Acorn Sunday 1999 | 2 Kings 8:6-32

*Preached at Grace North Church November 14, 1999*

God cannot be trusted. That's really all I have to say. Yes, yes, I'm going to go on talking for another fifteen minutes or so, but when I get to the end of it, it will all come back to the same message: God is not to be trusted.

Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing, since I'm sure that God only has our good in mind, but the ways God goes about working out his good are not always beyond reproach.

"That's a shocking statement" you might be saying, and you are right, of course. We in the West like to whitewash our gods, and consign all evil to a convenient scapegoat. Well, not this morning. Today, God doesn't get off so easy.

I remember when I was about five years old, our pastor would come over to visit, and he would actually play with me. I would hold my arms stiff by my sides, making little fists with my hands. And the pastor would grab my two little hands in his big ones, and lift me up by my own elbow-locked limbs. I hooted, I howled, I bumped my head on the ceiling. It was wonderful.

I had positive experiences of our pastors all during my formative years, back when Southern Baptists were more moderate and less kooky. They were the only intellectuals idolized in my little world. So when I began to think about what I was going to do in the big bad world upon entering adolescence, the choice was obvious. I surrendered to the ministry, and when I was sixteen I was licensed as a Southern Baptist preacher. "I trust you, God" I said. "I will follow wherever you lead." Well, if I had KNOWN that God was going to lead me to become a Catholic priest, I would have thought twice about surrendering my life to the minstry!

God tricked me, no doubt about it. He's a wily weasel, and not to be trusted, not for a second. Of course, it's not just my own experience that tells me this. The religions of the world are repleat with stories of God's trickery. In Hinduism the story is told of how the demons of the Triple city had gained great holiness and virtue. Now since the demons were the sworn enemies of the gods, this didn't please Vishnu or Shiva at all. But because the demons worshipped Shiva, and practised all the Vedic rites, and were kind and righteous, the gods couldn't touch them. Shiva especially couldn't touch them, after all they sacrificed to him! This was obviously an intolerable situation--what were the gods to do? Vishnu had a plan. As he so often had done in the past, Lord Vishnu was incarnate in human form. He was born as the Buddha, and as the Buddha, Vishnu went to the Triple City and taught the gods the heretical teachings of the Buddha. He taught such heresies as nonviolence, he satirized the Vedic sacrifices, and preached against the caste system. The demons were inspired by the monk's teaching, and they embraced Buddhism. Because of this apostacy, they were no longer righteous, and the gods were able to swoop in and demolish their city.

That Vishnu is one tricky guy, isn't he? Now you might be thinking, "Well, that's Hinduism! They worship cows and make their clergy sit naked in the streets. What do they know? Our God would never do anything like that." But if you paid attention to our first reading this morning, of course, you are not saying that at all.

In our story from the second book of Kings, we find that Yahweh can be just as tricky as Vishnu, though perhaps a bit less bloodthirsty, at least in this passage. In this reading, the King of Syria has it in for Elisha the prophet. Now remember, Elisha is the successor to Elijah, and we don't set a place for HIM at passover. Still, he was a pretty great prophet in his time, which is why the King of Syria wants him dead. He's TOO great a prophet--he can even hear what the King is saying in his private chambers.

So the king sends an army out to kill Elisha. An entire army to destroy one man! The king knew what he was up against, of course. This was not overkill. When Elisha and his servant saw the great host surrounding the city they were in, the servant flipped out a little, "Oh my," he says, "What in the world are we going to do?" But Elisha is unflappable. He says a little prayer and tells the servant to look again. And behold! The servant sees a great host of the heavenly army, perched on the mountains, about to swoop down upon their enemies. But for some reason, he did not let the Syrian army see this vision. Instead, he prayed to God to have them struck blind. God apparently thought this was a pretty good plan, and did it. Then Elisha lied to the army's commander, saying "Elisha isn't here, but I'll take you to him."

No, come on, if you were this commander, don't you think you'd be a little suspicious that something was UP? "Oh dear, I'm blind. Oh, dear, all of my men are blind. Well, what a pity. Still, we have a job to do" We're not going to consider the veracity of the record here, but it does make you wonder.

So the army follows Elisha right out of Israel into Samaria. Then he did a most unusual thing, he had God restore their sight, and he treated them with kindness, not only sparing their lives, but giving them a good meal before sending them home.

Yahweh, too, is capable of deceit, especially if it will help him get his way. So it won't do any good for us to think that our God is somehow morally superior to Vishnu or any other pagan deities. The devil, at the time of this writing, had yet to be invented, and so if anything unusual happened, it was all blamed on God. Thankfully, this story has less of a bloody ending than many, and God comes out looking relatively good. But that still doesn't mean you can exactly trust him.

No doubt many of you have had experiences where you have felt tricked, betrayed, even abandoned by God. There is any excellent examply of this right here, in the story of this very community. A wealthy and conservative Episcopal parish sends to England for a real Anglican priest who will honor their traditional sensibilities when it comes to liturgy. And who do they find? Fr. Richard Mapplebeckpalmer.

