The Shepherd’s Voice

Readings for Sunday, June 6^th

1 Kings 17:17-24
Ps 30
Gal 1:11-24
Lk 7:11-17

Good morning Good Shepherd Lutheran Church! My sermon this morning is titled “Into Arabia.” As we read in verse 17 of Galatians 1, Arabia is the region Paul travels to after his conversion and apostolic call. As you might imagine with anything biblical, there is always more in the details than first meets the eye. In this case, Paul’s journey into Arabia turns out to be a symbolic and literal turning point in his life and ministry. By the end of my sermon I will be advocating that all of us imitate Paul and go “into Arabia.” Before we get started let us bow our heads in prayer, asking God to open our eyes and prepare us for our own journey:

Prayer

It can be a good thing to be a zealot.

Of course, nowadays we usually characterize unreasonable and close-minded fanatics as zealots. We call terrorists zealots. If we do not follow their religion, and follow it exactly as they see fit, they use violence to hurt and strike fear into those with whom they disagree. There are political zealots, such as the folks on talk radio or cable news who, no matter what the issue or facts, demonize their opponents. For them, disagreement is a moral failure, and dialogue, the give and take of rational conversation, is not an option. Then there are sports zealots. Clearly the continued existence of the Clippers would not be possible without a substantial contingent of irrational fans.

But in the 1st century there was a tradition of zealotry that reached back into the complex history of Israel to justify itself. It did so because it believed that only the occasional exercise of violence in the name of God could successfully avert the wrath of God from breaking out upon the people of God. This tradition is perhaps best exemplified in the Maccabee brothers, who led a guerrilla war against the Syrian army around 166 BC. At the time foreign rule had effectively banned sacrifices, feasts and sabbaths, outlawed possession of the Jewish Scriptures and circumcision, and setup an altar to Zeus in the temple upon which unclean animals were sacrificed. The Maccabees eventually overthrew their occupiers and cleansed the temple, an event still celebrated today at Hanukkah. If you’d like to learn more about this you might consider reading the First Book of Maccabees. As Lutherans we don’t consider this book Scripture (while the Catholics do), but it does contain very interesting historical information regarding the first century. What we might wonder is where the Maccabee brothers got the idea that armed resistance was a Godly and holy practice.

Well, one model the zealots often turned to was that of Elijah. God had raised up Elijah to confront the very wicked and idolatrous king Ahab. Ahab and his wife Jezebel had forsaken the God of Israel and were not only worshipping the Canaanite God Baal themselves, but were encouraging the nation to do so. And so Elijah challenges Ahab and the prophets of Baal to a “battle of the gods” of sorts. The setup was as follows: Israel was to gather at the base of Mount Caramel. Elijah proposed the following rules:

23 Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. And I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it.
24 And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the LORD, and the God who aanswers by fire, he is God.”
(1Ki 18:23-24 ESV)

So, as you may recall, they did this. Baal did not show up. God did show up, and absolutely consumed the sacrifice. The event ended as follows:

38 aThen the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.
39 And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, a”The LORD, he is God; the LORD, he is God.”
40 And Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape.” And they seized them. And Elijah brought them down to athe brook Kishon and bslaughtered them there.
(1Ki 18:38-40 ESV)

All 450 prophets of Baal were summarily executed.

Now that may have seemed like a stunning victory for Elijah, and it was, but as it turns out Jezebel, Ahab’s wife and a devout follower of Baal, was not too happy. In response to this mass slaughter she puts out a price on Elijah’s head. He then goes out into the wilderness to effectively resign his job as prophet for God. As the Scriptures testify:

he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” (1Ki 19:4 ESV)

Elijah’s great demonstration of zeal for the Lord is followed by intense, almost inexplicable despair. But as he’s despairing, God feeds him and tells him to go journey to Mount Horeb, which is another name for Mount Sinai where the Torah was given. This is a natural place for a despairing prophet to go. Mount Sinai is where everything started. It’s where God promised He would bring the Israelites into a land flowing with milk and honey, a veritable picture of paradise. Now the Israelites are there, but they are losing everything. Even though Ahab has relative peace with Israel’s neighbors, the compromise with foreign gods is eroding Israel’s identity. Israel was to be, in Deuteronomy’s words, a “holy nation, a royal priesthood.” They were to be the nation that renewed the world. Instead, they are barely retaining their identity as God’s people. So now Elijah comes to Sinai to see God, and God comes to Elijah. In contrast to the grand spectacle of the sacrifice, God does not come in a violent, cataclysmic event. He does not come in a great wind, or an earthquake, or in anything like the fire that consumed the sacrifice. Instead, God visits Elijah with a low whisper and asks, “What are you doing here Elijah?” Elijah responds:

“I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, bthrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”
15 And the LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus… 16 aAnd Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel.

