Mugwumpers
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series III, Cycle C
Object:
In certain streams of Christianity, it is common to speak of people being "born again." The phrase comes from an exchange between Jesus and a Pharisee named Nicodemus in the third chapter of John. In that exchange, Jesus contrasts being born of the flesh with being born of the Spirit.
To be born of the flesh is to be shaped by the genes of your parents and their background. You come into this world with a heritage as a given. Because you live according to the demands of the flesh, you also possess the bodily desires and needs, emotional fears, and human vulnerabilities that all humans experience.
To be born of the Spirit is different. To be born of the Spirit is not a given but a choice. We can choose to respond to a force that is beyond the natural universe. Often this Spirit enables us to rise above some of the more base elements of the flesh and choose to not be guided by our fears or our desires. Rather, we are guided by God's purposes that often cause us to resist self-centered desires and not be driven by our fears.
The story of Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal provides us with an outline of the choice that is before us. Elijah was a prophet. A prophet is one who speaks the word of God, a word that comes from beyond our physical universe. A prophet is able to clear away the smoke and help us see the real choices before us. Sometimes the prophetic word does not come to us in the form of a person. Rather, it comes in the form of an historical event like a recession or a personal event like a sudden illness or a troubled marriage.
In our story, the prophetic word came out of a dispute that Elijah had with King Ahab. Ahab, the ruler of Israel, wanted to please his wife, Jezebel, by including her gods in Israel's life. Elijah, on the other hand, declared that only Yahweh, the God of Israel, was acceptable in Israel. As a way to settle their dispute, Elijah challenged Ahab to gather all of Israel to witness a contest on Mount Carmel. Then he summoned the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah. The fact that so many prophets existed reveals that this was a well-established religion in Israel. The idea was to demonstrate to all the people which god was real and which was merely created by humans.
Baal and Asherah became effective symbols in the Hebrew scriptures of what Jesus and Paul meant when they talked about living according to the flesh. These gods were essentially fertility gods that attempted to provide some way to understand and manage the dynamic forces of both humans and nature. We are all aware of how we can be captured by our desires and driven by our fears. We are also aware of how the sudden powers of nature can disrupt our orderly lives. What the Canaanites had done was to raise these often-disruptive forces to a godlike status and attempt to appease and manipulate them through religious rituals and sacrifices.
Many people in Israel tried to cover their bases by participating in rituals that responded to both the Canaanite gods and the God of Israel. Elijah challenged the people to choose who they truly worshiped. "How long will you go limping between two different opinions?" (v. 21) or as one translation has it, "How long will you continue to sit on the fence?" To use an 1884 political term: How long will you be mugwumpers -- that is people who like to keep their mug on one side of the fence and their wump on the other side?
Remember that to worship something means to give high worth to it. In our society, one of the dynamic forces that requires our worship is the force of economics. Like the fertility gods in Israel, the economic realities of our society demand that we give them high priority. Like the Israelites, we try to give worth or worship to both the power of economics and to God who has blessed us with our wealth. For the most part, we try to avoid honestly facing which one has highest priority in our lives.
Each year in most churches you are offered the opportunity to take a snap quiz on which power you trust most in your life. In most churches it is called either a stewardship campaign or a pledge campaign. You are asked to decide between your mug and your wump. Beginning with Abraham, the Jewish faith instructed believers to give a tithe or 10% of their wealth back to God. The wisdom of the tithe is that it is not just loose change after all the important bills have been paid. It is a significant enough commitment that one has to decide whether you see what you have in life as a blessing from God or as a possession that you have earned. Like the choice in Elijah's contest with the fertility gods of Canaan, you have to decide whether you see life as made up of things that you must possess to assure security and pleasure or as a reflection of the blessings of God who can be trusted for the future. You are challenged to declare by your pledge whether your life is shaped by Baal or God.
Elijah set up a contest between the gods. Both groups would set up a sacrifice on an altar at the top of Mount Carmel. The real God would receive the sacrifice by fire. Fire was a common symbol of the power and presence of God in the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. At Pentecost it was the tongues of fire that symbolized the presence of God empowering the frightened disciples to overcome their fears and go forth boldly into the world.
The prophets of Baal set up their sacrifice and exhausted themselves with prayers and ritual dances to call upon their god to receive the sacrifice. Despite all of their efforts, they were not able to command such a god to act. When you see people who literally exhaust themselves in all sorts of work and societal rituals in order to attain security and happiness in life and yet continue to come up short, you know that the story of the Baal prophets points to a reality in our lives as well.
