The last session about the story of the Exodus ended with a conversation about leadership – specifically, how did Moses as leader know what was good and true, and what to do; and how did the people know to follow him?
The questions of leadership – what makes for a good, true leader; how does one know who or what to follow – are critical questions in the Hebrew Scriptures.
These are also critical questions today in the midst of the multiple crises we live with, the severe social and political fragmentation we suffer, and the need we have to discover or create a new normal that’s good for all humanity and all life on Earth.
On one hand, the story of Israel as told in the Hebrew Scriptures is not dissimilar from the history of other peoples – a perpetual series of good visions and not-so-good real-life results.
They begin as a wandering people looking for a place to settle, and end up in Egypt which at first seems to solve all their problems, but eventually becomes a prison for them where they become enslaved to a system and a structure that is killing them and over which they are powerless.
They flee slavery, travel for forty years through a wilderness towards a promised land, and along the way are instructed in becoming a different kind of people on Earth – to be shaped in all they do by love and reverence for God, and by care for the rights and dignity of others around them and the life of Earth itself. But when they reach and enter the promised land, they immediately attack and conquer the people already there, determined to take control – leading to warfare even among themselves, in the quest for dominance.
They solve their anarchy by establishing a kingdom, make a poor choice for their first king (strong military leader, like people expect kings to be) but then find someone else (a shepherd) more likely to help them be the kind of kingdom they aspire to be. After a brief run at being a different kind of kingdom, though, they become just like other kingdoms – a top-down hierarchy ruled by a corrupt, self-serving elite with an official self-centred ideology/theology (or idolatry) of personal and national prosperity at the expense of others around them. This leads to the crumbling of the kingdom.
On the other hand, though, there is something that makes this story different from many other national stories.
In Genesis 1, the story of the creation of good life on Earth has a distinctive ending. Other ancient people’s stories usually end with the gods appointing a king to be their representative on Earth to keep the life that’s been created, good. In the Hebrew story, God creates common humanity to live in his image, and to keep all that has been created, good.
Then, as the history of the people unfolds it is not kings and queens who are heroes, but non-royal people who discern and embody the good vision for the people, and who inspire the people to follow it:
In their original wandering and the first search for a promised land, it’s old and childless Abraham and Sarah who lead the way and set the tone.
In the fall into old ways of seeking peace through conflict and conquest of others, it’s the out-in-the-fields shepherd named David (not at all your usual warrior-king) who becomes the ideal (and idealized) king.
In the degeneration of the kingdom into long years of corruption, idolatry and total self-centeredness, the corrupt kings and upper elite are part of the problem and it’s the lonely, outlawed prophet named Elijah who stands up for the way the people of God are meant to be.
We’ve already looked at Abraham and Sarah, and at Moses to some extent. Next session, I expect we’ll look at David – the idealized shepherd-king. This week, through the lens of three story-incidents in his career as a prophet of God, we look at Elijah – the lonely, outlawed man who saw through the idolatries of the kingdom of his day, and stood up against them for the kind of kingdom and people they were meant to be, to be good for the world.
The situation (I Kings 16:29-33)
Ahab son of Omri became king of Israel in the thirty-eighth year of Asa’s rule in Judah, and he ruled twenty-two years from Samaria.
Ahab did more things to disobey the Lord than any king before him. He acted just like Jeroboam. Even worse, he married Jezebel the daughter of King Ethbaal of Sidon and started worshiping Baal. Ahab built an altar and temple for Baal in Samaria and set up a sacred pole for worshiping the goddess Asherah. Ahab did more to make the Lord God of Israel angry than any king of Israel before him.
King Ahab is trying to turn the kingdom around (maybe “Make Israel Great Again”) by making worship of Baal the official ideology / theology of the kingdom.
A few things about Baal. When the Old Testament warns the people of Israel against the worship of other Gods, it is not referring to Allah, Vishnu, Buddha or the traditions of First Nations’ peoples. The “other gods” known to the people of Israel and that they are tempted to worship through their time as a kingdom, are the imperial warrior gods of Egypt, Assyrian and Babylon, and the more localized Canaanite god of prosperity, fertility and material success known as Baal.
The imperial warrior gods promise national peace and security through war, military victory and violent conquest of other nations and people. Baal promises family well-being, local fertility and national prosperity through sacrifice (including, when “necessary,” sacrifice of the weak and vulnerable) to the demands of the god.
The prophets see that Yahweh is very different from these “other gods” and that worshipping and following the way of Yahweh leads to a very different kind of society than the kind encouraged by the other gods.
Question: With what you know of the message of the prophets about what a godly (i.e. Yahweh-based) society is meant to be like, and this quick sketch of the “other gods,” what are some of the differences that you can see between Yahweh and the other gods, and between the kind of society each encourages?
One thing that complicates the matter is that these other gods are attractive in what they promise and the people of Israel are not immune to them. Different elements and echoes of these “other theologies” find their way into the Old Testament stories and theologies, even though they are in tension with what the people experienced of Yahweh in the wilderness and are able to articulate in their better moments. It’s not unlike “Christian theology” that takes into itself some of these same elements of these “other gods” (think, Nazi Germany and the greater part of the German church in the 1930’s) and that requires careful discernment and radical practice (think, the underground Confessing Church epitomized in Dietrich Bonhoeffer) to sort out what is faithful to Christ and what is not.
Question: In what ways are these “other gods” manifest today – under what guises, names or ideologies? How is a more faithfully Christian personal and social life different from the personal life and society encouraged by these other gods?
The challenge to Baal and Baal-worship from Elijah (I Kings 18:18-40)
King Ahab went to meet Elijah, and when he saw him, Ahab shouted, “There you are, the biggest troublemaker in Israel!”
