Father Bill’s Sermon, August 3, 2008

18^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

For the English speaking crowd, one of our favorite hymns is a musical setting for Isaiah’s elegant words, “Come to the water.” The prophet reminds his hearers and readers that the “Water” is always free, given at no cost whatsoever. What does he mean?

Were some religions “costly religion” in his day? Actually, yes, they were.  They were the competing religions of Israel’s neighbors–pagan ideas, but ideas that were seductive to the soul–and sometimes the “core” of those ideas even “slipped into” the “Judaism” of the prophet’s time, and made Israel’s religion “costly,” too. So, what were these “seductive ideas?”

Well, first, there was Baalism, the traditional religion of the area, a religion centered in how to get and keep wealth, with a soupcon of “sex” thrown into the mix! It was a religion of fertility, so it was a sexually charged religion, but it’s “end goal,” was the fertility of the crops, the herds, and the family–all of which meant Wealth (with a capital “W.”) Now, don’t get them wrong, in the minds of the prophets and the Torah, itself, there is nothing wrong with wealth; in fact, it’s a wonderful blessing, and something most people are willing to strive for. BUT, it has to be kept “in its place.” When it is the ultimate good of a human being, horrid things happen. Learning to live with both wealth and poverty is the mark of a person of spiritual depth. A religion that makes wealth it’s god, is a dead ended and soul-empty creed, unworthy of a human being created in the image of the Master of the Universe. This is an ancient longing of the human heart: to be wealthy enough not to “have to” do anything. Oh, we might want to go on being productive, but we’d sure like to be relieved of all “worry” about tomorrow. And, so much of our religious devotion is all about “securing ourselves” and those we love, economically. This “religion” has been seducing the human heart as long as anyone can remember.........

Or, there was Dagonism, the religion of the Philistine neighbors to the west, which was the religion of power and how to get it and keep it. The Philistines had always sought power. They nearly overcame Egypt, itself, and had it not been for Ramses III, they probably would have! They had been fierce “sea peoples” to the north in the Aegean, and in the late 1400's BC, they had been displaced, and came south in naval armadas and invaded Egypt. Ramses barely overcame them, and though he wasn’t strong enough to send them back where they came from, he was strong enough to keep them out of Egypt, proper, and put them on the coast of Canaan, where they remained in what is, today, the Gaza Strip, and via the Romans, who fancied themselves to be “history buffs,” their name became attached to the entire land: Palestine (is from Phlilstia.) These people had had control of the “atomic bomb” of the day–they knew how to make and finish IRON–this was also the dawn of the “Iron Age.” They kept this secret well guarded, and profited from it. Their “religion” as the Samson/Delilah saga recounts was all about controlling power. Now, I suppose, there is nothing wrong with having power, don’t you see? Someone is always going to have a bit more than others, BUT, with it comes responsibility. A religion that centers itself on gaining power is usually a scourge on the earth. Theirs proved to be such. This is an ancient human struggle, and I imagine each of us struggles with it. I do. We want to place our lives at the disposal of God and service to others........BUT...there ARE limits beyond which we can’t seem to give up our “control!”

Then, there was the lovely religion of Egypt, with its mysteries that sought out the meaning of the heavens as it tried to secure an afterlife; it was always tempting. We always want to know what God knows! We want to peel back the layers of the universe to understand it, and in doing so, perhaps come to an understanding of ourselves. But, what the prophets teach Israel is that there is nothing wrong with wanting to understand God and His Marvelous Plan for us, BUUT when we approach God, we are not approaching impersonal forces and static designs in the heavens, rather we are approaching a PERSON, in a sense–the Person in Whose Image we have been fashioned. It is the “fingerprint” of God that is our nature. So, to reduce religion to formulas, no matter how intricate and beautiful, is to make shallow the Deep, and to make profane the Holy. Most of us “fuss” with this, dichotomy, today, don’t we? On the one hand we want to “know the Lord,” and grow in His love, and on the other, we want the “formula!” “What do I have to do to be saved?” was Nicodemus’ misplaced question, but it’s ours, too, too often! And Christ’s answer is always there.........“Oh, this birth is from Above...God does it!” And we want to scream, “BUT WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO?” We find “trust” so hard...we want to tie down all the options and cover every base!

The religion of the Ammonite neighbors to the east, Molechism, was a religion of rage, vengeance and disrupting all order to one’s gain. This was, on its dark side, the equivalent of purchasing a voodoo doll and putting a pin in it! Why would good people turn to it? For the same reason we often do ugly things! People wanted “justice” in a world that is so often unjust! And they tried their hand at getting it quickly! Now, even a quick perusal of the Bible will tell you that Justice IS, indeed, something to be striven for, but only in a just manner. Ends never justify means, don’t you know. We, as a nation, are living with this conundrum right now, in issues involving torture of prisoners of war.

Don’t yo see? We have those religions with us, today, too; now they bear different names, and some of them have coopted the name of the Prince of Peace as their champion. But they always were, and they still are, terribly costly, not only to the practitioner, but to the whole society.

Then, along side them,  there was Torah, the “Water of Life,” teaching simple justice in the "here and now," there for all to read and to study–free of charge, like water from a brook, free to all. And when one delves into the Scripture and finds one’s Life there, there is nothing that holds us back on our path to each other and to God, as Paul would say. Matthew’s Gospel wants to say to us that the teaching of Jesus is nourishing to the Nth degree...water of life and bread of life, and, it, too, is there, for free–at no cost, other than the time one must invest in studying it and learning to enter into it so as to embody it. So, what’s stopping us? Hmmmm.