The Sound of Silence: Year A Proper 14

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; 1 Kings 19:9-13; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45b; Psalm 85:8-13; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

What new meaning can be wrung from the metaphor of Jesus walking on the water and pulling the unstable Peter to safety in the boat as the wind dies down? After 2,000 years, we have certainly heard and said it all – including the defiant retort from the underpaid, overworked middle manager (or Greek slave – pick your era): “Sorry, I only pass water, not walk on it!” We could reach for a clue in the fascinating factoid revealed in the notes in the Harper Collins Study Bible (p. 1885, note 14.27), that ancient Jewish mariners used to carry in their boats a magical club engraved with “I Am” to shake at the storm threatening their safety – sort of like the land-locked witch who throws a silver dagger into the earth in the path of the cyclone, thereby splitting and defeating it. There may be a scientific possibility that such action on the part of the witch could rearrange the electrical forces generated by a tornado out on the prairie, and so it could be construed as trust in the covenant with the natural forces of the universe – but all we would be doing is joining the biblical literalists, and the Elves who herd us willing or not along the supersessionist path.

Joseph’s brothers seem to be understandably tired of Joseph and his special coat (with “sleeves” or “many colors”). Any little brother who rubs in the fact that he is Daddy’s favorite by bragging about dreams of superiority is courting karmic consequences. But we blithely hit the highlights on the way to proving Jesus’s ancestry, and don’t worry about scaring our children with Sunday School tales of terror – not to mention justifying the worst examples of sibling rivalry.

Matthew’s Jesus is Moses, constantly withdrawing to mountain tops to commune with God, then leading the people through the Dead Sea waters. Jesus walking on the water evokes God who “tramples on the sea” (Job 9:8), and“[whose] way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen . . . .” Psalm 77:19. The hidden realm of God leads us to liberation through uncharted waters, leaving no trace but righteousness (justice-compassion), which creates the path for our steps.

Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

Paul Simon, 1966

Our favorite prophet Elijah is hiding out in his cave listening to “the still small voice” of God, but we need to read the beloved passage from 1st Kings carefully. According to the notes in the Harper Collins Study Bible (p. 551), the translation of the Hebrew is just ambiguous enough to cast some doubt on whether Elijah (like Paul Simon) heard anything other than his own despair in the silence that followed the storm. God does speak to Elijah, after Elijah repeats his tale of woe: “. . . I alone am left, and they are seeking my life to take it away.” God then tells Elijah to anoint a new king, AND to anoint a new prophet. “Thanks for your service, Elijah,” God seems to be saying. “I accept your resignation as soon as you have trained your replacement.”

Fools said I, you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

The silence of the collective Church in the 21st Century is deafening. Perhaps the silence rises and grows because the call from the liberal church for inclusive, distributive justice is drowned out by the fundamentalists’ exclusive, retributive message, which the media have assumed defines “Christianity.” Humans are normally able and all too eager to attach value to what attracts or repels. What is attractive is good; what is repellent is evil – except for those among us who have turned the logical experience on its head and insist that what is attractive is evil, and what is repellent is good. The torturers at Guantanamo Bay Prison come to mind, along with the entrepreneurs who set up the market-based disaster called the United States medical system, where neither “Health” nor “Care” are to be found – whether one has money and lawyers or not.

Some of the silence is due to seminary training, which neglects the reality of a need for a course in “Crucifixion 101.” Newly minted ministers may be grounded in post-modern theology, scholarship, and cosmology, but most are not equipped with the tools they need to lead parishioners out of the religious concepts of the 19th Century. As a result, instead of reclaiming Christianity for a new age, ministers in order to stay employed preach what the people are used to and want to hear.

Some signs are appearing that the current crop of young adult evangelicals may be ready and willing fora kind of accommodation with the left in terms of social and economic justice, if not a transformation. But conflict between the radical inclusiveness that liberals are convinced was taught by Jesus, and the dogmas surrounding homosexuality and the sanctity of life that conservative fundamentalists insist upon, still stand in the way. The fact that conservative Christianity has become identified with policies of the current United States government adds an additional layer of suspicion to liberals, who are accused and assumed to be unpatriotic with their opposition to war, their insistence on universal health care, radical response to climate change, prison and justice reform, etc.

No wonder old Elijah emerged from the silence in such a negative state that God had to act to replace him.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whispered in the sounds of silence.

If one reads Romans 10:5-15 thinking that “righteousness” means politically correct piety, Paul’s words are a call for crusade against everyone who does not sign up. “. . . [I]f you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him frm the dead, you will be saved.” What could be more clear? One’s life is justified (rationalized) by belief in the life and death and literal physical resurrection of Jesus. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” from Hell at the end of life. Hence the smug use of the aphorism, “there are no atheists in foxholes.”

Christian “faith” has become believing in magic: walking on water, calming storms, curing terminal illness, finding parking places, or extracting cars from snowbanks. While there are no magic wands or crystal balls, the cross has nevertheless conveyed magic power. We make the sign of the cross for protection or good luck. Crucifixes are especially useful for waving in front of vampires or other forces of evil. Pieces of the true cross (and its mojo) are still for sale by enterprising shopkeepers.

But pious interpretations are not what is going on here.

Paul asks, “how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed . . . of whom they have never heard?” So the call goes out for witnesses, missionaries, to bring the “good news.” These words just roll off the keyboard, as they have flowed from pens and from the extemporaneous artistry of countless preachers and theologians, most of whom have missed the point completely. The Apostle Paul’s mystic insights are incomprehensible to most people, who only want to eat, sleep, make and raise children, be happy, be healthy, and live forever.

Christian “faith” is not about anybody coming back from the dead, nor is it about avoiding death altogether. Christian “faith” is trust in the distributive justice-compassion that holds sway in the Universe, despite human social organization and understanding. Nothing distinguishes “Christian” from other faiths that have discovered the same truth except that Christian faith arises from the life and teachings of Jesus.

Chapter 10 of Paul’s letter to the Romans continues his polemic against the Jewish communities who disagreed with his conclusions about who Jesus was. It is incomprehensible to Paul that anyone who heard the story would either not believe it, or not realize its radical meaning. Paul would make the same argument today. The cherry-picking Elves do a great disservice to Paul’s theology by skipping around, perhaps hoping to avoid the anti-semitism that has plagued Christianity from the beginning. In the section skipped in proper 14 (Romans 10:16-21), Paul quotes Isaiah: “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me . . . All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” Does this mean those who refuse to believe in the literal story about Jesus? Or does this mean that – as Jesus preached – the realm of God is all around us, ready for anyone to open their eyes and look and listen, and step into that realm?

People can only know if they are told, Paul says. “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” “. . . Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” The word has gone out through all the lands, through the best scholarship, through voices recovered from the past in Qumran and Nag Hamadi, through the work of “biblical archeologists” excavating Jesus, and through the insights of cosmologists.
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The prophet Isaiah asks the same question Paul asks in his seminal letter to the fledgling Christian community in Rome (Isaiah 40:21-31): How can anyone not have heard? And once heard, how can anyone not get it?