God’s Messengers

Rev. Dave Kovalow-St. John   V   1/8/12   V   1 Kings 19: selected verses

So, to recap a bit:  First Christian is in the middle of a nine month encounter with the narrative portions of the Bible.  We started with the symbolic imagery of Genesis chapter one; moved on to the well known stories of Abraham, Joseph, David and Solomon. 

But NOW we are entering into a murkier period.  (Sometime during the next sentence, Dave gets a phone call)  It’s a period during which – on the UPPER level – (Dave answers phone.)  “Yes sir, I will most certainly tell them.”  On the upper level, God is constantly trying to reach people. The question is: Will they respond to God or put God through to voicemail?  (Please be impressed:  it took me a while to find anything remotely appropriate as a ringtone for God.) And since our Hebrew ancestors didn’t have cell phones, the message God wants them to hear is mostly delivered by special servants called “prophets.”

However, THAT is happening in the upper story.  Down on earth, things are not nearly so clear.

Keeping the Divided Kingdom Straight

In fact, things are so muddy that this point in the story is where a lot of people throw up their hands:  “I was following everything.  Even when I put this book aside (with its summation of the Bible’s historical portions) and went back to the original source (the Bible itself): I was keeping up.  I was able to wade through the laws, the poetry, the redundant descriptions of how to build a temple, and all the other manifestations of our Jewish ancestors’ piety. But—holy cow!—once Israel has a Civil War and splits into two Kingdoms (Judah in the south; Israel in the north), and both Kingdoms start having kings with unpronounceable names (Rehoboam, Jeroboam, Abijam, Jehoram – what’s with the ‘…am’s’?).  God sends all kinds of prophets to warn those kings to straighten up and fly right…:  that is where I just get LOST!”

Well, you know what?  If you’ve said something like that, you are not alone.  We are looking at two or three hundred years of history that are complicated by mostly bad leadership, a variety of international enemies, and a failure on the part of the people to remember who (and WHOSE) they were.

Our textbook calls all these details the “Lower Story.” The main comfort I’d offer is:  don’t feel bad if you can’t keep it straight.  It IS complicated, but simple charts like the one inside your bulletin can help you follow the thread.

This chart is a little like the one we looked at last week.  It shows the kings and dates of the northern Kingdom of Israel and the longer-lived Southern Kingdom of Judah.  (Remember, these are kingdoms the Nation of Israel split into after the civil war that followed Solomon’s death.) 

The neat thing about this chart is: it shows the prophets God sent to get one or the other kingdom (and its king) back on track.  For instance, notice that Elijah (the focus of our reading this morning) was a prophet in the Kingdom of Israel (the northern kingdom) during the reign of King Ahab. 

Ahab and Jezebel

Now, POLITICALLY, King Ahab was fairly successful, but religiously he was a mess.  According to II Kings 10:18, “Ahab served Baal a little,” but he didn’t completely abandon the faith of his fathers.  On the one hand, the names he gave each of his children were amalgams of the letters in the divine name, “Yahweh.”

On the other hand, he married a woman (Jezebel) who was a huge fan of Baal worship exclusively.  You and I are Americans; we might be inclined to say: let’s not be too hard on King Ahab.  He was obviously okay with tolerance, religious diversity, the separation of church and state. That sounds good, but realize three things:

1.     America is all about liberty, freedom, democracy:  take those away and we’re not us anymore.  Israel was all about being the people of the One True God; take that way, and they ceased to be who they were.

2.     Second: Christianity is fairly well set:  I’m not threatened by religious diversity because, in a fair debate, I’m confident we can win.  Back then, the people of God were still trying to figure things out; Jesus was 900 years in their future.  Maybe they weren’t so confident.

3.     But most important:  Baal worship took all kinds of forms.  I don’t care HOW tolerant you are, if Jezebel was pushing the kind of Baal worship that called for temple prostitutes and for child sacrifice, it was worth fighting. 

Elijah and Baal

Certainly that’s what Elijah thought.  In First Kings 18, the chapter before this morning’s reading, Elijah challenges 450 prophets of Baal to a competition and invites all Israel (i.e., the northern kingdom) to come and watch.  He directs Baal’s prophets to prepare a sacrifice as an offering, but not set fire to it.  Instead, they should ask Baal to set it ablaze.  Baal’s prophets accept the challenge, they build an altar: they dance, they whoop, they do everything they can for half a day.  Nothing happens.  Baal does not give them so much as a flick of his Bic. 

Elijah – ever so helpful – offers suggestions:  “Maybe you should shout louder.  Baal might be asleep.  Maybe he’s in the bathroom.”  Other translations say, “Maybe Baal is relieving himself,” or “Maybe he is taking care of business.”  No matter how you translate it, it’s not something you want said about your god.  The prophets of Baal get mad; they shout louder, they cut themselves with swords.  

Nothing works.

Elijah says, “Enough! My turn.”  He prepares an offering, and – just for dramatic effect – he pours water over it, not just once, but three times.  Then he says a prayer to Yahweh, the one true God, and his altar erupts into flame: water sizzles into steam.  The crowd watching is impressed, and since there are no goalposts to tear down, Elijah commands them to tear into the 450 prophets of Baal.

