2132AFC080621 – Enough Already!
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John 6:43-45 – 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.
Exodus 15:24 – 24 And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Grace and Peace to each of you from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus the Christ, in the Power of the Holy Spirit. Do you ever have something you just have to “get off your chest” and then you hold back until that “something” explodes all over you and everyone around you? Yeah, me too, and generally it’s something over which I have no direct control and it’s nothing I caused. Take today’s post for example.
I don’t know how often you use the Scripture links I put in these messages, but if you do check them occasionally, you’ll know they usually display three parallel versions for you. Well, today that’s not happening (try it, you’ll see), and it really sorta ticked me off. I want you to be able to see a passage from more than just one point of view. Let me say again that the whole point of these essays is to help all of us [1] read the Bible more often, and [2] understand in new ways what we read. Naturally, being the loud-mouthed nerd that I am, I found the Contact Us link and let them know my reaction to the changes they had “forced” upon me. None of us like to be pushed into something we don’t expect or appreciate. We grumble, gripe, moan and groan, maybe even have a tantrum. “How dare they/you?” Then I read a story by Kathleen Basi. Here’s a quick synopsis:
She was in the soccer-mom van with her kids and stopped at a red light. On the median stood a man in camos and he held a sign saying “HOMELESS—HUNGRY—ANYTHING HELPS.” The kids in the back were chattering away about something as Kathleen wrestled with whether or not to roll down her window and pass a couple of bucks to the guy. “But he might just use it to get drunk or stoned.” Well, yes, but he also might use it to get a cheeseburger off the Dollar Menu. Then the commotion in the back of the van changed. The kids were all yelling “Hi! Hi! Hi!” and waving at the man. His face lit up with a big, generous, warm smile and he waved back. The window went down, the money went into a gloved hand, and Peace filled the minivan. Kathleen said, “In that moment, Jesus’ words about becoming like children rang in my mind: ‘Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of Heaven’ (Matthew 18:3). It was in this moment that those words made sense for the first time. My children are better Christians than I am, I thought.” She had just experienced one of those “Close Encounters of the Sixth Kind” (Click This Link) She got to make eye contact with Jesus by looking into the face of the poor. There are a couple of things that I see here, besides the obvious point that we don’t need to rationalize being generous in the name of Christ. Take a look at Jesus’ first requirement for entry into The Kingdom: “… unless you turn …”
There it is again – that recurring theme of repentance. We see it so often we tend to gloss over it, but maybe that’s not very smart. If God is known to like grass because he made so much of it and made it so versatile, we should probably take the hint that his multitudinous references to repentance in Scripture are a pretty good sign he thinks it’s important. Given how easily we forget his preference for repentant sinners, we should probably wake up and pay more attention. Usually, though, we just ignore it – we even grumble, gripe, moan and groan, maybe even have a tantrum. “How dare you expect me to be perfect!? You gave me this free will and all it does is get me into trouble.”
Oh, Belovéd, none of God’s gifts get us into trouble. It is our sinful nature that does that. In this case that pronoun “our” refers to all of the earthlings throughout history up to this very day. Even those who are zealous for the Lord or those who readily do his will quickly and well are sinners. They can – and do – often find themselves under the domination of truly wicked people, governments, and even repugnant religions. Nonetheless, their passion for serving God strengthens them in truly remarkable ways. In the Church’s 
decision to focus on John Chapter 6 – the Bread of Life Discourse – we take a good look at Elijah (the name means “YHWH is my God”). In today’s Key Verse from 1 Kings 19, Elijah is running for his life from the evil queen Jezebel, the wife of the defiant King of Israel, Ahab. In the previous chapter we have the amazing story of Elijah taking on the 450 prophets of Ba’al and 400 prophets of Ashera and challenging them to a duel of fire. The idolatrous prophets would prepare an altar, stack it with wood, slaughter a bull, and lay the pieces of the bull on their altar. Elijah did the same. Then the false prophets for Ahab and Jezebel were to call upon their deity to set their offering ablaze with fire. They worked at that all day, even bloodying themselves with knives and swords to “appease” their deity, “but there was no voice, no answer, and no response.”
Elijah rebuilt the Altar of the Lord. He laid his wood upon it. He slaughtered and divided the bull. He had them dig a deep trench around the Altar. He had them pour huge amounts of water over the meat, the wood, and the altar until the trench filled up and overflowed. Then this happened as we read in 1 Kings 19:36-38 – 36 At the time of the offering of the oblation, the prophet Elijah came near and said, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. 37 Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” 38 Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench. The people of Israel agreed that there is only God the Lord, and Elijah took away all the wicked prophets and had them killed. When Jezebel heard what Elijah had done she swore to do the same or worse to him.
