I saw a tee-shirt which read, “THE HOKEY POKEY SHELTER: a Great Place to Turn Yourself Around”. Scriptures for the upcoming weekend are about those who try hiding, but God finds them anyway and sends them on their path. I feel like hiding, sometimes. Fatigued by daily instances of inhumanity and selfishness, I try to travel to the desert where there’s none of that…yet some hope keeps bringing me back. I’m not an optimist by any reason; I’m surprised that some small spark of my soul has survived to yearn for tomorrow. F. Scott Fitzgerald writes that “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function….[to] be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” (quoted in SIERRA, Jan/Feb 2019)
The Old Testament lesson comes through I Kings 19: the Prophet Elijah has just shown up the prophets of Baal–and slaughtered them all! Queen Jezebel was livid, and put a price on Elijah’s head. Figuring that all was lost, he headed for the desert to die. But YHWH evidently wasn’t done with him: food & water was miraculously provided, and Elijah traveled “forty days & forty nights” (i.e., a long time) to Mt. Horeb/Sinai where he intended to shelter in the Lord. But God, after some volcanic fireworks followed by the Sound of Silence, sent him back into the fray. (But Lord, I’m TIRED with all this prophesying; you want me to WHAT?)
Paul reminds the Christians of Galatia that “we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.”(3:23) But now we are no longer in need of a governor or “disciplinarian”. Our encounter with God has released us from the constraints of old fears and worries and social distinctions, and we can resume our rightful activity of people created in the reflection of God. The mountains of Galatia (think central Turkey) would be good places to hide…still there’s the restorative voice of God which calls them/us to once again validate a holy community.
The Gospel is that of Luke 8:26-39, probably a familiar story of Jesus and the demon-filled man of Gerasa (see also Matthew 8 and Mark 5). Besides the Hebrew-delighting story about the demons and the pigs–one of whose descendants moved to Amityville, LI–it’s a tale of the reclamation of a recluse which touches me. The whole town thought him hopeless. He himself thought he was hopeless. But an encounter with God when he least expected it turned his life around! Jesus sent him home to pick up the pieces and get on with his life. Martin L. Smith describes him as an “unlikely hero” who his family and neighbors “must come to know…in his simple humanity and goodness, now that Jesus has set him free from the misguided need to perform as the ghastly icon of their downtrodden community…” (SOJOURNERS, June 2019)
I expect that there’re many both inside and outside the Church who feel exhausted by the avalanches of distress, and who’ve considered some form of escape. Perhaps these scriptures will extend some hope to the hopeless, and encourage me/them to still carry light into the darkness even though “winded by the chase”. “Once more, dear friends–into the breach!”
God Bless Us, Every One Horace Brown King
My wrestling with the lessons for the upcoming weekend may be observed every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com
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