My Old Sermon Blog

Early in The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo proposes taking a direct overland route through woods to Buckleberry, rather than returning to the main road. There are some good reasons for the shortcut besides saving travel time, but Pippin warns that “Short cuts make long delays.” As the travelers discovered, more than once (i.e., the mines of Moria), there was solid truth in Pippin’s adage.

As we approach the 40-day journey of Lent, proposing to walk in our hearts with Jesus to the Cross, we might do well to remember Tolkien’s warning about shortcuts. And as opera singer Beverly Sills once said, “There are no short cuts to anywhere worth going.”

Our Gospel text for the first Sunday in Lent, Luke 4:1-13, shows us Jesus Himself tempted with three short cuts which would have not only delayed but would have totally side-tracked His mission. Those temptations should have all sorts of relevance to us because the forty days of Lent (not counting Sundays) is modeled on Jesus’ time in the wilderness. If we are truly “out there” with our Lord, then perhaps we should expect similar temptations.

It’s fairly easy to see how the first two temptations propose a shorter route to Jesus’ goals, the first a short-term aim for something to eat, the second more in line with His overall aim of bringing the kingdom of God to this world. Miraculous bread would be a quick route to satisfying physical hunger, and a simple deal with the devil could give Him instant dominion over the earth.

We might see Satan’s shortcut suggestions to Jesus reflected in smaller ways in our own temptations in Lent to give up on whatever measures of fasting we have adopted, whether from food or Facebook or whatever. And that unholy deal for dominion might make us inspect more closely all the deals we are inclined to make in order to have some measure of control in this world, even over our own schedules and possessions.

That third temptation, which Luke puts last, contrary to Matthew, is perhaps the most insidious shortcut. For it invites Jesus to presume on His relationship with God the Father in a direct and immediate way. By casting Himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple, trusting God to rescue Him, Jesus would demand too soon the very kind of saving power which ultimately raise Him from the dead. But to get to that resurrection moment Jesus needs to go through the suffering Cross, not leap effortlessly and painlessly into the Father’s arms.

How often do we wish a short cut to our own final salvation? Let us get on that plane to heaven now. Let us die a peaceful, easy death and wake in the arms of Jesus. Let us, if we only admit how we truly feel, skip all the difficulty of bearing our own crosses, and simply jump into a painless and comfortable after-life.

But Tolkien and Sills and Jesus were right. Short cuts will not get us where we truly want to go. Lent is here again to remind us of that.

The “Transfiguration” of Jesus before three of His disciples is one of the most wonderful and most baffling events in the Gospel. On the one hand it offers a fascinating glimpse at the divine glory hidden within the human nature of Jesus. On the other hand, one is left pondering the question, “What was the point?” How did this moment which revealed the ineffable brightness of God in Jesus further His mission and purpose? What are we to learn from it?

We’re looking at the Transfiguration this year through Luke’s Gospel, Luke 9:28-36. It helps to set the Transfiguration in its immediate context. It happens just after three key passages. Simon Peter states aloud that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. Then Jesus predicts His crucifixion and death. Then Jesus says that some standing before Him will not die “before they see the Kingdom of God.”

First, then, the Transfiguration is a visible confirmation of the truth of what Peter confessed by faith. The glory of Jesus as the divine Son, the second person of God, existing from eternity, was hidden as Jesus walked the earth as a human being. Peter’s discernment that the Man he followed was divine is remarkable and only possible, as Jesus says in Matthew 16, via a revelation from the Father. But on the Mount of Transfiguration, the hidden glory of the Lord spills out in brightest light.

Second, the Transfiguration is a reminder that the greatest glory of the Son of God lay still on the other end of the road of suffering. Jesus is most glorious in His worst humiliation. Jesus exalted even more highly than in the light of His transfiguration. His exaltation was being “lifted up” to die on the Cross. So in Luke 9:31, the topic of conversation on the mountain was Jesus’ “departure,” that is, His death.

