Scriptures: 1 Kings 19:9-18; Psalm 85:8-13; Romans 10:5-15, Matthew 14:22-33
Sermon by Chip Camden
Proper 14
In today's lesson from Kings, we find the prophet Elijah in a cave. Elijah is fleeing for his life again, because King Ahab of Israel and his wife Jezebel, who are promoting Canaanite religion, want to have him killed. Elijah, a prophet of Yahweh, is a thorn in their side. In the previous chapter of Kings, Elijah has convinced a large crowd of people by means of an impressive display of power that Yahweh is the true God and Baal is a fraud -- inciting the people to kill the prophets of Baal and return to Yahweh. This episode followed three years of drought that Elijah had predicted, demonstrating the impotence of the rain god Baal. He also predicted the very day that the drought would end. You would think the royals would be convinced. Instead, Jezebal threatens Elijah with immediate death.
The throne is not as interested in religion as it is in cultural and political uniformity. Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, the Phoenician king of Tyre and Sidon. Ahab's marriage to her cemented an alliance between the kingdom of Israel and the Phoenicians. The worship of Baal had been a key element of Phoenician culture for centuries, since at least the Bronze Age. It spread throughout the region and embraced many forms. Before and during the time of David, it appears that even Yahweh was sometimes called Baal. Coincidentally, that was also a time when relations between Israel and Phoenicia were strong and friendly. So when Elijah preached an exclusive, anti-Baal Yahwism, he was probably seen as an exclusivist, separatist radical. That version of the worship of Yahweh even came with its own anti-Canaanite origin story. Elijah needed to be silenced in order to consolidate cultural unity and political power across the region.
Elijah flees to the place where that origin story begins: Mount Horeb, the mountain where Yahweh appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and later gave the ten commandments to the Israelites. In this holy place, Elijah should be able to get a clear answer from God about all that has gone wrong.
But instead of an answer, God asks a question: "What are you doing here?" Literally, the Hebrew says "What is here for you?"
Elijah responds with a litany of everything that's gone wrong with the nation. Instead of responding to this, God tells him to go stand on the mountain and wait.
Being on Mount Horeb, Elijah is ready for something big. A great wind kicks up, so great that it splits rocks! But God is not in the wind. Then comes an earthquake! But God is not in the earthquake either. A fire! Now we're talking Horeb-style! But God isn't even in the fire.
Finally, a still, small voice. Our translation says "a sound of sheer silence" (which might evoke the words of prophets that are written on subway walls and tenement halls rather than in the Book of Kings). Either translation is reasonable; literally "a voice, silent, tiny"
In any case, it's not at all what Elijah expected. Yet he recognizes God in it, because he wraps his face in his mantle, just as Moses had hid his face when he realized that God was speaking from the burning bush.
God repeats his question: "What are you doing here?" Elijah repeats his litany of wrongs. God doesn't say "I'm sorry" or offer comfort -- rather, God gives Elijah new marching orders:
1. Anoint Hazael king of Aram (roughly Syria). After murdering his predecessor, Hazael will brutally invade Israel, taking all of the territory east of the Jordan as well as the city of Gath.
2. Anoint Jehu king of Israel. Jehu will utterly destroy the family of Ahab and Jezebel, and will purge Israel of Baal worshippers.
3. Anoint Elisha as your successor. This is the only one of the three tasks that Elijah performs -- he leaves the other two to Elisha.
All three of these tasks will work towards the elimination of the worship of Baal. "Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill, and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill."
Not your typical Sunday school lesson.
Seriously, though, what can we take away from this story? Certainly we don't believe that we should execute those whose religion conflicts with ours. Religious tolerance is a natural extension of the teachings of Jesus. But one lesson we can take is against the state appropriation of religion for political ends. That lesson is confirmed by other accounts where even pro-Yahweh kings are chastised for taking religious matters into their own hands. God does not serve the state.
“But wait!” I hear you cry. “At least two of God’s action items for Elijah are political!” Yes, that is true. God does not serve politics, but God can inspire us to political action in accordance with God’s will. “But…Hazael and Jehu are going to kill a lot of people!” Part of the incarnational nature of God’s action is that it occurs in the context of our broken human systems. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t want to change them for the better, though. When Elisha later tells Hazael that he will become king, Elisha weeps over the destruction that Hazael’s reign will bring. Hundreds of years after that, Jesus will teach us non-violence, and two thousand years later we still haven’t learned that lesson! God always wants to move us towards the Way of Love, but it takes a long time due to our human limitations. Fundamentalists mean well when they insist on fidelity to God’s word, but they fail to recognize that God’s revelation comes to us through human filters. We often misapply God’s call in ways that are distorted by our brokenness. So two things can be true: we can be following God’s call at the same time that we are failing to do so in significant ways. May God grant us discernment and growth.
Another lesson can be drawn from the way in which God speaks to Elijah. The "still, small voice" seems to call us to quiet contemplation, silencing the noise in our lives so that we can hear God speak in our hearts. While that is true and a good practice, I don't think that is the only, or even the best, lesson here. If we stop with this, we might expect God to speak to us every time we sit down and quiet ourselves. No, I think the real point here is that God spoke in a way that Elijah wasn't expecting, yet Elijah heard. One repeating feature of the prophetic narratives in the Bible is that God does the unexpected. To hear God speak, you have to be out of your mind — your usual mind, that is. The Greek word that is translated “repentance” in the New Testament is “metanoia”, which literally means “think differently”. That idea pervades Jesus' teaching, with "the first shall be last," "blessed are the poor" and other counter-intuitive sayings, not to mention mind-shattering deeds like walking on water and rising from the dead. Whenever we try to put God into a box, to circumscribe what is God’s way of doing things versus what is not, then we are placing ourselves above God. If we do that, we will be disappointed, perhaps even angered, by the unexpected. If instead we open ourselves to God's surprises, we will find freedom and joy.