Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
FIRST KINGS 17:8-24: Elijah the Tishbite, prophet of God, suddenly stood before Ahab, king of Israel. He declared that God was about to send drought and famine to Israel and to the whole eastern Mediterranean area. Saying this, Elijah fled north and east to the brook Cherith, where the ravens fed him. When the brook dried up from the drought, Elijah went to the land of Sidon. This was Jezebel's land. This queen of Israel, Ahab's wife, was the daughter of a priest-king in Sidon, when she came to Israel for her marriage. She brought with her the worship of her god, the baal of Sidon. When Elijah came to Zarephath in Sidon, he sought out the home of a poor widow with one son, and she welcomed Elijah into her home.
The family was poor, starving. When Elijah asked for bread, she had none to give. "I have nothing baked," she said, "only a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in the cruse. I am gathering a couple of sticks to make a fire. We will cook our meal, and then my son and I will lie down to die." "Thus says the Lord," avowed Elijah. "That jar of meal will not be spent, and that cruse of oil shall not fail, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth." The Lord was as good as the prophet's word. The handful of meal and the cruse of oil provided meals for the three of them for many days.
But the son became ill, so ill that he died. "Have you brought God into this house to pay me for my sins and cause the death of my son?" she asked Elijah. "Give me your son," said the prophet. He carried the little boy in his own bosom up to his room above. He laid him upon the bed. He prayed to God. Then he stretched out over the child three times, and he prayed, "O Lord my God, let this child's soul, his breath, come into him again." As he prayed, the child revived. Elijah brought the child down from the upper chamber and restored him to his mother. She said, in a confession of faith, "Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is true." Elijah stayed with the widow and her son for many more days.
PSALM 146: Praise the Lord, says the psalmist, and such a Lord is the God that we praise. Verses six through ten tell us of God as the psalmist knows him.
- God made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is them
- God keeps faith with his people forever
- God executes judgment for the oppressed
- God gives food to the hungry
- God sets the prisoners free
- God opens the eyes of the blind
- God lifts up those who are bowed down
- God loves the righteous
- God watches over the sojourners
- God upholds the widows and the fatherless
- God brings to ruin the way of the wicked
- God will reign forever, to all generations.
This is an especially important psalm, J. Clinton McCann Jr., tells us in the New Interpreters Bible, Volume 4. It introduces the final collection of the psalter. Like Psalms 1 through 3, it summarizes the fundamental message of the psalter. "Like Psalm 1," said McCann, p 1264, "Psalm 146 pronounces 'happy' those whose lives are completely oriented to God. Like Psalm 2, Psalm 146 asserts God's sovereign claim on the world. Like Psalm 3, Psalm 146 makes it clear that God's help does not mean a carefree existence for the righteous," but the righteous whom God aids are the oppressed and the hungry and the imprisoned. Happiness is not the absence of pain and trouble but the presence of a God who cares about human hurt and who acts on behalf of the afflicted and the oppressed.
McCann also gives the best definition of "praise" that I have found. Praise is the offering of the whole self to God in worship and work. The antithesis of praising God is trusting oneself or trusting human agencies and institutions in place of God. Therefore, sings the psalmist, "I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have being."
GALATIANS 1:11-24: In this important passage, Paul describes two matters: his call by God and his first endeavors in preaching the gospel.
1:12-14 Paul begins by describing his life before his call to apostleship. He found his original identity in Judaism. Since the time of the Maccabees, "Judaism" had been defined not so much by its beliefs as by its practices. It centered around circumcision, dietary laws, Sabbath observance, and the system of sacrifices and feasts. The Jewish people looked upon themselves as members of a distinctive society set apart for God in the midst of the pagan world. In this Jewish culture Paul (Saul) advanced beyond the others. The verb "advanced,"literally "beat forward" as if one were harvesting a field, was a word widely used by Greco-Roman moral philosophers, particularly Stoics, to describe their progress in the disciplines of living a wise life. Paul's "advancement" seemed to have to do with his "zeal." He was "zealous" in persecuting the church of God violently and trying to destroy it.
As Paul was doing this, God suddenly called him to another mission: not to destroy the church of Christ but to preach its message to the Gentiles. Paul used words from the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah to describe his own call. Jeremiah had said that
"Now the word of the LORD came to me saying:
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations ("Gentiles" in LXX)."
