Sermon by the Revd Dr Jeff Boldt for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, August 16, 2026

The Revd Dr Jeff Boldt  teaches at the Alexandria School of Theology in Egypt and is the Principal of St. Cyprian’s Diocesan College in Tunisia.

Transcript

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Let's pray. Almighty God, we pray today for your Holy Spirit to open our eyes, open our hearts to what you are up to through Jesus in our world today. We pray this in his name. Amen. My name is Jeff Bolt. And I'm familiar with Father Alistair because he comes to Tunisia quite a lot, where I live and where I teach theology. But also in Tunisia, where we were together for the consecration of Bishop Ashley Null last year. Our church in North Africa is growing fast. It was originally planted by the Bishop of Jerusalem, and we sort of gained independence in Egypt, and then out of Egypt sort of came independence for the church in Tunisia, but not just Tunisia. Their diocese contains Algeria, Libya, Chad, which is growing fast, and Mauritania soon. Now in Tunis, I'm the principal of St. Cyprian's, which is just a tiny little school, full of people from a Muslim background. Now, as you may know, the church in Tunisia and Algeria, it was the home of the extinct Latin church of St. Augustine. These churches were overwhelmed by barbarians first, right after the death of St. Augustine, and were limping along until the Arabs came through in the 8th century and finished the job. I think a lot of Christians assimilated and remnant went to Europe. So for the longest time there was no church, but now there is. Half of my students have been called directly by Christ Himself, actually. Or Mary, in one case, or audibly by God the Father. Tunisia on paper does have some religious freedom. So we gather up these people who Jesus has sent us and we try to raise them up in the faith. But of course, they have had to sacrifice for their faith. They've been kicked out of their homes or lost their jobs or been thrown in prison for some stupid reason or had their passport withheld or destroyed because they're Christians. Still, there is a church where there was no church. Now, in the sermon, I'm going to show how our own time is no different from the Old Testament time of Elijah the Prophet on the one hand, the New Testament time of Paul, from our reading in Romans, and from the time of Saint Augustine. There is a single pattern of God at work in history, which we can see today. A single pattern of giving and receiving ministry, of giving and receiving the gospel, of giving and receiving the Eucharist. All of these stories that we are talking about today have the same nations, even. The northern kingdom of Israel, which had broken away from the southern kingdom of Judah in Old Testament times. The Phoenicians play a major role in these stories. And they're the ones who settled in Tunisia of all places, Carthage. And then the Arabs, who Paul goes to first. Now I don't want you to get confused and get lost in all of these historical details. But I will sum it up in the end. Just keep in mind that there's a similar pattern going on here. Augustine's time, Paul's time, Elijah's time. Now, why do I refer to Elijah? He's sort of like Augustine in a way. And he's in the background of both of our lessons. Elijah the prophet, he's a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel. And through this word, God has brought famine on the land. This kingdom, which had gone after idols, would soon be overwhelmed by the Assyrians and assimilated in 722 BC. Just as an aside, my wife was an Assyrian and they ended up Christian. So that's just a little insight into where this story is going. But prior to that, Elijah is hiding out. He's being persecuted by King Ahab and is fed by ravens in the desert. God then tells him to visit a widow in Sidon, a Phoenician city. Now this woman is gathering sticks when Elijah meets her. Elijah asks her for bread, and she sheds, she says she's about to bake her last loaf before she and her son die of starvation. Still, the prophet tells her to give him the loaf, and he promises that the jar of flour and jug of oil will not be spent. This is the story that Jesus refers to in Luke 4 when he's rejected by his own hometown. Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years, and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath, in the region of Sidon. Here his point is that if the Jews reject Jesus, the Gentiles will not. Indeed, this is the point in Matthew, where there's another Phoenician woman who has another sick child who's about to die, so she approaches another prophet for another miracle. Jesus tells her the same thing as Elijah. Essentially, it is that she must give up the loaf of bread. For the loaf belongs to the prophet and his children, and she must wait for the crumbs. Jesus then evokes the biblical imagery of clean and unclean animals, of kosher and unkosher animals. The dog, which conveys that the Gentiles are not kosher like the Jews, who are the clean animals. Yet the woman responds with faith, despite the fact that she is not one of these children. And she is rewarded with spiritual bread. Jesus' point is that because by rejecting Jesus, the Jews like the Israelites in Elijah's time were rejecting this bread. Bread which is then given to someone else. Now, another difficult passage, Romans 11. It also has Elijah in the background. Verses 1 through 5, just prior to what we read. Now, like St. Paul, Elijah was disappointed by the fact that the Israelites had all fallen away from the faith. But he received word that God had preserved a remnant of prophets, and that he wasn't alone after all. Likewise, with Paul, a remnant of Jews had received the gospel, but many more had not. His consolation was in the fact that the Gentiles, even the Phoenicians, were converting in fulfillment of Scripture. Converting in fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham all the way back at the beginning of the