The temptation to continue our discussion of Jesus as the Bread that gives life to the world and to do a bit of liturgical instruction about the Eucharist and, more specifically, about the power of the Sacrament, but I felt nudged most of the week to our passage in 1 Kings. In part, I figure it is because it is not an opportunity that comes around often. In fact, it only comes up on Track II of Year B, so, in our case at Advent, every six years. Before I start in on today’s passage, though, we need to do a bit of history.
First, by way of reminder, the focus of
our pericope today is Elijah. When I mention that name, many of you think
of a heroic prophet in the OT, if you know anything about him, right? One
of the great things about the Bible, though, is that there is truly only one
heroic figure, Jesus. Everyone else is just like us. Peter has
great peaks and valleys of faith. Abraham & Sarah do a great job of
following God, except in those cases where they think He needs their
help. David is a great king, except for the rape/adultery of Bathsheba
and the killing of her husband, Uriah the Hittite. Solomon is likewise a
good king, until he chooses to marry an Egyptian woman to cement that
relationship. Josiah is truly a great king, right up until the moment he
ignores the warning that God gives Necho. Good I see nods and some
looking like they are thinking of their own favorite heroines or heroes of the
Bible.
The great news for all of us is that it
is God who makes human beings glorious. It is God who is the real hero of
salvation history. He can take men and women and youth like all of us
gathered here today, with all our faults and all our frailties, and use us for
His redemptive purposes. We have only to step out in obedient faith, and
the rest is up to Him! He will remind us of that yet again today as we
consider this story of Elijah. And the craziest thing about all of it is
that, because of our obedience and His redemptive purposes, people may well
think we are the glorious heroes, that we were the source of what they needed!
To place our story in its context, we
have to turn back a couple chapters to one of the best, but mostly unread,
stories in Scripture. It really should be the focus of a movie.
Elijah challenges the priests of Ba’al to a contest on the mountaintop in
Israel, the northern kingdom. Both the priests of Yahweh and the priests
of Ba’al will build an altar on top of the mountain, offer the appropriate
sacrifices, and call down fire from the heavens to show their power of their
respective God or god.
The priests of Ba’al go first and end
up exhausting themselves. They build the altar, slaughter the animals,
and then start the hard work of summoning their god. Their dances and
incantations and fervent prayers go on for hours. Meanwhile, Elijah is
relaxing while waiting his turn and mocking them and Ba’al. The best
line, I think, is when Elijah teases the priests that Ba’al must be stuck on
the commode, to use a more modern euphemistic translation, and cannot answer
their prayers right now.
Eventually, the priests of Ba’al give
up from exhaustion, and the priests of God go to work following Elijah’s
instructions. The odd instruction given by Elijah is that they need to
pour all the water on the wooden altar. Most of you will have forgotten
that all this comes after a 3-year drought, which was a reminder from God that
Israel was ignoring the Covenant their ancestors swore with Moses. Most
of you have learned over the course of your lives, though, it is incredibly
hard to start a fire when the wood is wet. Most of the men are gathered
up on the mountaintop this morning at the laymen’s conference, but I am sure
they would tell us to pour something flammable over wood, rather than water,
when it comes to starting a fire. Priests in Ancient Israel would have
had that knowledge, too, but they listen to the prophet and do as they are
told. With little more than a “show them what You got” from Elijah, the
Lord sends down a consuming fire that burns the altar built by both His priests
and the priests of Ba’al.
Everyone is stunned. Elijah
instructs the priests of God to kill the priests of Ba’al for their
blasphemy. Surely Israel will return to the Lord, right?
Wrong. In fact, Jezebel doubles down. She kills all the priests of
the Lord, as far as Elijah seems to know during his complaint to God, though we
know Obadiah saves about 100 priests loyal to Yahweh. Worse, Jezebel
tells Elijah that she will surely kill him within a day. What’s a prophet
to do? That’s where our pericope picks up.
