“As they were sitting at table, a word of the Lord
came to the prophet who had brought him back…”
--1 Kings 13:20
The other day I wrote about going home by a different route,
and how seeing the world (or my neighborhood and neighbors) from a different
point of view could also help me see myself in a new way. My experience had strange echoes of that
story from a story in 1 Kings 13 in which God commands a prophet (or “holy man”)
to take a message to the king of Israel (Jeroboam) and warns him that when he
is done, he should not eat or drink anything and should return home by a
different route than the one he came by.
So, on my morning walk I took that little command literally and tried a
different route. Click
here to read that essay, if you want to know what happened.
But there was something else in that odd little story that
also caught my eye. It was the character
of a second prophet who lies to the “man of God” and convinces him to come back
and eat and drink with him. Though there
are certainly more striking elements in this story, particularly the shriveling
of the King’s hand, and the lion who kills but doesn’t eat his prey; the part
of the story that I keep thinking about is that prophet who lies to the man of
God. Here is the part of the story that
I am pondering:
Now an old prophet dwelt in Bethel, and his sons came
and told him
all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel;
they also
told their father the words which he had spoken to the
king. And their father
said to them, “Which way did he go?” For his sons had seen
which way the
man of God went who came from Judah. Then he said to his
sons, “Saddle
the donkey for me.” So they saddled the donkey for him; and he
rode on it,
and went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak.
Then he
said to him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?” And
he said, “I am.”
Then he said to him, “Come home with me and eat bread.” And he
said, “I cannot
return with you nor go in with you; neither can I eat bread nor
drink water with
you in this place. For I have been told by the word of
the Lord, ‘You shall not
eat bread nor drink water there, nor return by going the way you
came.’”
He said to him, “I too am a prophet as
you are, and an angel spoke to me by the
word of the Lord, saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your
house, that he may
eat bread and drink water.’” He
was lying to him. So, he went back with him,
and ate bread in his house and drank water. As they were sitting
at table, a
word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back…
--1 Kings 13: 13-20
And that last bit there, that “word of the Lord” coming to
the prophet who lied, that is what catches my imagination most in this story. When I
am reading a poem or any work of literature actually, I look for those clues. I
listen for what sticks with me. I don’t
think of myself as any grand arbiter of what is important theologically or
mystically or artistically… In fact, I try not to think of myself. I try to
(instead) watch and see what I react to… and by doing so, try to understand
myself just a little better. So, clearly
I may miss something of the utmost importance by focusing on a small detail
that caught my imagination; it is not unlike being fascinated by the thorn that
snags our sleeve and missing the beautiful rose that drew us to the garden in
the first place. But, so it goes.
And my question is: why would God give His word to a liar?
Isn’t lying (bearing false witness) forbidden by the Ten Commandments? What
gives? God gives His word to this lying prophet.
What does this mean?
First, it says to me that the ways of God are not the ways
of man[1]
and we should not presume to judge them.
And second, it reminds me of the famous saying that God writes straight
with crooked lines. He can use anyone He
likes to convey His message –and it may not always seem fair or fine or glorious
to us. It may seem downright inappropriate, even! Regardless –it is not for us to judge the
ways of God.
Which makes me think back to the story of Saul, a handsome, tall
young man who seems to be humble and obedient to his father (cf. 1 Samuel
9). He was God’s chosen man to become the
king of God’s chosen people, yet even before Saul was anointed, God warned His
people about the king they were about to receive: he was going to take their
property, enslave their children and by and large make a mess of their lives (cf. 1 Samuel
8: 10-22), but the people still wanted a king and God let them have him.
And the results, one might say, were as sad for Saul as they were for Israel. And yet we say God is a loving God. A just God. A faithful God. Certainly, one might be tempted to ask: are
you sure?
Which brings me back to this poor “man of God” who
obediently carries a fearful message from God to the wicked king –a heroic
tale, one might say—yet ends up killed by a lion because he believes a lie told
by another prophet who claims to have received a message from an angel of the
Lord. My immediate reaction was how unfair that seems. The man of God, for all we know, sincerely believes
that the prophet has heard a message from God. So, what is the lesson the story teller is
trying to teach? That when we get a mission from God, we should follow it
through completely without worrying about what anyone else says --including
prophets?
And that prophet who lied about God, yet is still given, by
God, a prophecy to speak: the doom of the man he has lied to. That moment at the table when he receives this
message and must deliver it, that is an astonishing moment literarily. It is
like something out of Shakespeare or Tolstoy.
The message he must deliver is a two-edged sword; and I wonder who it
cuts worse? The hearer knows that he has
failed to be true to his mission from God, and knows now that he must suffer
the consequences. But the speaker must
face the fact that what he has done, his lie, has brought about the doom of
another… and the weight of that lie, like a millstone, is now hung around his
neck. Wow. This little story, with two unnamed
characters, dropped down in the middle of a lengthy 2 volume history of kings
and wars and corruption is astonishingly alive with meanings and lessons for us
today: not only a lesson about being faithful to God’s call, but also about the
cost of even the most innocent seeming lies, and one that we should probably
remember every time we turn on the news: sometimes even a liar will tell the
truth.
[1]
cf. Isaiah 55:8-9; Romans 11:33; Job 11:7; actually just about the whole book
of Job & several Psalms, including 92:5; 139:6 & the book of
Ecclesiastes
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