When it was Elijah's turn, he took twelve stones, one for each tribe of Israel. Symbolically he was gathering together the history of their life's experience. These were the stepping stones that had brought them to this decisive point in time. Like Elijah, our response to the promise of God is not something that happens out of the blue but is built on all our experiences within the church community. If you look at the major turning points or stepping stones of your life, both good and bad, God has been silently present nurturing you to respond to promise rather than despair.
It is the altar of our lives upon which the prophet lays the sacrifice bidding God to receive it. Then, we are told, Elijah poured gallons and gallons of water on the sacrifice. There was to be no human explanation if God received the sacrifice. If you think about the times when you were grasped by a power from beyond you and given a sense of calm in the face of fear or grief, you know there is no human explanation. Yet, for a moment, you were born of the Spirit. Life was sustained not by your wisdom or material resources but by something divine.
Elijah's prayer was: "Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, answer me and let this people know that thou art God and that thou hast turned their hearts back." Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob recalled the stepping stones of the community's faith. Abraham was the one who left everything behind to respond to the promise of God in faith. Isaac means God's laughter and reminds us of the need of humor that keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously. Israel was the name given Jacob and means one who wrestles with God. It is in our response in faith to the promise of God, to the humor of life and the joy of God, and our willingness to wrestle at decisive points in our lives with the presence of God that we experience the power of God in our lives.
It was then that fire fell and consumed the sacrifice. It is then that the power of God's presence absorbs our fears, insecurities, and empowers us to face life in the power of God's Spirit. To be born again is to suddenly recognize how our mugwumping has been ineffectual in enabling us to experience the depth of life. To be born again is to realize that our attempt to secure ourselves against the insecurities of life and to satisfy our desires through indulgence is hopeless. When each of us reviews the journey of our life, the stepping stones that have brought us to this moment, it begins to dawn on us how often there has been a hint of the divine presence waiting silently for us to respond.
Then, in promise, laughter, and struggle, we slowly begin to open ourselves to be guided by a power that is beyond us. We begin to allow ourselves to be grasped by a truth that empowers us to overcome our anxieties and to trust in the faithfulness of a love that transcends even our fear of death. It is this new life that was revealed to us by Jesus who lived in response to God's Spirit even though he was tempted by the same human realities that we are.
It is a new birth, a new beginning to life. It is a life lived in response to the promise of the Spirit rather than a life lived in response to the fears of the flesh. It may happen in an explosive experience that seems to overwhelm us or, for many of us, it may slowly dawn on us through a series of experiences that confront us with what we really trust in life and nurtures us into greater and greater trust in God whose love increasingly sets us free for the promise of life lived in the Spirit. Amen.
To be born of the flesh is to be shaped by the genes of your parents and their background. You come into this world with a heritage as a given. Because you live according to the demands of the flesh, you also possess the bodily desires and needs, emotional fears, and human vulnerabilities that all humans experience.
To be born of the Spirit is different. To be born of the Spirit is not a given but a choice. We can choose to respond to a force that is beyond the natural universe. Often this Spirit enables us to rise above some of the more base elements of the flesh and choose to not be guided by our fears or our desires. Rather, we are guided by God's purposes that often cause us to resist self-centered desires and not be driven by our fears.
The story of Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal provides us with an outline of the choice that is before us. Elijah was a prophet. A prophet is one who speaks the word of God, a word that comes from beyond our physical universe. A prophet is able to clear away the smoke and help us see the real choices before us. Sometimes the prophetic word does not come to us in the form of a person. Rather, it comes in the form of an historical event like a recession or a personal event like a sudden illness or a troubled marriage.
In our story, the prophetic word came out of a dispute that Elijah had with King Ahab. Ahab, the ruler of Israel, wanted to please his wife, Jezebel, by including her gods in Israel's life. Elijah, on the other hand, declared that only Yahweh, the God of Israel, was acceptable in Israel. As a way to settle their dispute, Elijah challenged Ahab to gather all of Israel to witness a contest on Mount Carmel. Then he summoned the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah. The fact that so many prophets existed reveals that this was a well-established religion in Israel. The idea was to demonstrate to all the people which god was real and which was merely created by humans.
Baal and Asherah became effective symbols in the Hebrew scriptures of what Jesus and Paul meant when they talked about living according to the flesh. These gods were essentially fertility gods that attempted to provide some way to understand and manage the dynamic forces of both humans and nature. We are all aware of how we can be captured by our desires and driven by our fears. We are also aware of how the sudden powers of nature can disrupt our orderly lives. What the Canaanites had done was to raise these often-disruptive forces to a godlike status and attempt to appease and manipulate them through religious rituals and sacrifices.
