Sermon Response to Scripture proclaimed for Year B, Proper 14: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34:1-8; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51 At Zion Episcopal Church by The Reverend Sarah E. Saxe on August 9, 2015 An Enchanted World Today the curtain rises on Scene 3 of chapter 6 in John. And today we see the chapter’s first of three denials of Jesus as God and Messiah. Despite the miraculous signs; despite Jesus’ persistent explanations, the people just don’t get it. It reminds me of one of my Christian Ethics textbooks. (Hold up the book.) In this book, A Secular Age, the author Charles Taylor, asks the question, ‘How did we become a secular society’ – one in which belief in God is optional? One in which God and religion are no longer taken into account when we make our business decisions, our government decisions, social and environmental decisions. Then in the next 800 or so pages, he tries to answer that question. (pause) Taylor says that one of the contributing factors to this condition is that we have lost a belief in the enchanted world of spirits, demons and the forces of good and evil. But I don’t think a belief in the enchanted world has disappeared. After all, the Bible is filled with stories of unbelief as well as belief, and I think it’s the same way nowadays.
Indeed these five weeks we are spending in chapter 6 focus on the mystical aspect of Jesus, and the struggle with people 2000 years ago to get it. They came face to face with God on earth – with the enchanted world. Some believed and some did not, as our Gospel lesson points out. So does that mean that, way back then, they no longer believed in an enchanted world, which would ruin Dr. Taylor’s thesis that it is a recent development? (pause) Maybe it means that even though they did believe in an enchanted world, they struggled with it when some new aspect of that world was revealed. Maybe it means that they believed parts of it but not the whole. In other words, they believed in the power of God but not in the forces of evil or vice versa. Or that they believed in the power of God sometimes and in the ‘power of me’ at other times. And that led me to wonder… Whom do we give credit to when things go well? And whom do we blame when things go badly? (pause) In today’s Old Testament lesson, we enter Elijah’s story just after he has gone into hiding because Jezebel has put out a hit on him. But just before this scene, Elijah had called upon God to send fire from Heaven, which consumed not only the sacrifice but the altar itself and the trench of water surrounding it. Then God had sent rain to end a threeyear drought.
Yet today Elijah is not only hiding for fear of his life but he has given up hope. Does he really not think that God can save him after just seeing what God did earlier? So that made me wonder whether Elijah had let those miracles go to his head. Did he forget that it was God who was so powerful and not his prayer? Did his ego get all puffed up … but quickly deflate when Jezebel threatened him? Did Elijah forget that he was living in an enchanted world? That it wasn’t all about him. It’s all about the battle between good and evil. I wonder if that’s why God sent angels to care for Elijah – to bring him back into the enchanted world, despite his impression that our world is not … so enchanted. (pause) Whom do we give credit to when things go well? Today’s Psalm gives credit to God. The author exhorts us to look to God at all times – both the good and the bad. To be comforted with the knowledge that angels are present, ministering to us as they were for Elijah. (pause) Do we give God credit for all the good things in our lives? Or do we attribute their source to a stroke of luck or to our skills?
Do we believe in the Holy Spirit’s activity or in angels? Or do we forget that we are living in an enchanted world and our ego swells up as Elijah’s did? ‘I am an awesome prophet. I am God’s most devoted servant. I am a gifted teacher; a powerful CEO.’ (pause) But what happens when tragedy suddenly strikes and our world or ego is threatened? Whom do we blame when things go badly? (pause) The Psalmist today doesn’t blame God, but trusts that God is fighting the forces of evil on his behalf. Yet while working as a chaplain, I often heard it said…so often I heard it said…that their suffering was ‘God’s will.’ On Palm Sunday Reverend Horton preached that he refused to believe that tragedy of any kind is God’s will, and I agree with him. Whom do we blame when bad things happen? If it isn’t God, then who is behind all the bad things in the world? Well, let’s call a spade a spade: evil, demons, Satan, the devil, the tempter, the adversary. These beings litter the Bible. And their purpose is to wreak havoc on Creation. If we don’t believe that they exist; if we don’t also believe in this part of the enchanted world, does that mean then that we don’t believe in the other spiritual beings in the Bible, like angels and the Holy Spirit, and the Word made flesh “who has ascended into Heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father”?
Well, we must believe because every Sunday we say that we live in an enchanted world when we pray the Nicene Creed, “we believe in Jesus Christ…true God from true God…who came down from Heaven…(and) by the power of the Holy Spirit was made human.” “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord the giver of life who proceeds from the Father.” And when I pray the pre-Sanctus for all of us, “joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven.” And likewise, we must also believe in the forces of evil because at least four times each year we acknowledge demons, evil and Satan when we renounce them in the renewal of our Baptismal vows. So if we do indeed believe in the enchanted world of demons, spirits and the forces of good and evil, why does Dr. Taylor have the impression that this belief has been lost? (pause) Perhaps it’s because our belief is not reflected in our actions. After all, we aren’t just pawns in a cosmic battle between good and evil. We have the God-given gift of free will. We can make choices. Do the choices we make show what we believe? Whether we believe in an enchanted world? Is our faith revealed not just by our thoughts but also by our words and deeds? It is one thing to meditate on all this and say to ourselves, “Yes I do still believe in such a world.” It is another thing to examine our actions at the end of the day and determine whether what we said and did reflects that belief.
Because if we believe, then our actions will not be guided by lists of pros and cons or strategies or the bottom line or saying what we think someone wants to hear. No, our actions will be guided by the results of prayer, of slowing down, of being quiet and listening for God’s guidance. And as Ephesians says, our conviction will press upon us to tell the truth, to experience anger but not act wrongly on it, to work hard not for material gain but to have extra for those in need, to control what we say and how we say it, to treat each other with love, even if we are angry with them. In a nutshell, to “be imitators of God.” Our deeds will reflect our faith by prioritizing prayer over solitaire, Bible study over TV shows, church every Sunday over sleeping in on occasion, listening to others over talking to them, community over individuality. I wonder what Charles Taylor would make of that if instead of contributing to today’s secularization we worked against it by such a counter-cultural behavior. A behavior that says, “We believe in an enchanted world, a world in which we oppose the forces of evil, in which the Holy Spirit guides us in the way of justice and truth, in which angels come and minister to us in times of need and in which the true Bread from Heaven invites us back to the Banquet again and again and again.