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Receiving the Message Amid Contradiction

Saint Paul's Cathedral, San Diego
March 4, 2007; II Lent, B
The Very Rev. James E. Carroll

Receiving the Message Amid Contradiction

In today's reading from Luke's Gospel Jesus replies to Herod's threat with, "And on the third day I finish my work." This is a subtle foretelling of the Resurrection. John's Gospel puts a similar declaration in this way: "I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do." (17:4) And on the Cross he "knew that all was now finished." (19:38) These passages point us to Easter already. But before that happens the death that Herod threatens is the death that Jerusalem will provide.

People who want to edge the Episcopal Church off the map of the Anglican Communion often invoke "biblical authority." But to invoke the Scriptures in order to buttress a particular ideology is a slippery slope. Today's readings illustrate that. With Luke's Gospel Jerusalem is the beginning and the end of the whole story. The beginning finds Zechariah, the old priest in the Temple, discovering that he is to be the father of John the Baptizer. And the end finds Jesus commissioning and blessing the disciples as he is carried into heaven, whereupon the disciples return to the Temple in Jerusalem, blessing God. So Jerusalem, the Holy City, Zion is the beginning and the end. Yet it is the locale of darkness and the death of the Messiah. We need to accept the message amid the contradiction.

In the Genesis reading Abram's first words to God are, "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless?" This, after four promises of fertility in previous chapters. But now we hear that his descendants would be as countless as the stars in the sky. So Abram believed God, and that was reckoned to him as righteousness. This belief, this act of faith, became the paradigm for what are now called "the three great Abrahamic faiths," which have both co-existed and been at each other's throats for centuries: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

But, in the context of today's reading, Abram had done well to take God at his word. Now a formal agreement was in process, a covenant. But what a weird proof of God's promise about multiple descendants and the Promised Land. He requires Abram to sacrifice a cow, a goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon. These animals, except for the birds, are split in half. Then birds of prey descend, as one would expect, and our hero shoos them away. And at sundown he goes to sleep. When it's dark, incense and flame shoot between the split carcasses. A wild picture indeed. But the arresting verse, the one that gets your attention amid all the bloody paraphernalia of sacrifice, is "a deep and terrifying darkness" fell upon the sleeping man. The bright promise of blessed descendants and the Promised Land is blended with terror and darkness. We try to receive the message and accept the contradiction.

Ah, birds of prey descending. I have to use the illustration made by one of my retired cathedral dean friends, Harry Pritchett, who spent his final pre-retirement years at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Dean Pritchett meditated on a personal experience as he visited Disney World in Orlando some years ago. He named the meditation, "Vultures in Disney World." A flock of these predators descended out of the blue and roosted along a place called "Main Street U.S.A.," having been driven from their habitat in the Okefenokee Swamp by real estate development. The management of the theme park, fearing the inevitable compromise of this clean, bright place, ordered custodians to roust these roosters, these reminders of darkness, perched as if waiting for something, though the only thing happening was the wilting and replacement of flowers along Main Street U.S.A. But there they were, scavengers of decay and degeneration staring down at the antiseptic universe of Disney World. Bright, fun-filled Disney World was haunted by spectral birds of prey. This is somewhat reminiscent of the sacrifice that sealed that particular covenant between God and Abram (before he became "Abraham").

God's promise, you recall, was to give to Abraham's descendants all the land from "the river of Egypt" (the Nile) to the Euphrates, right smack dab in the middle of Mesopotamia--Iraq. Moses' sermon in the Book of Deuteronomy went this one better: if the people obeyed and loved the Lord their God, their "territory shall extend from the wilderness to the Lebanon, and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the Western sea." (11:24) That is, the Mediterranean.

When the three great "Abrahamic faiths" take this stuff literally, wrenched out of its historical context, there's trouble. A deep and terrifying darkness descends. The conflicts between Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Iran have deep, ancient roots which were further poisoned by European adventurism in the last century. Power, Oil and Religion at its worst.

Contrast this with Luke's portrayal of Jesus. Most of the Gospel is about Jesus and his disciples going from Galilee to Jerusalem for the climactic acts of passion, death and resurrection. The Holy City. Zion. The lamentation you heard from Jesus is tinged with sarcasm. The Pharisees had warned him about King Herod's determination to kill him. His response: "Go tell that skunk (the right translation from the Greek) that I'm casting out demons." But I must be on my way "because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem." Such delicious irony. The hideous deed will be done IN Jerusalem. And God's grief would be like a mother hen seeking to gather her brood under her wings, and they weren't willing to accept that protective love.

No promise of territory here, or of numerous descendants. Only judgment and destruction. It happened, you know, in the year 70. The city and the Temple were destroyed. What a contradiction Jerusalem still is. Yet for believers who are willing to accept the message amid contradictions there is glory as well as tragedy.

The New Testament Letter entitled "Hebrews" contains a mini-sermon for us who are on the Lent-Holy Week-Easter track.

You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (12:22-4)

(But) then I looked, and there was the Lamb, standing on Mt. Zion…Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

The Very Rev. James E. Carroll
March 4, 2007; II Lent, B

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