(Jeremiah 1:4-5)
Isaiah of Babylon had spoken of his call in similar terms.
"Listen to me, O coastlands,
pay attention, you peoples from far away!
The LORD called me before I was born,
while I was in my mother's womb he named me.
I will give you as a light to the nations ("Gentiles" in LXX)
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
(Isa 49:1, 5-6)
Paul said the same: "When he who had set me apart before I was born and had called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles." Paul saw this event not as a conversion from one religion to another but as a summons by the God of Israel to undertake a special prophetic mission.
The key question, of course, is this: what is "revelation of Jesus Christ"? As Paul describes it, in this "revelation" Paul's past and Paul's future united in that flaming moment when he understood that God wanted him to be an agent of Jesus Christ among the Gentiles. Paul was given a new past, a new present, and a new future, and in all of these Christ played the key part. Paul's future vocation was "to preach Christ among the Gentiles." He came to see his puzzling past, the experiences of his life that did not seem to fit into any sort of pattern - his Roman citizenship, his training to be a Pharisee, his attempts to destroy the church - as a preparation for this task. To accept this past and this future, however, he had to solve his most pressing theological problem: why was it necessary for the Messiah to die?
He shows us how he solved this problem in a later part of this letter, chapter three, verses 10 through 13. He dealt with his problem in a Pharisaic manner. He read a passage in the Law, Deuteronomy 27:26, that said "Cursed be everyone that does not abide by all the things written in the law, and do them." Well, Christ was cursed, because he consciously did not keep everything that was written in the Law of God. He healed on the Sabbath, he ate with sinners, he associated with women and children. But then Paul read in Deuteronomy 21:23, "Cursed be everyone who hangs upon a tree." So Christ was doubly cursed. He was cursed because he did not keep the law, and he was cursed because he was hanged upon a tree. In the chemistry of Paul's mind, the one curse canceled out the other. By hanging on the tree and accepting the curse that came through that, Christ had redeemed Paul and all people from the curse of the Law. We may not accept this line of reasoning but we have to respect the theological and Scriptural way that Paul went about dealing with his problem.
In the next part of this letter, 1:16b through 2:21, Paul's new experience is immediately put to the test. Was it real, that which had happened to him? Paul tested in the following ways:
The test of loneliness: can you stand to live with yourself? A.N. Whitehead said that "religion is what you do with your solitude." This is only a partial definition, but Paul did go away into Arabia and Damascus and for three years he experienced the test of solitude.
The test of conversation: can you talk about your experience with other people, is it personal rather than merely private? Paul came back to Jerusalem to meet with Cephus and James face to face.
The test of reconciliation: can we be friends with those who were formerly our enemies: "They were hearing that 'the one persecuting us previously is now preaching the faith which formerly he ravaged.'"
The test of participation: can you take part in the organized life of the community that is gathered around a similar memory and hope? Paul attached himself to the community of the apostles, the Sent Ones.
The test of conflict: can you be loyal to the central figure of the faith, and to your friends in the faith even when you are in conflict with them? So Paul is in conflict with the "pillars" and with Peter but does not break community with them.
"18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to meet Cephas face to face, and I remained with him fifteen days; 19 but another of the apostles I did not see, except James the brother of the Lord. 20 And what I write to you, behold, before God that I do not lie. 21 Then I went to the region of Syria and Cilicia. 22 And I was unknown to the face to the churches of Judea those in Christ, 23 but only they were hearing that "the one persecuting us previously is now preaching the faith which formerly he ravaged," 24 and they glorified in me God.
The above is my personal translation of this passage. I need to comment on certain parts of it.
18 "Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to meet Cephas face to face, and I remained with him fifteen days." The word "to meet" is much stronger than the translation indicates. Paul had gone up to Jerusalem to be examined by Peter; the word behind "to meet," means "to inquire into, to inquire of an oracle, to examine," and it points to a formal process of examination. What went on in the interview Paul did not say, except to assert that Peter, and James whom he also met, did not challenge or change his understanding of Christ. The point of the interview was other than theological, therefore. It was instead ecclesiastical, to ascertain whether this man who was now preaching the faith he had formerly ravaged was indeed trustworthy: was he a genuine follower of Christ or was his new posture toward Christianity simply one more ruse to further his cause of persecution?
