Homily for Sunday, 13 August 2023– Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Psalm 85:9, 10, 11-12, 13-14; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

I must say I feel badly for Elijah and Peter! Elijah in the First Book of Kings and Peter in Matthew’s Gospel from which we hear today cannot seem to act in such a way that fully pleases other people or, more importantly, pleases God.

By the time Elijah finds himself in a cave on Mount Horeb in 1 Kings, we find ourselves, in a way, dropped into the middle of the story of the reading we have just heard. Before Elijah ends up in the cave on Horeb, he confronts the king of Israel, Ahab, and his wife Jezebel, over their worship of false gods. If there is a way to combine a comedy and tragedy into a single scene, the part of 1 Kings just before Elijah hides in the cave on Mount Horeb may be it! God has sent a drought over Israel to punish Jezebel’s and Ahab’s idol worship.

After three years of drought in Israel, God orders Elijah to speak with Ahab to end the drought. On top of worshipping foreign gods—for which we could excuse Jezebel somewhat, because she was not from Israel—Jezebel spent the years of drought slaughtering the prophets of the LORD, the God of Israel. So Elijah organizes a great contest on Mount Carmel between the prophets of Jezebel’s gods, the Ba’als and Asherah, and himself, representing the true God of Israel. The four hundred fifty prophets of the Ba’als (pagan gods of storms and rain) and the four hundred fifty prophets of Asherah (a fertility goddess) will call on their gods to send down fire to consume a bull presented as a sacrifice. Elijah will do the same. Whichever side’s gods send down fire will decide which god(s) the people of Israel will worship.

This sounds like a great idea: Elijah, the prophet of the LORD, true God of Israel, allows himself to be outnumbered nine-hundred-to-one by the prophets of the Ba’als and Asherah! Thankfully, God accepts Elijah’s sacrifice and sends fire over the altar Elijah builds to God, consuming the bull. The gods of the nine hundred prophets are shown not to exist, because they do not send fire on request to consume the bull sacrifice. Israel’s people (except for Jezebel and Ahab) are moved to worship the one true God of Israel, not the Ba’als or Asherah. For good measure, Elijah—spectacularly because, remember, he is outnumbered nine-hundred-to-one—has all the prophets of the Ba’als and Asherah killed.

All this makes Jezebel and Ahab very angry at Elijah. Jezebel wants Elijah dead. At least, besides reporting Elijah to his wife Jezebel for so-called “murder” of her false prophets, Ahab only calls Elijah “disturber of Israel” for bringing Israel back to the worship of the one true God. But now Elijah sinks into despair. Jezebel’s army is after him, so he hides in a cave on Mount Horeb. Elijah (and who could fault him?) wants nothing of God’s fire that consumes bull sacrifices. He wants nothing of the sword with which he has slain nine hundred false prophets. Elijah just wants to die. This “disturber of Israel” is done disturbing the peace. But God is not done with Elijah yet.

Today’s reading from 1 Kings begins at this point. The LORD disturbs the peace, and the sleep, of the once-“disturber of Israel,” Elijah. God calls Elijah to “stand on the mountain” outside the cave, “for the LORD is about to pass by.”

Just then, “a great wind” begins, “so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks before the LORD.” We have had some pretty good storms this summer, but none quite that strong. Elijah seems to know right away that the LORD “is not in the wind,” that the wind and storms were said to be signs of the Ba’als, the false gods worshipped by Jezebel and Ahab. I imagine Elijah saying into the wind, “You do not scare me. Try again.” And so there is an earthquake, “but the LORD [is] not in the earthquake,” either. Elijah is too good at discerning when God is truly present, so the earthquake does not faze him. Neither does the fire. It is a little more surprising that Elijah is not duped into believing that God is present in the fire, since this is how God was present to him in consuming the bull sacrifice. But, no, “the LORD [is] not in the fire.”

