"The Only Lord is God" by Colleen O’Sullivan

"The Only Lord is God" by Colleen O’Sullivan

Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

Ahab sent to all the children of Israel and had the prophets assemble on Mount Carmel.  Elijah appealed to all the people and said, “How long will you straddle the issue?  If the Lord is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him.”  The LORD’s fire came down and consumed the burnt offering, wood, stones, and dust, and it lapped up the water in the trench.  Seeing this, all the people fell prostrate and said, “The Lord is God! The Lord is God!”  (1 Kings 18:20-21b, 38-39)

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.  (Matthew 5:17)

Piety

Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge;
I say to the LORD, “My Lord are you.”

You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.  (Psalm 16:1b-2a, 11)

Study

Our first reading is quite a long one.  Evidently, some of God’s people were hedging their bets and attempting to worship both God and Baal.  Most of us know what that’s like.  We say we worship God, but our lives sometimes say otherwise, if we take into account our attachments to money, the things money can buy, and the power we enjoy wielding over others. 

The prophet Elijah decided to settle this commitment issue once and for all.  He set up a contest between the God of Israel and Baal to show who the true god really was.  He saw that each set of followers was given a bull which could be sacrificed on an altar.  The animal was prepared and the altar was set for a fire.  Elijah told the Baal worshipers to go first.  They spent hours dancing around, calling on and pleading with their god to light the fire.  But there was not a sound; no one answered, and no one was listening. (I Kings 18:29b) Nothing happened.

In the afternoon, it was the children of Israel’s turn.  They rebuilt the altar to God, which had been destroyed.  The prophet told the people to dig a trench around it and then to pour water over the offering and the entire altar.  Even the trench ended up full of water.  We all know that fire doesn’t generally destroy anything that’s been water-soaked.  Elijah prayed to God to let everyone know who the Lord is.  Flames began licking at the altar.  Before long, the sacrificial bull, the wood, the stones, even the dirt and the water in the trenches had been consumed!   The people fell to the ground in adoration of the one, true God.

Action

That was an extremely dramatic way of revealing the God of Israel as the one true God, who doesn’t like us making gods of other things in life.   And yet, that is exactly what we so often find ourselves doing.  Take money, for example.  There’s nothing wrong with money in and of itself.  It’s good to have enough and a great thing to share when we’ve got more than we need.   It’s very much longed for when we don’t have enough to get by.  But sometimes we put too much stock in it.  My father once said to me that there’s not much in life that money can’t fix.  I wondered about that at the time, but from the perspective of 40 years later, I’d advise always putting our faith in God over greenbacks.  Our money will never love us, but God always will.  Money never offers forgiveness, though we sometimes use it to try and cover our sins.  God, on the other hand, is like the father in The Prodigal Son, always ready and willing to take us back when we are repentant.   Money can buy healthcare, but it can’t guarantee good health.  My dad could afford to be cared for in his old age, for which I’m very grateful, but no amount of money could stop the ravages of dementia toward the end.

Maybe it isn’t money that we idolize.  Perhaps it’s what money can buy – expensive cars, big houses, drugs to soothe our addictions.  Just name the commodity, and someone will be willing to sell it to us.    Our possessions tend to get old and wear out, fall apart or are given away when we die. God, on the other hand, is forever.  God’s Son talked to the first disciples about going to prepare a place for us, a forever place in heaven.   Jesus never gets worn out.  He’s always got our eternal home ready and waiting whenever we get there.

In recent days, we’ve been forced to acknowledge the fact that many of us enjoy wielding power over others.  Racism is one form of this.  It’s a sick way of feeling like we are better than someone else.  The thing we seem to have forgotten is that when God played in the dirt past the seventh day of creation, God created us to be of many races and colors.  And God blew the very same breath of life into every one of us, no matter the hue of our skin.  We are all God’s children and, though most families experience sibling rivalry from time to time, blood is thicker than water in the end.  God will always love all of us and hopes we can love one another like the brothers and sisters we are.

When we are praying today, it might be a good time to own up to the idols in our lives.  It could also be an opportunity to recommit ourselves to God as the only god we serve.