Elijah has been fleeing to the
south. Remember, Israel is the northern kingdom. Jezebel would risk
civil war if she sent soldiers after him into Judah. So Elijah does the
sensible thing and flees to the south. Interestingly to some
commentators, Elijah makes it to Beersheba in Judah. We might think
Elijah would stop in a city of Judah, but Elijah keeps going south.
Why? Probably it is her promise that he will be dead within a day.
Jezebel is not known for playing by the rules or the laws or the Covenant,
right? So rather than stop, Elijah keeps heading south into the
wilderness, though he leaves his servant there, likely to keep an eye out for
Jezebel’s hirelings. That’s where we pick up in his life. He is
afraid and running for his life.
It is also the scene that proves even
memes are redeemable by God. Those of you who have seen the memes that
say we should never overestimate the power of a good nap and a good meal when
we are feeling like failures know one of the lessons of this pericope. I
know, a few of you have shared it. I’ve seen your social media accounts!
Elijah, we are told, comes to a broom
tree and lays down and and prays to God to let him die. Ironic, isn’t it,
he has been fleeing for his life for 24+ hours, but now he asks God to let him
die. He expresses that he is no better than his ancestors in verse 4, and
then lays down exhausted.
What does Elijah mean by his comment on
his ancestors? Could it mean that his ancestors had been unable to
convince others to follow Yahweh? Sure. But there is, I think, a
more obvious meaning. Elijah is a prophet. In fact, Elijah will end
up being THE PROPHET in Hebrew culture. It is Elijah and Moses who appear
with Jesus in the Transfiguration. When Jesus asks who the people say He
is, His disciples say that some say He is Elijah. One of the strands of
messiah understanding taught that Elijah would return in a fiery chariot to
lead God’s people. It made sense, Elijah was one of two people not to
die. Elijah was carried off by fiery chariots to heaven in view of Elisha
and the other prophets! Elijah seems to be recognizing that his own
failures are like his fellow prophets.
For example, can anyone think of a
prophet who failed miserably, in his own mind at least, and lay down under a
plant giving him shade in the heat? That’s right, Jonah. Remember
Jonah. He tried hard not to preach repentance to Nineveh, even hiding in
the belly of a fish to avoid that sermon, right? That’s right. He
boarded a ship and was tossed overboard when he realized he was the focus of
the storm and swallowed by the fish. It was only when the fish spit him
out that he finally obeyed God. He preached the shortest sermon of all
time, and Nineveh repented. Jonah should have been thrilled, right?
Nope. Nineveh was the ancient enemy of Israel. Jonah had argued
with God that if he preached repentance in Nineveh, and they repented, God
would forgive them. He contemplates his rightness under that plant and is
mad that God relents of the planned disaster, and God reminds Jonah and us that
He loves our enemies every bit as much as He loved us.
Another prophet is referenced in verse
6. The angel gives Elijah bread that baked on a hot stone, a resapim.
That word appears here and in Isaiah 6. You might remember it since
Funmi’s ordination was not too long ago. God calls Isaiah to prophesy,
and Isaiah resists by telling God he is an unclean man with unclean lips.
The angel in Isaiah’s vision takes a hot stone from the holy altar of The
Temple and touches it to Isaiah’s lips. Isaiah and his lips are now
cleansed and able to speak the words God will give him.
The angel even references Elijah’s
experience. The word for the jar, or sapphat, of water from
which angels gives Elijah drink is the same as the jar which keeps the widow of
Zarephath, her son, and the prophet Elijah fed during the drought. We
often miss such clues in our readings, but God is really good at ministering to
the needs of those whom He calls to work in His plan of salvific history.
As you all know, none of the prophets
are excited to answer God’s call on their lives. All of them experience
incredible failure despite their obedience. At Her very best, Israel
listens to the prophets for only a short time. Usually, they ignore the
prophets or try to declare them false. Some are cast into cisterns; some
are killed. But all have the same lesson to learn as Elijah is now
learning. God is the One who gives meaning to the work. Elijah
might love the mountaintop experience and have other ideas about what should
happen as a result of these powerful signs, but God almost always has different
plans. Worse, at least from the prophets’ perspective, the people to whom
they are sent, His people, seldom ever listen. The desperately want those
listening to them to hear God’s warning, God’s offer of grace, and to return to
God, but more often than not, the people grumble and ignore their call.