“After the fire,” Elijah (rightly) discerns the presence of God in the “sound of sheer silence.” Elijah is, we have to admit, really good at knowing when God is present and responding to God’s presence. But the reading we hear from 1 Kings today leaves out two short lines (or the same line, twice) from this story in the Bible. In 1 Kings, before and after the sequence of the wind, earthquake, fire, and silence, God asks Elijah, “Why are you here”? Both times, Elijah answers God, in short: “I give up. The people of Israel are unconvinced by the spectacular pyrotechnics on Mount Carmel, the bull sacrifice now a heap of ash. They are still worshipping false gods. Jezebel and Ahab want to kill me for killing nine hundred of their false prophets. I will admit that was pretty spectacular, too, a bit gruesome, but… just… You know what, God? Just leave me alone and let me die.”

But neither time does God take Elijah’s “no” for an answer. The first time God asks Elijah why he is hiding on Mount Horeb, God tells Elijah to wait outside the cave for God “to pass by.” And, the second time, God tells Elijah to go toward Damascus and anoint Hazael as the king of that region (Aram). God tells Elijah to anoint Jehu as king of Israel, which means Ahab’s time as king is almost up; Jehu will be the one to order Jezebel’s servants to kill her. And God tells Elijah to anoint Elisha as his own successor as prophet of Israel.

It is as if God repeats to Elijah, “I will not let you give up! You are too good a prophet to end like this”! Elijah will become even greater than a prophet: A kingmaker and a prophet-maker. God takes who Elijah is and calls him to be something, somebody even greater.

Can we think of a time in our own lives when somebody has challenged us at the right time to be even better than we are, even better at something we are already good at? I can think of many instances in which this has happened to me. I think of my colleagues at St. Joseph’s College when they say, “You will be very good at teaching that course, at researching in that area of theology. Here is a challenge that will push you just beyond the limits you sometimes impose on yourself.” I think of my students, when they say, “We really enjoyed this activity, this assignment in class. But we only got to do it once or twice. We should do more of this, or you should do more of that the next time you teach this course.” Outside myself, I think of great minds, great athletes, great anything, who are great in part because a coach, an advisor, a friend, a student, God pushed them to be greater than they thought they could be in a critical moment.

This is true of Elijah, when God appears twice to him in the silence, the “still small voice” on Horeb and asks, “Why are you here, Elijah”? And it is true of Peter in his relationship with Jesus in our Gospel today.

Please allow me to say that I feel a lot of empathy toward Peter when I hear today’s Gospel reading. My retreat before professing final vows as a Basilian and being ordained a deacon ten years ago was in the Holy Land. I will always remember standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, feeling a slight increase in the wind, and seeing the surface of the water go from completely still to white-capped waves in minutes. So I can appreciate how this (so I understand) frequent weather phenomenon could have frightened Peter and Jesus’ other disciples that day. And then to have Jesus walk toward them on the stormy sea: I am not surprised at all that Peter and Jesus’ other disciples responded with the terror they did!

Still, as Peter does so often, he (almost) gets it right; he recognizes (as well as Elijah recognized God in the silence on Horeb) that it is Jesus walking toward him on the sea. And Peter asks Jesus to command him to walk toward him “on the water.” That is, may I say, very bold of Peter. It is a display of faith from Peter maybe second only to when he identifies Jesus as “the Christ, Son of the living God.”

So why, at this moment, does Jesus call Peter, “You of little faith”? Is this not unfair of Jesus not to recognize the (in fact) great faith with which Peter asks Jesus to command him to walk toward him on a stormy sea? Sure, Peter becomes scared right away after that and starts to sink. But maybe he was not a great swimmer. Surely there are worse things than not being able to swim well, right?

I think here, though, Jesus is doing with Peter something very similar to what God does with Elijah in 1 Kings. Jesus sees the great faith of which Peter is capable in word and action, in this and many other instances in our Gospels. But in any moment, Peter’s faith will always be littler than what it can be with some coaching. It is as if Jesus says to Peter (and, through Peter, to us), “It is not me, but you, who does not see in this ‘stormy’ moment how bold your faith actually is. Come to me on the water, so you see how great your faith can be. You, like the great prophet Elijah, have an uncanny ability to discern and reach out to God in the most challenging circumstances. Like Elijah, with my help and grace, you will become even better at reaching out to me, praying, walking on water, discerning my presence in the storms of life as in the sacred moments of ‘sheer silence.’”

