Psalm 30
2 Kings 5:1-14
Galatians 6:7-16
Luke 10:1-11 , 16-20
Hymn: 94 (Nature With Open Volume Stands)
Homilist: Gary Chartier

En route to Jerusalem, James and John decide that the time for violence is long overdue.

Residents of a Samaritan village refuse to welcome Jesus—after all, he’s headed for the principal city of the Samaritans’ religious rivals—and the disciples sometimes called the “Sons of Thunder” see violence as a natural response. “Master,” they ask, “do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?”

It is interesting to ask just what they had in mind. When I first read about the violent, apocalyptic fantasies of the members of the Qumran community, who gave us the Dead Sea scrolls, I assumed that they believed God would actually rain down death on their enemies from heaven. Divine miracles would annihilate the Romans and those who collaborated with them, along with the impure and unholy. And perhaps that’s what they had in mind. But I’ve realized that when the biblical prophets talk about God’s action in history, they’re thinking of mediated action, action occurring in and through the acts of human beings. So I have come to wonder whether the War Scroll of the Essenes might not have depicted what the Essenes themselves hoped God would do to their enemies through them. They may truthfully have believed that they were referring to God’s work, while understanding that the work would be performed by human hands. They may well have understood their apocalyptic language as metaphor.

This is obviously pure speculation. What is not speculation is that, as they are depicted here, James and John believe that God is a God of vengeance and that divine justice is rightly meted out to those who put false religious beliefs on display. More broadly, they believe that God is a god of power. In today’s reading from Second Kings, for instance, God materializes a chariot of fire and horses of fire and uses a whirlwind to draw Elijah into heaven. The images of the fire, the horses, and the whirlwind all suggest raw, untamable power, and Second Kings seeks here to highlight God’s possession and use of such power.

The same vision is evident in today’s psalm, celebrating as it does God’s “mighty deeds,” the “wonders of old” accomplished by God’s power. Superior to the other gods, Yahweh puts divine might on display in view of the world’s people, instilling terror even in the waters of chaos. Israel’s god is a warrior, whose arrows are lightning bolts, and who works redemption by violence.

There is a stark contrast between the posture of James and John and the way of life commended in Galatians by St. Paul. The Golden Rule’s requirement of fairness and a ringing call to bear the Spirit’s harvest in one’s own life—a harvest of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—are nothing like the program of divine vengeance the disciples seek to foster or implement.

Ironically, however, today, in a society awash in Christian imagery, the god of power clearly takes precedence over the Spirit who nurtures the flowering of fairness and grace. Punishment, retaliation, retribution—these are regularly sought not only by demagogues but by people steeped in traditions of peace (like the gentle Quaker radio commentator whose jarring call for a post-September 11 invasion of Afghanistan I still recall with dismay). Like James and John, good people today call down fire out of heaven, sometimes all too literally.

More broadly, though, power—some­times therapeutic, sometimes paternalistic—is increasingly pervasive. It may not come to expression in overt acts of violence. But as people’s lives are regimented, manipulated, structured, coralled, subjected to surveillance, as due process is increasingly treated as a relic of the past (all this as people ready themselves for another year’s ritual sermonizing about freedom), we see a disturbingly familiar model of power put more and more confidently on display. It does not always feature the overt violence about which James and John enthuse in our Gospel—though some times it does. But it involves the same implacable willingness to ride rough-shod over dissent, even if clothed, often enough, in a friendlier visage. The road ahead is paved with easy slogans and good intentions.

It is easy for us comfortably to indulge in a sense of self-righteous superiority, knowing ourselves to be peaceful and tolerant. We don’t celebrate or call for punitive violence, do we?

Well, do we?

I suspect our attitudes are often more punitive than we would like to think. It’s surprisingly easy for decent people to decide that a colleague who has messed up in some way ought to be sent packing—not because they expect more bad things from her or him in the future, but as retribution for past behavior (or to convey a message of moral rectitude to the community).

But let’s grant that we aren’t always punitive. We can still find ways, institutionally and personally, to control and dominate. Emotional manipulation of our loved ones, paternalistic attempts to manage others’ lives for their own good, decisions rooted in the serene confidence that we know what’s best for others, whatever their own preferences—none of these things involves a call for fire to come down out of heaven, but all of them reflect a willing embrace of power.

Recall that James and John’s horrific proposal to Jesus comes as he is proceeding to Jerusalem for a final confrontation with those who hold the reins of power in his society. That confrontation will climax as Jesus hangs on the cross, crying out in terror and abandonment, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Central to the Christian gospel is the attempt to rethink divine power as the power of a God seen with surprising and disturbing clarity in this image of Jesus on the cross. The impact of that image on Christians’ perceptions of divine power continues to reverberate: too many people still see Jesus as a temporary disguise for the god of power, the god who calls down fire. But the deification of oppressive power is difficult, at best, to square with support for the Golden Rule and the harvest of the Spirit.

We can see that. But seeing the truth doesn’t free us from inner conflict. The sinful nature—the side of us that seeks aggressive power, that relishes domination—struggles against the Spirit, and the Spirit nudges and lures and woos us toward a way of life in contrast to the authoritarianism craved by the sinful nature. We have work to do, in our own lives, and in the institutions and communities we influence.

Elijah spoke truth to power (even if he, too, seems to have embraced a picture of God as identified with aggressive force). Let’s take up his mantle. We can say “no” to the temptation to call down fire out of heaven, “no” to the temptation to celebrate domination and control and the kind of imperial authority that crucified Jesus once he reached Jerusalem. Let’s remember that we, and all people, are called to be free.