Third, Moses and Elijah were there to talk with Jesus as a clear sign that Jesus was about to fulfill everything predicted in their ministries. Moses represented the law and Elijah the prophets. The story and message of the Old Testament, which is the building of God’s kingdom on earth, was completed by Jesus. As He said in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.” So the promise that some would see the Kingdom coming before they died was kept there on the Mount of Transfiguration.

From the presence of Moses and Elijah I draw the title for the sermon this Sunday, “Huddle,” picturing that mountaintop confab between the three of them, Jesus, Moses, Elijah, as a football huddle, talking over the great play about to be run by Jesus. In a small way, we mirror that “huddle” when we gather for worship with out Lord and prepare for our own missions in the world.

The transformation on the mountain looks powerfully toward the other mountain where Jesus completed His mission by departing into death. Yet it is also a preview and promise of the glory that is to be revealed when all that God desires is complete. In Revelation 1:12-16 John tells his vision of Jesus as He will return, blazing with glory, shining with power, with the sword of His Word in His mouth and with stars in his hands. Writing the Revelation, John must have remembered the vision years before and realized how the Transfiguration contained the promise of what he then saw as an old man.

Since our daughter moved to Canada, married a Canadian and became a Canadian citizen, we are much more aware of Canadian culture and some its, often amusing, differences from the United States. One fairly recent difference is that the pictured coin, a Canadian penny, is no longer being minted there. While you can still spend one in Canada, they were withdrawn from circulation a few years ago and are becoming increasingly rare.

Then there is kilometers versus miles, milk sold in plastic bags, the dual labeling of merchandise in English and French, and the general fact that Canadians often tend to be a little more polite than Americans. Traveling to Canada is bit like a “Twilight Zone” shift, where most things are almost familiar, but not quite.

I’d like to suggest that the Gospel of Luke is like Canada in relation to the Gospel of Matthew, especially as regards Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount” versus Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain.” We tend to be more familiar with Matthew’s way of telling it than Luke’s, so when we pay attention to Luke’s version it can seem quite strange.

As we observed last week, the Beatitudes in Luke are stated differently than they are in Matthew, with alternative emphases. This week in Luke 6:27-38, we find words which ring very close to words in Matthew 5:42-48. But Luke’s version is in a different order and word choice is varied enough that it feels a little odd. The striking difference is in a comparison of Matthew 5:48 and Luke 6:36.

Matthew has Jesus wrap up His teaching about turning the other cheek, submitting to demands for service, lending to those who ask, and, most of all, loving one’s enemies with the admonition, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” a seemingly impossible demand. But in Luke that is transformed into the slightly more doable, but still difficult, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

Thank God for Luke! The demand for perfection, whether drawn from Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 or from our own self-understanding, can be almost the opposite of mercy when wielded heavy-handed in judgment of others or of ourselves. But when we grasp that, while God is morally perfect in every way, one of the peaks of His perfection is a gentle, forgiving mercy toward those who are not so perfect, it changes everything.

Like I said, the demand for mercy like God’s is still a daunting command and may often elude us. But, unlike some shiny state of divine perfect being, it’s a virtue to which we may genuinely aspire and, with divine help, occasionally achieve.

It might do Americans some good to let go of our feelings of national superiority and emulate the “niceness” of Canadians. It might do Christians some good to let go of false and hurtful ideals of perfection, and emulate our merciful Lord.

The doctor calls and says, “I have good news and bad news.” “What’s the good news?” you ask. “Your tests showed you have 24 hours to live” she replies. That’s terrible good news!” you say, “What’s the bad news?” She says, “I didn’t have time to call you about it yesterday.”

Good news, bad news jokes are a staple of our humor, but maybe they are a pretty ancient form of wit. In our Gospel text for this coming Sunday, Luke 6:17-26, Jesus offers a slightly different form of four of the Beatitudes, blessings, we typically recall from Matthew 5, and pairs them with four woes. There is good news for some and bad news for others, with the blessings and woes being distributed in the opposite directions we might expect.

