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Thought for the Week 20 June – 3rd Sunday after Trinity
Today’s
readings are all about umbrellas and wellington boots. How so? I hear you ask. Well
let’s have a look at Elijah from our Old Testament reading first. He was
exhausted, had run out of steam and was living on the edge ----- probably of
a breakdown of some sort. Being the one and only prophet left in the land,
with the responsibility of being Israel’s conscience was enough pressure to
begin with. On top of that he had to do battle with Ahab, Jezebel and the
prophets of Baal and Asher, and be God’s servant in bringing the reality of
God to the widow of Zarephath. He was the first to bring someone back from
the dead when he did that for her son. I’m sure you remember she acknowledged
that the word from Elijah’s mouth was the truth. Ahab was Israel’s king for
some twenty two years and we are told was the worst in the history of Israel,
“he did more evil in the eyes of the :Lord than any before him” to quote from
1 Kings. In fact he married Jezebel and in so doing spread Baal worship
throughout the land, building not only an altar but also a temple to Baal. In
fact immediately before our reading today Elijah had faced up to the prophets
of Baal, four hundred and fifty of them, and the prophets of Asherah, four
hundred of them. He challenged them to a sort of duel. They and he were to
build two altars, two bulls were to be killed, fires laid on the altars, the
bulls put on the altars to be roasted by fire provided by the respective
gods. Elijah being the gentleman he was allowed the Baalites to go first and
despite calling on their god over a period of twenty-four hours and doing
themselves physical harm nothing happened. Elijah had a trench dug around his
altar, then asked for several buckets of water to be poured on the fire wood
until the trench was also full of water. Then he called on God and the fire
lit ---and the offering cooked. Consequent upon this the prophets of Baal
were killed and Jezebel was after Elijah’s blood. So we find Elijah this
morning somewhat at the end of his tether, dried up and living on the edge as
it were. Why else would he retreat into the desert and pray that he might
die? To wish death upon oneself, you have to be pretty well at world’s end,
no other alternative being apparent.
But we forget one thing he was a man of faith and the Lord looked
after him providing him with food and leading him to Horeb, to the mountain
of God,. There he realises that his work for God is not finished and, in the
strength God gives him, he goes off to the desert of Damascus to anoint
Hazael, as king. This
week’s Gospel story is that of the Gadarenes. Gadara is a city about six
miles South east of the Sea of Galilee. However you want to describe it the
man the subject of this story had a problem. He appears to have had a morbid
fascination with graves and cemeteries, an abnormal strength, a lack of
feeling of pain, a desire to parade in the nude, he certainly had a deranged
mind and a disintegrated personality. Indeed we learn that when asked their
name the demons within him give it as “Legion” A legion was a division of the occupying
Roman army, consisting of six thousand infantry. So this man was well and truly
possessed, like the country itself, you could say he was enemy occupied
territory. As
an interesting aside whatever it was that possessed this man acknowledged the
supremacy of Jesus for the spirit cried out
“What do you want with me, Jesus Son of the most high God? I beg you
don’t torture me!” And they beg him not to send them to the Abyss. What’s
that? You may ask. Well you need to flick forward to Revelation 9 verse 1 and
what follows to get an indication, where we get the impression that it is
some subterranean location where all that is demonic resides. This
man had obviously scared the locals for they had chained him up, both hands
and feet and put him under guard but he had broken free. Jesus remains calm
in front of this raving lunatic. We don’t know what the disciples thought
about it all, for we are not told, like all of us in the presence of unknown
forces they probably wanted to get back in the boat and get away from that
place as quickly as possible. Jesus assigns the demons to the herd of pigs,
an indication that this did not take place in Jewish territory, which then
rushes down into the lake and is drowned. It’s
no accident that this story follows on from the calming of the storm by Jesus
for here we have the calming of the possessed man. The intention of Luke
being to show that Jesus commands nature and man, both miracles are examples
of Jesus’ authority over the chaos in them.
The
locals find Jesus with the man cured and dressed and are afraid, so afraid of
what has happened, so afraid of undoubtedly what they perceived as the
supernatural, that Jesus is asked to leave which he does. But not before we
come to what is the point of the story in my mind. The man wants to go with
Jesus, but this time instead of saying, “Follow Me.” he says “Return home and
tell how much God has done for you.” And we are told he does just that in
what must have been an essentially gentile region. It
is at this point that we interface with this man. The radical change once
faith in Christ, once Christ comes to live in us, occurs is probably not as
evident in us as it was in this man. But the change is nevertheless there,
faith does that to a person and a different lifestyle takes over, different
principles apply, different considerations come into play.There is no
condition precedent to being put right with God other than an acknowledgement
of what He has done for us through and in his Son Jesus Christ. Faith
changes people, it gives different values to our lives and so it must as
Jesus lives within us. As we go through the waters of baptism we die with
Christ to our old self to follow him, puts responsibilities on our shoulders
just as it did for that man. and are raised with him to a new life in him.
For as Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians”…. For all of you who were
baptised into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ.” If that is right
then the consequences for each of us are dramatic for it means, following
Paul’s reasoning and there is nothing wrong with that, that we are in fact,
through Christ Jesus, sons of God through and as a result of our faith in
Christ. Like the man in the gospel story our faith in Jesus, our desire In
his excellent book Surprised by Hope Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, puts it
this way, “People who believe that Jesus is already Lord and that he will
appear again as judge of the world are called and equipped to think and act
quite differently in the world from those that don’t.” Elijah
was called by God to carry on notwithstanding his wanting to die, his living
on the edge. The man possessed was called by his faith in Jesus to do God’s
work in his own town and area, and can you imagine the derision he went
through as a result of that. We who have faith in Christ, no matter what our
circumstances, are called to be different, to proclaim the good news in the
way we live, in the way we talk, in the way we behave. We are called as
children of God. Now
at the beginning I said that this morning was about wellington boots and
umbrellas. Don’t expect your faith in Christ to protect you from the slings
and arrows that life may have in store. Faith does not prevent the vagaries,
the uncertainties and the tragedies of life from happening but it does give
us the ability to face life’s adversities with courage and hope in the
knowledge of who we are, children of the living God. Faith is not an umbrella
that stops catastrophe falling on our head but it is a pair of wellington
boots to enable us to wade through the flood. As Paul writes in his letter to
the Romans, “……. in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called
according to his purpose.” In all things ----- there is no
exception ! Mel
Fancy: Reader, Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude To return to main Thought for the Week page, click X at top right to close this window. |