August 13, 2023
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 13, 2023 – 1 Kings 19:9A, 11-13A; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33
When I look in the mirror in the morning, I see my father looking back at me. When I sit down like this, unconsciously my posture is frequently that of my Italian grandmother. And I often find myself saying things my mother said forty years ago. Like it or not, we almost all become our parents in some ways at some time.
Sometimes we do ourselves a disservice having these little snippets of scripture at Mass. The only way to understand today’s first reading would be to read the whole thing, which is very, very long, but I’ll summarize it for you. Elijah had a contest with the priests of Baal to get something done and Yahweh God caused Elijah to win. But, after his win, in his victory dance, so to speak, he had all 450 prophets of Baal executed by being beheaded which, of course, enraged Queen Jezebel and King Ahab and she put out a fatwah on him. So, the story picks up today as he’s escaping, running for his life, into the desert. He comes to an oasis and plops himself down under a tree, exhausted and despairing. And that’s when he says, “Lord, take my life, I am no better than my father.” That line, “… take my life, I am no better than my father,” is the key line to this entire story and it’s buried.
The next thing that happens is some angel appears with food and says, “Hey, Elijah, eat something. Come on, eat something.” And he refuses. And he says, “Listen, Elijah, if you don’t eat something, you won’t be strong enough to continue the journey.” So, Elijah eats, and he continues to journey for forty days more - forty is always a time of preparation and learning. Forty days more to the mountain, Horeb. And we don’t care what mountain it is, do we? Geography means nothing to us. But Horeb Sinai is the place where, four hundred years before that, someone else appeared to someone else in lightning, wind, and rain. It was the first great epiphany of God to Moses. And it was a terrible, terrible experience. Thunder and lightning and wind, and everyone was terrified. So, Elijah is going back to his roots to try and find something there that will sustain him.
But notice what happens in today’s story. There’s the wind, there’s the fire, there’s the earthquake, there’s the thunder, and God is not in any of them. That’s why Elijah covers his face with his hands. Because it’s the ultimate betrayal, the ultimate despair. God is not here where I came to find Him. And then there’s a small whispering sound. That’s where our story stopped. But the next thing that happens is the true resolution of the story. Out of the small whispering sound comes the voice of God. The same thundering voice that Moses used to hear except now it’s a very quiet voice. And it says, “Elijah, why are you here?” It’s an astoundingly open-ended question. “Elijah, why are you here?” And Elijah doesn’t answer but God continues to speak God says, “I have more work for you to do.” He sends him to places where he is out of the clutches of Jezebel but there’s truly work to be done.
Elijah felt that he was no better than his father because, just like Israelites before him, he spoiled a moment of triumph with God by sinful behavior. Certainly, the gratuitous murder of 450 people was sinful behavior, but God pushes past that, and God doesn’t allow him to go back and try to use the old stuff over again. There is a new direction.
I think to myself sometimes, “You know, right know there are people in our congregation - the majority of us, not all of you, but the majority of us - are in their 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. Alright? We thought of ourselves as very different from one another growing up, but the demographers have lumped us all together as the “baby boomers.” And we thought we were doing great stuff, didn’t we? Huh? The equal rights movement, the feminist movement, the peace movement. All that stuff came out of us. But now we sit in front of our televisions and watch the news at night, and it looks like nothing got fixed and it’s all still a mess.
My generation of priests, those who were ordained between the late 60s and the late 70s, we’re the Vatican II babies. And we thought we had the answer to all the Church’s problems, and we were going to fix them all. We really did. We knew it all and we were going to do it all. And we did some good things. But we also did some not so good things and some terrible things. The Church still is in need of fixing.
The same thing is true in our personal lives. Whatever you do, or did, for a living, whatever family you created for yourself, you did some really good things. But stuff happens. Sometimes you caused the stuff to happen. Sometimes, other people caused the stuff to happen to you. And sometimes, it’s hard to explain how it happened. But it did. And we all say, “I am no better than my father.” And we think that, as American citizens and as Catholics, if we just go back to the sources, everything will be okay. You know. The Constitution. The words of Jesus. The traditions of the Church. But you just can’t go back because you have to move forward. There has to be a new beginning. And God says to us, no matter what our age is, “Why are you here?” Why are you here?
It’s interesting that last Sunday’s gospel and this Sunday’s gospel had no connection. But, in both of them, the story ended with Jesus saying to someone, “Do not be afraid. It is I.” So, we are no better than our fathers. That’s just the way of life. But if God asks us today, “Why are you here?” “Do not be afraid, I am with you.”