This is God's trick #1. Now you'd think they'd have gotton a clue what they were in for by his kooky name, but no, they offered him a handsome salary, a beautiful rectory, and as Monty Python says, "All the gold he could eat." How could he say no? He and his family made the long journey around the world to Berkeley, California. Now the people of this parish had prayed for a British rector, a conservative churchman, someone who would honor their distinctive way of being church. And what did they get? An eccentric Brit who wants to have Indian temple dancers performing in front of the alter. Did God trick them? You bet God did.

But now take a look and this poor parson and his family. They uproot their lives and come all the way around the world with high hopes and great trust that God is leading them into a great adventure. Well, if only they KNEW what kind of adventure God was leading them into. They might have stayed home! For here in California they were met with a church that didn't understand them, a bishop who didn't support them, and parishoners who'd just as soon see them skinned alive. The poor parson is run out of the church on a rail, and left stranded 4000 miles from home. God's trick #2.

Can God be trusted? Hey, ask anybody here, they know! They KNOW! God is a trickster, a fox, or as C.S. Lewis says in the Narnia stories, "He's not a TAME lion." Not tame, indeed.

And yet, what has God been up to. What of this trickery that has led a good little Baptist boy to be a Catholic priest? What of this trickery that led an English family to California? What of this trickery that has led a rag-tag bunch of Episcopalians and Congregationalists to forge a bold new vision of how to be the church?

You'll note that in all of the stories we heard, God's deception was always in service of some great plan. We may not approve of God's methods, but apparently in heaven, the means do indeed justify the ends. For here, at Grace North Church, this trickster God has forged a most unusual and important vision: that of a Congregational Catholic church. Our worship is strictly Anglo-Catholic, and yet the laity run the church, hire the pastors, and are lorded over by no one but God himself. I have seen the likes of it nowhere else on earth, and it is a glorious vision indeed.

Now, unbenownst to you, I do a lot of writing about theology and church history, and these writings have made their mark amongst Old Catholics. Grace North Church is legend, a bold experiment that has inspired Old Catholic clergy and clergy-in-training far and wide.

Last month, I got an email from a priest in Arizona, saying, "Fr. John, the vision that you and the people of Grace North Church have for a Congregational Catholic community is exactly what our churches need to hear. We need your voice and your leadership. Would you consider becoming a bishop, and help to form other communities like yours?"

That God. Can't trust him for a second. I always said that I didn't want to be a bishop, wouldn't be a bishop, couldn't make me a bishop if you threatened to sell my sister to the Bolivians. Personally, I think God is snickering even as I speak. Now I have priests and deacons from Chicago, Oregon, Arizona and here in California saying, "Do it." So you tell me, what do I do?

This is just a little nut, yet it is deceptively small. It is another of God's tricks, you know. Take this little thing and bury it in some dirt, and the mightiest tree in the forest emerges from it. Amazing. But that is they way it often is with God. He tricks you into thinking something is insignificant, or even that something or someone is unimportant, or even a failure. And yet out of such small beginnings, grand things result. Jesus took twelve uneducated blue-collar workers and conquered the Western world. Such a small thing

Who knows what great things shall emerge from this tiny community? I don't know what will happen, of course, but I can dream. I dream of a National Association of Congregational Catholic churches that will pick up the torch from this community and run with it. Parishes that worship as the Orthodox do, as the Romans Catholics do, and as Anglicans do, but free from the tyranny of the clergy. A free association of churches that are autonomous, soveriegn bodies, who call their ministers to serve them, not to rule them, and yet honor the sacred rituals and theology of ancient Christendom.

Yes, I have a vision, but it is not mine alone. It is the vision of this community, forged here amongst these stresses, these friendships, these hallowed walls. And shall we take this vision to the world? What is God doing here?

Whatever it is, let us be on our guard. We never really know what God is up to. Is he sending the Buddha amongst us to deceive us? Is he blinding us and sending us home by the long way around? Is he sending a wacky English priest to upset our applecart? Is he asking us to trust him and then leaving us stranded? Is he turning our good little Protestant boys into Catholic priests, or even more horrifying, into Bishops?

Yes, God is doing all of these things. "He's not a tame lion," said Mrs. Beaver to the Pevensie children, "But he's GOOD." From deceptively small beginnings, great things grow. Thanks be to God. Let us pray

God, we trust you and we do not trust you.
I think that this is appropriate, given our history with you.
Yet, I also believe that through all the twists and turns
in the plotlines of life on earth,
that you are working all things out for the greater good.
Help us to trust that, to go along with your nutty plans,
to love you in spite of the deceptive havoc life presents us with,
and to know that the acorn you have planted here will bear
friut for generations to come.
For we ask this in the name of the trickster coyote of Israel,
Even Jesus Christ. Amen.