The very king Elijah will anoint, the new king he is in service to, will bring an end to Ahab and Jezebel’s reign. In the midst of and through Elijah’s zeal God was actively restoring Israel to its mission.

So these are the models 1st century Jewish zealots took as their examples. And Paul, known as Saul prior to his conversion, would have been one of these zealots. As he writes in our epistle lesson for the day:

13 For you have heard of amy former life in Judaism, how bI persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.
14 And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely azealous was I for bthe traditions of my fathers.
15 But when he awho had set me apart bbefore I was born,1 and who ccalled me by his grace,
16 was pleased to reveal his Son to1 me, in order athat I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone;2
17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.
(Gal 1:13-17 ESV)

Saul saw the early church and grieved. At the time what we think of as the church would have appeared to have been a breakaway Jewish sect. This sect worshipped a blasphemous rabbi they thought to be the messiah. Worse still, this sect was teaching that obedience to the Torah was no longer necessary. Circumcision, ritual sacrifices and matters of cleanliness, honor to the temple – all of these matters were being violated. This sect was an affront to the Maccabean tradition that had worked so hard to retain Jewish identity less than two hundred years earlier. Like Elijah, Saul would have thought that the church endangered Israel’s mission to the world. The church required destruction. And so Saul persecuted the church.

Like Elijah, God had a surprise for Saul. God revealed Jesus to Saul. Saul’s response was to go into Arabia. Why Arabia? As Galatians 4:25 testifies, Mount Sinai was in Arabia. You can imagine what Paul was thinking: “All these years I have ardently, zealously followed after the tradition of Elijah and now I find out that I have gotten everything wrong. I will walk in Elijah’s shoes and go to Sinai to speak with God.”

Like Elijah we know that God did not greet Paul in might. Paul did not find God in a great wind, or an earthquake, or a mighty fire. God met Paul in the low whisper of the crucified Christ. It was there that Paul learned that violence was necessary to restore Israel to purity, but that it was not violence against the outsider or those who violated Torah. It was violence against God’s own Son. Because the wrath of God had been appeased through the crucified Christ, God could gather to Himself a “holy nation and royal priesthood” in the church. They were no longer holy because of what they did, but rather because of what God did for them. And the renewal of all creation through them could not fail because that renewal did not depend on their obedience to a covenant established between them and God, but instead depended solely on God’s grace towards them.

Like Elijah, Paul returns from Sinai to Damascus, where he is now the envoy of the new King. Just as Jehu put Ahab and Jezebel’s corruption to an end, so the risen Christ will bring the wickedness and corruption “of this present evil age” to a final end. But he will do so not through violence or zealotry, but through the humble, self-sacrificing and suffering love He demonstrates through Christ.

I began my sermon by disclosing ahead of time that I would be advocating for us all to go “into Arabia.” I’m going to end it with that proposal. To go “into Arabia” means for us to abandon our attempts to use violence, even subtle violence, to bring about God’s will. In Arabia we receive clarification that our King is none other than the crucified Christ. And He never uses coercion or violence.

Now there are very obvious example of violence at hand for us that we all would see as terribly anti-Christian. Murder, rape, robbery – all these are obvious. As I close I’ll share two examples of violence that I think exemplify how we might be on the watch for violence in our own lives. They are more subtle forms of violence that I am sure we are all guilty of.

When I was first married, my wife and I would attempt to cook together. This was a disaster – I was very controlling in the kitchen. If a recipe called for chopped onion, the onion had to be chopped “the right way.” Even supposing there was a “right way” to cut an onion, my insistence that she do everything in a certain manner subverted the very purpose of cooking together, which was to share and celebrate our time together. The meal was for us, to nourish us bodily, but to also nourish our souls. There was no need for me to enforce the “Torah of the kitchen” or let “zeal for Thy onion consume me.” It was only later that I realized I had to give up control and simply let the cooking take place. I had to respect her person and freedom. I don’t always do that even today! But when I do, then the meal becomes a time of community and love.

Another example of non-obvious violence pertains to parents and their children. The art of being a parent involves knowing how to both respect your child and act as their guardian until they are of age to act for themselves. But sometimes parents insult their children in order to control them. Suppose a child dropped a dish and the parent were to remark, “What’s wrong with you?” Remarks like these are meant to normalize behavior. The insult attempts to produce order at the expense of destroying the child’s sense of self. Instead of belittling the child to control him or her, the better path would be to acknowledge that dishes break as a matter of course, but souls ought not be broken.

With all this in mind, go out into the world and be Christians to one another, practicing love. Violence has been done away with once and for all on the cross. It is now time to love.

Amen.