Proper 12C - 7/24/16 Grace St. Paul s Faith & Sarcasm in the Biblical and Post-Modern Age I don t know about the rest of you, but for the last year and a half, I have felt like we have all been transported into some sort of alternate universe, a place so bizarre and so impossible to comprehend, that I was sure it was all some convoluted nightmare. Though I am supposed to be in the word business, I confess to you that I have no words to describe what has happened in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I seriously thought that nothing could be more unexplainable than the presidential campaign we have just survived. But the weirdness reached an entirely new level of mystification this past week, the likes of which none of us have ever seen before. Though many have tried, no one has yet given a credible explanation for last week s mistake by the lake, or for that matter, how we arrived at this outrageous place in our history. How, I ask you, is it possible that we just watched a national political party that holds up faith as a central component of their platform, choose as their presidential candidate a man whose strategy during the campaign was to demean human beings, a guy who did everything possible to disparage individuals, a man who used adolescent playground insults to disrespect the dignity of human beings? How could someone do the exact opposite of what our baptismal covenant says, and then be supported by the very people who honor that covenant? How is it that a man who has said that his favorite biblical passage is an eye for an eye, be the choice of a segment of Christianity to run their country? How could the person who said to Anderson Cooper, in response to a question about the role of repentance in his life, Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am not making mistakes? How is it possible 1
that this person is the choice of any faith based community to be the next president of the United States? How is it then possible that this same Convention would open with a benediction (a blessing, for heaven s sake), from some Pastor named Mark Burns who actually said that they were praying because they were electing a man who believes in the name of Jesus Christ. He went on to identify our enemy. It was not ISIS, mind you, or our own failures, but rather, the other political party in America. Now he didn t pray for that enemy, he asked God instead to keep us divided from them. That s right, divided. How, how could this be said from the floor of any convention in this country, much less from the home of Bible belt Christianity? Then, after declaring over and over again for four days, including in that so called blessing prayer, that the other party is the enemy and in at least one case, evil incarnate, someone explain to me how this same party could turn around and plagiarize a speech made by that same stated enemy eight years ago? It is all so bizarre, so mind boggling, that I cannot be anything but incredulous this morning. Forgive me, but I can think of no other appropriate way to respond to the seeming impossibility of all this, then with the approach taken by Stephen Colbert and Laura Benanti. Satire, spoof, and sarcasm are the only possible responses that make any sense when reacting to such abominably crazy contradictions. That said, I understand why some of you may have been offended by the clip I just showed. The question of whether sarcasm is ever an appropriate response by people who are faithfully trying to live into their Baptismal covenant is a fair one and one we need to address. 2
And by the wonder of lectionary serendipity, guess what we get in today s first reading from Hosea? Perhaps it is not immediately obvious, but believe it or not, Hosea speaks to us about how we should respond to the National Convention in Cleveland. Stick with me. It is a colorful lesson, isn t it? Whores and prostitutes and illegitimacy, so very cool, huh? Now there are plenty of sexually lurid tales scattered throughout our sacred text, but, fortunately or unfortunately, this is not one of them. Today s reading is not really about sex. It is about rain, or more specifically, the lack of it. The Hebrews of 800 BCE, were living in a desert very much like ours, and they are experiencing a terrible drought. In desperation, they have turned to a rain god. That is why Yahweh is so annoyed. Hey, he yells to the people of the northern kingdom, does I shall be your God and you shall be my people ring a bell with any of you? Conveniently forgetting that covenant with Yahweh, the people turn to the religious structure of their neighbors, the Canaanites. Like all the other religions of the day, the Canaanites had gods for everything. In that slice of land that we now call the Middle East, life is between the sea and the desert. The sea, for them, is a source of destruction. That God is called Yam. For them, like for all of us, life depended on rain. So the most important god of all in their pantheon was, Ba al, the god of rain. To insure the fertility of the land, livestock and people, Ba al worship centered around symbols of fertility. And of course, THE symbol of fertility is sex. So at the center of their Ba al worship was a ritualized form of prostitution. Ah ha. You get it? What Yahweh is doing with Hosea this morning is taking part in the ancient practice of sarcasm. Based on Yahweh s caustic remarks, there seems to 3
be little doubt that Israel has been taking part in Ba al worship. Well then, Hosea, why don t you just go marry a whore, because that s what you re doing. Yahweh is mad as hell this morning, and the only way He can think of to get through to these crazy people is to do a skit not unlike the one you just saw. Yahweh satirizes their idol worship. He uses the most sarcastic language he can to get them to come to their senses. Well, if it s good enough for Yahweh, it is good enough for me. And if you are listening IRS employees, I am not advocating that anyone vote for a particular individual. Instead, we are participating in the ancient Godly practice of sarcasm, because it just might be the only thing that knocks some sense back into our political and religious landscape in this country. We who have just withstood this unbelievable Convention, can directly relate to Yahweh s incredulous reaction to his people. Their actions also make no common sense. The gods of Canaan and Egypt and Persia were, after all, vending machine gods. Perform the right ritual action and get the rain or sun that you need. But the God of Israel, this very upset Yahweh, was a completely different concept of God from what anyone had ever heard. This God was a personal God, a hands on God. Rather than a genie god, this was a God of relationship, a God that we could interact with, a God that we could talk to, a God who promised to be with us in our pain and suffering. Yahweh totally rejects vending machine religion and when His people turn back to it again, he reacts with a sarcasm Stephen Colbert can only dream of imitating. That is why he is so peeved with Hosea today. Don t you get it?, Yahweh says. Religion is not about right worship to get the results you need. Religion is not about praying to God 4
