Welcome to the new school year!

                                                                                    Proper 14A

                                                                                    St. Stephen’s        

                                                                                    8/10/08

When we were out in Montana a number of years ago, we came across a nice little micro-brewery called “Black Dog,” whose motto was “no whiners”—which apparently applies to show dogs.  Well, today we have multiple lessons about a bunch of whiners.  Not a show dog in the bunch.  Let’s see who we’ve got here.

I realize this is complicated, so try to keep up.  First, the Episcopal lectionary for today, which you no longer have in your bulletin, has my favorite biblical character, Jonah, in it.  Jonah is the king of whiners, a real mutt.  The entire book of Jonah consists of Jonah whining.  No matter what happens, no matter what God says, Jonah whines.  “Go to Nineveh!”  “I don’t wanna!”  “Save the people of Nineveh!”  “I don’t wanna!”  “Get out from under that castor oil plant!” and so on.  Really, it’s a whining tour de force.

Now, moving right along, we have two Old Testament lessons in today’s bulletin, which come from the Common Lectionary, which we are now using and always has two, so that makes a total of three Old Testament lessons.  Stay with me, here.  The first one has one of the more annoying characters in Hebrew literature, Joseph.  Not Joseph Jesus’ dad, Joseph with all the brothers.  I have not chosen this lesson for today because, first of all, it doesn’t matter which one I choose, since I’m talking about all of them anyway.  And secondly, I am boycotting the lesson because some insidious translator has decided that Joseph didn’t have a coat of many colors, he actually had a coat with sleeves.  You can look this up on your bulletin for yourself.  This seems to me just too silly.  Why would anyone be jealous of him, as his brothers are, because his coat has sleeves?  And what good is a coat without sleeves, anyway?  And why would anyone even bother to mention something as mundane as sleeves?  Geez, give him back his coat of many colors.  Anyway, I digress.

You can imagine what a whiner Joseph must have been.  Daddy’s favorite.  Always having dreams that his older brothers would bow down to him.  Getting a coat with actual sleeves.  No wonder the brothers had had enough of him and threw him into a well and then sold him into slavery.

The third Old Testament character we have today is Elijah.  In this lesson, which we read because it’s the shortest, Elijah keeps trying to get God to understand that people are trying to kill him, but God seemingly pays no attention.  Look, Elijah whines, I did everything you asked me to do.  I beat Baal at bringing fire down on altars.  I lived through the drought.  I stayed all that time with that annoying widow in the wilderness.  I preached to your ungrateful people.  But…Hello??  They’re trying to kill me!  God’s reply?  “Don’t worry—I have your successor already lined up!”

To top off this trio of whiners, we have Peter, certainly the whiniest of the apostles and without doubt the dumbest.  We wonder once more how Jesus could have said, “Upon this rock I will build my church.”  Then we remember that biblical scholars—all except the Roman Catholic ones—pretty much agree that Jesus never said anything of the sort and it was added later.  Take that, Vatican City.  Whoops!  Another digression.  Anyhow, here Peter is bravely setting out to prove his faith in Jesus, but almost gets sunk when he again falters and starts whining. 

What most of these characters are whining about, in one form or another, is dying.  Elijah can’t understand why God doesn’t get it through his head that Elijah’s number is up.  Peter’s faith goes to pot every time he thinks his life is in danger; he’s more afraid of dying than of disappointing Jesus.  Jonah, taking another tack altogether, wants to die, or so he says, yet he scrambles to find shade under that infernal plant and never falls on his own or any other convenient sword.  Joseph seems pretty much doomed to die, whether down there in his well or as a slave in Egypt.

And what is the bible’s answer to these predicaments?  What are we always told?  God meant it for good.  God is working his purpose out.  God has a plan.  Joseph had to get sold to the slavers or he could never have accomplished God’s purpose by becoming powerful in Egypt.  Elijah had to get out of the way so God could get a younger, more vigorous prophet to keep up the good work.  Jesus has to dunk Peter so Peter will believe in him and become a great apostle.  It’s all part of God’s grand design, we’re meant to believe.  Whatever happens, no matter how miserable, no matter how tragic, is God’s will. 

Well, I don’t believe that.  You can, but I don’t.  It’s not God’s will to have children thrown into wells or sold into slavery.  It’s not God’s will to leave the elderly faithful with a sense they’ve been abandoned and betrayed.  It’s not God’s will to play with people in a game of “now you’re sinking, now you’re not.”

By the same token, it’s not God’s will that children die of cancer or of starvation.  It’s not God’s will that a car runs a stop sign and plows into your wife’s.  It’s not God’s will that overpopulation is solved by hideous, painful, degrading viruses or conscripted armies blowing each other up.  It’s not God’s will that people are forced to live in places where they die of thirst or exposure, or that people have no place to live at all.

I refuse to believe that God means it for good when we see these things around us.  Any God that would need to do these things to achieve his purposes is not much of a god, and one that I would have a very hard time respecting.  I don’t think I can give praise and glory to such a god.

But perhaps God doesn’t cause these things.  Perhaps these things—even the most horrible—happen, for whatever reason.  And God’s purpose can indeed be seen, but not in the tragedy.  Perhaps God’s purpose reveals itself in the response to the tragedy. 

For all their whining, Joseph, Elijah, Peter, and even poor, pathetic Jonah are actors in their dramas, not passive victims.  And each, in his own way, gets the same message:  Not, “you’re not important, let’s move on.”  But, “You are very, very important.  Not in your dying, but in your living.”

For each of these figures has contributed to the inbreaking of the Kingdom.  Each has brought God’s people closer to being fully who they are, whether it’s Jonah’s Ninevites or Joseph’s family or Elijah’s 7000 faithful Israelites or Peter’s converts.  Each models service not only to God but to the life of the world, to the betterment of humankind, to his fellows—not some distant sort of idealism, but concrete service to real persons in real need there and then.

This, I do believe, is God’s purpose.  The Kingdom is not that location, that destination that these characters fear.  The Kingdom is not someplace you go to when you die.  The Kingdom is not the end, nor is it a place of retribution. 

The Kingdom is spread out upon the face of the earth and we do not see it, in the words of the Gospel of Thomas.  It is what we make of it.  The Kingdom is the possibility we see of living fully, living wholly.  It is the potential for doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with each other and with God.  It is the extent to which we work to alleviate the hunger and thirst, the homelessness and illness, the pain and tragedy of a world in which stuff happens.  The Kingdom is about living, not dying. 

The world is full of bad breaks.  It’s OK to whine, and Lord knows, we do.  Whine all you want, but get up and be the Kingdom made visible.  If you do that, you will truly be fulfilling God’s purpose.