Towards Sunday, June 16 (Fathers' Day)

Reading:  I Kings 19:8-18 
Elijah's crisis and "the still small voice"

Elijah is in a mess. 

Things had started out well.  A new prophet on the scene, Elijah had some early success -- naming the evil of his time, denouncing the king and his policies of corruption, finding community with the poor, and bringing healing and new life to those who suffer.    From there he went on to a public confrontation with the entire bureaucracy behind the king's misguided policies, and he utterly destroyed them.  His rise was meteoric and he has became a sensation.

But then comes the reality check.

The king and queen put a price on his head.  The powers that be start to turn public opinion against him.  Rumours start to circulate.  He is more vulnerable than he thought he would be.  His career may be over as quickly as it started, and his fall seems as tragic as his rise was miraculous.

Did he make a mistake in the way he went about things?  Is he really cut out for this?  He once thought he was gifted and special; now he is just one more ordinary failure.  Maybe he should just quit.  Who was he to think he could ever be make a difference?  And why does he feel so alone?

Is there any one among us who has never been in this position?  Never felt this way?  Never faced these doubts?  Never asked these questions of ourselves?  

Is it time to go home to mom and dad? 

Feeling sorry for himself, defeated and utterly alone Elijah does not go home to mom and dad.  Instead, he goes to Mt Horeb, the mountain of Yahweh.

In some ways, though, this is kind of like going home to dad, because Yahweh is the one who got him started in this prophet-thing, the one who taught him all he knows, the one who showed him the ropes and encouraged him to "go get 'em, tiger!"

So, looked at in the light of Fathers' Day, is there anything about Yahweh's "fatherly" response to Elijah in this critical moment that's worth our noting?  Anything about how Father Yahweh helps save Elijah's self-image and career, that's good for us to think about? 

Hope to see you Sunday.

Towards Sunday, June 9, 2013

Reading:  I Kings 17:8-24
The story of Elijah, a poor widow, a dying son and Yahweh

Elijah is sent by God to spend some time with a poor widow in Zarepath.  We ask: where on earth is Zarephath?  Elijah might wonder the same thing.

Elijah, a prophet of God, is deeply discouraged by current events in the kingdom of Israel.  The king, Ahab, is as bad if not worse than the kings before him.  And now through marriage to Jezebel, princess of the neighbouring kingdom of Sidon, Ahab has brought a culture and an ethos into Israel very different from what Israel has been.  As far as Elijah can see, the kingdom is being changed irrevocably for the worse.

God's response is to send him to spend some time with a widow in Zarepath -- a town in the kingdom of Sidon, the "enemy culture."  The foreign widow, like Elijah, is poor and marginalized in her own land, and her son is dying.  All is not well in Sidon either, and as the widow and Elijah come to open themselves to one another in risky and generous ways, they come to know surprising abundance, feeding, healing and even resurrection from death.  In other words, under the radar of the misguided kingdoms of their time, they come to know the kingdom of God where they are -- the same kingdom of God the Gospels talk about in the stories of Jesus, as being among us always.

Elijah is rightly worried about the changes being made for the worse in the kingdom of Israel, and he stands up to challenge them as strongly as he can.  That was last week's story (I Kings 18). 

But at the same time, through relationship with others on the other side who also suffer from the corruption at the top, he finds himself -- much to his surprise, sharing with them the gifts of the kingdom of God in the world even as it is.

In worship on Sunday, we'll try to explore and find our way into the truth of this story.