So the poor are blessed, but the rich warned. The hungry and promised food, but the well-fed told to expect hunger. Those who are sad are to be given laughter, while those laughing now will be crying someday. Finally, those who are despised and hated for Jesus’ sake are offered great reward in heaven, while the popular and respected are lumped together with the false prophets, implying they will receive a divine judgment like those liars.

The beatitudes and woes Jesus speaks in Luke, during the so-called “Sermon on the Plain” (which I think is the same event as the Sermon on the Mount, but could have been simply a similar speech by Jesus), are harder to “spiritualize” than those in Matthew. Being “poor in spirit” or “hungry and thirsty for righteousness” sound like something we might ascribe to ourselves while still being materially fairly comfortable in the world. But plain poverty and hunger are pretty clearly the attributes of those at the margins of society, which is not where I or most of you reading this probably find ourselves.

So the question for us might be whether Jesus’ good news, bad news joke is actually on us. Is there any good news in this text for middle-class Americans who’ve seldom, if ever, suffered for our commitment to Christ? Let’s think about that together this week.

Most fishermen are familiar with the experience of coming to the end of a day on the water and thinking to oneself, “Just one more cast.” It’s an especially poignant thought on those days one has been “skunked,” having caught nothing even though working at it all day.

Sometimes that “one more cast” is productive. After all, because it’s the last try for the day, you focus all your attention on placing the fly or lure just right, getting a perfect drift, putting the bait just where you think the fish should be. And every fiber in your arm is tuned to set the hook quickly if there should be a bite.

On those “skunked” days, however, that last cast is often just a fruitless flailing of the water one more time before giving up and going home, trying to believe the old saying that “a bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work.” I say all this to give us some sort of window into Peter’s mindset in our text from Luke 5:1-11, as Jesus asks him in verse 4 to put out into deep water and let down the nets again. Peter replies that they have been up all night (not a bad time for fishing if the moon and stars give enough light) and caught nothing, but at Jesus’ word they will try one more time.

The results of course are miraculous, the kind of catch any fisherman, whether fishing for business or pleasure, only dreams about. That one more try was all it took when it was Jesus asking for it.

I’m pretty willing to try one more cast when I’m fishing. What have I got to lose? But I wonder how often we are ready to give up when doing what our Lord asks of us? Are we willing to hopefully offer one more prayer for that chronically ill friend; to take another turn in some unappreciated volunteer role at church yet again; to really pay attention for the umpteenth time to a Scripture we’ve read all our lives; to offer forgiveness once more for an insult that just keeps getting repeated?

Specifically to the point of the text, are we willing to try, at our Lord’s bidding, still yet again to reach out and draw to Him those who have not yet received His grace? I think I find it easy to forego that “one more cast” when it comes to fishing for people. “O.K.,” I think, “she didn’t respond. Let’s move on and talk to someone else.” But maybe what Jesus asks of me is not to cover a lot of water, hoping to find eager fish elsewhere, but to faithfully keep going back to those who seem unresponsive, consistently showing them His love and grace.

May our Lord Jesus meet us in our boats and give us many opportunities to make one more cast for Him.

My third or fourth sermon ever was preached with all the sureness and self-importance of a first-year Christian college student coming home with a couple of theology and philosophy classes under his belt, coming home to straighten out the misconceptions of those in the church he grew up in.

I not sure, but I think that college sermon may have been about the significance of Holy Communion. What I do remember clearly is that it was hardly as earth-shaking and home-church-altering as I imagined it might be. A number of people had nice things to say to me afterward, but it didn’t really change anyone’s heart or practice, even mine at the time. I know now the kind words were just indulgence of a fellow they knew as the little boy who read science fiction books during worship, interrupted his teachers with jokes in Sunday School, and once had to be told to be quiet by the pastor during the pastor’s own preaching one Sunday. I should not have expected to be truly heard, and I mostly was not.

