I remember, a year or two
ago, acting out this story with our kids at Vacation Bible School. It’s a great story for children.
Elijah is the only prophet
left that worships the Lord. Yet there
are hundreds of prophets serving the false god Baal. The evil Jezebel, wife of the king, has been
persecuting all the prophets of the Lord, which is why the number of those
prophets is down to one. And that one –
Elijah – is afraid that soon, that number will be down to zero.
So he proposes a little
competition. It’s a last-ditch effort to
save himself, and prove that the God he serves is the one true God. The prophets of Baal will build an altar, and
Elijah will do the same. Then they will
pray to their own gods, and see which god will send down fire to light the
altar.
The prophets of Baal went
first. This part of the story gets
skipped over when it’s told to children, and in fact, the lectionary reading
skips over it as well, because the techniques these prophets use are a little
disturbing. It involves cutting
themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushes out of them. Worship of Baal also, at times, involved
bizarre sexual acts and rites and rituals.
Yet when all this was done,
there was no fire.
Then it was Elijah’s
turn. But first, Elijah had four large
jars of water dumped on his altar. Then
he had four more jars of water dumped on his altar. And then, for good measure, had he four more large jars of water dumped on his
altar.
And then Elijah prayed to
God, and the fire of the Lord fell upon the altar, consuming the offering, the
wood, the stones, the dust, and even licking up the water that had been poured
on it.
And then the lectionary ends
the reading, and we stop at this point
when we tell the story to the children, conveniently leaving out the little
postscript about Elijah gathering up and killing all the prophets of Baal.
So. With that little bit of “reader discretion,
it’s a good story for children, full of excitement, drama, suspense. But what’s in this story for adults?
In this story, Elijah says to
all the people, before the contest begins: “How long will you go limping with
two different opinions?” How long will
you sit on the fence? How long will you
waver back and forth?
It seems that the people had
been pulled in two directions. On the
one hand, they had the teachings of their faith, which had been handed down to
them through the generations.
On the other hand, they had
the culture that pulled them in a different direction, led by Ahab, king of
Israel. Ahab led the people in
worshiping idols and false gods, those represented by the prophets of Baal.
Is this a story that should
be applied to non-Christian religions, or at least non-Judeo-Christian
religions? Should we engage in contests
with Buddhists to prove whose religion is better? Should we perhaps put “God” to the test
against “Allah?”
I’m sure that there are some
who would interpret the story this way.
But with Bixby Knolls Christian Church’s historical involvement in the
interfaith movement and connection to the South Coast Interfaith Council, I
doubt you’d find many of them in this congregation.
And certainly, with my own
involvement in interfaith activities here in Long Beach, and my understanding
of how Jesus regarded people who worshipped God differently, I certainly would
not interpret this scripture that way.
After all, Jesus said people did not have to worship God the way God was
worshipped in Jerusalem, and Jesus praised the faith of many who were not a
part of the Jewish religion.
I think the proper way to
interpret this story for today is to start by asking what really are the false
gods of today? What is it that gets more
attention, more worship, and more devotion than God? What do we love more than God and neighbor?
Certainly, at the top of the
list would be wealth. We worship wealth.
We idolize the lifestyles of the rich and famous. We bow before a
growing economy. And in our personal lives, one of the strongest beliefs we
hold is: “more is better.”
The problem with this is
two-fold.
First, in fighting our way to
more wealth, we don’t hesitate to push others out of the way, push others down
to the bottom. This is a justice issue,
one that both prophets and Jesus spend a lot of time condemning. The current climate in our country is
especially skewed in favor of accumulating wealth, and as a result wealth is
being increasingly concentrated by the few at the top.
Second, in fighting our way
to more wealth, we work harder and harder.
We literally work ourselves to death.
I heard a news report last week that said about a quarter of all U.S.
workers take NO vacation time at all.
Many of them also work a lot more than five days or forty hours a
week.
No rest. Little time with family. A very low quality of life. And very little joy or happiness.
Is it really worth it?
The problem here is that we
have been conditioned to want more than we have. Our minds have been conditioned to never be
satisfied.
This year, advertisers will
spend over $500 per American, all in an effort to get Americans to spend more,
buy more. And most of those ads use the
strategy of convincing you that your life would be fuller, more meaningful, if
you buy what they are trying to sell you.
$500 per person.
Just in this room, that’s
about $30,000.
