I had dinner this past week with M (No,
I’m not trying to hide her real name. She just likes to go by “M,” so that’s
what everybody calls her.). She’s getting baptized at my church this Sunday
along with her eight-year-old son. She was telling me about her job, and about
how hard it is for her to see God in her surroundings.
M works at the local racetrack and casino
which is a few miles to the northwest of us in Bensalem, PA. Originally, when
the racetrack was built in the mid-1960’s, it sat directly across the street from our church. The first pastor of
Faith Lutheran fought the Philadelphia zoning board tooth and nail to keep that
sucker from going up. Not only would its location eat up land that could be
used to build homes for potential Lutheran parishioners, but the pastor
realized that if you build a gambling facility in a working-class neighborhood,
working-class people will gamble. Which means, of course, that people who can
ill afford to waste money will risk losing it on stupid games of chance.
Today the site of that original racetrack
has become a retail outlet mall, but the track and its accompanying slot
machines and green felted tables are still sucking money out of the pockets of
local roofers, plumbers, and other hard-working stiffs just a few miles down
the road. M tells me that she sees the same faces there day after day. They are
people motivated by greed or desperation or by the addiction of gambling. And
the corporation which runs the place doesn’t give a rat’s ass about who is
playing and losing so long as they keep making a profit. I told M that it must
be hard for her, a person of character and moral conviction, to be surrounded
by a swirling sea of avarice and compulsive behavior. The neon lights and the
jaunty slot machine bells can’t disguise the atmosphere of corruption.
Two of the lessons assigned in the RCL for
Pentecost 10 (1 Kings 19:9-19 and Matthew 14:22-33) are stories of God’s people
in chaotic environments. At least that’s the way I see them. Elijah in the
Hebrew scripture reading and the disciples in Matthew’s gospel seem to be
caught in situations they can’t control and are feeling very far from God. I
bet we’ve all felt that way ourselves. We’re just trying to make a living and
stuff happens and crazy people are all around us and nothing is going right.
We’re trapped in a little boat in a big storm and we didn’t do anything to
deserve this.
The story in 1 Kings may not be familiar
to you if it’s been a long time since you were in Sunday School. Elijah, the
rock star of prophets, has done some pretty cool prophesying. He’s told Ahab,
the king of Israel, that God isn’t happy with the apostasy into which the
kingdom has fallen—especially since wimpy Ahab’s nasty wife, Jezebel, has got
everyone worshiping a Canaanite weather and fertility god called Baal. God
punishes Israel with a severe drought, and Elijah challenges the 450 prophets
of Baal to a contest to see whose god is the real deal. Elijah wins the contest
and has the 450 false prophets put to death. God ends the drought, but Jezebel
decides to have Elijah killed anyway. When we meet him in this lesson, he’s
alone, running for his life, and feeling like nothing he’s done right has
mattered. It’s all turned to crap anyway.
“What are you doing here, Elijah?” God
asks. Elijah whines about his problems, so God tells him to go outside because he’s
about to pass by. Then follows a hurricane, an earthquake, and a forest fire.
But it’s only when all the chaos has subsided and Elijah is alone in the
deathly quiet that he realizes he is truly in God’s presence. Just him and God.
And it freaks him out. It’s in that still, quiet moment that God lets Elijah
know that all isn’t lost, that he’s not alone, and that there are other people
out there who are part of his community. Thousands of people, in fact.
The disciples in the gospel lesson are
also feeling a bit lost and alone. They’re out in a boat in the middle of the
sea and the wind is kicking up. Jesus comes to them, but they’re even frightened
of him. Impulsive Peter wants to conquer
his fears by doing a pretty stupid thing. He wants to test Jesus’ presence by
walking on the water himself. I guess it isn’t enough for him that Christ has
come to give aid and comfort. His fear makes him act irrationally. For a while
he seems to be doing okay, but he looks around and gets scared by the wind.
Now, if I were Peter out on a small boat
in a heavy sea, it would actually be the water
that would make me nervous. After all, you can’t really drown in wind. But
remember that in the Greek the word for wind is the same as the word for spirit. Perhaps it’s the spirit of the
times, the mood of the place, the attitude of those around us, or the
prevailing angst which is overcoming us. It’s not the actual threat, but rather
the fear of that threat that causes
us to sink.
I’m sure a lot of us—like M—identify with
Elijah or with Peter. The world around us seems chaotic and uncontrollable and
depressing in spite of all of our best efforts to stay afloat. That’s why we
need each other. We need to know we’re not alone. And we need to take those quiet
moments to be alone with God and get our heads on straight. We need to check
our impulsivity and get in touch with our faith. That’s why we need the Church
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