Homily for Sunday, 12 August 2018

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada. 

How often are we asked to do or not to do something? Children and teenagers, maybe you have been asked occasionally to do or not to do something at home: Clean your room, make your bed, set the table, do the dishes, take out the garbage, do not argue with your brother, sister, or parents, and so on. Maybe you have been asked to go to bed, or to get out of bed on time. Anybody here who works: Maybe your supervisor or employer has asked tasks of you. If you are an employer, a supervisor, a parent, or anybody in a position of authority or responsibility for another, maybe you have asked others to do something, or not to do something, more or less frequently.

In our readings today, we hear several instances of people asking and being asked to do or not to do something. We hear of Elijah who, in 1 Kings, has fled “into the wilderness” to escape the murderous rage of Queen Jezebel of Israel. Elijah had just killed all the false prophets of the Baals, the false gods Jezebel was worshipping and encouraging the people of Israel of the time to worship. Elijah flees for his life, but soon begins to despair of his own life: “It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” (In no way do I wish to trivialize despair, or even what we might recognize nowadays as depression, or thoughts of or attempts at suicide. If anybody we know ever experiences despair or depression, or thinks or speaks about taking her or his own life, please reach out to this person. If anybody here has experienced or is living through depression or outright despair, please know the dignity of your life, and that I; our faith community; our Church is here to support you; to reach out to you.)

Amidst Elijah’s despair is when an “angel of the LORD” wakes him and asks him to do something, twice: “Get up and eat.” Might we empathize with Elijah: The last thing he probably wants to do is “get up and eat.” In fact, he wants to die. To his credit, though, Elijah does as the angel asks, gets up, and eats some cake and drinks some water. As one of my brother Basilians says whenever another of our priests eats cake or other sweets for breakfast, “Ah! The breakfast of champions”! And so, if I were to ask us to do anything (especially parents whose children might think tomorrow morning, “Father said at Mass last night that it was okay to eat cake for breakfast”!), it would be not to be upset with me. I did not give your children permission to eat cake for breakfast; the angel of the LORD in the Bible did, and only to Elijah because he was despairing for his life. I am sorry to anybody who is disappointed!

The letter to the Ephesians, as in the story of Elijah in 1 Kings, gives us instructions about what and what not to do as people of God: “Brothers and sisters, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God… Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice.” Our Psalm asks of us, “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” And today in John’s Gospel Jesus asks the people not to “complain amongst” themselves.

Our Scriptures include many instances of people asking others and being asked to do something: Get up. Eat cake for breakfast. Avoid “bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander… [and] malice.” “Do not complain among yourselves.” “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” But how often do we ask somebody or are we asked not to do something but to be or to behave in a particular way?

To ask or to be asked to be some way may be less common than ask or be asked to do something. Yet have we not still asked or been asked not to do something but to be or behave in a particular way: Be kind. Be careful. Be happy with what you have. Be humble. Be prayerful. Be on time. Be brave. Be hard-working…?

Nowhere in our reading today from 1 Kings does anybody ask anybody else to be some way. But we hear this kind of command today in the letter to the Ephesians: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

This kind of calling to be or to behave in a particular way is not present in our Gospel reading, either, at least not word-for-word. Jesus is more content to describe to the people who he is, not so much who the people are or should be. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Of course, Jesus’ use of emphatic “I am” statements, twenty-four times in John’s Gospel, as many times as in the rest of the New Testament combined, is a characteristic of John. It is John’s particular way of identifying Jesus as the same God who has been present in history all the way back to the first moments of creation; the same God who once identified himself to Moses as “I am who I am.”

But Jesus rarely calls us to be or behave in a particular way in John’s Gospel, at least at first hearing. Today we hear Jesus identify both himself as “the living bread that comes down from heaven” and the bread as something (or somebody, himself; his flesh?) he “will give for the life of the world.”