In our text for Sunday, Luke 4:21-30, we find Jesus in a similar situation, though His claim to true authority was genuine and far superior to my sophomoric college knowledge. As verse 22 notes, “All spoke well of him,” but what follows shows that they understood and heeded little of what He actually had to teach.

In verse 23, Jesus quoted a proverb to them, “Doctor, cure yourself!” implying both a request for miracles there at home to match what He had done elsewhere and a request for some dramatic validation of the authority which He claimed and with which He spoke.

Jesus’ mention in verses 25-27 of the miracles on behalf of the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian suggests to the people of Nazareth that no miracles will be forthcoming for them and that they are less worthy of such than the people of neighboring towns. In short, Jesus says that, though they might think of Him as a physician, as a doctor, they are not really willing to hear the “doctor’s orders” for what is their actual spiritual condition.

Perhaps we can grasp the sudden flip from praise to anger among those of Nazareth when we consider how we sometimes respond to solid but unwelcome counsel from our physicians. Beset by some illness or injury, we go seeking the miracle drug or surgery, but instead receive direction that calls for losing weight, giving up some favorite foods, exercise or some tedious course of therapy. A doctor we have previously praised suddenly becomes the object of our anger and rejection.

The solution, the cure if you will, is pretty obviously to not be like the townspeople of Nazareth. Let’s not let our familiarity of Jesus dull us to His good and healing “doctor’s orders,” and let’s not let the difficulty and sacrifice His directions require lead us to reject His guidance outright. Let’s instead offer our Lord the honor and willing obedience He didn’t find there at home in Nazareth.

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In business, a “silent partner” is one “whose involvement in a partnership is limited to providing capital to the business,” according to “Investopedia.” Though a silent partner may also be consulted for guidance, provide business contacts, and possibly offer mediation in disputes between other partners.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but with our text this Sunday from Luke 4:14-21, I suggest that Jesus’ synagogue reading from Isaiah 61 points to the Holy Spirit as the “silent partner” in His upcoming ministry.

The Spirit’s capital investment in Jesus here in verse 18 (verse 1 of Isaiah 61) is “anointing.” The witness of the early Christians was that Jesus was a man anointed by the Holy Spirit (see Acts 10:38). That anointing showed itself in His miracles and in His teaching. Here in Luke 4, quoting from Isaiah, the focus is on the Spirit’s anointing for proclamation of good news to the poor, captive, disabled and oppressed.

Elsewhere we learn more about the Holy Spirit, that His business is to constantly point us toward Jesus and the Father. His silent partner role produces “contacts” in the form of believers for the firm of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We also know that this anointing of Jesus by His “silent partner” is the root of the title given Him so often and consistently that we often imagine it is another name for our Lord. But “Christ,” derived from the Greek word for “anoint,” is actually a title, “The Anointed One.”

Thus while the Spirit may often seem a silent partner, even for Jesus, His role in the ministry of the Gospel and in our salvation is huge. We would do well to do as Jesus did, to openly acknowledge and frequently consult the Spirit for guidance and to rely on the gifts that He has invested in us.

120 gallons. That’s one estimate of the capacity of the water jugs containing Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding of Cana, water transformed into wine. It’s an incredible amount.

The calculation of the literal amount in the text, “six stone water jars each holding two or three measures,” varies. A measure was 8-10 gallons, so the amount could have been anywhere between 96 and 180 gallons. Even at the lower limit it is huge. One contemporary commentary says “six hundred to nine hundred bottles of fine wine.” The fanciful, lushly set among Graeco-Roman buildings, Renaissance painting above by Paolo Veronese of the wedding at Cana is not really out of line with the extravagance of Jesus’ provision of wine.

John 2:1-11 raises all sorts of questions for us, some insignificant, some large. Who was being married? Why did Jesus take his disciples along with Him to what was probably a family affair? What’s going on in the conversation between Jesus and His mother? Why did Jesus consent to the miracle? What’s with the huge amount of wine? Stepping back, one might simply ask what Jesus was doing there. He had a world to save. Why was He taking time out for frivolous activities like weddings and making sure everyone had enough to drink?

