Psalm 119:97-104
Luke 18:1-8
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
Ancient
The story begins when Apsu, the god of fresh waters, and Tiamat, the goddess of the salt oceans, and Mummu, the god of the mist that rises from both of them, were still mingled as one. There were no mountains, there was no pasture land, and not even a reed-marsh could be found to break the surface of the waters.
Apsu and Tiamat became the forbearers of a host of gods including a great-grandson named Ea. Ea was the cleverest of the gods and with his magic became the most powerful of the gods, ruling even his ancestors.
Eventually, these gods caused such a ruckus that Apsu proposed to Tiamat that he kill all of their descendants. Tiamat did not favor this plan, but Apsu decided to set it into motion despite her objections.
Ea and his siblings became aware of these plans so he hatched a scheme of his own. He cast a spell on Apsu, and pulling Apsu’s crown from his head he slew him. Ea then built his palace on Apsu’s waters. It was there that, with the goddess Damkina, he fathered Marduk, the four-eared, four-eyed giant who was god of the rains and storms.
The other gods, however, went to Tiamat and complained that Ea had slain her husband. Aroused, she collected an army of dragons and monsters, and at its head she placed the god Kingu, to whom she gave magical powers as well. Even Ea was at a loss how to combat such a host, until he finally called on his son Marduk. Marduk gladly agreed to take on his father’s battle, on the condition that he, Marduk, would rule the gods after achieving this victory. The other gods agreed, and at a banquet they gave him his royal robes and scepter.
Marduk armed himself with a bow and arrows, a club, and lightning, and he went in search of Tiamat’s monstrous army. Rolling his thunder and storms in front him, he attacked, and Kingu’s battle plan soon disintegrated. Tiamat was left alone to fight Marduk, and she howled as they closed for battle. They struggled as Marduk caught her in his nets. When she opened her mouth to devour him, he filled it with the evil wind that served him. She could not close her mouth with his gale blasting into it. He shot an arrow down her throat splitting her heart, and she was slain.
After subduing the rest of her host, he took his club and split Tiamat’s water-laden body in half like a clam shell. Half he put in the sky and made the heavens, and he posted guards there to make sure that Tiamat’s salt waters could not escape. Across the heavens he made stations in the stars for the gods, and he made the moon and set it forth on its schedule across the heavens. From the other half of Tiamat’s body he made the land, which he placed over Apsu’s fresh waters, which now arise in wells and springs. From her eyes he made flow the Tigris and
Marduk set the vanquished gods who had supported Tiamat to a variety of tasks, including work in the fields and canals. Soon they complained of their work and they rebelled burning their spades and baskets. Marduk saw a solution to their labors, though, and proposed it to his father Ea. He had Kingu, Tiamat’s general, brought forward from the ranks of the defeated gods, and Kingu was slain. With Kingu’s blood, with clay from the earth, and with spittle from the other gods, Ea and the birth-goddess Nintu created humans. On them Ea imposed the labor previously assigned to the gods. Thus the humans were set to maintain the canals and boundary ditches, to hoe and to carry, to irrigate the land and to raise crops, to raise animals and fill the granaries, and to worship the gods at their regular festivals.
This is the story of Marduk and Tiamat.
Now, the creation story we are familiar with from Genesis begins with a God whose love is so great that humanity is created to share that love. Humanity, we were created to be in relationship with God and to love God. Our world is not the remains of a dispatched goddess. We aren’t made of the stuff of yet another slain god. We aren’t substitutes for gods who went on strike for better wages or working conditions, or whatever reasons gods go on strike.
Let me just say, and I trust that you agree, I prefer the Hebrew creation story found to the Babylonian every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Created in a loving relationship by the Lord God is far better than being created as slaves of a demigod.
God whose name we spell with a “big G,” the Lord our God is to be loved and yes feared too. Those Babylonian gods, gods we spell with a “little g,” they simply were to be feared. This is the difference between the God Jesus refers to and the parable’s judge, the lord of the manor, a god over his own land.
This judge was the lord of his land. He had the power of life and death over his subjects. He didn’t fear God (with a big G) nor did he have respect for his people. He must have been a very powerful man and quite a piece of work. The way this judge reined his power would have made Marduk proud, but he had one thorn in his side, a woman seeking justice against her opponent.
Now the woman of this parable must have been some kind of persistent. A single woman would have had no social status in the ancient near east of this parable, and considering she was complaining to a man who had no regard for anybody, she must have been quite a thorn in his side. Actually, what is written in our bible “so that she won’t wear me out” can be translated as “so that she won’t keep beating me in the face,” which is several levels above merely annoying.