Two results emerged from the interview. For one, Paul was sent to Cilicia and Syria after the meeting, and this was intentional. Paul had received his revelation of Christ in Syria, and he had been raised in Cilicia; he was therefore returning (or was he sent there by Cephas?) to the areas where he was best known to the Christian communities and where trust in his ministry would be highest.
Simultaneously, while he was not invited to preach in the churches of Judea, work in them or even appear in them -- after all, this had been the locus of his persecution, and suspicion of him would die only slowly and after a long period in which his reliability was being tested -- word was transmitted to these churches that Paul had had a change of heart: "He who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith which formerly he had ravaged." This statement appears to be a quotation from a document in Paul's possession, and this document grants Paul his credentials to preach the faith that he had formerly ravaged.
Was Paul the only one who had to undergo this credentialinq, or did this process apply to others as well?
One prominent Christian before Paul, at least, had undergone a similar testing, and that was Cephas. Unlike Paul he had never been a persecutor of the faith, but like Paul his reliability had been questioned: at the critical moment when he could have defended his lord he had failed to do so, and this failure had to be overcome by some demonstrable means. In Cephas' instance, Christ himself had certified his credentials. At the moment of the Great Confession, had not Jesus said, "After you fall away you will return to strengthen your brethren," and had not the crucified Christ who forgave sin on the cross sought out Peter at the moment of resurrection and set him on his mission to the synagogues of Galilee? But such a re-credentialing as had happened to Cephas needed to be certified by the church. And it was, as is clear from the agreement on resurrection embedded in the First Letter to the Corinthians, 15:3ff. The agreement stated (and Paul said that it was one that he had "received," meaning that it had been worked out and accepted in council and delivered to the churches in this precise form),
"That Christ died in behalf of our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that he was buried
and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve; after that he appeared to (about) five hundred brethren,
some of whom are still alive,
after that he appeared to James;
then to all the apostles,
last of all as to one ripped from his mother's womb, he appeared also to me."
No wonder Paul spoke in such detail of Christ appearing in him. Only when it was clear that Paul had "seen" the risen Christ could he be accepted to stand along Cephas and James as a leader in Christian mission.
The other passage I need to comment on is found in 19 and 20: "19 but another of the apostles I did not see, except James the brother of the Lord. 20 And what I write to you, behold, before God that I do not lie." Paul met Peter, the leader of the Twelve of Galilee. He also saw "James the brother of the Lord." James was the leader of the Torah-observant Christians who called themselves "the brothers of the Lord." He did not meet any of those who were apostles before him. Mentioning these groups outlines the structure of the church's first mission. Peter and the Twelve were to return to Galilee where they were well known. James and the brothers worked in the synagogues of Judaism where people spoke Hebrew in their daily lives and where the worship was conducted in Hebrew. Paul was to go to Syria and Cilicia, areas beyond Judea and Galilee, and minister with the synagogues where Greek was spoken and where Gentiles were present. But Paul wanted to make one thing clear to the Christians of Galatia. Neither Peter nor James challenged his understanding of Christ, "the gospel that he preached." They had agreed that the interpretation of the faith that Paul presented was a valid one indeed. The mission of the apostles was as authentic a Christian mission as was that of the twelve and of the brothers. Paul's presentation of the gospel, that preached freedom from the restricting laws of Judaism, from circumcision, from the food laws, from Sabbath observance, and from the system of sacrifices and feasts, was a genuine expression of the Christian faith.
LUKE 7:11-17: This story concerning Jesus is similar to the story of Elijah told above. Jesus had gone to a city called Nain. As he approached, a man was carried out for burial. He was the only son of his mother, and his mother was a widow. Being a widow meant that his mother was very poor, and now her only means of support was about to be buried. When Jesus saw the woman and recognized her situation, he had compassion on her. "Do not weep," he said. Jesus touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. Jesus said, "Young man, I say to you, arise." The dead man sat up and began to speak. Fear and astonishment gripped the crowd. "A great prophet has arisen among us. . . . God has visited his people." The report about him spread to all Judea. Elijah had prayed to God, and God heard him. The young boy was raised from the dead. Jesus had acted on his own authority, and God gave him the power to raise the widow's son. A greater than Elijah has visited the people.