They end up becoming suffering servants in anticipation of the Suffering Servant,
Jesus of Nazareth, who will be killed for His own obedience.
It is that same Jesus, though, who
reminded us of the ego eimi just a couple weeks ago, of the
truth that God is. No matter our expectations, no matter our failings, no
matter our courage or cowardice, no matter our strength or weakness, God
is. No matter the calamities and disasters around us, God is. And it is
His desire to reach all humanity.
In his current state, Elijah is
incapable of doing what is necessary. The angel tells Elijah it is rab,
which is translated as “too hard.” The physical and emotional toll on
Elijah is apparent. He longs to die. He has given his best and it
makes no difference. Now he has fled; he has run scared for over a
day. Those in power want him dead. How does God respond? He
feeds Elijah; He waters Elijah; He lets his body recover. He allows
Elijah to come to come to the understanding that all of us dread. God
does not need us. But even as we come to the realization of our own
impotence when compared to His, as we come to realize our incredible weakness
and folly when compared to His strength and wisdom, we begin to understand that
we still matter to Him. In fact, we matter so much to Him that He is
willing to die for each one of us, scorned and rejected.
In Elijah’s case, though, God feeds and
waters him and allows him to rest. Notice, though, God is not finished
with Elijah’s calling. God sends him back into the teeth of those who
want the prophet dead with orders Elijah to anoint the new leadership and
Elijah’s own successor! How many of us really want to choose our
successors? None of us really likes to think of a time when we are not
going to be around, right? None of us like to face our mortality.
Oh, we make wills and trusts, but can you imagine how you will fill if I came
to you and said, “God tells me it is time for you to appoint a new
matriarch/patriarch in your family because your time is running out”? You
are laughing, but part of your laughter is knowing what it would do to you,
right? Yet it is God who just provided for Elijah, God who told Elijah
the way was too hard for him, who tells Elijah what he must do. Elijah,
now ministered to by God is prepared for his work, and because he will trust in
God, the way will not be rab for him, even if it seems
contrary to common sense.
All that brings me back to the second
big teaching of this pericope today. Ego eimi in the
midst of our trials, in the midst of our valleys, in the midst of our shadows,
in the midst of our mountaintops, in the midst of our disease and injuries, in
our strength and health, and in the midst of our all our life and work and rest
and feeding. More amazingly, though He does not need us, He wants us to
choose to love and serve Him. And He is so with us that He knows what we
need in order to serve Him. In Elijah’s case it was rest, and food, and
water, and a reminder of his own experience with God, and a reminder of the
experiences of other prophets with God. For us, it may be entirely suited
to us, to what we need to learn that He is, that He loves us, and that He has
work for us to do! And then fortified by God’s tender loving care to him,
Elijah is sent back north to do God’s work, just as you and I are during this
liturgy, where we remind ourselves intentionally of God’s work in the past and
promises of the future, and having shared in His Body and Blood, we are sent
out to do the work He has given us to do.
As I reminded you at the beginning of
this, Elijah is not a superhero of the faith. You have seen that God
wanted you to know that Elijah, for all the glory that is attached to his work,
was just a human being. He had plans; he had ideas. He experienced
bitter failure and longed to die. The hero of his story is, of course,
God. God is the one who shapes and forms and uses us to His glory.
And just as He did with Elijah, He promises to do the same with each one of
us! Can you imagine? Can you really imagine? That is part of
why it is Good News, great news. His plan of salvation history is not up
to us. All He asks is that we do our best to stay on the path He
directs. The rest, even the feeding and watering and the rest and the
picking us up after we stumble, is up to Him! And that is a reminder we
all need to hear from time to time, just like a good nap or good meal.
In Christ’s Peace,
Brian+
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