Elijah was fleeing for his life. He was on the run – first sprinting over hill
and dale, then struggling through wilderness and desert before he simply lay
down under a gnarly old bush – starving for food, thirsting for water,
exhausted, depleted, his whole body aching, wishing he would die – right then
and there.
Elijah had simply had enough of this
prophet business. After all these years,
he had decided that it was now time to throw in the sponge. After all, the rewards had been few, and the
dangers were far too great.
As he lay there – hot, sweaty, blisters
on his feet, he thought about what had brought him to this precipice, to this
point of discouragement, to this edge of despair. It had all started as somewhat of a lark, but
the whole event had backfired, and so here he was lying under a broom tree in
the middle of nowhere.
It had appeared to be such a marvelous
opportunity to get the best of the evil Queen Jezebel even as he tweaked the
noses of her 450 plus pagan pseudo-prophets. And the end
result, Elijah intuitively knew, would be a glorious affirmation of the power
of Yahweh/God even as Jezebel’s god Baal would be unceremoniously put back in
its Canaanite box once and for all.
It was a big public showdown, a “my God
is better than your god” sort of thing.
You see, it had been the third year of a terrible drought. Crops were failing, cattle were starving, and
people were dying. And King Ahab the
ruler of the Northern Kingdom of Israel had called Elijah and all the 450+ prophets
of Baal and directed them to do something, anything, to cause the skies to open
and the rains to fall.
Elijah took advantage of this dire
situation and proposed that the prophets of the two gods have a sort of
competition – dueling sacrifices, so to speak.
They would bring bulls, place them upon altars, prepare a fire, and – ah
ha! – do whatever needed to be done to entice their particular god to light the
fire for the burnt offering.
The prophets of Baal drew the short
straw and went first. The bulls were
brought, the altars constructed, the fires laid – and all the people gathered
round, watching and waiting.
The prophets of
Baal prayed – and prayed some more. In
fact, they prayed for hours on end - throwing in a couple of rain dances for good
measure - but nothing happened.
That was when Elijah got cocky and so “indulged in a bit of showboating. He mocked the prophets of
Baal for their noisy prayers, which had not produced the result they sought. “Is your god deaf”, he had taunted, “maybe you need to shout a bit louder”.
Then he directed four participants
chosen randomly from the audience to pour water on his sacrifice just to make
his challenge a bit more difficult.” Each one poured a jar of it onto Elijah’s
altar until the water ran down the edges and into the surrounding trenches.
The prophets of Baal never did get
their fire lit. However, when it was
Elijah’s turn, Yahweh/God immediately sent a flurry of flames. They burned up not only the sacrifice, but
also the wood and stones of the altar. They
even scorched the surrounding earth and dried up all that water in the
trench. And even better, looming
thunderheads suddenly hid the brilliant afternoon sun, and the rains began to
fall.
Elijah was clearly the winner of that
go round. So elated was he and feeling
so triumphant that he ordered all 450+ prophets of Baal to be seized, led to
Kishon Brook, stabbed, and drowned. Kind
of like doing a dance in the end zone, I suppose, except a lot more
grisly.
Maybe it was Elijah’s teasing and
provoking that riled up Queen Jezebel, or maybe it was the shocking death of
all her beloved prophets, but she threatened Elijah – and that is where our
story begins today. “The gods will get you for this and I’ll get even with you! By this time
tomorrow you’ll be as dead as any one of those prophets.”
Now Elijah knew enough not to take such
a threat lightly. He was well aware of
Jezebel’s fiery temper and the ease with which she knocked off people she did
not like. The Bible tells us that Elijah
was afraid, and that is probably one of the biggest understatements in all of
Holy Scripture.
And so Elijah fled, and thus we find
him in this morning’s reading exhausted and sleeping under a broom tree in the
middle of nowhere. It was then that an
angel tapped him on the shoulder and left him a loaf of bread and a jug of
water.
He had a few
bites and sips of these small gifts from God, left the remainder beside him,
and promptly fell asleep again.
The angel was persistent, however, woke
him again, and told him in no uncertain terms to eat up because he had a long
journey ahead. He did too because he
hiked 40 days and 40 nights all the way to Mount Sinai, to the holy mountain
where Moses had picked up the Ten Commandments, to the sacred peak where
Yahweh/God was said to reside.
And Elijah found a cave on the mountain
and crawled inside for the night. His
feet hurt, and he was feeling very sorry for himself. Believing he was quite alone in the quiet
coolness of the cave and the evening, Elijah was surprised when he heard the
voice of God.
The conversation went like this,
according to Episcopal priest Stuart Higginbotham”
God:
"What are you doing here, Elijah? Why are you holed up in this
cave?"
Elijah:
"Well, I'm pretty upset right now."
God:
"Well, whatever for?"
