June 27, 2010

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 5     2 Kings 2:1-14     Luke 9:51-62

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Each of us comes this morning with a variety of things on our mind. Putting us in the past, present and future all at once. In my own case I find myself preparing for next week’s meeting with representatives from all three Tikanga of the Anglican Province of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. It has a deceptively obscure but alliterative title. It is called a Hermeneutics Hui. A Hui, as most Kiwis know, is simply a meeting. Hermeneutics is more complicated. I went to seminary just to find out what it is. It is an art form taught to budding theologians. While it is more than this, simply put, it is a process that is the foundation of every sermon. It seeks to tease out of scripture what it meant at the time and apply it in a way that makes it useful today. The root of the word is the Greek messenger god Hermes. Hermeneutics is about bringing the message forward, dusting off the past that it can be heard appropriately today so it might be lived out tomorrow.

In the case of this Hui the intent is to discuss what Scripture has to say about human sexuality. In particular we will be looking at the few instances of where Scripture is purported to have something to say about homosexuality. I don’t think the hope is that the diverse elements in the church will find agreement in what they mean to us today. That is probably impossible. Only slightly more possible is that mutual respect might be the fruit of these meetings. My personal hope is that it might be the first step in dismantling the sacred.

This Hui Margaret Bedggood and I will be attending as two of the representatives of the Diocese of Auckland has gathered twice before since 2007 and will meet once more before it is concluded. It is an experiment that seeks unity in the face of the well-publicised schism in the Anglican Communion. The question to be answered by the experiment is: Will it also lead to justice?

Some believe the fracture is the fault of the Americans and Canadians. The Americans, as we all know, ordained an openly gay man and recently a lesbian as bishops. The Canadians approved publicly blessing same sex unions. Others believe that this was just the proverbial straw that broke the Communion’s back. The forces of division have been in play ever since new prayer books came out in the 70s and 80s that began a process St Matthew’s continues today of favouring scholarship over tradition, and modern and inclusive language over the more poetic but less comprehensible Elizabethan tongue. It was further exacerbated by ordaining women to the priesthood and later as bishops and lastly as a primate in the US. Most of the Anglican Church does not see these women as legitimately ordained on the grounds that it violates the male-imposed traditions of the church. It is not surprising that those most resistant to our renewal of worship and the inclusion of women in ordained ministry are most angered at the idea of openly including gays and lesbians as full participants in the church. It is my view that the Anglican Communion is not divided by the recent acts of the North American churches but by two very different views of what the church has been, is and is becoming.

As a result, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been scrambling to find a way to make the schism go away. What he and a majority of his fellow primates have settled on is a new Anglican Covenant. Most of it is boilerplate. We Americans would describe it as “Flag, Mom and Apple Pie.” They are long held agreements of what holds Anglicans together that few would dispute. But the critical piece gives the Primates unprecedented power to punish up to and including expulsion, provinces like those in Canada and the US that act in a way not approved of by a majority of other provinces. 

By far most of the churches in the Communion are the fruit of the 18th and 19th century English Evangelical missionaries sent to the colonies. These churches have a traditional view of what it means to be church. Under the covenant they will hold immense power over those seeking new ways of being the church. Progressive churches and provinces will either have to stop seeking justice for those the church has marginalised and forsake new knowledge and understanding of what it means to be faithful in the 21st century or continue to do so, waiting to be kicked out. 

Should this Covenant be approved the church will become less divided but smaller by necessity. But in whatever unity it gains it will lose the creative tension that has always existed between what we want to hold onto and what we need to let go of. But for now that tension still exists. From my perspective that still gives the church a glimmer of hope to continue its supporting role of our walk in faith. I don’t believe it can do so if it doesn’t let go of traditions that marginalize some and that it might embrace justice.

As coincidence or grace would have it, as I prepare for this meeting our readings give a road map not just for the church but for each of us in our daily lives. In both cases dismantling is involved.

Our first reading is a story about letting go. Elijah, the foremost prophet of the Hebrew Scriptures, passes his mantle to his successor Elisha. After granting Elisha’s wish for a double portion of his power he makes a grand exit in a whirlwind on a fiery chariot. Looks like a good day for Elisha. He is probably ecstatic at his newfound position and power. Elijah made headlines when he defeated the priests of the Canaanite god Baal on Mt Carmel. It, too, was great theatre. Elijah challenged them to a dual of sorts between their Baal and his Yahweh. Whose god could burn a sacrifice on an altar without using a match? Baal got to go first but the sacrifice remained unroasted. Elijah mocked their god suggesting he had to rush off to the longdrop. Then Elijah, to rub it in, drenched his sacrifice in water three times and then called on Yahweh to show his stuff. A pillar of fire came down and made an ash of the sacrifice. Elijah then did a high five by calling on the spectators to slaughter the 450 priests of Baal. 

While Elisha is aware of this mountaintop experience which he thinks he can now do twice as well, he is not aware of a second one his mentor had that led to his getting the mantle. Apparently bloodlust for God was not as satisfying as Elijah thought it would be. It puts him into a slump. Elijah cries out for death, as he is no better than his fathers (I Kings 19:4). God tells him to go to a different mountain and wait for him. It is on this mountain that Elijah encounters God not in the theatrics of an earthquake or storm but in stillness. The still small voice dismantles his understanding of the sacred. God is not about power. God is not about competition and besting rivals. God is not about sacred violence. In the darkness of the cave Elijah blushes that he thought God was his to use for his purposes instead of the other way around. It is probably at that moment he decided to let go of his position as chief prophet.

In the Gospel reading we have Jesus making plain Elijah’s experience. When the disciples want him to incinerate the Samaritans, notorious for worshipping on the wrong mountain, for being inhospitable to Jews who have long treated them as less than human, Jesus tells them to let it go. God isn’t a weapon of mass destruction. God isn’t about power but love. God is about giving life, not taking it. After dismantling their view of the sacred he offers a new understanding. God doesn’t reside any place, yet is found everywhere. God is not in the past, but in the moment facing the future. Follow a loving spirit. It leads to God’s kingdom.

My hope is that the Hui hears the still small voice of God and like Elijah blushes. I hope it leads to our dismantling our traditional notions of the sacred that it might lead to holiness reflected in justice. Letting go of our prejudices and certainties of the past is not easy. It can lead to a crisis in confidence, but it frees our heart to become one with the sacred now. It will be a wild ride, not unlike riding a whirlwind in a fiery chariot, but well worth the trip.