There is plenty of symbolism going on here, with the new wine from Jesus taking the place of water for Jewish purification rites and with a precursor to the great wedding feast of the Lamb John writes about later in Revelation. But I like to dwell one one shining facet of it all, the sheer abundance of the wine. Jesus participated in an ordinary human celebration and blessed it extravagantly. Our Lord joined in celebrating human love with His own lavish love and grace.

Our Lord’s abundant, lavish love here in this text is a reminder to be wary of our own stinginess and even what we call “stewardship” of resources. The economy of the kingdom of God is not based on scarcity but on abundance. There is plenty to around and lavish celebration is not to be avoided but entered into joyfully. Let us remember that as we gauge our resources, formulate budgets, plan for the future, and seek to be Christ-like to those around us.

Driving up I-5 here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, one might be put in the mood of the Christmas story simply by seeing all the sheep grazing in fields on either side of the highway. I’ve no idea what the scope of the sheep industry is here, but there are plenty of fuzzy four-legged creatures, including some pretty cute little lambs.

Somebody must be taking care of all those Oregon sheep, but I seldom see anybody like our biblical image of shepherd out there with them. They graze in fenced fields and presumably are rounded up by guys in pickup trucks or perhaps on horseback. Sheep dogs may also play a part but, like I said, I’m pretty clueless about contemporary sheep herding in our state.

Be all that as it may–my ignorance and the radical differences between modern sheep care and the work of ancient shepherds–the animals and the land must remain much the same as what was found around Bethlehem in 4 B.C. Sheep still need to graze, and they still need protection and care so they don’t wander off, get injured or get attacked by predators.

Our psalm for this Sunday, Psalm 80:1-7, opens by addressing God as “Shepherd of Israel.” The picture of God, and especially Jesus the Son, as Shepherd is so familiar to us as Christians that it may be hard to glean much that is fresh from it. My aim in preaching on this text is simply to remind us that just as sheep remain in need of care, whatever form that takes in modern agriculture, we remain in need of our Lord’s shepherding.

Moreover, the tangible reality of today’s sheep, even seen through a speeding car window, helps us grasp the reality of the Christmas story and the actual presence of those who cared for sheep, shepherds, there at the manger. It might even help to imagine those ancient men as modern immigrant Basques or South Americans wearing jeans, smoking cigarettes and driving pickups. The scene around Mary and Joseph was as real as those figures are today.

Which is all to say, simply, that it was true and still is true that God is with us in Christ Jesus. The baby the shepherds were told to visit became the Man who died and rose again so that He could be with us yet as our own Great Shepherd. May we gladly, willingly shelter in His green pastures.

As we talked with our classicist daughter a couple days ago, my wife Beth wanted to tell her what our church choir sang Sunday morning, a 16th century carol in Latin, “Gaudete!” which means “Rejoice!” But Beth got it mixed up with another Latin song by a similar name, “Gaudeamus Igitur,” which may date to a 12th century manuscript and is generally regarded as a college drinking song. The first line is “Let us rejoice, therefore, while we are young,” and it goes on to reflect on the fact that life is short so enjoy it now. It’s much like the “eat, drink, and be merry” verses in Scripture.

A little disingenuously, I’ve chosen to regard our Scripture song (canticle) for this coming Sunday as a drinking song. But the drink in Isaiah 12:2-6 is of course “water from the well of salvation.” That water is drawn and imbibed with rejoicing and with thanks to God.

The further “drinking” implication of Isaiah’s song about God’s salvation is that we are saved through the gift of our Savior’s body and blood, celebrated in food and drink at His Table in worship. It’s that blessed gift which we also celebrate in His infancy at Christmas.

From our “book of the month” here at Valley Covenant, I’ve been reading a bit of what G. K. Chesterton wrote in various essays about Christmas. Over and over, Chesterton delights in the sheer earthiness of Christmas as a holiday in which God entering into human flesh invites us to rejoice in fleshly joys like food and drink. He talks of the importance of “punch” in Dickens’ stories like “A Christmas Carol,” and about how he Chesterton is very likely to eat three or four helpings of Christmas pudding when it is served.