So because according to the parable she was such a pain in the neck, both figuratively and literally, she received justice. Jesus then compares this to the Lord God who will grant justice quickly to the ones who cry out to the Lord.
Let me just say, and I trust that you agree, I prefer the justice of the Lord our God to this little tin god every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Created in a loving relationship by the Lord God is far better than being slaves of a demigod.
Little tin gods; this expression comes from a poem called “Public Waste”[2] by Rudyard Kipling, the author of “Captains Courageous” and “The Jungle Book.” This poem is about Exeter Battleby Tring, an expert railway-surveyor who was the obvious candidate to manage “The Railways of State.” But since he did not come from the right social bracket; “the Little Tin Gods” gave him what CEO’s today call a “golden parachute” and appointed “a Colonel from
Here were the “little g” gods treating those around them like slaves created by the blood of lesser gods. Here were the “little g” gods who had neither regard for God with a “big G” nor respect for any of the people. In our gospel reading we are presented with a god of the manor who have what the world considers power over people and events and the Lord who is the King of Glory. The world has them both and it is up to the church, it is up to us to praise one and hold the other’s feet to the fire.
Scott McClellan writes about the “little g” gods of American politics in his book “What Happened?” He talks about how American politics has shifted from using power to change things and make them better to a position of gaining power for the sake of having power. He talks about a model of governing called “the permanent campaign” where governing is forsaken in exchange for maintaining power within one political party.
Let me take a little aside and say that McClellan was a George W. Bush insider and the theory of “permanent campaign” was created by Patrick Caddell, an advisor to Jimmy Carter. If how the people who govern us are guilty of this sin as McClellan says, it is not the property of one side of the political aisle or the other, it belongs to both. I like to say it like this, in government there are not too many Democrats or too many Republicans, but there are far too many politicians. Little tin gods are little tin gods whether they come from Kipling or from
Jesus says that the unjust judge will give the woman justice just to relieve his own discomfort. Our God will grant justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him out of love. But then he asks, when the Son of Man comes will he find faith on earth? For our Lord to find faith, we will need to be faithful to the God who loves and gives graciously, not the gods who want only fear and slavery, so we need to discern the differences between the two.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian agency that has the responsibility for among other things detecting counterfeit money, has a very specialized training program. What they do not do is study the many, many ways counterfeiters find to copy currency. They do not study the latest trends in how criminals copy inks and make plates to create fake bills. They take the opposite approach. Instead of learning how fakes look, they study real Canadian dollar bills. These agents scrupulously study their own money. They study every little piece and nuance of their bills, the images, the inks, the typefaces, even the feel and smell of real money. This way they become intimately familiar with what real money looks and feels like.
They find it’s easy to spot a counterfeit when you know the real stuff.
For us, this is a lesson to be learned in finding the differences between gods, those we look at as “big G” Gods and “little g” gods. By being able to recognize God in our lives, we are better able to recognize the idols of our life and time; idols which make demands upon us like the gods of ancient times.
We find God in our scriptures. It is in the stories of our faith that we learn that the loving God wants a relationship with creation. It is in holy writ that we find an overflowing God who creates in abundance, not out of a need for slaves. It is in the Psalms and in our Call to Worship this morning[3] that we learn of God’s law and how it makes us wiser than our enemies because it is always with us.
Paul’s second letter to Timothy makes this point as he implores the young man to continue in what he has learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom he learned it. Paul reminds Timothy that all scripture is useful for teaching and training so that all who belong to God will be equipped for every good work. Paul even says that it is Christ Jesus who is the judge of the living, not some self-declared deity, someone who has made themselves an idol to be worshiped like a little tin god.
So yes, in our world, a world that no longer worships Marduk or Tiamat or Zeus or Apollo or any of the gods of ancient societies, we have “little g” gods of our own. So we are called to work like the Mounties and know who God is so that we will not be taken by false gods that come our way. We are called to seek God in scripture and in prayer. When we do this that we will be found faithful by the Son of Man when he comes again in glory. In Him, in his blood and righteousness alone is our hope.
[1] The stories of Marduk and Tiamat can be found in Matthews, Victor H., and Benjamin, Don C. “Old Testament Parallels, Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East.” Third Edition.
[2] Text of “Public Waste” can be found at http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/2774/, retrieved October 15, 2010.
[3] Psalm 65
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