Ezek22 Lectionary Reflections

Today’s Readings (text):

• 1st Kings 19:16, 19-21
• Ps 16
• Galatians 5:1, 13-18 (RCL* -25)
• Luke 9:51-62

We know when Jesus was alive, lots of people claimed to be exorcists. They all thought they could cast out demons. In today’s gospel passage, we have a story of Jesus, James, and John coming across some of these people, on their way to Jerusalem through Samaria. These people, we are told, refused to welcome Jesus, probably seeing him as some sort of competitor.

Knowing what they did about Jesus’ power, James and John wanted to bring down the wrath of God on these men, who treated our Lord so badly, disrespecting his beliefs. But Jesus told them they should not do that and instead moved on to the next town.

The prevailing message here is one of tolerance. Perhaps no one preached a stronger tolerance message, with Jesus’ teachings, than John Wesley, who founded the United Methodist Church. Mr Wesley’s brother left his church to join the Roman Catholic church, and Mr Wesley, famously, said to him, “Whether in this church or in that I care not. You may be saved in either or damned in either…”

We see above, John Wesley being tolerant of Catholicism. Christians should take a lesson from this, since it is so clearly what our Lord taught. Lutherans should be tolerant of Catholics, Baptists of Pentecostals, and so on and so forth. What matters is our love for the Lord. In fact, John Wesley made the call to prayer in the United Methodist Church something akin to that: Let all who love the Lord come here.

But why stop there? Jesus didn’t. In fact, he surely knew that these other exorcists were preaching a false creed. Yet, he would not allow them to be eliminated. What about Muslims? Or, for that matter, what about Buddhists or atheists?

God works in mysterious ways, you know, and all we really know is that we know absolutely nothing about the truth — certainly, our minds are way too small to understand even a speck of what God had in mind when he created us. I’m sure God can figure out a way to work through atheists and Muslims, as well as Christians. Out of love for all of God’s children, even if he gave them life in a Muslim or atheist tradition and created them in that way, we should not strike them down because of their beliefs.

Rather, let us recall the words of Abraham Lincoln, who, when reminded that it was his duty to “destroy” his enemies, noted that he had destroyed his “enemies” when he made them his friends.

It is with that spirit of love, caring, and friendship, that Jesus taught us to preach. We are not indifferent to the disbelief of atheists. Rather, we seek to understand it, in order to learn more about our loving God. They don’t know any more about truth than any Christians, so we seek not to convert them to Christianity, per se. Instead, we seek to convert all people to a gospel of love, as we Christians have learned through the teachings of Jesus.

As we are reminded at the end of today’s gospel passage, the moment of opportunity is now. For example, do not mistakenly assume our Lord would have you strike down the traditions of Haitians who practice Voodoo. Don’t try to convert them to Christianity by kidnapping their children and disrespecting their laws. You have missed the opportunity to teach them our Lord’s message of love, which came for a crucial moment and then, in a fleeting instant, evaporated.

Like the second man in our gospel, whose father probably was not already dead, by the way, he either joins Jesus at that crucial moment or never comes at all. We all find opportunities like that in our lives — of saying “thank you” or “I love you” to someone, etc. The more we let these moments pass us by, the less likely we are ever to act on these urges. Sometimes, we let the emotions themselves serve as substitutes for the actions that those emotions should bring. That is no way to live a Christian life.

Every time some idiotic church group kidnaps a bunch of children, every time a pedophile priest molests a child, every time a preacher says something untrue or irrelevant, an opportunity is lost for conversion of hearts to a gospel of love. As St Paul tells us in our epistle reading today, those who serve the Spirit (love, God) do not serve the flesh (worldly or personal gain).

Our prayer is that people study what Jesus taught (or whoever your heroes may be), learning to love others and respect them. If you are Christian, learn to respect them as children of God, as Jesus taught you. Our Lord would not have you strike them or their traditions down. You may believe they are mistaken, but first of all, you don’t know the truth either, and second, your only chance of converting their heart to one of friendship and love is to treat them with love as a friend.

