Week 10 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Kings 18:20-39; Psalm 15; Matthew 5:17-19

As children, at school, there was a lot to hold our attention in the stories from the Bible, especially from the Old Testament. There were so many big characters and colourful and dramatic stories. We had Moses and Samson, Joshua and Elijah, Jacob and David, supermen easily placed alongside Batman and Superman. There were mighty women also - Delilah and Deborah and Judith, to go with the super-heroines of the comics we read. It all fitted very easily with what we were also seeing in the cinema - cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, heroes and villains.

'When I was a child I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child' (1 Corinthians 13:11). The world was enchanted but also dualistic (even though we would not then have understood the term!), the children of light engaging in warfare with the sons and daughters of darkness, to save the world, save civilisation, save humanity.

'When I became a man I gave up childish ways'. Well, did I, really? It is still much easier to think in dualistic terms and we see it being done all the time - rich and poor, north and south, black and white, Christian and Muslim, left-wing and right-wing, conservative and liberal. It seems that even when the world loses its enchantment for us, and we become more skeptical about the arrival of any heroic deus ex machina to save the day, we still go on thinking in dualistic terms. 

The story of Elijah's confrontation with the priests of Baal is therefore one with which we will be very comfortable, at least from the point of view of its simplicity. One faithful prophet against four hundred and fifty pagan priests. An absent and/or powerless god who can do nothing with a dry bull ('perhaps he is on the loo', Elijah taunts) compared with an always present, always powerful, always ready to act Lord, the God of Israel, to whose devouring fire the bull soaked in water presents no difficulty. There are goodies and baddies, and it is clear who they are, the odds are stacked against the goodies, but they have the Superhero of all superheroes rooting for them and so all is well - 'the Lord is God, the Lord is God' echoes along the slopes of Mount Carmel and across the beautiful valley of Jezreel. (You can still hear the echo if you visit there today!)

Fast forward to another Galilean hillside and another prophet, speaking to a crowd of followers and others. It is less dramatic, less colourful, less noisy or smelly, there is no bull. Very soon Jesus will make a series of contrasts between the old law and his new law - 'you have heard that it was said ... but I say to you'. It is all too easy to place this within the simple familiar pattern with which our minds are most comfortable - old is bad, new is good; Jewish law bad, Christian law good; ancestors limited, we enlightened; former times primitive, our times sophisticated.

But this prophet will frequently challenge, subvert, upend our easy, lazy, dualistic way of thinking. It is as if this is the heart of his preaching. Who goes home justified? Who is chosen? Who enters first into the kingdom of heaven? Who will be first and who last? Who wins and who loses?

So he prefaces this series of 'you have heard ... but I say' with a warning which obliges us to think again and to think hard. It  directly confronts our tendency to separate into 'goodie' and 'baddie', our childish way of thinking. We can say simply that it calls us to think, to think deeply and consistently, perhaps to think seriously for the first time. His mission is all about metanoia, a change of mind, a revolution in how we think. So do not imagine, he says, that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. Think this instead: I have come to complete them, in every last detail. It you want to be great in my kingdom then keep these laws in every detail and teach others to do the same. (Is he being serious?)

It is not by being childish in our way of thinking that we are to be like little children so as to enter his kingdom, thinking the world is a showdown, understood simplistically, between the good and the bad (with you and I always among the good, of course).  It is all much more interesting, more complicated, more of a challenge to human imagination and thought, more dramatic spiritually - how to understand this world and the providence unfolding within it, how to stay with this prophet in all the confusion that can gather round, how to have 'the mind of Christ' and to stand with him as he brings all law, all prophets, all promises, all covenants, to unimagined completion.

Elijah and Moses, those two great superheroes of our childhood, will soon confirm this, appearing with him on yet another Galilean hill, pointing to him, only to fade away quietly, leaving only Jesus. And the quiet echo of the Father's voice, 'listen to him'.