to smite your enemies and make you win the presidential election. Religion is about relationship. It is about making God a part of your life. In the book of Amos, Yahweh will make this crystal clear. I hate, I despise your festivals... even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. And what does this God ask of us? To do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God. With God. Not many of us take stock in rain gods anymore, but we are all too ready to sell out our ethical and moral base, to pray for things that go against what we know about God, to get what we think we need. When life gets difficult, all of us return to a vending machine understanding of God. Rather than attempting to create a relationship with God, our prayer life becomes an attempt to insert the proper coins in the slot so that we can get the M & M s. Rub the lantern just right and the genie will appear. My friends, that is not religion, it is magic. And we are not in the magic business. While we might not admit it though, most of us continue to understand prayer as magic, and because we do, we ve come to believe that this whole prayer thing is a scam. As someone said to me this week, We ve been praying for world peace for thousands of years, and what good has it done? Deep down, we believe that prayer is about asking for and getting what we need. And because we have documented evidence that it doesn t work, most of us have secretly stopped praying. That s why the average American Christian prays four minutes per day and the average American pastor prays seven. And I have to say, if people are praying like Pastor Mark Burns, I am ever so grateful they are only praying seven minutes a day! 5
I can t help but think that this idea of prayer as magic is just what was on the disciples minds when they asked Jesus about this whole prayer thing. And what Jesus does is take us right back to the rejection of the rain god idea found in Hosea. Notice that when he talks about the Lord s Prayer, he does not say to the disciples ask and you will get what you ask for. He says, ask and you shall receive. And what is it that we receive in prayer? Jesus answers that question in the last sentence of the Gospel. How much more, he says, will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. What we receive in prayer is God. That is the point of praying. Praying, as the people of Hosea s time forgot, as the people of Jesus time forgot, as we so obviously continue to forget, is supposed to be about bringing us into communion with God. This is what Jesus experiences today and what the disciples want so desperately to experience. Jesus confirms this understanding in each aspect of what we have come to call the Lord s Prayer. He begins by addressing God in the Greek word Abba, a term of deep intimacy. It might more closely be translated Daddy. Then why, you may rightfully ask, do we continue to pray for God to do stuff for us? Because that is the nature of a parent/child relationship. We pray for peace every Sunday not because we think God will wave God s hand and make all the fighting stop. We do it because we know that if everyone feels the intimate connection with God that we do when we pray, world peace IS possible. We do so because by praying and continuing to improve and grow our relationship with God, the world will become a better place. Prayer is about asking for relationship. It is about creating that relationship and it is about sustaining and improving that relationship between an intimate God and us. 6
Note that this is the opposite of what Mark Burns prayed at the Convention. His prayer was us vs. them. But Jesus prayer is communal prayer. It is always about ALL of us. OUR Father. Give US each day our daily bread. Forgive US our sins, for WE forgive EVERYONE indebted to US. Relationship. Community. Coming together with those with whom we disagree. It is our commitment not just to be in relationship with this intimate God, but to also have that same relationship with each other. We are committing ourselves to treat everyone with the same dignity and respect that we are asking of God. That is the message that I pray will be heard by the candidates and people of all political parties in this country. We must be all about bringing dignity and respect to each other, to every single person on this planet, or we are not praying, and we are also failing as Jesus people. Beloved, it is time to toss the genie god into Yam s sea. It is time to finally start maturing in our prayer life, growing in deeper familiarity and connection to the God that awaits us. And once that begins to happen, there is no limit to what our prayer can accomplish. Through our deepening relationship to God and each other, we can actually create the world that we were asking for all along. We will bring the kingdom of God, that same kingdom that we pray for each week in the Lord s Prayer, right here to our doorstep. As sarcastic as Yahweh gets with the Hebrews in today s first reading, note one more thing. In the end Yahweh says this; Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea...and in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, it shall be said to them, Children of the living God. 7
Beloved, it is never too late. God s last words to all of us are always grace. No matter how many times we ask God to be an impersonal vending machine for us, God will always turn around again and say, No, I m not a machine. I am your mommy and your daddy. And if you can grow your relationship with me, God tells us in today s Psalm, I will never abandon you. In fact, God says, God will dwell WITH US in this land. May each of us grow and mature in our own prayer life so that we can continue to bring about the world of Psalm 85, captured in this image before you this morning. A world where justice and peace will kiss, a world where Republicans and Democrats will embrace, a world where sarcasm brings us back to God and to each other, so that we may laugh together and love together, despite our differences, a world where Americans are unified again. Amen. 8