In all the fun and silliness of Christmas celebration is an important Christian theological lesson. Christian salvation is not otherworldly, not disconnected from this world and our bodies. Chesterton mocks a then recent pronouncement of Mary Baker Eddy that she does not give physical Christmas gifts but simply sits and mentally wishes those she cares about to be healthy and happy and at peace. Such meditation on the welfare of others might be worthwhile, but it’s incomplete unless something tangible is actually offered. We are creatures made by God to enjoy gifts of food or drink, hugs and handshakes, warmth and light. As we sing praise rejoicing in God’s salvation, let us thank God that our salvation is not just a metaphor. Let’s drink to that.

The sun almost seems to pop up at our cabin in Arizona. Especially in the darker months of the year, the canyon walls on either side of us mean that the sun appears late and disappears early, even later and earlier than happens in more open places near there in the winter. So when the light finally peeks over the rim into the dark space below, it feels quite dazzling.

I imagine there are canyons and vistas a little like Arizona in the Holy Land, although I’ve never been to the latter to confirm it. So I picture Zechariah imagining one of those sudden and brilliant sunrises as he cradles his newborn son John, who is become “John the Baptist,” and says, in the second-to-last verse of a song of praise in Luke 1:68-79, “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us.”

Though he may not have realized it clearly, Zechariah was prophesying the even more miraculous birth that was to follow his own son’s miraculous birth. John had been born to an old man and woman past child-bearing years. Jesus would be born to a virgin who had never been with a man.

The dawn breaks suddenly in Zechariah’s song and so it seemed to the people of Israel when Jesus came into the world. Indeed, He seems to arrive quite unexpectedly and sweepingly on the pages of history, with the good news about Him spreading quickly around the western world within a few decades.

Yet as Zechariah makes clear in the earlier portion of his song, that sudden dawn had long been anticipated and promised. By sending Jesus, God was keeping a covenant begun long ago with those who put their faith in Him.

Our message from Zechariah’s song is at least the same sort of promise that, no matter how dark the night around us, no matter how high the walls which seems to shut us in, the light will rise above it all and shine on us. This Advent, as we perhaps long more than usual for light in our poor dark world, let us be sure that the covenant is still being kept, that the dawn from on high has broken already and will break yet again. Let us live in His light while looking for the brighter light to come.

This Advent I will preach on the psalm or canticles assigned for each Sunday, thinking about how the songs we sing, especially those from the Bible, reflect our faith and life together in Christ.

This Sunday we look at Psalm 25, in which, nearly at the beginning in verse 2, the psalmist asks God, “do not let me be put to shame.” It’s a helpful reminder that in the culture of Bible people, mostly Hebrew, shame often played a huge role in how people viewed themselves and others. To be shamed or bring shame on one’s family or community was a personal disaster.

We haven’t yet seen “Crazy Rich Asians.” Netflix is delivering it today. But I imagine that one of the themes in that film will be young Asians dealing with shame in cultures that, in that respect, are perhaps more like that of the Bible than white America.

Yet white Americans like I are not free of the experience of shame. We perhaps keep it better hidden and suppressed than other cultures where it is openly expressed and imposed. As I will share in the sermon Sunday, shame blocks me from even a simple expression like singing solo when others might hear me.

For those who have been abused, undeserved shame can derail relationships and even frustrate progress in school or work. Shame is often an oppressive and destructive emotion in any culture. Though it may have some positive effect by inhibiting us from acting out of our baser impulses, shame is more frequently unhealthy and debilitating.

In any case, one facet of our salvation is a release from shame by the grace of God. In the NRSV, from which I often read and preach, verse 3 of Psalm 25 is a petition, “Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame.” But the NIV, NLT and other translations make it an assertion, matching God’s own assertion in Isaiah 49:23, “No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame.” Evidently the Hebrew allows it to be either way.

