Kings 19:1-15a
June 19, 2022
This past week I was in Louisville
at the Presbyterian Seminary, finishing up the second week of my fourth and
last seminar for my Doctor of Ministry degree. There is still at least another
year and a half of work, research, and writing left to do before I can even
think about the graduating, but to finish this fourth seminar felt like a big
step. In retrospect, I can see how much further I got on my project during
these last two weeks. But I can only say that because I’m done with the two
weeks. I could not say that during these past two weeks. No, in the throes of
these last fourteen days, my attitude toward everything I was doing was very,
very different.
The first week when I attended the
class from home, I felt overwhelmed and wasn’t sure I’d be able to get through
all the work that needed to be done. But I kept thinking that it would be
better once I was actually on campus. Then the second week, I went to
Louisville, and it didn’t feel any better. Forget these two weeks! I was
convinced that I would not be able to get through the work for the entire
degree. Talking to Brent at night, I would tell him,
“I have made a huge mistake.”
“Why did I ever think I could do a
DMin?”
“Why did I ever say the word, DMin?”
“I’m going to quit.”
“I want to go home.”
And when I wasn’t sharing my fears
with Brent, I was lying awake at night, wondering what the heck I had gotten
myself into. There were tears. And I don’t think I had one good night’s sleep
the entire time I was gone. But the last day of class, my professors assured me
that my work on my proposal had come a long way from the first day of the
seminar.
Hearing that helped. And I’m so
grateful for Dr. C. and Dr. F. because they kept me going forward. But what
helped me even more was hearing that my colleagues in our cohort were feeling
the same way. Apparently, it wasn’t just me asking, “Why? Why?!” And it wasn’t
just me shedding tears of frustration and wanting to quit, give up, go home,
and forget that we’d ever even thought about getting a DMin at all. That made
me feel better, not because I wanted my misery to have some company, but
because I discovered that I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t the only one feeling
discouraged and confused. Even though I may have felt completely alone in those
moments, I know that I wasn’t. And that helps. It helps because it reminds me
that we are all in it together. Knowing that doesn’t make the work that lies
ahead any less daunting. It doesn’t make it any easier. But it makes it
bearable, because I know I have three other women who are with me. No matter
how discouraged about this work that I have been, and no matter how discouraged
I will be in the days and months to come – and I’m sure I will be – I am not
alone. These three other women are with me on this path, and I am with them.
Elijah was not alone either, but he
felt like he was. We haven’t spent any time in the chapters before this one, so
we may not have a good sense of how Elijah was doing in living out his
prophetic call from God. Well, from what I can tell, he was doing great! In the
verses before our chapter begins, he predicted that a drought would come to an
end, and it did! Before that he triumphed over the priests of Baal. Major
victory for God and for Elijah. Elijah’s ministry was on fire. One commentator
that I read likened Elijah to a pastor whose ministry is in the fast lane. If
Elijah were a minister today, the commentator speculated, he would be that
pastor whose church is growing by leaps and bounds. The pastor’s congregation
is thriving. The church’s programs are busting out at the seams. Other pastors
want to be this pastor. If Elijah were a pastor today, he would have inspired
other ministers to preface their comments with, “Well, I’m no Elijah but …”
But for all that Elijah was able to
accomplish in the time before our passage, in the verses we read today we find
him running scared. Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, has sent word to Elijah that she is
going to do to him what he did to the prophets of Baal. With this threat and
the fear of being struck down in his heart, Elijah runs away. Suddenly Elijah
isn’t quite as confident as he was before. He travels about a day into the
wilderness and finds a solitary broom tree. He sits down underneath it and asks
God to let him die.
“It is enough; now O Lord, take away
my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”
Then Elijah lays down under this
tree and falls asleep. An angel wakes him and tells him to get up an eat,
otherwise the journey will be too much for him. Elijah looks and sees that
there is food and water waiting for him. He eats and drinks, and with the
strength that the food gives him, he goes forty days and forty nights to Mount
Horeb, the mountain of the Lord. There was a cave there, and he went into the
cave and spent the night there.
