Scripture Lessons for 8/12
by: Pastor Isaac Collins
1 Kings 19:4-8, Psalm 34:1-8, Ephesians 4:25-5:2, & John 6:35, 41-51
On the anniversary of August 12, the story of Elijah gives us an opportunity to acknowledge just how tired we are. Elijah is in the midst of a fight for the soul of the people of Israel. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel have led the people away from following God’s commandments. On the Queen’s orders, God’s prophets have been slaughtered in huge numbers. Elijah flees to save his own life. He’s exhausted by everything that has happened, and he is ready to be left for dead. He falls down in the wilderness under a broom bush. Elijah tells God that he wants to die, and that he’s no better than his ancestors. He then falls asleep from exhaustion.
In the gospel lesson, Jesus is also in the midst of an ongoing controversy. Jesus tells the crowd that he is the bread of life. He promises that anyone who eats this bread will never hunger again. Jesus is comparing himself to God. The crowd responds by “complaining against him.” How can this man claim that he came down from heaven? they respond. He has a mother and father just like the rest of us. He’s just a person. There’s nothing divine about him. He’s too ordinary. The people are skeptical because their image of God is of an invisible, all-powerful, majestic God. This is a good reminder that Jesus probably didn’t look that impressive. There are some people that we describe as looking like ‘greek gods.’ They’re usually acting in Hollywood or incredible athletes. We sometimes make pictures of Jesus that make him look like one of these beautifully curated people. This apparently is not what the people of his day thought. Whatever his appearance was like, it did not inspire the imagination to think of the divine. The people reason that Jesus cannot be from heaven because he looks just like everyone else. God would look higher than we do. God would look stronger than we do. God would look scarier than we do.
We come here today as people who face challenges every day of our lives in Charlottesville. Some of us may spend our days fighting for justice in this city. Some of us may spend our time crying out for redresses to the structural racism and white supremacy that goes unnoticed by Charlottesville’s most privileged citizens – aka its white citizens. Last year was not an aberration, but rather a visible manifestation of something that goes largely unnoticed by the comfortable most of the time. But, if you’ve spent the last year struggling to make rent, struggling to find work that helps you feel like a dignified and happy person, struggling to be allowed to take enough bathroom breaks during your shift, struggling to find health insurance or to pay off medical, student loan, or credit card debt, then you’ve experienced the injustices that make living in this town and in this country an exhausting experience. If this describes you then Elijah’s despair and Jesus’ frustration is for you. After Elijah cries out that he has reached his limit, it is no accident that he falls asleep. An angel wakes him up to eat, and then he falls asleep again. He needs rest and sustenance. In Jesus’ context, he also is looking at a crowd of people who are desperate and tired, and he tells them that he is here to feed them. He wants to keep them from being hungry or thirsty ever again.
Scripture’s emphasis on rest and sustenance is not our country’s usual prescription for injustice though. Those in power do not agree with the idea that the tired should not hunger or thirst anymore. Instead, when we cry out over injustice perpetrated against us by those that deem themselves higher than us, they respond by trying to ‘awe’ us into silence. Do you know what it means to stand in ‘awe’? It means to be filled with terror or dread. It comes from an Old English word, and there are many religious places where you are supposed to ‘stand in awe’ when you enter them. Great cathedrals are built to make believers stand in awe when they walk in. It can be incredible to stand in one of them, and to gaze upon the grandeur of the buildings. But, the reality is that these churches are meant to ‘awe’ you if you walk into them so that you will be silent. As you enter the church, you will be filled with fear and wonder so that you’ll shut up. If you’re feeling angry about injustice. Or if you’re feeling tired because you can’t get a job where your boss treats you like a human being, the church suddenly becomes a place where you are silenced in awe of a God that is too big to care about your job or your exhaustion.
I bring this up because this weekend, the state of Virginia wants us to stand in awe of its power. For the last year, as a community, we’ve been wrestling with the fact that we have major problems in our town. Non-white people here do not feel safe. Poor people cannot afford to live here. Wealthy people are too comfortable with the status quo to make compromises. Meanwhile, Nazis marched in our streets. The KKK marched in our streets. White-supremacist militias marched into our town dressed like soldiers. Hundreds of young white men marched through UVa’s campus with lit torches screaming, Jews will not replace us. A woman was killed in our streets and dozens were injured when a deranged man drove his car into a crowd of people. We have many reasons to cry out for justice, for safety, for solutions to the deep-seeded racism that has dominated Charlottesville’s history.
Those in power have responded by trying to silence cries for justice with a display of power meant to awe us into silence. As I walked the streets this weekend with other clergy, a police helicopter constantly flew over our heads. It has a silencing effect. My fellow clergy and I stood in silence as a motorcade of dozens of state troopers on motorcycles led prison buses full of police with riot gear to Market St Park so that they could prepare to protect the Lee statue from vandalism. There are 1000 police officers in this city right now. That’s one cop for every 57 people. We are told that this is to ensure our safety. The truth is that it is being done to ensure our silence. It’s an attempt to awe us into moving on from the failure of our systems of government to keep us safe last year. We are being told to look at hundreds of police officers in riot gear as a sign of safety. I do not feel safe. I feel awed. I feel full of fear and terror.
We are taught to think of God as too big to care about our problems. There are many ways that we learn to think this way. It’s our job to work out what those ways are together so that we do not fall into awed silence in the face of the problems that make our lives and the lives of our neighbors a living hell. The number one dogma of the ‘awe’ doctrine is that God is far away, hard to reach, and uninterested. As Christians, we proclaim the exact opposite. God loves this world so much that God became a part of it. God did this because God loves the ordinary, the unnoticed, the mundane reality of our lives. To prove this love for the small things of the world, God showed up in the womb of an unmarried Palestinian teenage girl. If God wanted to awe us into obedient silence, God could have ripped the heavens apart and shown up as Zeus, throwing lightning bolts around like a badass. But, God doesn’t want our silence. God wants to hear our voices. God in Jesus Christ wants to know where our lives hurt the most. Jesus wants to take your exhaustion, your fear, your anger, your sadness, not so he can tell you that you shouldn’t feel that way. But, so he can walk with you on your journey, saying to you, ‘I’ve felt that way too. I understand. I love you. We’ll get through this together.’
Jesus compares himself to bread. Jesus could have picked any grand image as a metaphor for the reality of his life. He is God in the flesh after all. But, he picked bread. He picked something very ordinary and plain. He did that because he wants us to know that there’s nothing about our lives that he isn’t interested in. He chose bread because he wants us to remember that we need to eat every day in order to live. He wants us to rely on him to get through the most mundane aspects of our lives. There’s nowhere we can go where God will not show up. There’s no detail of our lives that is too boring for God to care about.
I like this sanctuary because it is small and incapable of inspiring awe in anyone. There are grandiose churches in town. Let them be. That’s not what Wesley is called to offer the people of Charlottesville. We are called to offer an ordinary grace that opens up an opportunity for dialogue. If Jesus is in the midst of our everyday lives, then God wants to hear about it. If Jesus is in the midst of each of our lives, then church is a place to talk about the things that make us want to cry out in exhaustion like Elijah. People are struggling. Christians have spent too much time telling those people to be quiet about their problems and to stand in awe instead. Now is a time to talk about exhaustion. Now is a time to talk about what is killing us. Now is the time to talk about these things because we serve the God that will change them. We cannot tell hungry people to starve, when our Savior tells them to eat. We cannot tell them to get back to work, when our Savior tells them to rest. May we learn not to be awed into silence. Amen.