I’m going to prefer the assertive form, “No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame,” yet allow that there is a shade of petition in it because what the writer is doing in the rest of the psalm is talking himself into that assertion of a hope beyond shame. That is, he is dealing with his shame by placing his trust in God. May his reflections help us to do the same.

This Sunday, along with the Gospel for the day and another sermon text from I Kings, we will recall that it is the hundredth anniversary of Armistice Day, the end of World War I. We celebrate that day as Veterans Day in the United States. As we look at Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel in I Kings 18:20-46, we might imagine some of our modern conflicts or wars to be reflections of that awesome “duel” between the God of Israel and the god of the Canaanites, battles between the forces of good and those of evil.

Yet it’s seldom so clear, especially of late. While the two great wars of the 20th century are fairly easily portrayed as combat between darkness and light, things seem quite a bit more gray in our times. We often find God’s people, Christians, divided about the righteousness of this or that act of war on behalf of our nation.

Even in the Old Testament story, the conclusion grates a little (or at least I think it should) against our Christian sensibilities. Elijah immediately takes advantage of the turn of opinion toward the true God and summarily arrests and executes the 450 prophets of Baal. If we haven’t totally lost our souls to depictions of action-hero violence and shoot-them-all video games, then we will cringe a little at that merciless mass execution.

Yet Elijah’s actions are all in service of the choice he demands of the people of Israel at the outset, to make a decisive choice between following the Lord and following Baal. As Jesus Himself said about God and money, there can only be one Master (which is what the name “Baal” means), only one God.

So, ironically, Elijah’s violent duel with worshipers of Baal, might actually call us to consider the need to choose between following God as He has been revealed in the humble, suffering death of Jesus and a spirit which imagines that violent retaliation is the answer to evil in our world.

Elijah got to call down fire from heaven, but when Jesus’ own disciples want to do the same in Luke 9:54-56, Jesus rebuked them. There is still a choice to be made, a duel between gods, but in the person of Jesus the form it takes has changed. A problematic addition to verse 56, which may appear in some versions, has Jesus explain to His trigger-happy followers, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of.” It may not be part of what Luke originally wrote or the actual words of Jesus, but it’s a fitting comment on how we can get our spiritual allegiances mixed up, following some unforgiving, merciless deity instead of the God who came to us in love and grace.

So, rather than rush out to be like Elijah and find some way to confront the false and evil gods of our time, we would do better to spend some time making sure we have answered in our own hearts the choice Elijah put to the people. “If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” If we want the first, then we must spend some time, like Elijah himself needed, in the presence of the Lord and learn who He really is and what He is like.

I plan to have fun with the text I’ve selected from our Immerse readings in I Kings for the past week. It’s I Kings 10:1-13, the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon. It’s a fascinating account, not least because it has sparked so much imagination and legend that carries weight down to the present day, particularly in Ethiopia.

The last verse of the text says, “King Solomon gave the Queen of Sheba whatever she asked for…” in the New Living Translation we are reading. A little more literally and provocatively, it says in the NRSV and other translations that he gave her “every desire that she expressed.” A long-standing legend has it that her desire included having Solomon’s baby. That legend became the basis of a centuries-old royal dynasty in Ethiopia, claiming to be a line of kings or emperors originally descended from Solomon. Halie Selassie in the 20th century was the last person from that line to rule Ethiopia. There are still many Ethiopians who claim Solomonic ancestry.

Whatever the worth of the legend which goes well beyond the biblical account, our text shows us royalty visiting royalty in deep respect for each other. As we celebrate All Saints Day this Sunday and recall our own royal parentage as children of God through Jesus Christ, I’d like to invite us to that same deep respect for one another. The stranger who comes among us may be “visiting royalty” as much as any earthly king or queen, because that person is a brother or sister in the Lord.

So as we live together in the kingdom of Lord, let us learn to be as respectful and generous with each other as Solomon and the queen of Sheba were. Short, of course, of any illicit relationship which may or may not have occurred!