Sermon: The Mythopoetics of Peter & Elijah

            I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Hollywood is ecstatic,
for the first time since Covid, people are REALLY going back to the movies…
and not just any movie…
Christopher Nolan’s adaption of Homer’s Odyssey
—a tale nearly 3,000 years old…

            And people want more! They’re turning back to the Original Ancient Greek Poem;
there is even something of a pop-culture fight over which English translation of the Odyssey is the best…
Classists and English Teachers
are being thrust into Tik-Tock battles and culture wars…

In this moment, the culture has a taste for the mythopoetic
—a concept popularized by J.R.R. Tolkien author of Lord of the Rings…
Mythopoetics
—art that expresses a heightened reality, tells primordial stories, speaks to order and meaning…
we’re hungry for it…

 

And today, both Elijah and Peter are found in a similar place to King Odysseus
—caught in mythopoetic storms and Theophanic assaults…

faced with a reality so much bigger than themselves,
they are transformed,
so they can be who they need to be
in their life made new.

Prayer

 

            At first blush, Peter meeting Jesus in the storm can seem, merely, like choppy water and superstition.
But Matthew wants us to hear ancient biblical echoes (that in turn echo even earlier stories) in his Gospel.
The boat Peter is on is being battered—tormented
—by Sea—by chaos itself, primeval chaos
—Tohu vaBohu in Genesis
—Formless & Void,
Disordered & Uncreated…
that which defies Creation and Creator.

And not only that, “It’s a ghost!”
A Phantom, a Shade stalking the space between death & life
—a thing that goes bump in the night and raise the hairs on the back of your neck
—this is intense!

Death and Chaos meet Peter, at least that’s his initial experience of it.

To this Jesus responds, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
“It is I”, a phrase harkening back to the Hebrew Bible
—I AM
—the name God offers Moses from the burning bush.

“In so far as you are I AM, command me to step onto Chaotic Waters” Peter asks of Jesus, stepping out into the mythopoetic storm.

 

Likewise, Elijah,
having defeated the Prophets of Ba’al and escaped with his life,
hears a voice of God, and lists off his extreme zeal:
-he alone is faithful Israel,
-upholding their end of the covenant,
-still worshipping after everyone else has left the building,
-and is the last prophet.

In essence he’s saying: “O’ Lord! I’m holding the whole of your people on my back.”

And he is sent to see God as God passes by.

There is dreadful wind, just like in Genesis
—“God’s wind swept over the waters.”

Then there is earthquake
—just like in Psalm 29, where God makes things quake so much that the mountain ranges of Lebanon and Sirion skip
like shaky knob kneed infant animals.

            Finally, there is fire
—like Moses’ bush or like the fire that fell and defeated the Prophets of Ba’al…

            These intense images of God showing up
—Theophanies—profoundly frightening encounters with a God who is
truly other, strangely holy… awesome and awful.

            But God is in none of those things
—God meets him in sheer silence, A Still Small Voice. Thin Quiet.

            (Pause)

 

            This silence subverts expectations
—God is strange in a different way than we thought…
God in a small silent moment…
a clarifying silence where there is nothing
—Rock Bottom perhaps
—a time where hope is all you got.

 

            Probably the most famous scene in the Odyssey is the one with the cyclopes.
Poly-phemus, the cyclopes, askes Odysseus his name,
and he replies, “Odyss”—No One.
And after their confrontation the Cyclopes shouts, “No one has blinded me,”
and his brethren do not come to his aid…
because “Odyss” blinded him…

So too God’s name: “I AM.”
In the ancient world, names had a power to them, like magic,
know the name, know the person or thing
—know the name, it owes you something,
the deity is within your grasp…

But the one who is and was and is to come
—the one who exists and is existence…
that’s a GOD—not an idol…

 

-Elijah overselling his righteousness
only to find that God is there in the lonely silence…
-Peter… afraid and courageous, doubtful and called…
there on the water with nothing holding him up except a little buoyancy and trust in the one who walks upon chaotic waters and catches those afraid of death—Jesus, savior of those who doubt…

 

Both are changed
changed to return to everyday life,
but it is no longer ordinary.

Out of the silence, Elijah goes back home,
where 7,000 faithful people await his return
—New allies, new kings, new prophets—out of nothing,
that clarifying silence opens up trust and hope and a way forward.

Grasped and pulled up out of the water,
Peter’s little faith
—a starter kit faith
—a beginner’s faith
—is enough—like a mustard seed it grows.
“Save me!” is enough of a cry of faith!
His little faith culminates in a big confession,
“Truly you are the Son of God.”

 

In both The Odyssey and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings
—these Mythopoetic works
—there is the end that is beyond the end
—The Hobbits go home and scourge the Shire,
Odysseus’ journey isn’t done when he arrives home, he still needs to reclaim his family and his life.
They return, but changed, and that change
—after encountering deeper reality, disorder and order on a cosmic scale
—transforms their return into a homecoming
—a reintegration,
a meaningful ending,
grounded and grateful.

 

So too, I pray,
when God draws us into the mystery of faith
may Christ refresh us and comfort us,
may we understand our day to day as extraordinary,
the very territory of God.
May we be transformed to be who we need to be in a life made new.
Amen.