Here, I ask us to go back to the beginning of our Gospel reading today, and to connect the beginning of our reading from John to the end of what we hear today. Our Gospel reading today begins with the people grumbling because Jesus had said he was “the bread that came down from heaven.” It ends with Jesus saying that this bread, in fact his own flesh, is “the bread [he] will give for the life of the world.”

What if I were to suggest that the people were not complaining about Jesus’ identification of himself as God, or because they were put off by Jesus’ suggestion that they would eat his flesh? At least this is not yet what they were complaining about. This would become the heart of the people’s complaint only later, when Jesus would link the people’s salvation with eating his flesh and drinking his blood. This is a good time for a spoiler alert on next Sunday’s Gospel reading, but today the people’s complaint is for a much simpler reason.

Let me suggest that, today, the heart of the people’s complaint is not Jesus’ identification of himself as God or because he commands the people to eat his flesh, or because Jesus asks the people hearing him to do anything else.

This bread that Jesus offers, his own self whom we receive sacramentally in our Eucharist, is beyond anything “the manna in the wilderness” could ever have been. Jesus’ gift of himself is greater than any other earthly food, because it alone changes who we are. It alone promises us eternal life. When Jesus says to us today, “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh,” behind these words Jesus is asking us to change. My sisters and brothers, Jesus is asking us, with the help and grace Jesus offers us in this celebration, to be more and more like him; more and more like God. Jesus is asking us to be, as he is— “I am” — “bread for the life of the world.” This is extraordinary!

And so we, like the people following Jesus in John’s Gospel, could easily complain among ourselves, because changing who we are is difficult. But, as St. Augustine says, when we receive the Eucharist, “we are what we receive.” And so how do we become more like Jesus; like God in our world? Our Eucharist compels us to go out and give “life [to] the world” by our works of justice, of mercy, and of kindness. Our Eucharist compels us to repent from our failures and sins. Our Eucharist compels us to defend all life and creation and its God-given dignity. Our Eucharist compels us to do all these things, but in so doing it compels us to change: To be, at our very heart, different than we have ever been; to be more like God, like Jesus; to be “what we receive”; to be, ever more, “bread… for the life of the world.”

Homily for Sunday, 13 August 2017

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Psalm 85:9, 10, 11-12, 13-14; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

How deeply do our own experiences; our society and culture; our families, friends, and acquaintances; people we regard as leaders, in society and in our Church, influence our basic image of who God is? Of how many different images of God; popular understandings of God are we able to think?

Maybe thanks to the influence of Pope Francis, although God has been understood in these terms long before him, we may be developing an increasing awareness in our Church and broader world of God as merciful; a God who calls us to be merciful and kind to one another. My observation, though, is that this increased emphasis on a merciful God calling for a more merciful Church and world has not pleased everybody. How do we balance mercy with moral accountability? How do we respond to people who persist stubbornly in defiance of moral norms of Church or of societies; who persist in sin? Might an authoritarian God resonate better with some who are worried about too permissive an image of God, so that moral decay and, eventually, the whittling away of any sense of right and wrong, continue unchecked?

What other images of God, besides the merciful God, the permissive God, and the authoritarian God, vie for space in our minds and in our experience? Much like the authoritarian God is the angry, punishing God. There is the God of military might, or the God who blesses wealth (for some, this God of the so-called “prosperity Gospel” also curses people who are poor, sick, with disabilities, or otherwise disadvantaged). The God who sets the universe in motion and then leaves it, and us, to our own devices, is also alive and well in our world: The impersonal, distant, “blind watchmaker” God or, as I have heard this god called among my brother Basilians, “Yoyo” God, as in “You’re on your own”!

These are only a few predominant images of God, of the top of my head, that we might experience. None of these images of God are perfect, although some are better than others. Some have more of a basis in Scripture than others. Today we hear about the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings. Elijah hides in a cave on Mount Horeb. Why would Elijah want to hide himself in a cave on Mount Horeb? The reading we hear today from 1 Kings is right after Elijah has killed all the prophets of Ba’al, a false god in Israel worshipped by the queen, Jezebel. In a rage, Jezebel calls for Elijah to be killed and so, fearing for his life, Elijah flees to the cave on Horeb.

