, "It could be a year from now, it could be a month from now. Or it could be next week."
The tape then goes suddenly blank, because the volcano erupted right then, taking this supposed expert and the other fourteen people on top of the mountain that day by complete surprise.
The blast killed nine of them, include six volcanologists who were inside the crater taking measurements. In other words, most of people killed by the eruption of Galeras were the very specialists whose job it was to predict when the volcano would blow. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time because they made the wrong predictions.
As well as any story from our time, that incident on top of Galeras illustrates the shakiness of any endeavor that relies on prophecy as we often define it today. In our vocabulary, prophecy usually means the longer-range version of forecasting, and a good bit of the time, it is totally wrong....
The Galeras incident can help us understand what biblical prophecy is and what it isn't. We often picture prophets as people who told their audiences what would befall them in future. While that was true in a broad sense, it was seldom true in specifics and detail. In fact, most of the biblical prophets would probably be surprised to hear their work described as primarily predicting the future. If they were chiefly forecasters, we might be excused for thinking that the biblical prophets have nothing to do with us, for many of the things they referred to as future events are long in the past for us.
-- Adapted from Adam Goodheart, "Sifting Through the Ash," The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2001, W12
True faith always finds itself in conflict with falsehood.
Old Testament Lesson
1 Kings 18:20-21 (22-29) 30-39
Elijah vs. The Priests Of Baal
This week begins a six-week series of first lessons from the First and Second Books of Kings. In this marvelously colorful story, Elijah demonstrates the traits of both a prophet and a showman, as he challenges the prophets of Baal to a public display of spiritual power. The lectionary editors suggest that verses 22-29 of this lengthy story may be omitted, although to do so means removing a good deal of the tale's drama. Elijah challenges the Baal-prophets to build a sacrificial pyre beside his own, and to call down fire from heaven to incinerate the sacrifice. He bitterly satirizes the limping, ineffectual efforts of his opponents: "Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened" (v. 27). After nearly a day of fervent cries and entreaties, the Baal-prophets are unsuccessful. When it's Elijah's turn, he rebuilds an ancient altar to the Lord that is in that place. To even the odds, he first douses his pyre with large amounts of water (here's where his talent as a showman comes in). Elijah offers a brief prayer, after which his pyre instantly goes up in flames. The people all bow down and acknowledge the Lord as the one true God. In a grisly final verse omitted from the lectionary, Elijah presides over the massacre of every one of the discredited Baal-prophets.
New Testament Lesson
Galatians 1:1-12
Paul vs. The False Teachers
This week begins a six-week series of Epistle Lessons from the Letter to the Galatians. In the opening of this letter, Paul establishes his apostolic credentials by declaring that he has been sent directly by Jesus Christ (vv. 1-2). Having established his identity, he then greets the people using the traditional apostolic formula, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (v. 3). Paul then gets right to the point: He has heard that the Galatians have been straying from the true path, following a gospel other than the one that has Jesus Christ at its center. This heretical gospel has been inculcated in them by certain false teachers (vv. 6-7). In no uncertain terms, Paul lays a curse on all those who teach such falsehoods (vv. 8-9). Paul is no people-pleaser, he declares. The only one he is seeking to please is God (v. 10). Once again, Paul reiterates that the gospel he proclaims comes from no human source, but directly from Jesus Christ (vv. 11-12). Perhaps there is a sermon in Paul's words about seeking to please God rather than humans (v. 10) -- for it is when we seek to please others and neglect God that we get into ethical trouble.
The Gospel
Luke 7:1-10
Jesus Heals A Centurion's Servant
After a long hiatus in the Gospel of John, we return this Sunday to weekly readings from Luke's Gospel. As Jesus is passing through Capernaum, a Roman centurion sends some Jewish elders to Jesus, to beg him to come and heal a "valued" slave of his, who is near death. Given the national and ethnic tensions prevalent in Palestine at that time, the setup to the story is by itself remarkable. What sort of man is this centurion -- a military commander in an occupying army -- to be able to convince the local religious leaders to take up his case? And what is the nature of his relationship with this slave, that he would put himself out in such an extraordinary way to seek his healing? Those questions are not fully answered by the text, but the elders do tell Jesus, "he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us" (v. 5). The centurion is evidently a "God-fearer," one of the Gentiles who is interested in Judaism but has not sought to be converted through circumcision. The centurion is also a man of extraordinary humility for a military officer, for as Jesus is approaching, he sends messengers saying he is not worthy to have Jesus come under his roof: "But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed" (v. 7). He is sure that Jesus, being a man who, like himself, also exercises authority, can simply issue an order that his servant be healed. "I tell you," Jesus says to the crowd, "not even in Israel have I found such faith" (v. 9). The servant is healed.
Preaching Possibilities
Ladies and gentlemen ... step right up and see the most amazing, the most stupendous, the most death-defying wonder-worker on the face of this earth. They call him ... "The Prophet." He is ... the Magnificent Elijah!
