Thirteenth Sunday After

Pentecost C
2016

13th Sunday After Pentecost

1. Psalm 82. Can someone tell me what that is about? God is in a council meeting
with other gods are is yelling at them because they dont do their job right: they
favor the wicked over the poor and the needy.
Biblical scholars point out that Psalm 82 is a vestige of the polytheistic past of the Jews.
Prior to God revealing himself to Abraham and the Patriarchs, up to the middle of the bronze
age, all the people of the middles east, including the ancestors of the Jews, were polytheistic,
that is to say they believed in many gods.
How did the change from believing in many gods (polytheism) to believing in one God
(monotheism) take place? Some scholars suggest that it might have been triggered by a
natural disaster.
About 1600 years BC (36 centuries ago) there was a huge volcanic eruption. The Greek
island of Santorini blew up. It was one of the most violent volcanic eruptions in history.
Given the amount of debris spear around the world, scientists estimate that it had the force
of 50,000 atomic bombs.
It triggered a tsunami wave that was nearly 500 feet high. It caused an unbelievable set of
fiery storms, raining fire and brimstone all over the Mediterranean and the Ancient Near
East. It caused a dramatic change in climate for a few years, with exceptionally heavy
rainstorms that devastated crops from Egypt to China. Scientists in California found evidence
of the climate change in tree rings, and date the event to 1628 BC.
In pre-scientific times people had no idea of what had happened and why. It was obvious to
them that no human being could cause such catastrophe. The only explanation they could
come up with was that there must have been a fight between gods and that a new god using
storms and lightning as his weapons, had overthrown the old gods.
Coincidentally, fight after the Santorini eruption, there were radical changes in several
religions in the area. In Greece, people begun to believe that the old god Kronos, had been
overthrown by his son Zeus, the storm god who, used lightening and storms as a weapon
In Babylon, people begun to believe that Marduk, the god of storms had defeated and killed
the old supreme goddess Tiamat.

13th Sunday After Pentecost

In Palestine the Canaanite believed that Baal the go of storms, had defeated all the
other gods and replaced the supreme god El. A similar shift in religion happened as
far as India.
Is it a coincidence that the Old Testament often describes Yahweh as a storm god:
surrounded by clouds and lightning? God spoke to Moses from a cloud and a burning
bush. The way the Bible describes Yahweh is similar to the way Baal is described in
Ugarit tablets.
However, in Exodus, Yahweh tells Moses that he is the same God that his ancestors, the
patriarchs had worshiped under the name El. So for the Jews, this phenomenon did not
result in the belief that the old god had been overthrown by a storm god, but in the
belief that there is only one God.
The Jews did not get to this belief in one God overnight. There was always one party
that held that the only God was Yahweh. But they lives side by side with people who
worshipped Baal and many other gods, so many Jews waved in and out of monotheism.
In Exodus we read that, while they were in the desert and Moses had gone up Mt. Sinai
to get the tablets of the law from God, the Jews rebelled and compelled Aaron to make
them a golden calf (symbol of Baal) to worship. When Moses came down the mountain
there was bloodshed.
For centuries the prophets (like Jeremiah in todays reading) are raging against the
worship of Baal. That is a sure sign that the worship of Baal continued to be a problem
in Jewish Society. Eventually, around 5 centuries BC, monotheism became the only
religion of Israel

2. In todays Gospel Jesus tells his disciples that they cannot serve multiple
gods. They must choose.
Idolatry is the believe in false gods. Idolatry, polytheism would seem like an odd
subject. Nobody believes in multiple gods in the Western world. We are all Christians
here, what do we have to do with idolatry and the worship of Baal?

13th Sunday After Pentecost

There are people in our society are actually pagans. But there are many people who believe in things
such as astrology. The notion that the planets and the stars have some kind of influence on our lives
and on our destiny. There are people who consult card readers, palm readers and such superstitions.
These are forms of idolatry, based on the notions that there are other supernatural spirits or powers
outside God and that people can gain knowledge or power by tapping into some sort of supernatural
source of power which is beyond God. That is a form of idolatry
There are other religious manifestations within Christianity that come close to idolatry: the way some
deal with Christian saints comes dangerously close to idolatry
There are also people who create God in their own image. The Bible describes God as love (the father of
the prodigal son) yet some Christians misinterpret entirely some passages in the Bible and create a
harsh and hateful God, then then turns people off to religion
What would you be ready to sacrifice everything for? Money? Career? Success? If that is the highest
value in your life, then it is a form of idolatry
There is only one God, and now, as in the Bible, he asks us that we believe in him. Jesus revealed God as
love. A God who is all around us and supports us, while allowing us to make our choices and live our life as
we wish. Even allowing us to ignore him

3. Jesus in Lukes Gospel is asking his disciples to make a hard choice. Either chose him, or chose
whatever idol youd like, and if you chose God, then you may lose your friends or even your
family, who will not understand what you are trying to do. Jesus is not interested in
compromise, in sharing top billing with some other idol: we are either with him or against him.
How can we then respond to this divine challenge. The letter to the Hebrews provides the answer. The
only answer we can give God is our faith.
We have been reading the epistle to the Hebrews over the past few Sundays In todays reading we find a
list of people in the OT who were deemed righteous [in the right relationship with God] because of their
faith.
Faith is a child-like trust in the love of God. Just like children trust the love of their parents. This faith is
a gift from God that we are free to accept or reject, and turn to idolatry
Ultimately, to have faith means to accept that there is a God, that we are his creatures and that we can
always count of Gods love in spite of our shortcomings.