Second Sunday after Pentecost; 19 June 2022; Proper 7C (RCL); 1 Kings 19:1-15a; Psalms 42-43; Glatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39.
The reading from 1 Kings is quite rich. Elijah has just won his contest with the 450 prophets of Baal, and has had them killed at the Wadi Kishon, and the people had fallen on their faces and acknowledged the Lord as God. Jezebel has threatened Elijah, who has fled for his life, to Beersheba, in Judah, out of her reach. In the wilderness, he sits under a broom tree and asks to die. Jonah would echo Elijah as he sat under the castor bean plant outside Nineveh.
Elijah is echoing Moses, who complains to God that if he must carry this people all by himself, he would rather die. Elijah sleeps and is awakened by a messenger (from Jezebel? – the word is the same as the messenger who delivered her threat to him), and instructed to eat miraculous bread and drink miraculous water. He sleeps again, and this time is awakened by a messenger from the Lord (phew!), and instructed again to eat miraculous bread and drink miraculous water, else the way will be too much for him.
He then journeys 40 days to Mount Horeb (=Sinai) and enters a cave (the cleft in the rock in which Moses stood?). Moses was on the top of Mount Sinai for 40 days, and the people journeyed through the wilderness for 40 years. The NT will echo this by having Jesus fast 40 days in the wilderness, and later appear on the mountain top with Moses and Elijah. As Elijah hides in the cave a great storm passes by, but God is not in the storm (although a storm arose after his contest with the prophets of Baal). Then comes an earthquake, but God is not in the earthquake, and then a fire. It sounds for all the world like a volcanic eruption, much like Moses experienced on the top of the mountain. But unlike Moses’ experience, God was not in any of these manifestations.
After the eruption, Elijah hears the sound of sheer silence ( wonderful oxymoron). God is in the silence. A second time, the voice asks Elijah what he is doing here, and he gives the same self-pitying answer: I have been very zealous for the Lord, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, killed your prophets, and I alone am left. God will have none of it, and sends him back north (the the wilderness of Damascus). We leave out the rest of God’s charge to him: anoint Hazael as king of Aram, Jehu as king of Israel, and Elisha as your successor; whom Hazael doesn’t kill, Jehu will kill and whom Jehu doesn’t kill, Elisha will kill, until only 7000 are left who have not bowed to Baal. I would not want to be the bearer of that vocation.
The exorcism of the Legion share some similarities with the Elijah story, and even more with the Moses story. Jesus has just miraculously crossed the sea when he encounters the demoniac, whose name is Legion, the name for a unit of the Roman army of somewhere between 3000 and 6000 men, about the same as a brigade in a modern army. Jesus casts the demon into a herd of pigs (Mark tells us the herd number about 2000 pigs, about the size of a legion), who rush into the sea and drown. Like Moses, Jesus has (humorously) conquered an oppressor’s army.
When the townspeople come out to see what is the commotion, they see the demoniac, clothed, in his right mind, and sitting at the feet of Jesus — after the storminess for which he was previously know, this amounts to a sound of sheer silence. And their response is not wonder, but fear.
The townspeople are afraid, much like Elijah was afraid, despite the stunning victory of Jesus over the demons. Why? Who would be eating those pigs? Most likely, the swineherds were raising those pigs to feed the Roman legion occupying Palestine at the time. The garrison commander is going to be pretty upset at the loss of provisions for the army he is responsible for. No wonder they want Jesus to leave — like Elijah, he is a troubler of Israel.
There are those who say religion and politics don’t mix, but clearly, in these two stories, they do. Elijah stands up to the king (Ahab) and his queen (Jezebel), and for his trouble is given the vocation of anointing kings to purify God’s people. Jesus, in a story that would be recognizable to the hearers of the Gospel, conquers an occupying army. But, then like now, fear follows witness.
The demoniac (or rather the man freed from demons) on the other hand, knows no such fear. He openly declares all that Jesus has done for him — not something likely to ingratiate either himself or Jesus into the favor of those who lost the pigs. It takes the courage of having been released from oppression to inspire us to call out oppression where we see it. And it’s likely to get us in trouble. Elijah seemed to forget, almost immediately, the spectacular display of power on Mount Carmel when he feared for his life at Jezebel’s threat. The man healed of the legion of demons demonstrated no such fear after his encounter with Jesus. Let silence make us fearless.