Yes, this very afternoon right here on Mount Carmel, the prophet is going to singlehandedly take on 450 prophets of Baal. He's going to call upon his God to send ... fire from heaven! Not only will Elijah rebuild the ancient altar; not only will he pile it high with dry wood; not only will he lay upon the altar the meat of a prize bull, but Elijah's going to drench the whole thing with hundreds of gallons of water ... not once, not twice, but three times! Only then will he call upon ... fire from heaven!
Such a feat of daring will not be seen again. Prime rocks are still available on which to sit. Step right this way!
Well, if they'd been charging admission there on Mount Carmel, that might have been how they'd have promoted it....
On the other hand, maybe not. But still, you have to admit there's something of the showman, the impresario, in the prophet Elijah. There he is, proposing to King Ahab a contest, a battle royale that will settle once and for all the question of whose God is strongest: Baal, the Canaanite storm god, or Yahweh, God of Israel.
The great escape artist Harry Houdini couldn't have staged it better. Old Houdini would never have stopped at merely opening a pair of handcuffs or picking the lock on a jail cell. That was amateur stuff. The Great Houdini would open the handcuffs while wearing a straitjacket, suspended upside-down inside a locked safe, submerged in six feet of water! It is with the same flair for the dramatic that Elijah proposes this "Battle of the Prophets," at such incredible odds for himself.
What's at stake, for Elijah and for the Baal-prophets?
Everything. King Ahab of Israel has married the Phoenician Princess Jezebel -- and, as sometimes happens in mixed marriages, Ahab has converted to his wife's religion. The Bible tells us "Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel who were before him." It was nothing less than religious civil war. The worshipers of the Lord versus the followers of Baal. And the Baal-prophets seemed to be winning.
That is, until Mount Carmel. All day long the 450 Baal-prophets dance around their altar, intone their chants, perform their distinctive limping dance. They even cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood flows: all to no avail. They cannot answer Elijah's challenge. They cannot call down fire from heaven.
It is mid-afternoon when Elijah takes center stage. He rebuilds the ancient altar to the Lord that had been pulled down. He stacks the wood high and slaughters the obligatory bull. But when the prophet digs a trench around the altar, and has the crowd drench the altar with water -- three times, until the trench is full -- no one can believe it!
It is only then that Elijah calls upon his God to send fire from heaven. Instantly, the altar explodes in a ball of flame, burning so hot that not only the meat and the wood, but the stones themselves -- even the dust -- are consumed. Not a drop of water remains in the trench. The people fall down and worship, saying, "The Lord indeed is God, the Lord indeed is God."
Some say it was lightning, but the author of Kings would probably not have been satisfied with such a natural explanation. He clearly wants us to see it as miracle: as a suspension of natural laws. The God of Israel is powerful; Baal is as nothing before him. That's the lesson of Mount Carmel.
So what do we make of this weird mountaintop experience? Does this ancient tale have anything to teach us, in these beginning years of the twenty-first century? It seems there is one thing in common between our place and time and Elijah's: spiritual warfare. A battle is being fought for the hearts and souls of the people of our land, and even of our community, just as a contest was being waged between Elijah and the Baal-prophets.
The difference, however, is that our battle, our spiritual contest, is very subtle. There are no Baal-prophets out roaming our streets, doing their little limping dance around a campfire. No, the opponents of Christian faith in this day and age are much wilier and much more dangerous. Two of these opponents deserve particular mention.
The first great opponent of Christianity in our day is called secularism. This one has really snuck up on us. In the name of fair play, and separation of church and state, secularism has been singlehandedly responsible for massively diminishing the profile of religion in American life.
Secularism -- the pursuit of no religion at all -- is rapidly becoming a competitor to Christianity. And on many fronts, it's winning. When school American-history textbooks are prevented from even mentioning why the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock, or where the Abolitionists got their fervor, or who those Quakers were who operated the Underground Railroad (other than some fat old man on an oatmeal canister), secularism is winning. When youth athletic teams routinely schedule games on Sunday morning, and no one in our towns bats an eyelash, secularism is winning.
This is not to speak in favor of the establishment of any one religion in these United States: the way mainline Protestantism used to be unofficially established. Yet we should argue against the establishment, in its place, of this strange anti-religion called secularism. We Americans have nearly forgotten how to honor matters of faith in our national discourse; if we don't figure out a way to do so soon again, the prophets of Baal may have won.
The second opponent to faith in this day and age is a loose confederation of psychics, armchair philosophers, and peddlers of crystals and potions, popularly known as the New Age movement.
We need to be very clear that not everything that travels under the banner "New Age" is wrong, or intrinsically un-Christian. There is much that is helpful, loving, and life-affirming in New Age philosophy -- and also much that is merely silly, like using crystals for healing and fortune-telling. Yet much of the goodness of the New Age movement is all but obscured by an unfortunate, eclectic tendency to dabble in other religions. Here are a few common "New Age" beliefs:
"We are all gods!" some New Agers say (well, so do the Mormons, but at least they have the decency to believe we don't become gods until after we die!). Remember what the serpent told Eve in the garden: "God doesn't want you to eat the fruit, because he knows if you eat it, you too will become a god!" This kind of thinking is merely the lie of the serpent revisited. Sin is always about trying to be God.