Eventually it was she who came to a very bad end. She was thrown out a window by the servants of King Jehu, her body was trampled by horses, and then – as Elijah’s successor Elisha had prophesied – “The dogs shall eat Jezebel in the territory of Jezreel, and no one shall bury her.” She never had enough power or wickedness or vile plans to satisfy her. Elijah, on the other hand, was pleading for God to take his life because he was sure Jezebel would put an end to him. His prayer was like our saying, “Enough already!” God’s response to that prayer was, “Hold on. I have something better in mind.” And so we read that Elijah was given rest, food, encouragement, and spiritual nourishment. He took the food the angel provided – a hearth cake and a jug of water – along with the blessing of spiritual strength from God and walked forty days and forty nights from Beer Sheba in Judah.
It was a long trip and took a long time. The language in this tale is, of course, prophetic, so “40 days and 40 nights” is Prophet-speak for “a long time” and he probably traveled about 200 to 250 miles through some pretty rough country on foot. He “threw in the towel,” but God said, “Not yet.” Elijah eventually got to hop onto a fiery chariot that swung low and took him to God.
Today we have so much to complain about! We even complain about complaining! We grumble and mumble and grouse and gossip and whine and pitch fits and protest and carry signs and pillage, rob, loot, and destroy – and we expect to be rewarded for that. Oh, you don’t really do those things yourself. We see it on the news or on Facebook or some other social media outlet. We would never behave like that! We would never challenge authority, or criticize the decisions of our elected leaders (who are there by the permission of God). We wouldn’t get bent out of shape because our grocery store or COSTCO stopped stocking something we’ve truly enjoyed for a long time. We would never say, “That’s it! I’m never going there anymore!” When we are tested or tempted, we don’t ever say to God, “That’s enough already!” Then perhaps later we see a skin-and-bones three-year old covered in flies accepting a drink of clean water after none was available for days. Or we might see terrified refugees fleeing for their lives before a band of violent religious fanatics determined to wipe out everything and everyone that is not lawful in their view. We might see the collapse of a building with hundreds of people inside, many of whom died. We might see a loved one ravaged by disease, or lying broken after a tragic accident that was not caused by them. “I complained because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” Belovéd, at times I wonder if God’s answer should be “Quit whining and asking to be freed from this trial! Ask me for strength to endure this moment so you will be cleaner than before. Try to see that this blessing is the next step to the purity I can see growing in you.” Then, like little children, we might say “Hi! Hi! Hi!” and look Jesus in the eye long enough to say “Right behind you Lord. Thanks for the heads up!” Talk about your OMG moment!
We have spoken before (↔ Click Link for examples) about those short, seeming directionless exclamatory prayers we use every day. “Oh, my God!” is one of them. Another one – presented here – is “That’s it. I’m done!” We need to think twice about that one. Oh, I am certainly not saying that we should just hunch up and get beaten like an obstinate mule (although we can be obstinate) by those who seek to do us harm (person to nation to worldwide included). There are absolutely times when we have to stand up and speak out – see something, say something. THEN DO SOMETHING. Remember this:
James 2:14-16 – 14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? Same thing goes for anything we see that is not nurturing for body, or mind, or spirit. Do we truly have Faith, Trust, Grace upon Grace? Or instead is our living based on satiation or Satisficing (← Check it out!)? Look beyond whatever distracts us from God’s will (including the assertion of our own will). We must not nourish our souls with the junk-food empty calories of selfishness. Love demands that we must turn to God to know and satisfy our True needs, not our temporal and carnal wants. If all we can do is grumble against whomever or whatever because we feel empty, maybe we should reexamine the value of fasting from those things that cannot make us wholly Holy.
God reveals his own fatherly heart and parental Love in Christ Jesus so that – having sent the Son as the fulfillment of the Original Promise after the Original Sin – we have access to God the father and eternal life when we are attracted to the Father by the Son as the Son is both drawn from the Father and sent to his chosen. It is the working of that “irresistible affinity for God” I often speak of. It is not violent or forceful; it is only the gentle tug of Love calling us out of the muck and mire of sin. We can resist and grumble all we like, but if we once relent in our struggle to preserve the status quo of our sinfulness, we enter into the Brightness of his Light. It was not the manna, or the quail, or the water that took Israel to the Promised Land. All of those were the Gifts of the Greatest Giver. He was really all they ever needed to make the eleven-day trip from Egypt to Canaan. All their grumbling was of no use whatsoever. They had Bread sent down from Heaven. So do we.
That is something I really need to think about more often.
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Biblical languages inserts from Bible Hub (Bible Hub: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages) Visit at http://biblehub.com
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