Queen Jezebel is not pleased.  Her men have not only been embarrassed, they’ve been killed.  Elijah may have expected her to repent from her idolatry.”  Instead, she plasters his face on post office walls: “ELIJAH: Wanted, Dead …or Dead.”

At that point, Elijah may have expected God to protect him.  But when Jezebel makes her threat, nothing happens, and – as we heard – he runs for dear life.

…Now, what are we to do with this story?  Even if we interpret it as metaphorically as possible – if we contextualize it, and remember the possibility that the prophets of Baal practiced child sacrifice and forced young women to be temple prostitutes – even so: 450 people killed to celebrate a victory for God?  That’s hard to swallow (ESPECIALLY since we’re talking about the God we meet in Jesus Christ)!

I have to wonder if maybe even Elijah had second thoughts.  Oh, it was glorious when his offering was so obviously accepted, but maybe it felt not quite so glorious when the last prophet of Baal was butchered (just as he had ordered); or when the monarch, instead of repenting, put a price on his head.  Maybe, when Yahweh did not come to his aid, it occurred to Elijah, “I may not know as much as I thought I did.”

The Talmud says the words “I don’t know” are sacred.  Maybe that’s because a little humility, a little doubt can actually bring us closer to the sacred, closer to God.

Elijah and God

Anyway, Elijah runs.  His doubt collapses into despair.  He finds a cave in the desert and all the old verities are gone.  Is he supposed to be saving Israel?  Is he on God’s side?  Is God on his side?  According to the passage we heard, Elijah is ready to die.  And THAT’S when he hears the voice.

Frederick Buechner says of such despair, “God reserves his deepest silence for saints….  Maybe only saints can survive such doubt as that.” 

Isn’t that odd?  Buechner doesn’t link sainthood with certainty and triumph, but with doubt and despair – or, at least, the kind of doubt and despair that can lead to a reencounter with the sacred.  That’s what happens to Elijah. He rediscovers God.

He hears God asking, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  …It’s a question we COULD take at face value:  “How in the world did you come to be hiding in a cave?  What possessed you to run into the desert?”  But surely it’s deeper than that. 

“Elijah, what got you to the point where you feel alone; where you feel no one understands and death will end your story?”

God arranges a remarkable display – all the things you’d THINK it would take to reassure Elijah.  Is your faith faltering?  Do you need powerful reassurance?  How about if heaven sends more special effects than Hollywood could pack into a thousand movies: tornadoes, earthquakes, fires (and, just for fun, we’ll have Jesus jump off the roof of a temple and land without being hurt)!  Razzle dazzle ‘em!

Elijah watches and realizes God isn’t in any of that stuff.  Finally the world falls still – Elijah falls still – and that’s when he hears the voice:  “What are you doing here?”  Are you giving up, Elijah, or are you ready to go on? 

If we had read further, we would have heard God say:  if you ARE going on, Elijah, here’s what I want you to do.  I need you train some people; I need you to make a difference in the lives of some people!   1^st Kings 19:15-16 – Elijah, if you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, then get out there and anoint Hazael, and Jehu, and Elisha.   

Elijah listened.  …Elijah went.

He returned to the difficult job of a prophet:  calling people to the right path, to God’s path – something he did better than (debatably) any other Old Testament prophet.  It happened because out in that desert Elijah remembered something:  God was with him, always.

In that lonely cave, he had cried out:  “I’m alone, deserted, forgotten!” 

But he wasn’t.

I think it helps to remember that Elijah neither knew nor served God perfectly.  That hardly makes him unique.  It’s something he shared with all of Israel, all of Judah, AND (even though we have the advantage of Jesus) all of us.  But God never gave on him, never gave up on Israel, and never gives up on us.

With Me

Let me end with a true story from just over a decade ago.  Casey Alexander is a chaplain for the Samaritan Center of Waconia, Minnesota.  He describes a woman he once worked with.  Her name was Mary and she had Huntington’s disease.  She was an extremely active woman – a mother with several children; she loved to dance the polka and to drink beer (especially green beer on St. Patrick’s Day).  Casey says (I love this):  “She laughed uproariously at all my jokes, and I am not that funny.  For Mary, life and people were a joy to be shared and savored.”

But then her disease started robbing her of little pieces of herself.  Huntington’s slowly takes your ability to speak, to control your movements; and eventually ends in dementia and death.  In her last few months, it was all Mary could do to recite the 23^rd Psalm.  At first, she would shout the whole thing with gusto.  Then it got reduced to its critical components:  “My shepherd!  Green pastures!  No evil!  With me! Goodness and mercy!”

As time passed and the disease worsened, Mary eventually reduced the Psalm to just two words:  “With me!”

The Talmud says that the phrase “I don’t know” can be sacred.  But as Christians, especially Christians studying prophets like Elijah and just emerging from a Christmas celebration of the Incarnation, we would have to say there is no phrase more sacred than that God is with us.     

To put it another way:  God is calling. 

Will we answer?