Godkiller

The Angiris Council

Lections: The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost (Lectionary 20), AD 2025 C

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.

God stands amongst the gods—and denounces them. This is really rather remarkable.

The 82nd Psalm begins with a trope familiar to the whole of the Ancient Near East: the divine council, a sort of synod for celestial spirits tasked with the workings of the cosmos. The gods got together, in other words, to settle debates amongst themselves; an immortal United Nations, as it were. We see this attested in Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Canaanite, Israelite, Celtic, Greco-Roman, and Nordic pantheons.

Usually someone sat in judgment as head honcho, an arbiter of last resort. For the Canaanites this was the high-god El, who apportioned authority over the nations out to his various sons; his favorite being Ba’al, or “Lord,” the storm-god. This ought to sound familiar. It seems clear that at least some early Hebrews conceived of heaven in this way, the same way as all of the peoples around them: that the Most High God had sons who governed the nations; and that Israel’s god, Yahweh, might once have been understood as one of those.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to folks familiar with the Scriptures. The biblical revelation of God deepens over time. Not that God changes, but that our cultural capacities do. As societies civilize, we tend to move from notions of animism, wherein everything has a spirit; to polytheism, with a number of gods in charge; then on to henotheism, as the gods begin to follow a king; and finally we reach monotheism, where one god stands over all.

But we’re not done yet, because monotheism then develops into classical theism, where we come to recognize that the One God isn’t really a god at all—which is to say that He isn’t just the most powerful being within the Creation—but that He is in fact the Creator; the infinite and eternal Source of all consciousness, being, and bliss; in whom we all live and move and have our being; all-powerful, all-knowing, present everywhere and nowhere all at once. Every serious religion arrives at this reality, however differently expressed.

Judaism, in other words, is not uniquely monotheistic. Lots of cultures came to know the One God. In fact, the biblical reforms of Josiah coincide with Scythian monotheism sweeping down from the vast Eurasian steppe, through the influence of their daughter empires, the Persians and the Medes. Much of Greek philosophy followed suit. But what makes the Hebrew religion unique to its time and location is the persistent prophetic insistence upon ethical monotheism, what we call Theology of the Cross.

Here’s what I mean. Emperors love monotheism. If there’s one great God in charge of all the heavens, then they figure that there ought to be one great king of kings in charge of all the world. Emperors love to claim to be God’s chosen sons upon this earth, ruling by divine fiat over every mortal man. “Whom do you suppose,” they ask, “does God favor within the web: the spider or the fly?” Power, wealth, majesty, might—truly these must be divine. It’s theological totalitarianism. Even the upstart Greeks, pontificating about democracy, embrace a God of cool and disinterested reason. But the Hebrews have a different perspective.

The Hebrews have lost all they thought they knew of God: their kingship, their Temple, their ancestral homeland. They have been conquered and dragged into Exile, strangers in a strange land. All they have left are their stories, and the sense that God is still with them. The Bible is a document of Exile. The Torah, those first five Books of Moses, are edited and compiled in Babylon. That’s why every story—from Adam and Eve expelled from the garden to Moses leading the Exodus out of Egypt—yearns for a homeland lost.

And what do Exiles have to say about the One True God? What is their perspective on monotheistic belief? They lay it out in the 82nd Psalm.

God has taken His place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods He holds judgment: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah. Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” …  All the foundations of the earth are shaken. I say, “You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals and fall like any prince.” Rise up, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations belong to you!

Do you see how subversive that is, how it flips the entirety of worldly and spiritual hierarchy right upon its head? God will cast down princes and rulers, God will cast down the very gods themselves, the powers in the heavens, and why? Because they are corrupt! They ignore the weak and the orphaned; they deny the right of the lowly and the destitute. God does not care about strength; He sits not aloft and aloof with His reason; God overthrows the order of the cosmos for the last, the lost, and the least. To hell with wicked gods!

To hell with all the structures of celestial and earthly power that oppress the alien, starve the poor, and seek to dispose of the vulnerable! This is religious revolution. This is the universe turned firmly upside-down, slaves going free while Pharaohs rage. Think of the implications. Think of what this means for our understanding of our world. God rejects, God condemns, God damns the injustice and wickedness and selfishness and greed that run like rot through reality itself, both human and divine.

The 82nd Psalm proclaims that the way in which our world works is not the way it ought to be—blasphemy to billionaires and oligarchs and everyone on top, but sweet release to those who struggle, those who suffer, those who always wonder why. Why is our world so harsh and cruel and deeply unjust? Because it is broken! God does not intend for this, and will not let it stand—even if He has to wade through a heaven’s-worth of angels.

That is the Jewish Gospel: that God will overcome the world and not leave anyone behind. And how does He do this? How does He right the heavens and liberate the earth from death, decay, and damnation? Does He call down an orbital strike? Does He overwhelm the dictators and the demons with superior firepower? Of course not. God overcomes the world by becoming one of us: not an emperor, not a general, not a demigod, but a wandering Jewish rabbi, teaching amongst the wastes; raised by a carpenter within a conquered country, a backwater blot on Caesar’s map of the Mediterranean.

“I have come to cast fire upon the earth,” Jesus says, “and how I wish it were already ablaze! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” The fire of which He speaks is the fire of the Holy Spirit, of God’s own Breath and Life breathed out from Him and into us. And the baptism, which He sees coming, is nothing other than His Crucifixion, at our hands and for our sake. That was our idea, not God’s; Jesus didn’t have to die in order to forgive us. Read the Gospels for yourselves: first He forgave us, as though He were God; and then we murdered Him for it, in the worst way we knew how.

God overthrows all the pestilent powers that be, not with weapons of war but with His whole and humble surrender, completely pouring Himself out for those He came to save. For us He served as less than a slave; He deigned to become a corpse. And the fire thereby kindled burned up all the pits of hell. The sword of which He speaks is but the sword of His own mouth; the division which He sows is nothing but the light of truth; and the war He thereby wins is our salvation. He vanquishes death with life, and hatred with forgiveness.

Christ is the victory of God. Christ is the doom of the powers of this world. And His triumph comes not as a discrete moment in time but as His eternal enthronement, judging every moment of our history: resurrecting it, setting it right; the past, the future, all of it. Christ casts down all wickedness and evil—even the evil deep within our hearts—and raises us up anew in Him: a new Heaven, a new Earth, a new Creation.

Proclaim the Good News of His Kingdom, to all who live in fear, and to every unjust god.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

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St Peter’s Lutheran

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Nidaros Lutheran

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