Community Christian Church of Springfield
Roger Ray, pastor
1 Kings 19:9-14
9At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 10He answered, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away." 11He said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 14He answered, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away."
I have a long treasured fantasy. Probably nothing I have to say now could possibly live up to your expectations but it is my fantasy, not yours. Mine is a fantasy that was born in the final months of my tenure as the senior pastor of a large denominational church... when I had to take medications to calm my stomach and others to cope with the political insanity of my circumstances.
I bought a lottery ticket every Saturday afternoon and I would stop at a store and check it on my way to church on Sunday to see if I had won, literally to see if I could "call in rich." In those days I dreamed having enough money to buy a Starbucks on the coast of Florida where I could change my name and just stand behind the counter and make cappuccino drinks all day and officially stop trying to care about what happened in the news or to the church.
I never won the lottery but I did find myself unemployed and investigating the purchase of a Starbucks only to learn that Starbucks doesn't sell franchises. All of their stores are company owned.
Returning to pastoral life was not a straight line and when life gets a bit more challenging than I think that I want to continue to bear, I return to my fantasy of what I call my own personal "Elijah moment." I am sorry to be speaking so personally this morning but I can't help but think about my Starbucks fantasy whenever this Elijah story comes around in the lectionary.
We read just a bit of it this morning but let me remind you of the larger context. King Ahab, the king of Judah, had married a queen from a neighboring kingdom who was determined to replace the worship of the Jewish God, Yahweh, with her own native religion. Jezebel was a determined evangelist for Baal, killing those who would not comply by converting.
Elijah has a great show down with the priests of Baal. It was a red-letter day for Elijah who succeeded in calling down fire from heaven and then personally slaying the priests of Baal with a sword. Ecumenical relationships were at a low ebb at that time.
Jezebel then threatens to kill Elijah and even though he had proven himself to be a friend of God and pretty handy with a sword, he was horrified and he ran into the wilderness to hide. He hid in a cave and prayed that God would simply take his life.
Now, of course, this story is full of hero-worshipping exaggeration but the core narrative tells a tale that I can certainly relate to and I suspect that most of you can too.
He didn't run and hide because he no longer had the strength to stand up for the faith he had defended. He didn't go into hiding because he was afraid of one woman, even though she was a queen. He went into hiding because he didn't believe that he had any friends.
Elijah was a powerful prophet, certain of his convictions and unafraid of his enemies but, as you see it in the beginning of this pericope we have from I Kings 19 today: The Lord calls to Elijah who is hiding in the back of a cave, "Why are you hiding?" And Elijah answers, "I've been so zealous for the truth, I've worked so hard, but everyone else has just given up and given in... they have forsaken the message, accepted the religion of the government.. and," Elijah says, "I, I alone, am left."
You know how a shy child will sometimes just pull his shirt tail up over his head so that, well, so that no one could see him though the truth of the matter is that everyone can still see him, he just can't see anybody. It is one of those things that children do that adults aren't supposed to do but the text says that Elijah did, he pulled his mantle up over his head..... which doesn't look very mature.... But it does look sadly desperate.... Depressed... hopeless.
In the months that have passed since my newspaper column ended, my mail has changed pretty dramatically. The mail that I received in response to my News-Leaders articles were mostly very negative and some were even threatening. But the mail I receive in response to our YouTube and iTunes listeners is typically very positive. Of course, that is a self selected audience and the newspaper is a general circulation publication so people who don't like my stuff on line will usually just go away. ... but not always.
I get an occasional letter from a fundamentalist who is praying for me, telling me that I need to believe in God's word and in Jesus Christ.... I don't pay any attention to those. But when I do get a negative response, it is usually pretty forceful, usually a bit too personal, and it sounds like it was written from the mouth of a cave in the wilderness by someone who feels abandoned and desperate.
One of our listeners, Tony Khoshaba, and Iraqi Christian, wrote to ask me why no progressive Christians are talking about the slaughter of Christians in Syria and in Iraq by the Isis extremists. I replied, frankly, that though I and others address current social justice issues that we are not a news service. While I try to take a wide angle view of social issues, I am disciplined about exposing myself to a lot of non-corporate international news... I still cannot say that I am comprehensively educated in current events.
Tony, though the plight of your people, the Yazidis, is dire, and I know that hundreds have been murdered and thousands are stranded in the mountains without food and water, and I affirm that very little media attention is being given to this emergency, I do want you to know that we are not indifferent to your plight. The Yazidis, which means, "children of the son," have lived in Christian community in Iraq and Syria from the days of the apostles themselves.
Since the rise of Islam, I know that you must feel much like Elijah, where everyone has abandoned the faith, turned to the majority religion and now, under the Iraqi banner which reads, There is no God but Allah, your people are being hunted down and killed.
There have been demonstrations in major cities on both the east and the west coast of the United States, sometimes drawing out thousands of desperate people who have fled from the Middle East for the safety of the United States, but the TV cameras don't show up and no one seems to hear your cries.
I hear your anger and I can bear the fact that you are angry even very specifically at me. Still, there is nothing that I can do to change the policies of the governments of Iraq, Syria or even the United States, but I can tell you that you are not alone.
The only reassurance that Elijah gets is that he is not alone. He is still in a tiny minority, but he is not all alone.
But there is something more I would like to add for Tony, for myself, for any of you who feel like pulling your shirt over your head, getting a meaningless job and officially checking out of society.
In his book, The Impossible Will Take a While, Howard Zinn writes:
Consider the remarkable transformation, in just a few decades, in people's consciousness of racism, in the bold presence of women demanding their rightful place, in a growing public awareness that gays are not curiosities but sensate human beings, in the long term growing skepticism about military intervention despite brief surges of military madness.We have been successful on many fronts, even when the success is far too slow. And I realize that 200,000 refugees in the mountains of Iraq do not have time to wait for water, food, and protection from an army of terrorists, I don't want to be dismissive of that in any way. Still, the larger issue is the historical cessation of war.... The issue is that we have to stop creating more refugees, moving national boundaries by force and allowing regional civil strife to become genocide.
It is that long-term change that I think we must see if we are not to lose hope. Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.
If we are ever going to do that, we have to get out of the cave, we have to find each other. You don't have to be friendless or isolated.
Pull your shirt down off of your face, go find your tribe and make your tribe strong enough for your voice to be heard. Isolation is the same thing as surrender and we are not the kind of people who give up.