Elijah answered. “You’re the troublemaker—not me! You and your family have disobeyed the Lord’s commands by worshiping Baal. Call together everyone from Israel and have them meet me on Mount Carmel. Be sure to bring along the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel’s table.”
Ahab got everyone together, then they went to meet Elijah on Mount Carmel. Elijah stood in front of them and said, “How much longer will you try to have things both ways? If the Lord is God, worship him! But if Baal is God, worship him!”
The people did not say a word. Then Elijah continued, “Bring us two bulls. Baal’s prophets can take one of them, kill it, and cut it into pieces. Then they can put the meat on the wood without lighting the fire. I will do the same thing with the other bull, and I won’t light a fire under it either. The prophets of Baal will pray to their god, and I will pray to the Lord. The one who answers by starting the fire is God.”
“That’s a good idea,” everyone agreed.
The prophets of Baal went first. They chose their bull, got it ready and prayed to Baal all morning, asking him to start the fire. They danced around the altar and shouted, “Answer us, Baal!” But there was no answer.
At noon, Elijah began making fun of them. “Pray louder!” he said. “Baal must be a god. Maybe he’s day-dreaming or using the toilet or traveling somewhere. Or maybe he’s asleep, and you have to wake him up.”
The prophets kept shouting louder and louder, and they cut themselves with swords and knives until they were bleeding. This was the way they worshiped, and they kept it up all afternoon. But there was no answer of any kind.
Elijah then said, “My turn.” He used twelve stones – one for each of the tribes of Israel – to build an altar in honor of the Lord. He dug a ditch around the altar, large enough to hold about thirteen quarts. He placed the wood on the altar, cut the bull into pieces and laid the meat on the wood. Then he told the people, “Fill four large jars with water and pour it over the meat and the wood.” After they did this, he told them to do it two more times. They did exactly as he said until finally, the water ran down the altar and filled the ditch.
When it was time for the evening sacrifice, Elijah prayed, “Our Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, prove now that you are the God of this nation, so these people will know that you are the Lord God, and that you will turn their hearts back to you.”
The Lord immediately sent fire, and it burned up the sacrifice, the wood, and the stones. It scorched the ground everywhere around the altar and dried up every drop of water in the ditch. When the crowd saw what had happened, they all bowed down and shouted, “The Lord is God! The Lord is God!”
Just then, Elijah said, “Grab the prophets of Baal! Don’t let any of them get away.” So the people captured the prophets and took them to Kishon River, where Elijah killed every one of them.
An 8th-century-BCE Royal Rumble. Or maybe more a high-level political debate between opposing ideologies to govern by, with a particular kind of evidence as the criteria of evaluation (i.e. which God will be able to light the sacrifice successfully?) In Elijah’s day, that’s the kind of evidence that the national argument was based on.
Question: In the debates and controversies today about which theology and what kind of God to follow in the making of our society, what evidence do we look to (in public media, in social media, in political campaigns, in Parliamentary debate, around the water cooler) to settle the question? Is there consensus about what evidence counts? Or about what weight to give to different kinds of evidence?
The source of Elijah’s authority (I Kings 19:1-18)
Ahab told his wife Jezebel what Elijah had done and that he had killed the prophets. She sent a message to Elijah: “You killed my prophets. Now I’m going to kill you!”
Elijah was afraid when he got her message, and ran to hide far in the desert. He came to a large bush, sat down in its shade and begged the Lord, “Just kill me now” Then he lay down in the shade and fell asleep.
An angel woke him up and said, “Get up and eat.” Elijah looked around, and by his head was a jar of water and some baked bread. He sat up, ate and drank, then lay down and went back to sleep.
So the angel woke him again and said, “Get up and eat, or else you’ll get too tired to travel.” So Elijah sat up and ate and drank.
The food and water made him strong enough to walk forty more days. At last, he reached Mount Sinai, the mountain of God, and spent the night there in a cave.
While Elijah was on Mount Sinai, the Lord asked, “Elijah, why are you here?”
“Go out and stand on the mountain,” the Lord replied. “I want you to see me when I pass by.”
All at once, a strong wind shook the mountain and shattered the rocks. But the Lord was not in the wind. Next, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. Then there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.
Finally, there was a gentle breeze – a still, small voice – a sound of total quiet – (it’s apparently a really hard phrase to translate into English)—and when Elijah heard it, he covered his face with his coat. He went out and stood at the entrance to the cave.
The Lord asked, “Elijah, why are you here?”
Elijah answered, “Lord God All-Powerful, I’ve always done my best to obey you, but your people have turned against you, are following the ways of Baal, and now are even trying to kill me!”
The Lord said:
“Elijah, go back to the desert near Damascus. When you get there, I have some people I want you to out in charge of things, who will start putting things right. Because you know what? You aren’t alone. There are still 7,000 Israelites who have refused to worship Baal, and they will live.”
Jezebel didn’t like to lose. Instead of conceding, she put a contract out on Elijah. She seems still to have a lot of authority; her word still carries considerable weight in the kingdom.
Elijah is convinced he has no future, and doubts his own authority.
When he gets to the holy mountain, though, and is met by Yahweh, he is introduced (maybe re-introduced) to a kind of authority that has nothing to do with Jezebel’s kind of authority that is based on might, worldly power and grand displays of glorious force.
Question: How do you understand “the still, small voice” or “the sound of sheer silence”? Have you heard it? Where and when? Do others hear it? Does it have any authority today? How?
Bonus question: how do you know that the still, small voice you hear is not just that little evil angel sitting on your shoulder, whispering into your left ear?
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