The Lord comes to him while he waits
in the cave. The Lord speaks to him, wanting to know what Elijah is up to. Elijah
answers,
“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.”
In other words, “Look God, I have
been eager to do your work and your will. I have been diligent. I have never
forsaken you or your call in my life. But instead of things going right, they
are going wrong. I am all alone in this because the other Israelites are trying
to kill me. “
I am alone, God. I am alone, and if
you cared about me at all you would let me die.
That may be an extreme sentiment,
but I suspect that more of us have felt forsaken, discouraged, and alone than
we would care to admit. Elijah had been trucking along at a nice speed, but
then he was derailed by a hateful threat and the work that he had been doing
came crashing to a halt. Now, he didn’t know what to do next. He was all alone.
Except … he wasn’t. God was there
with him in that cave on Mount Horeb. God refused to leave him alone, and
considering the state that Elijah was in, he may not have thought that a good
thing. But the Lord refused to leave Elijah alone or let him off the hook.
“Go out, and stand on the mountain
before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
And a terrible wind, so strong that
it was splitting mountains into two and pulverizing large rocks into tiny
pieces. But God was not in that great wind. And after the wind passed, there
was an earthquake. Everything on land and maybe even in the sky shook and
rolled with the force of that quake. Then after the earthquake came a fire. Its
heat blazed across the shaken and tossed mountaintop. But after the fire came
the sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard the sound of silence, he wrapped
his head in his mantle and went and stood at the entrance of the cave. Out of
the silence, the Lord spoke to him.
“What are you doing here, Elijah?”
Elijah gave him the same response as
before. I’ve been zealous for you, Lord. The Israelites have forsaken your
covenant. They have thrown down your altars. They have killed your prophets
with the sword. Now, they want to kill me too.
If Elijah hoped that God would say,
“Oh, I understand why you ran away into the wilderness. I get why we had to
have this conversation up here. It’s okay, buddy, you take a few days to get
yourself together. Maybe take a week. Go somewhere sunny, with a beach! And
when you return, I’ll start you back on desk work. Okay?” then he was sorely
disappointed.
God did not respond to Elijah’s
complaint. God just said, “Go.” If that seems callous on God’s part, let’s look
back at the story. God made sure Elijah had food and water. God made sure
Elijah made it through the wilderness for forty days and nights. God could have
roared at Elijah in the great wind or shaken him in the earthquake. God could
have singed him in the fire, but it was in the sound of silence that God spoke
to him once more. It was in the sound of silence that God said, “Go.” And God
didn’t tell Elijah to go and sacrifice himself. God didn’t command Elijah to
voluntarily put his head on a silver platter. God just said, “Go.” Go because
there is still work to be done. Go because I call you to be faithful in spite
of the hardships that others place on you. Go, because I never promised you
that this would be easy, but I do promise you that in the long run it will be
worth it. Go, because sometimes all you can do is keep on keeping up, but I
promise I am with you.
All of us are called, in different
ways, to different ministries, but we are all called. And I think that along
with each and every call comes discouragement. Discouragement that it seems with
all we do and all we try nothing is changing. And in these times, giving up and
walking away seems like the wisest decision to make. When we are discouraged,
it is easy to forget that God has been providing for us all along. God has fed
us, nourished us for the journey. God has sent messengers along the way to
remind us that we are not alone. And when we think we cannot go another step,
God says, “Go.” And we do. We put one foot in front of the other, and we go. We
move forward. We keep on keeping on. And we trust that we are not alone. We
trust that there are people on either side to help us walk when we cannot. We
trust that we are not alone, that God is with us. So, let’s go. The work is
before us, and God says, “Go.” Thanks be to God.
Let all of God’s children say,
“Alleluia!”
Amen.
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