The Gospel reading for today describes John the Baptist as a locust eating, skin wearing wild man who insulted the people who came to follow him. He was on the fringe because, like Elijah, that's where God sent him, and that's where he wanted to be.
Both of these stories illustrate how encounters with what is holy can drive people to radical action. They are hardly surprising in that respect: after all, if devotion to the Creator of the Universe won't inspire radical action, what will?
But to read these stories today, on September 11, 2009, is a sobering thing. When the conspirators of 9/11 decided to kill themselves and thousands of others, they did so out of a radical devotion to what they saw as a holy mission.
Nothing more plainly illustrates the importance of the question, what holy mission are you devoted to? In the New Testament reading for today, Paul describes how he abandoned everything--everything that, quite frankly, he considered holy--to sacrifice not others, but himself, to the cause of Christ.
We can have the devotion of Elijah, although we are not called to kill the prophets of Ba'al or anyone else. We can even eat bugs and dress up in leather, but we are not commanded so much as to demand repentance from others as we are from ourselves. Our zealotry ought to demand sacrifice, but it should be a humble sacrifice of ourselves, not of those who disagree with us.
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