Who could fault Elijah, his life in danger for obeying God against the prophets of Ba’al, for believing himself to be a failure, “no better than [his] ancestors” in eliminating from Israel any worship of foreign gods? More importantly, who could fault Elijah for understanding God first and foremost as a God of might; an angry and violent God? After all, this kind of God had been Elijah’s experience: The God who, through Elijah, had responded to the idolatry of Jezebel and the people of Israel, and Jezebel’s murder of the prophets of the LORD, by having the prophets of Ba’al slain by the sword? This same God now seemed content to leave Elijah on his own on Horeb to die.

At this point, though, when Elijah is most stuck on his images of God as mighty and perhaps angry and violent, and then as distant and allowing Elijah to sink into despair, God calls Elijah out of the cave. The LORD says to Elijah that he “is about to pass by.” Will Elijah recognize the presence of the LORD when he passes by Mount Horeb? The first vision Elijah experiences that might be God is of a strong wind, “splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces.” And, we hear, “after the wind” is “an earthquake” and then “a fire.” Do any of us wonder what Elijah may have been thinking as he was witnessing these visions? Might he have been thinking how closely the wind, the earthquake, and the fire resonated with his prior experience of God: Mighty, angry, violent, and even destructive; a God to be feared more than loved?

To Elijah’s credit, he is able to discern that none of these visions; none of these images— the wind, the earthquake, and the fire— are adequate images of God. Elijah’s and our God is “not in the wind… not in the earthquake,” and “not in the fire.” No, Elijah’s and our best and fullest experience of God is in “the sound of sheer silence.” It is as though, through the silence, God says to Elijah, “Do not be afraid. Do not fear the wrath and destruction of Jezebel. Do not fear me, as though I am an angry and violent God. I have chosen you as my prophet. Rise and wait for me at the entrance to the cave. I will be with you, in calm silence.”

Is this God who called Elijah from the cave on Horeb; is our God not the same God who has been with us from the first moments of creation? St. Paul pleads with his own people in his Letter to the Romans to recognize that the God who once appeared to Elijah in “the sound of sheer silence” is the same God who has been with us all along. This God, our God, gave to the people of Israel first “the adoption, the glory, the covenants… the Law, the worship, and the promises… the patriarchs” and finally “the Christ.” Our God is not to be feared but to be worshipped in love. Our God is “not in the wind… not in the earthquake,” and “not in the fire,” but in “the sound of sheer silence”; in the peace and unity we build in our Church, our communities, our households, and among nations. God is with us in his kindly sustenance of creation; in forgiveness of our sin and of our false images of God that we too often still promote to our world: The gods of fear, of anger, of escalating threats, of violence, of military “fire and fury”; or the impersonal “yoyo” god— “You’re on your own”!

Do we not, though, still in our day have difficulty with all these incomplete and inadequate images of God? Does our world not still, too often, fear God instead of loving God and, in loving God, learn to love one another and uphold one another’s basic dignity as creatures of God? Do too many people today (including ourselves perhaps; including me sometimes) not still doubt the loving kindness of our God by which we are ultimately saved?

To us as to Jesus’ disciples on the boat in Matthew’s Gospel who “cry out in fear” amid the storm; to us as to Peter who, thinking he is able to walk on water by himself before he becomes frightened by the wind and begins to sink; to us as St. Paul to the people who first heard him; to us as to Elijah hidden in despair on Mount Horeb, God extends a hand of kindness, encouragement, and peace, and calls out: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Firmly yet gently, God challenges our incomplete and inadequate images and understandings of who God is; our fear that prevents us from loving God and one another as we are called to do: “You of little faith, why did you doubt”?

Our God is in the calming of the storm at sea; in the calming of our fears; in the calming of the chaos and conflict of our world; in the calming of our false or at least incomplete images of God as either behind the chaos or distant from it. Our God “not in the wind… not in the earthquake,” and “not in the fire,” but in the silence; in the calm. May we not doubt. May we not fear, but may we worship and celebrate in love of God and of one another.