Many people in Israel tried to cover their bases by participating in rituals that responded to both the Canaanite gods and the God of Israel. Elijah challenged the people to choose who they truly worshiped. "How long will you go limping between two different opinions?" (v. 21) or as one translation has it, "How long will you continue to sit on the fence?" To use an 1884 political term: How long will you be mugwumpers -- that is people who like to keep their mug on one side of the fence and their wump on the other side?
Remember that to worship something means to give high worth to it. In our society, one of the dynamic forces that requires our worship is the force of economics. Like the fertility gods in Israel, the economic realities of our society demand that we give them high priority. Like the Israelites, we try to give worth or worship to both the power of economics and to God who has blessed us with our wealth. For the most part, we try to avoid honestly facing which one has highest priority in our lives.
Each year in most churches you are offered the opportunity to take a snap quiz on which power you trust most in your life. In most churches it is called either a stewardship campaign or a pledge campaign. You are asked to decide between your mug and your wump. Beginning with Abraham, the Jewish faith instructed believers to give a tithe or 10% of their wealth back to God. The wisdom of the tithe is that it is not just loose change after all the important bills have been paid. It is a significant enough commitment that one has to decide whether you see what you have in life as a blessing from God or as a possession that you have earned. Like the choice in Elijah's contest with the fertility gods of Canaan, you have to decide whether you see life as made up of things that you must possess to assure security and pleasure or as a reflection of the blessings of God who can be trusted for the future. You are challenged to declare by your pledge whether your life is shaped by Baal or God.
Elijah set up a contest between the gods. Both groups would set up a sacrifice on an altar at the top of Mount Carmel. The real God would receive the sacrifice by fire. Fire was a common symbol of the power and presence of God in the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. At Pentecost it was the tongues of fire that symbolized the presence of God empowering the frightened disciples to overcome their fears and go forth boldly into the world.
The prophets of Baal set up their sacrifice and exhausted themselves with prayers and ritual dances to call upon their god to receive the sacrifice. Despite all of their efforts, they were not able to command such a god to act. When you see people who literally exhaust themselves in all sorts of work and societal rituals in order to attain security and happiness in life and yet continue to come up short, you know that the story of the Baal prophets points to a reality in our lives as well.
When it was Elijah's turn, he took twelve stones, one for each tribe of Israel. Symbolically he was gathering together the history of their life's experience. These were the stepping stones that had brought them to this decisive point in time. Like Elijah, our response to the promise of God is not something that happens out of the blue but is built on all our experiences within the church community. If you look at the major turning points or stepping stones of your life, both good and bad, God has been silently present nurturing you to respond to promise rather than despair.
It is the altar of our lives upon which the prophet lays the sacrifice bidding God to receive it. Then, we are told, Elijah poured gallons and gallons of water on the sacrifice. There was to be no human explanation if God received the sacrifice. If you think about the times when you were grasped by a power from beyond you and given a sense of calm in the face of fear or grief, you know there is no human explanation. Yet, for a moment, you were born of the Spirit. Life was sustained not by your wisdom or material resources but by something divine.
Elijah's prayer was: "Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, answer me and let this people know that thou art God and that thou hast turned their hearts back." Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob recalled the stepping stones of the community's faith. Abraham was the one who left everything behind to respond to the promise of God in faith. Isaac means God's laughter and reminds us of the need of humor that keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously. Israel was the name given Jacob and means one who wrestles with God. It is in our response in faith to the promise of God, to the humor of life and the joy of God, and our willingness to wrestle at decisive points in our lives with the presence of God that we experience the power of God in our lives.
It was then that fire fell and consumed the sacrifice. It is then that the power of God's presence absorbs our fears, insecurities, and empowers us to face life in the power of God's Spirit. To be born again is to suddenly recognize how our mugwumping has been ineffectual in enabling us to experience the depth of life. To be born again is to realize that our attempt to secure ourselves against the insecurities of life and to satisfy our desires through indulgence is hopeless. When each of us reviews the journey of our life, the stepping stones that have brought us to this moment, it begins to dawn on us how often there has been a hint of the divine presence waiting silently for us to respond.
Then, in promise, laughter, and struggle, we slowly begin to open ourselves to be guided by a power that is beyond us. We begin to allow ourselves to be grasped by a truth that empowers us to overcome our anxieties and to trust in the faithfulness of a love that transcends even our fear of death. It is this new life that was revealed to us by Jesus who lived in response to God's Spirit even though he was tempted by the same human realities that we are.
It is a new birth, a new beginning to life. It is a life lived in response to the promise of the Spirit rather than a life lived in response to the fears of the flesh. It may happen in an explosive experience that seems to overwhelm us or, for many of us, it may slowly dawn on us through a series of experiences that confront us with what we really trust in life and nurtures us into greater and greater trust in God whose love increasingly sets us free for the promise of life lived in the Spirit. Amen.