Today’s Readings (text):

• Zechariah 12:10-11, 13:1
• Ps 63:2-9
• Galatians 3:26-29
• Luke 9:18-24

Tony Hayward is not feeling very happy these days. He’s the chief executive of BP, the company that drilled the well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico, the well that exploded on April 20 for unknown reasons, costing 11 lives, dumping millions of gallons of crude oil into the gulf and threatening the environment and wildlife.

Here is an excerpt from Mr Hayward’s prepared statement to Congress, delivered in testimony on June 17:

As the scope of the unfolding disaster became more apparent, we reached out to additional scientists and engineers from our partners and competitors in the energy industry, as well as engineering firms, academia, government and the military. Among the resources that have been made available:

• Drilling and technical experts who are helping determine solutions to stopping the spill and mitigating its impact, including specialists in the areas of subsea wells, environmental science and emergency response;

• Technical advice on blowout preventers, dispersant application, well construction and containment options;

• Additional facilities to serve as staging areas for equipment and responders, more remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) for deep underwater work, barges, support vessels and additional aircraft, as well as training and working space for the Unified Command.

Events leading up to the explosion suggest that opportunities were missed that could have kept it from happening. Why didn’t we bring all these resources Mr Hayward talks about to bear back then? Mr Hayward acknowledges at the beginning of the excerpt above that the company waited until the scope of the disaster had become apparent. Why on Earth did they wait that long? Anyway, at least there is now some measure of a response.

The answer to why we waited so long may be that it is not in our human nature to give freely like that unless we’re backed into a corner, as the government has backed BP into a corner. We just don’t do stuff like that unless we have to. Cows don’t do it either: They won’t just walk up to you and give you their milk. They have to be coerced into a stall so they can’t get away. Even then, they only give about 10 liters of milk per session. Now that there’s a disaster in the gulf, BP gives us 10 liters from its udder.

Continuing with our little analogy, BP has offered to devote a vast number of resources to the clean-up and recovery. And perhaps because this altruism is sort of unexpected and not exactly according to human nature, people are confused about how they should respond. Should we stop drilling offshore? Or, should we send this company as much help as we possibly can?

Happily, it wasn’t like that with God. The Romans didn’t actually have to nail him to the cross in order for him to die. As was foretold in today’s Old Testament reading, God “will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and petition; and they shall look on him whom they have pierced … as one grieves over a firstborn.”

Our Lord gave his life willingly as he “poured it out,” thousands of years before we were born, so that we might be saved from the sins of this worldly existence. He didn’t wait until after we had sinned. Thank God for that!

Many people don’t know quite how to respond to our Lord’s free giving of salvation, either, and I suppose the main reason for our confusion is that his act of laying down his life for those who believed in him is not really part of our human nature. If our confused response to BP’s offer to clean up an oil spill and make financial amends to people who have been put out by it says anything about human nature, how much more confusing must it be for people to figure out how to respond to God’s offer of salvation!

Lucky for us, Jesus isn’t only human. What is human nature for us (trying to escape anything that makes us empty ourselves) was not part of God’s plan for him: He gave his life freely, as he says in John 10:18 and in today’s gospel passage from Luke: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”

If only BP had followed our Lord’s example and freely devoted all these resources before they were backed into a corner, the whole situation might have been avoided.

We take so much of this for granted. What we should be doing is giving thanks: to both BP executives for giving what they can to clean up the mess they made and to Jesus for giving everything he had to save our souls.

How should we do that? Well, for BP, the answer is easy: We should work with them in every way we can in order to determine the best way not only to clean up the current disaster but to prevent catastrophes like this from happening in the future. If we can only accomplish that by cornering them to counter their human (or corporate) nature, then so be it.

But as Mr Hayward said, “we will not rest until we stop this well, mitigate the environmental impact of the spill and address economic claims in a responsible manner. No resource available to this company will be spared. We and the entire industry will learn from this terrible event and emerge from it stronger, smarter and safer.” On the face of it, if BP lives up to that promise, it sounds good to me.

In terms of Christ, the original gift was much greater, and our thanks should be complete, as he tells us himself:

If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

To reframe Mr Hayward’s words, let us emerge stronger from our sinful lives, emptying ourselves of everything we have and giving it to our neighbors out of love, as a way of giving thanks to our Lord for his free and not-exactly-human gift of salvation.