Bible. The promise which said that through Abraham, all nations, all Gentiles, would be blessed. Paul was now in the position, a point of time where he could reveal how this was happening. So God gives this blessing to Abraham. Abraham passes this promise on to Isaac. Isaac passes it on to Jacob. And Jacob passes it on to Epha. One of the heads of the twelve tribes. He says that his seed shall become the fullness of the Gentiles. Now Ephraim was the youngest of the twelve tribes of Israel, but the biggest tribe. And his tribe was in charge of this northern kingdom. It is his tribe to which Elijah sent. Now St. Paul in our reading today alludes to Ephraim's blessing. Verses 25 through 26. He says that blindness is part, is in part happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles become in. The fullness of the Gentiles is an exact reference to God's promise to Ephraim in Genesis 48. Now, here's the problem. By the word of Elijah, judgment fell upon Ephraim. Its king Ahab, intermarried with the Phoenicians of all people. Jezebel, who I'm sure you've heard of. They worshiped her god, the god Baal, who, as a matter of fact, was imported to Carthage. So what happens? The Assyrians raise their cities, scatter them among the nations, but not to be outdone by the southern kingdom of Judah, the latter prophets complained that the Jews had sinned worse by killing more prophets than the north. Not least in the end the Messiah himself. So the Babylonians and then the Romans raised their city of Jerusalem and scattered them to the Gentiles too. According to Paul, then all Israel would be saved when in fulfillment of prophecy the northern and southern tribes reunite under the Messiah. Now recent scholarship shows that Paul was following an itinerary set out by the prophet Isaiah. Where does he go first? He goes to Damascus in the fulfillment of Isaiah 16. Damascus at that time is run by the Arabs, just for a brief moment in time. So he goes to the Arabs, and we know the story. He gets run out of town and he has to he has to be let down in this vassal at the window. Which, as a matter of fact, that's still how they do it in Egypt and a lot of high buildings, right? You let the vassal come, pick up your vegetables, pull it up. So he escapes. So he realizes well, maybe I'll follow the itinerary set out in Isaiah 66. I'll go to the west, ending in Spain, which is Tarshish. So he's going to the west. Now, why is he doing this? Paul had discovered that if Ephraimites had intermarried with and assimilated to the Gentiles, then God's irrevocable promise to Ephraim was an open invitation to the Gentiles to join Israel, to join the remnant of Jews, to join the apostles themselves, and in this way, all of Israel would be sinned. All of us here. That is, with the small exception of the rest of the Jews, who Paul was trying to provoke to jealousy. Now, what does he mean in this passage? I don't think it means that he was in the end going to win over the Jews by leaving the waves. In the Old Testament, we have jealous wives, the two wives of Abraham or the two wives of Jacob, whose stories don't really turn out well. There's not really a positive outcome to polygamy. It's sort of a symbol of family infighting, which is why the Bible teaches monogamy. And which is why the book of Revelation has one bride of Christ descending from heaven in the book of Revelation at the end of time, right? So that wife, that bride, that whole Israel, is not divided against itself anymore. So right now you sort of have Christians and Jews, two conflicted wives. And without going too far into end time stuff, Paul finally says that the Jews nonetheless will convert right before the return of Christ. And as a matter of fact, that Elijah will have a part of it. Now, in the meantime, the Anglican Church is still discovering a remnant of spiritual Israelites in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Chad, and so on. Paul's mission to the Arabs remains our own mission. It's had its ups and downs. The church has grown there and shrunk and come back. As it had happened already in Elijah's time and in Paul's time, there's a single pattern. And that pattern is that there is a remnant, a faithful remnant, even now. Now, for the longest time, we ate the crumbs from North Africa's table. That's where we get Saint Athanasius and Saint Cyprian and Saint Augustine. And now, in a sense, they eat the crumbs from our table. In the book of Acts, however, Saint Peter sees a tablecloth in heaven where all animals have been doing clean. Because, as Paul said, all humanity was imprisoned in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all. In other words, in the church, all the nations have been made clean by Christ's blood. There is neither Jew nor Greek, Phoenician nor Arab, Canadian nor American. All are at the wedding feast of the Lamb. All share the same crumbs and the same bread and wine. All have been made children of the same heavenly Jerusalem, the bride of Christ, our mother. We therefore have all things in common. This is why Paul not only traveled around the world spreading the gospel, but taking a collection for the church in Jerusalem. So let me restate this pattern one more time with another figure Paul uses. So when the gospel goes to a nation, many will reject it, but a remnant will accept it. That's when the gospel will go out to another nation, which in turn will go through the same ripening process. The church gathers up all these remaining grains and adds them to one lump of dough, which is offered back to the Father through the Son and the Holy Spirit. This common life of sacrifice is the way we participate in God's plan until Christ returns. I've tried to lay this out, this plan as it relates to Elijah's time, Paul's time, Augustine's time, and our own. We participate in it as we give ourselves to God and receive our lives back in the Eucharist. In his body and blood, we get our mission, our life, every crumb of it. And for this, we give back thanks to God. Amen.