THE STRAIGHTFORWARD PULPIT

Text:  1 Kings 19:1-15a

Theme:  "Confronting Our Inner-Elijah"

5th Sunday After Pentecost

June 23, 2013

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

 

+In the Name of Jesus+

 

Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. ² So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”

³ Elijah was afraid^[a] and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, ⁴ while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” ⁵ Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.

All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” ⁶ He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.

⁷ The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” ⁸ So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. ⁹ There he went into a cave and spent the night.

And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

¹⁰ He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

¹¹ The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. ¹² After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

¹⁴ He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

¹⁵ The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus.

There's an old line from a Disney movie that popped into my head during prep work this week.  It comes from Song of the South.  B'rer Rabbit says:  "Where I'm goin', there ain't gonna be no trouble."  Uncle Remus replies:  "Dey ain't no place dat fur.

Of course, the "healthy" thing -- we are often given to believe -- is to face our problems and not run from them.  That, in a nutshell, was what Uncle Remus was telling B'rer Rabbit.  Our problems are only temporary, and they, the problems, have something to teach us.  But did you know that one of the great, towering figures in the Holy Bible sought to get away from his problems?  He certainly wasn't the first, and he wouldn't be the last. 

Sometimes we church-goers like to think that some of these characters in God's Word are like superheroes, paragons of virtue, examples for us of righteous living and so on.  Well, I'm here to tell you:  Peter had his denials; Thomas had his doubts; Jonah had his whale; David had his Bathsheba.  Here this morning we note that Elijah had his Jezebel. 

The particularly interesting item in this account is that Elijah found himself in a whole heap of trouble because he did what God wanted him to do. He didn't deny, doubt, disobey an order, or cheat -- as in David's case. As a result, Queen Jezebel seeks to have him eliminated.  Elijah had every right to exclaim, as the Tom Cruise character said in Jerry MacGuire:  "And the hits just keep on comin'!"

This week James Gandolfini died.  He will forever be known as Tony Soprano.  There was much ado in the media about that.  Also, this past week, Vince Flynn died.  Flynn didn't have the Gandolfini celebrity status, but I'm sure that was alright with him.   Vince Flynn wrote novels -- and not just any kind of novel.  He wrote counter-terrorism novels. For me, they're like literary Lays Potato Chips; you can't eat just one!  His main character in many of the stories he wrote was man who was an assassin for the CIA named Mitch Rapp.  His job was to carry out the orders given him by the CIA, and the CIA was simply carrying out orders it had received from the higher-ups in government. 

The government in today's story, headed up by Queen Jezebel, sought to take out Elijah, to "assassinate" him, if you will.   If they had Navy Seals back then, they would probably be called up.   Why did Elijah have to go?  Because, as the reader quickly discovers, he was only doing what God wanted him to do.

Folks, I can understand getting into trouble for some dumb things I've done, stupid actions I've taken, irresponsible choices I've made, etc.  On any given day, we make all kinds of choices.  Our tendency is to think more about those choices than the consequences. In short, we act before we think.  Adding to that, many folks today live by instinct run riot, and instincts only want to be satisfied; they could care less about consequences.

Elijah the prophet was simply facing the consequences of his choices -- and the fact that he was only doing the will of God, with his choices, made it worse.  Have you ever done the right thing and have had to pay the price for it?  You're at peace with God, at peace with your conscience, at peace with yourself about what you've done, but not everyone is, and a few of those folks are going to make sure you know it.  They might even make your life miserable.  In Elijah's case, they tried to kill him.

Is it frustrating?  Well, that's about as nice a way as you can describe it on a quiet, serene, lazy, hazy, summer Sunday morning.  But let's not sugar-coat it.  Elijah was angry at the state of affairs.  Elijah was also afraid.  That's a powerful combination.  What does he do?  He decides to go on the lam -- or, as they say in the CIA, he goes "off grid."  In short, he runs away from the problem. He took the "Midnight Express" -- as the American prisoner did in the movie of the same name:  he escaped.

Have we not taken the "midnight express" on occasion?  Have we not sought escape? Have we been burned so many times in the past that now we feel jaded and cynical and indifferent? Are there times, truth be told, when we'd rather "laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints (because) the sinners have much more fun", as Billy Joel sings?