Elijah:
"Well, I've been working so hard as a prophet, you see? And, as for
the other Israelites, they aren't trying at all. They have forsaken your
covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the
sword. I alone am left, and now they are seeking my life to take it away
too!"
(Aside:
Poor Elijah! Woe is me!)
And what does God tell the prophet?
"Oh, I am so sorry; yes, I know that you have been such a wonderful
prophet?" No. God says to him, "Go out and stand on the
mountain, for the Lord is about to pass by."
Elijah does not get some sympathetic pity
from God; instead, God tells him to get his you-know-what in gear and get out
of the cave, or else he will miss the theophany--a seldom seen manifestation of
Divine Glory. Such a temptation got Elijah to his feet and to the
entrance of the cave.
Of course, that is when the elemental
forces of nature come into the story.
First, Elijah felt a surging wind on this face that initially tousled
his hair and caused his robes to flap furiously about him. However, as that
wind grew stronger, it split mountains and shattered rocks. Then there was
an earthquake, and Elijah felt Mt. Sinai tremble beneath his feet as the Holy
Mountain was shaken to its very core.
And finally there was a fire so hot that Elijah was certain it would
consume everything, for surely nothing could survive such a scalding. Then, it
was over.
And, for Elijah, who was anticipating a
spectacle that would top the one he had orchestrated for God with the Baal
prophets and the flaming altar, it was all very anti-climactic. The wind was just a wind, the fire just a
fire, and the earthquake just a momentary shake, rattle, and roll. Elijah was mightily disappointed because he
had expected to see the God of his people, the one true God passing before his
very eyes.
Elijah was just turning to go back to
continue his “poor Elijah, woe is me” lament when he heard the silence, if you
can even hear silence.
It was the kind of silence that follows
after the last crack of thunder in a storm.
It was the kind of silence between when a baby is born and when he takes
his first breath. It was the kind of silence
at the other end of life when an elderly grandmother exhales for the very last
time. In Hebrew, it was the “sound of fine silence.” (PLAY CD)
"Hello, darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk to you again. Because a vision softly creeping left its seeds
while I was sleeping, and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains
within the sound of silence."
(Simon and Garfunkel, “Sound of Silence”)
It was a silence that was full and
rich, a silence that was filled with possibility. As the poet Mary Oliver wrote, "little
by little, the stars begin to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there is a
new voice which you slowly recognize."
It was in that silence that Elijah
found God. And the old jaded prophet –
not sure what to do with the silence other than revere it - covered his face
with his cloak and tiptoed back into the cave.
And it is there – with Elijah stunned
by the sound of silence, having found his way back into the farthest, quietest recesses
of the cave – that we usually end this story.
And when we do, we cannot help but focus
on finding God in the silence of sanctuary, in the stillness of prayer, in the
rising and setting of the sun, in all the quiet places we can carve out in the
midst of our chaotic and noise-filled world.
These verses we just read lie at the foundation of many a clergy
sabbatical, many a silent retreat, and many a lonely pilgrimage.
However, the passage does not end
here. Because, in the silence that was
God, the Holy One repeated his question to Elijah. “Whatever are you doing here, holed up in a
cave?”
And Elijah, perhaps predictably,
answered with his lamentable, Eeyore-like moan – “Woe is me. I am the only faithful one left. Everyone else has fallen short. This prophet business is too hard, too much
work. If you do not mind, I am just
going to hang here in this cave.”
But God did mind. God always minds when we pull back and stay
in our sanctuaries, in our churches. God
minds when we let others financially
support those who are representing us at Maine Seacoast Mission. God minds when we ignore those who hunger,
those with no health insurance, those who are bullied and marginalized, those
who destroy our planet because they will not change their consumerist ways. God even minds when we let others put up posters to advertise the
concert that will allow us to continue our ministries locally and
globally.
God did mind, and so God told Elijah to
get out of the cave. As United Church of
Christ pastor Lauren Lorincz remarked, “In other words: Get back to work!
The world is
calling you, Elijah: idolatry, racism, sexism, homophobia, ecological
collapse.” Even in the silence, the
message is the same: "Listen, Elijah, you need to get back to work; I have
things I want to accomplish, and you're the instrument for getting them
done!" (Kate Huey)
In other words, “Do not let these rock
walls define your mission, Elijah.” Do not let these artfully painted sanctuary
walls define your faith, O you who proclaim to be Christians, followers of
Jesus, disciples of his message of peace and of his dream of transformation.
And Elijah did as God commanded. He left the cave. He turned his back on the silence and
ventured into Damascus, one of the busiest, noisiest, dirtiest cities of the
day. And there, when he had thought all
along that he was the only faithful one left, Elijah found 7000 just like him –
men and women loyal to God who had never so much as nodded at Baal.
And Elijah’s prophetic voice – renewed,
restored – once more proclaimed God’s love for the world and God’s passion for
justice. May our voices do likewise.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond VIllage Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
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