CProp11

Amos 8:1-12; Psalm 52; Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42

Hymnal – 48, 488, 401

July 18, 2010

While in Ireland Elery and I both enjoyed reading How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Kahill.

This book seems to be in tune with the oracle we hear in the book of Amos,

and a recent move we’ve seen, “The Book of Eli”.

So, I’d like to briefly recount how the Irish saved civilization and “The Book of Eli.”

Then we’ll come back to Amos and see what these three voices might have to say to us.

Kahill’s book begins with the fall of Rome.

In the 400’s hungry barbarians crossed over the frozen Rhine River and they ransacked and burned and killed their way through the most powerful civilization in the world the Roman empire.

Pax Romana – the so-called peace that Rome had established fell into chaos -

what we know as the Dark Ages began.

One tragic outcome was that books were destroyed and they stopped being copied.

Libraries were no longer maintained. Formal education ceased and knowledge wasn’t passed on from one generation to another.

The safe roads Rome had built were riddled with highway robbers.Wholesale slavery was common place. It was during this time when the young Patrick was taken from Brittany to Ireland as a slave.

Patrick escaped from Ireland, went on to become a bishop, and he felt called to take the Christian way back to Ireland . As Christianity took root there, many men and women chose the monastic life.

The monks came to be called green martyrs.

Unlike the red martyrs whose blood was shed because of their belief, the Irish monks did die to their old life, not by having shed their blood, but by retreating away - into the woods, or on top of a rugged mountaintop, or out to a desolate island – to immerse themselves in study of scriptures and true communion with God.

As the earliest simple thatch roofed monasteries were formed the monks began to copy the books they had access to.Making parchment out of sheepskin they copied by hand the Gospels and other books of the bible; also the lives of martyrs and saints.They copied sermons and commentaries of the early teachers in the church. Not only did they copy religious works, they also copied classical Greek and Latin literature. And, they put onto paper the ancient tales of their own culture that had been passed on orally from generation to generation.They copied and copied and copied and carried their books to new monasteries and new lands. Learning began to be offered in monasteries, not only to the noble class, but to anyone eager to learn.

[Until, in the 8^th century they were producing works like

the famous Book of Kells,

holy scripture handwritten with vivid colored inks

and intricate lettering and fanciful characters.

The Book of Kells can be viewed at Trinity College in Dublin.]

Now let’s move on to the movie – The Book of Eli.The setting - is a harsh, barren, violent landscape in only brown sepia tones. Everyone is desperate for food and water. Barbaric gangs ransack, burn, and kill.

This Dark Age has come about, the movie indicates, because people wanted more and more

and finally their greed resulted in a war and nuclear fallout that tore a hole in the sky, and the blinding sun came down and cooked the earth. All civilized order and structure is gone. No government. No religion. Only a small remnant of savages scattered about, trying to survive any way they can.

A man named Eli hid for the first year after the war. Like the old priest Eli in the bible, his eyesight was damaged and has become dimmed.

In his solitude after the fallout, he heard a voice that led him to a book buried in rubble, and the voice told him to protect the book and take it west where it would be safe.

Eli walks and walks for thirty years across a barren and dangerous land that used to be the great United States of America.

[In him we can see an Old Testament warrior, like David or Solomon,

killing if he has to, to fulfill God’s destiny for him.

Yet in this character of Eli, we also see a man of resolute calm,

who never raises his voice,

and except for when he has to kill them,

(not unlike the holy violent ones of God in the Old Testament)

he treats everyone he encounters with respect and dignity.]

Eli goes through the ruins of a town where a petty dictator named Billy Carnegie has taken over.

Carnegie’s power lies in that he has access to water which is hard to come by and which he makes very costly. He also hungrily collects books, which are also very hard to come by. He sends his thugs out to bring in all the books they can. He is looking for one book that has been impossible to find. And Carnegie figures out that it is the book Eli has – a bible.

One person Eli meets in this town is a girl named Solara. At one point as he offers to share his food with her, he holds her hands and prays, thanking God for the many ways he has been blessed and protected

in the midst of so many dangers. And you can tell that the concept of prayer is unknown to this girl.

We see through the movie that each night Eli unlocks the book and reads it.

As Eli moves on and Solara follows him Carnegie comes after them and takes the book by force, wounding Eli. But Eli and Solara continue westward. They make it to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and he sees the island, Alcatraz. And he knows that is his destination.

They row over to it and as they approach it we see the first signs of color in the movie, the beginnings of green grasses spreading over the rocky island. It made me think of those green martyrs.

Inside the old prison, they find a peaceful, ordered community that is dedicated to collecting and preserving all they can. They have Shakespeare and Mozart and books of other religions, but they have not been able to find a Bible. They are building a printing press so that what they have collected can be copied. Eli can’t give them the one he has carried for so long, but he asks for a scribe and paper and he begins to dictate from memory the bible he has been reading for the past thirty years and he begins with the first verse of Genesis. As his life comes to a close, we see the printing press begin to turn out

fresh new pages of the Bible.

And the oracle from Amos…

God shows Amos a basket of summer fruit, fruit so ripe that it is right on the edge of going bad.

I can imagine that it is dripping with sweet nector. It symbolizes the immediacy of the fall of Israel.

In this apparent fullness, people are consumed with success and profit.

When a holiday comes around, they don’t want to take a break and have fun.

They want their stores to stay open so they can sell more.

When Sabbath time comes, that sacred time when they are invited to take a pause from their labors

and rest in the abundance they have from God – when Sabbath time comes, they get restless, fidgety, wanting to get back to work, thinking that if they are ever going to rest, they must first work harder;

that the only way to have abundance is to make more profit. In the oracle God continues to describe the state they are in, just before the fruit begins to go bad.They inflate the worth of things so they can make more profit. They even control the worth of people, buying and selling them in wholesale slavery.

Like the great river Nile that swells up and floods the land, all their prosperity will picked up and tossed about and sink again.

All that they have built up, they think it is all so indestructable, and yet it is as frail as the land of Haiti when a mighty earthquake rips it apart. Or seaside communities when a hurricane or tsumani roars in,

or when crude oil silently creeps in suffocating what lives there choking out people’s livelihood.

All their prosperity and ease hardwon by their greed is like ripe fruit just before it spoils.

And God says that a famine will come, not a famine of bread or a thirst for water. But the people will no longer will be able to hear the word of the Lord. They will wander all over the land seeking it and they will not find it.

.

The story of the early monks in Ireland. A science fiction movie about the end of the world. An ancient prophecy

What might they have to say to us?

Maybe, yes, that books and learning are important in society.

But, I take from them that whether you are part of a mighty empire. Or you think you are a citizen of a super-power capitalist nation. Or you are any people who think they can produce their own salvation..

It’s all temporary.

There is permanent peace that awaits you. A true sanctuary that no one can take away from you.

The still, quiet word of God - meditated upon in holy scripture; the very presence of God contemplated in your heart. And, we know Jesus as the full revelation of God, the way, the truth, the life. And that in following him we will neither hunger or thirst.

The monks found it in their daily reading of script and in prayer. And, Eli, too, as he read the book and talked to God each day of his thirty years of wandering.

And so can we.

It can be so hard to stop, to get still,

and really turn your mind and heart to God.

And, yet, these three stories are calling us there.