"All is one and all is God," say other New Agers. The ancient Greek philosophers had a name for that belief: pantheism. God is in everything, say the pantheists: in every tree and rock, in the ecosystem, in the stars in the heavens. All we need do to commune with the eternal, they say, is to immerse ourselves in nature, to find our true place in the cosmos. Of course, if God is in everything, then God is no place in particular -- and we have no one to call upon for salvation, when it becomes evident that not everything in the universe or in ourselves is good and pure and loving.
"Death is not real," say still other New Agers. They dabble in reincarnation and spiritualism; they speculate about past lives and the ever-rotating wheel of karma. "Sin is not real," they declare; "you can be your own savior." There's no room, in such a way of thinking, for death or sin -- or new life or salvation, either. Everything spiritual is do-it-yourself, pull yourself up to heaven -- or nirvana, as the case may be -- by your own bootstraps. People do not need a Savior, say the apostles of the New Age; they need enlightenment, heightened knowledge of their own potential. (Of course, the consequence of this is that Jesus died on the cross for absolutely nothing and that he was a pathetic bumbler who just didn't understand the cosmic mysteries.)
"The message about the cross," says the Apostle Paul, "is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18).
"How long will you go limping with two different opinions?" asks the prophet Elijah. "If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him."
Choose this day whom you will serve.
Prayer For The Day
Lord, we pray for the gift of discernment.
There are so many voices that cry out for our attention:
each one claiming to speak wisdom,
each one claiming to speak for you.
In an age of relativism,
may we never forget that
it is truth that you cherish;
and that truth is embodied for us
in Jesus Christ,
in whose name we pray. Amen.
To Illustrate
Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, a theologian and a preacher, think they know when secularism began to turn the tide against religion in our culture. Reflecting back on their own experience, with a touch of humor, they write:
"Although it may sound trivial, one of us is tempted to date the shift sometime on a Sunday evening in 1963. Then, in Greenville, South Carolina, in defiance of the state's time-honored blue laws, the Fox Theater opened on Sunday. Seven of us -- regular attenders of the Methodist Youth Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church -- made a pact to enter the front door of the church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the Fox.... On that night, Greenville, South Carolina -- the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world -- served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the church. There would be no more free passes for the church, no more free rides. The Fox Theater went head to head with the church over who would provide the world view for the young. That night in 1963, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish....
"We in no way mean to imply that, before 1963, things were better for believers. Our point is that, before the Fox Theater opened on Sunday, Christians could deceive themselves into thinking we were in charge, that we had made a difference, that we had created a Christian culture."
-- Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989)
***
In a speech to the Religious Communication Association, Quentin Schultze quoted Soren Kierkegaard, who once suggested that, "the majority of people are not so afraid of holding a wrong opinion, as they are of holding an opinion alone."
Schultze observes, "In other words, we human beings are social creatures who tend to go along with what other people believe rather than venture courageously in an unpopular direction. We are more fearful of being thought crazy than wrong, as long as we have the comfort of being mistaken with others. Ignorance loves company. We are creatures of fashionable, even if sometimes foolish, ideas."
-- The Journal of Communication and Religion, March 2005
***
A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.
-- Edgar J. Mohn
***
The gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question mark against all truths.
-- Karl Barth
***
There is some remarkable video footage from 1993, shot on top of Mount Galeras in Colombia. Galeras is an active volcano, and the video shows a scientist who specialized in the study of volcanoes standing by the crater, responding to the question, "When would Galeras erupt?" He responds, "It could be a year from now, it could be a month from now. Or it could be next week."
The tape then goes suddenly blank, because the volcano erupted right then, taking this supposed expert and the other fourteen people on top of the mountain that day by complete surprise.
The blast killed nine of them, include six volcanologists who were inside the crater taking measurements. In other words, most of people killed by the eruption of Galeras were the very specialists whose job it was to predict when the volcano would blow. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time because they made the wrong predictions.
As well as any story from our time, that incident on top of Galeras illustrates the shakiness of any endeavor that relies on prophecy as we often define it today. In our vocabulary, prophecy usually means the longer-range version of forecasting, and a good bit of the time, it is totally wrong....
The Galeras incident can help us understand what biblical prophecy is and what it isn't. We often picture prophets as people who told their audiences what would befall them in future. While that was true in a broad sense, it was seldom true in specifics and detail. In fact, most of the biblical prophets would probably be surprised to hear their work described as primarily predicting the future. If they were chiefly forecasters, we might be excused for thinking that the biblical prophets have nothing to do with us, for many of the things they referred to as future events are long in the past for us.
-- Adapted from Adam Goodheart, "Sifting Through the Ash," The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2001, W12
