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1 Kings: 19:
1-8
November 22, 2009 ELIJAH’S PICNIC: This morning we continue our exploration of some of the old, old bible stories of our faith with the story of the prophet Elijah. Being one of the prophets of Israel, like all the prophets, Elijah had the unenviable task of telling those in power things they didn’t want to hear. They were the conscience, they were the voice of God, the reminder of the ethical and moral standards that God had established, and those are things that Kings and Queens, not to mention Prime Ministers and Presidents and members of Congress often times do not want to hear, particularly if your name happens to be Jezebel, a name now synonymous with tyranny, corruption and cruelty. Don’t get me wrong, there was a king also, King Ahab, but this royal family was a bit like the family of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Like Lady Macbeth, Queen Jezebel was the force to be reckoned with and King Ahab sort of went along for the ride. Now, in those days, if a King or Queen didn’t like what a prophet was saying, if they didn’t kill the prophet, they would simply go out and hire a prophet, a false prophet who would tell them exactly what they wanted to hear, whispering sweet nothings into their ears. Those in power would say, “mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of the them all” and these sycophantic prophets would say, “O Queen Jezebel and O King Ahab, how can anyone be so right and so wise and so beautiful all at the same time.” If those in power didn’t like what the true scientists were saying about environmental concerns, for example, they would go out and pay a scientist to tell them what they wanted to hear. If they didn’t like what the prophets were saying in their admonitions against war and violence, they would pay a prophet to tell them to go ahead and prepare for war reassuring them that God would be “on their side,”, and “besides,”, these false prophets would say, “we’re not really concerned about issues of war and peace”; “that’s not our area of expertise”; “we’re much more interested in more ethereal or spiritual matters.” Likewise, if King Ahab and Queen Jezebel didn’t like the prophets speaking so incessantly about justice and a concern for the poor, they would find a suitable prophet who would tell those in power that they were divinely entitled to their disproportionate share of the wealth. The bible, after all, says, “The wealth of nations shall come to you”, and they took this quite literally and personally and they were not going to put up with any troublesome prophets would talked so incessantly about economic and social injustice. And, by the way, this is where Adam Smith got the title for his famous book, The Wealth of Nations. Anyway, Elijah, being fed up with all of these false prophets, challenged them to a contest on Mt. Carmel up in the Northern part of Israel, overlooking the Jezreel valley. But this contest would be more than just a friendly competition; it would be a battle to the death, and like so many of these biblical stories we’ve examined, this one also ought to be rated “x” for excessive violence. At the end of the competition, Elijah calls down the wrath of God on all these false prophets, and they are – at least according to this story – exterminated. So, as you can imagine, Jezebel and Ahab if they were angry with Elijah before, but saw him as annoyance; now they were absolutely livid, and so they put a price on Elijah’s head, and Jezebel sent him a message: So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one these dead prophets by this time tomorrow. So here is the part of the story that I want to concentrate on for today. Elijah is now afraid, and runs for his life, all the way from Mt Carmel in the North all the way down to Beer-sheba in the South, in the Negev desert. It’s hard for us to identify with prophets when they are “at the top of their game”, when they seem absolutely fearless and invincible, when they say with great bravado, “thus saith the Lord”, when they stand in the public square and take on the principalities and the powers, when they seem to be so fearless in their articulation of the truth, when they stand up for truth and justice and freedom even when the authorities tell them to stand-down, when they’re more than willing to take on the world all by themselves. But even the best of our prophets sometimes feel tired and beleaguered and defeated, and sometimes even the more confidant and self-assured among us runaway from our prophetic responsibilities, and so it was with the prophet Elijah in this story, and I’m glad that this story shows Elijah in all his frail and feeble humanity, for it is something with which we all can identify. Running for his life, Elijah finally sits down in the shade of a Broom Tree, and suffering from self-doubt and self-pity, he says, It is enough (which is a biblical way of saying, “enough already!”) It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers. Can you see yourself in these words? Have you ever been in that spiritual, existential condition? I’m sure we all sometimes feel as if we are in flight from our responsibilities, and being in flight, we then punish ourselves for our failure of nerve, our ineptitude. The Queen Jezebels and King Ahabs of this world sometimes get the best of us, and we can find them not only in our systems of government, but also sometimes wherever there is a position of power and authority – in our places of business, in our schools, and sadly sometimes also in our churches, and in fighting the good fight against them, we all sometimes get tired and we “run for our lives” and take shelter beneath a broom tree or a maple tree, and what I love about this story is how it seems to suggest that God understands our humanity. Rather than tell Elijah to get up and to stop feeling so sorry for himself, God sends an angel who touches him, and says, “Arise and Eat.” And Elijah looks up, and he sees a “cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water.” In far too many of these stories, we have seen the angry, vindictive God, but here we see God is a very different way – gentle and sensitive and reassuring, not a “Master God” but more of a “Servant God”, not a “sky God” but an “earthly God,” not a God that “Lords” it over us, throwing down thunderbolts from on high, but a God that kneels down and touches us in our pain. There’s a line from an old hymn that says, “Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer.” That’s the kind of God that I see in this story – or at least this part of the story, not what you find a few verses before or a few verses after our scripture lesson for today, but at least here, at least here we find what I would consider a wonderful portrait of the True Nature of God. Bracket out everything else, and this is enough for me. In these biblical stories sometimes you have to hack your way through an awful lot of dross before you come to gold, but when you find gold, it makes it all worthwhile. And that’s at least what I have found in this story, the golden reassurance of God’s love for us, no matter whether we succeed or whether we fail. We run away from our responsibilities, we allow ourselves to be cowered by the Queen Jezebels of this world, but even there, in that spiritual, existential state, God finds us pouting and feeling sorry for ourselves in the pitiful shade of a Broom Tree, and an angel of God bends down and touches us and blesses us with a picnic – angel food cake baked on hot stones and not just a glass but a jar of cool, fresh water. If we were to do an “archeological” study – if you will – on the origin, the genesis of the Sacrament of Holy Communion, I’m sure we would find its rudimentary beginning in this story of Elijah. Elijah ate and drank and the bible says that he “lay down again, and the Angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him, and said, “Arise and eat, else the journey will be too great for you.” And so it is with us. The journey, the pilgrimage of life will be too great for us unless we also allow ourselves, from time to time, to be on the receiving end of God’s gentle, compassionate love, and so as we share together in this Sacrament of Holy Communion, think of your favorite tree and picture yourself on a hot summer day sitting beneath that tree, and think of yourself not in the best way but in the worst way. Think of your own failures and think of the things you should have done and could have done, and then think of God kneeling down and serving you a picnic of angel food cake and a jar of cool water. For Elijah, that was enough to sustain him for 40 days and 40 nights, which is a biblical way of saying, “for a long, long time.” May it be so for us as well. Amen. David W. Good Old Lyme, Connecticut
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