Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 19:1-14
In this reading, the people of God are not doing well, and are making bad choices to try to solve things.
As a people and a kingdom, they are on a downward path. After starting out well under Kings David and Solomon, for generations they have grown corrupt, divided and demoralized. Now, under King Ahab, they are falling into even greater disarray as they face the greatest drought they have known for some time.
Ahab’s solution is to make the worship of Baal the official religion of the kingdom. Baal was – and still is, a god of prosperity, affluence and comfort. He deals in big spectacles to show his own power, and he accepts the sacrifice of others for the sake of one’s own good health and worldly success.
When King Ahab marries Jezebel, a neighbouring queen and a devotee of Baal, he effectively declares the worship of Baal to be the official religion of the people of Israel. At this point Elijah, a prophet of God, can take it no more. In a great public contest, Elijah stands up against 500 prophets of Baal, and with God on his side (or, because he dares to let himself be bent towards God and away from the idolatry of the day), defeats them all.
This resounding victory, though, only guarantees that Elijah is now on Queen Jezebel’s hit list, and he begins to run for his life.
Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 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.”
Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 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.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.
All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” 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.
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.” 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. 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?”
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.”
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. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 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?”
Reflection
Just bread? And water? This is all the angel of God has for Elijah as he sits alone under a broom tree in the desert, afraid for his life, and on the run?
This is not the Instagram moment Elijah might have hoped for. Not something he can throw up on Facebook as a happily curated moment, to tell all his friends, “having a lovely time, too bad you’re not here.”
Could God not have sent a little roasted quail? A jug of wine, to reward him for what he has done as God’s servant against the prosperity priests and prophets of Baal? Would it have killed God to have given Elijah even a little of what people were promised by Baal?
No wonder Elijah is depressed, despairing, and at that moment quite angry with God, the world, and his life in it.
Not unlike a lot of people today. I can’t tell you the number of conversations I’ve been part of, or have overheard recently about how unhappy and angry people seem to be after the last few years of the pandemic. It’s come up here at church with some members of the Quilt Club and in our Zoom book discussion of “Gratefulness” by Diana Butler Bass, and elsewhere in random conversations on the street and with neighbours. And with my barber.
And I feel it myself – an anger that flares up at random moments in the course of daily life. I can be home alone, on the road, in the middle of trying to write a sermon or do something good. And something happens – as simple as dropping a book; banging a shin; seeing a terrible decision made by some other driver; or my laptop typing producing a mess – or is that a mass? – of mistakes that I have go back and correct.
All normal, real things. But at that moment the little pin-prick of frustration touches the deep-down reservoir of uncomfortable feelings built up over the past two years, and they come out as sudden, unexpected, out-of-proportion anger. The feelings of powerlessness, of loss and grief, of anxiety, of limitation, frustration and disappointment, of jealousy, of not being in control. Feelings we’re not used to having to live with as part of real, human life.
Last week in our Zoom discussion of Diana Butler Bass’s book “Gratefulness,” the group talked about the great joy we feel now when we can go to a concert, attend a hockey game, take a trip, see the world again, get together at restaurants and festivals, practice what Diana Butler Bass calls occasions of “social gratitude” – big, shared things that help us celebrate the goodness of life, and to grow in gratitude rather than resentment, as a basic attitude about life.
We also noted, though, that so many of these things are quite exclusive in who can enjoy them. They require money, a certain kind of leisure and personal freedom, mobility in general. And we wondered if basic happiness and gratitude depend on access to such special things. On Instagram moments.
I learned recently of a new app on the block – an alternative to Instagram, Pinterest and Tik-Tok. It’s called Be Real, and what it does for you and your friends who sign up for it, is to send you and them a signal at the same time every day – a different and random time each day, to take a picture of yourself in the next two minutes and post it for all of you to see who all of you really are in your daily life.
The app takes a picture from both the front and the back of your phone, so what’s posted is what you look like as well as where you are. An un-varnished, un-curated, un-edited, day-by-day sharing of our daily reality. With the pictures disappearing after a time, as well. No attempt here to build up some kind of everlasting monument or homage to our life.
People who’ve used the app, say they like it more than they thought they would. It helps them know they’re not alone in dealing with daily realities of life, both happy and hard. That we don’t always have to be or do or appear to be something special, to be real and worthwhile. And that the sacred – the holy, is discovered in the mundane and the normal.
Just think of Elijah, alone in the desert overwhelmed by despair at the state of the world and of his life in it. What he’s offered for the healing of his soul and the renewal of his life is simple bread and water, because this is what he needs for a journey to the holy mountain. Once there, a place of temporary refuge and rest. And the next day, a holy and singular encounter with God – not in some great spectacle, nor a great show of power, nor a world-shaking event, but in a quiet whisper, a near-wordless awareness, a deep-down feeling of something holy at the heart of the present, painful, and precious moment.
If we were to keep reading to the end of the chapter, we’d also find a promise from God that all is not as lost as it seems. That although they are not front-page news there are still thousands in the kingdom who have not sold their souls to Ahab and Jezebel’s prosperity god. And that when Elijah goes back to keep facing and living in the world as it, he will find he is not alone, and that the world in its day-by-day normal reality, is still a vessel quietly filled with the day-by-day love and enduring presence of God.
One day this week I took an early morning walk to the local cemetery. I stayed there a while, and the sadness rose up within me and flowed through me for some time. It was good to be there, even though not easy.
After a while I rose from my place, left the cemetery and began to walk through the park beside on it and on my way home. As I walked, I noticed the morning sun slanting through the trees. The sky above, true and pure blue. I noticed the grass, the flower beds, the waiting playground equipment. Heard the birds’ morning chorus. Shared and also overheard the “hello’s” and “good morning’s” of others out for a walk.
Further on, out of the park, I saw the crossing guard arrive at his post on busy Sydenham Road that runs – sometimes races, right alongside the Catholic school. With traffic vest on and STOP sign in hand, he looked at his watch to be sure he was on time to keep the kids coming to school that day safe from harm. We waved hello at each other. Some minutes later, as I neared home, I heard the sounds – some days happy, some days not, of my next-door neighbours getting their kids ready for their walk to school.
An ordinary morning. Nothing spectacular. Mundane – in every sense of the word. Just the ordinary stuff – the bread and water of day-by-day life.
But, oh, so sacred and holy. Thanks be to God.
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