Terrible Whiteness
Lections: The Nativity of Our Lord ( Christmas I ), AD 2025 A Homily: Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great. Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. “Call me Ishmael.” So begins the greatest of all American novels, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick . Right out the gate, we have here a biblical reference: Ishmael, Abraham’s discarded son. This sets the tone for the entire narrative endeavor. All of us have heard of Moby-Dick ; many of us, I’m sure, have read it. It’s about a whale, a great white whale with a hump like a snowhill, as well as the vengeance of Captain Ahab—another biblical character—who is hellbent on hunting him down. Now, if that were all that the book is about, we might have ourselves a mildly interesting look at 19th-century American whaling. Just what every kid wants to read about in school, right? But of course it isn’t about a whale. It’s about God, and our half-crazed quest to find Him. ...
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