Feel free to write this down in the margin of your service folder.  Grab a pencil or pen and write down four letters:  H.A.L.T.  Put together, they spell "Halt".  The H stands for "hunger", and here hunger has a broad definition; it can either mean eating too much or eating too little.  The A stands for "Anger"--and that anger may be justified; it may be irrational, but it's just anger.  The L stands for "lonely".  You feel that you're all alone in a world of seven billion people.  No one understands; no one cares.  You're all alone.  Finally, the T stands for "tired."  You're tired physically, mentally, and spiritually.  You're just plain worn out.

Four letters:  H.A.L.T.  Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.  I'm convinced we've all experience at least one letter. I'm not sure if everyone here today has experienced them all at once.  But I'd bet the farm that we've all experienced a combination of two or three of them. 

Elijah -- that great and mighty prophet, that towering and powerful figure, that destroyer of idols and idol worshippers -- experienced it all in our text.  He took the "midnight express"; he ran.  He experience H.A.L.T.  He knew hunger; he knew anger; he knew loneliness, and he was tired. He wanted to give up, to chuck it, and even wanted to check out.  "I have had enough, Lord; take my life; I'm no better than my ancestors,"  he said.  Then he falls asleep.  Do you know one thing depressed people do a lot of?  That's right; they sleep.

Elijah had been pushed beyond his limit many times. He hit rock bottom.  Lo and behold, he feels a touch.  It's an angel of God.  The angel says "Get up and eat."  Looking around, Elijah sees some baked bread and a jug of water.  He partakes and then promptly falls back asleep.

The angel comes a second time, touches Elijah a second time, provides more bread and water.  Elijah partakes.  And "strengthened by that food", the Bible says, Elijah, still "off the grid", goes to the mountain of God and hides out in a cave.

Then, we are told, "The word of the Lord came to him."  God said to Elijah:  "What are you doing here?"  Elijah, to his everlasting credit, admits what's going on.  You want to know why I took the midnight express?  You want to know why I'm hungry, angry, lonely, and tired?  Here's why:  "I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."

The good Lord replied:  "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by."

Vulnerable as he is, Elijah ventures out, at God's bidding, to a yet more vulnerable spot:  standing in the presence of the Lord--where there is no midnight express, where there is no escape.  And then, standing there, he braves a mighty wind, an earthquake, and a fire. 

Winds can destroy; earthquakes can destroy, and so can fire.  But Elijah was unscathed; he wasn't destroyed.  Why?  Because God wasn't in all those dramatic things like we might think God would be.  The good Lord wasn't in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire. No high drama here.

But He was in a gentle whisper.  Covering his head, a trembling Elijah goes to the mouth of the cave.  God, in a whisper, asks a second time:  "What are you doing here?"  And, for the second time, Elijah replies with the same reason:  "I'm the only one left, and they're trying to kill me."

God says "Go back the way you came."  There's no harsh rebuke for taking the midnight express.  There's seemingly no empathy for the hunger, the anger, the loneliness, or the weariness. There's just a whispered word of God:  "Go back the way you came."  And that was enough.  Elijah wanted to let go -- of God and of his own life.  But the love of God, in a whisper, wouldn't let him.

Many interpreters think that this story is here to teach us, in our own day, that God is still in control, that God is sovereign no matter how ugly our circumstances might be, and I don't deny that.  But that's not all it teaches.  Pretty clearly, very clearly, we see, in Elijah, what it means to be human. And when we're human, like Elijah, we must admit our penchant for the midnight express and our only too real ability to be hungry, angry, lonely, and tired.  After all, Jesus was.

Jesus escaped -- more than once, from those who sought to kill him.  Jesus was hungry.  Jesus was angry -- and he cleansed the temple.  He was lonely.  "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests," He said, "but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head."  And He was tired; remember how he slept in the back of the boat.

But He, like Elijah and through it all, stayed true to why He came.  He came to pay the price for us, to pick up the tab, if you will, for all those times that we, selfishly and self-centeredly, took the "midnight express" and groveled in our hunger, anger, loneliness, and weariness.

As we confront our own inner-Elijah, we don't have to look for the wind, the earthquake, or the fire.  A gentle whisper will suffice.  It is the gentle whisper of the Gospel, the good news, that enables you to carry on yet further on.

Break of day 'till the sun goes down
You work the time between them
A far off land to your own hometown
You've been all around to see them

And when it's standing in front of you
Then you take it and you pull it in
Can you see where you're going to

Lead your way
Sing your song
Moving everyday
Going further on

Amen.