For just the people who live
in Long Beach, that’s about 250 million dollars.
And with this money, big
corporations have you convinced that you need to drink coke, that your year-old
smartphone is now obsolete, that your car that you’ve been driving for three
years needs to be replaced, and that your kitchen appliances are no longer up
to the task.
And if you don’t spend money
on these things, consumer confidence will go down and the economy will
collapse. So it’s your patriotic duty to
spend money on stuff. The economic system
depends on it.
Well, it sounds to me like we
need a new system.
The apostle Paul has a
solution to this. Writing to the
Philippians, Paul said “I know what it is like to have little, and I know what
it is like to have plenty. In any and
all circumstances, I have learned to be content.”
To me, in this day and age,
that seems like a lost art: being content.
It bothers me that, every
year in November, we have a day to celebrate being grateful, a day of giving
thanks; and then, before that day is even over, people are flocking to the
stores to buy, buy, buy. The message of
Thanksgiving has become: “We’re thankful
for what we have, but it’s never enough.”
I have already begun working
on a series of sermons for the summer, which I will start next week. The theme of these sermons will be the
parables of scripture.
Well, one thing I’ve learned
I can’t wait to share with you, because it fits in so well with our topic
today. It concerns the Parable of the
Talents.
In this parable, a master
gives each of his three slaves some money.
To one slave he gave five talents, to another he gave two talents, and
to the third he gave one talent.
A talent, just so you know,
is a huge sum of money. Today’s
equivalent would be about 2.5 million dollars, one million dollars, and half a
million dollars. In a story like this,
these are fantasy amounts.
Well, the first two slaves
who got the largest amounts of money, they invested their money and earned
interest for the master; but the third servant hid the money he received, and
returned it with no interest when his master returned.
The master praises the first
two, for investing their money and making it grow; but the third slave gets
tossed out into the street, much like Fantine in Les Miserables, and who knows
what horrible misfortune will await him.
I don’t know about you, but
usually, when I’ve heard this parable explained, I was told that the lesson
here is that we should be like the slaves who invested their talents. We should invest our talents, our gifts and
abilities, and watch them multiply.
I’ve since learned that that
is NOT how people in Jesus’s time would have understood this parable.
In his study on the parables,
John Dominic Crossan (who I’ll talk about more next week) realized that for
those who listened to Jesus’s parables, they wouldn’t have quite known what to
make of this story. First of all, they
would not have looked favorably on
the wealthy, land-owning master, because most of them were poor peasants. Some
people have interpreted the master as representing God, but that doesn’t seem
to be Jesus’s intention here. The master
is just a wealthy bourgeoisie elite slaveowner… someone who’s not exactly a
friend to the general population.
Second of all, Jesus’s
audience would have been familiar with some of the many scriptures that condemn
interest. Every time interest is
mentioned in the Old Testament, it is condemned. Charging and earning interest goes against
the Torah. It was a common practice of
the Roman Empire, but it was not an accepted part of the Jewish tradition.
So here is how people in
Jesus’s time would have heard this story.
The master – a man who is
described in the parable as unfair and greedy – rewards those who go against
Jewish teaching and earn interest. He
rewards those who do what their faith teaches them NOT to do. The one who, according to Jewish teaching,
does what is right by not seeking interest is the one who is thrown out into
the darkness.
Imagine the reaction the
people would have had to this story.
Some would certainly be offended by it.
Just what exactly is Jesus saying?
Well, maybe the point is to
simply contrast the way of Caesar, which accepts interest as an economic
practice, and the way of God, which does not; the teachings of their culture,
which rewards those who charge interest, and the teachings of their faith,
which does not.
I’m sure a lot of Jesus’
followers were on the fence when it came to issues like that. They were of two opinions, just like those
who heard Elijah. Follow the culture, or
follow the faith? It’s not always an
easy decision. Especially if, sometimes,
one is going to be punished, thrown out into the darkness, for practicing one’s
faith. Because we know that happens
sometimes. We’d like to think otherwise,
that we’re always rewarded for our faith.
But Jesus, certainly, knew
better than that.
I’m sure you can think of
many ways that the culture pulls you in one direction, and even rewards you for
going that way, while your faith pulls you in a different direction. That’s just the way it happens sometimes.
The question is: which way
will you choose?
It’s the same question Joshua
asked the people of Israel at Shechem:
Joshua said, “Revere the
Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that
your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord,
choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in
the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are
living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
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