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June 20, 2010
Psalm 42, 1 Kings 19: -15a

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, who sent your word to live among us. Amen.

Elijah seemed so bold.

In the story just ahead of the one we heard today, he stood before the king and the queen and all their prophets and challenged their belief in a false god.  

Elijah called on his God to show who was the true God. And when the contest between the God of Elijah and the false god of the king and queen was over, the people all saw that the God of Elijah was the true God.

So Elijah took the 450 prophets of Baal - the false god - out to a valley outside the city and killed them all.

Elijah seemed so bold.

And then he crashed.

The man who faced down the king and queen, who tested their prophets in a high-stakes contest and won, who flexed his muscle in a bloodbath of victory, now was on the run.

The queen – Jezebel – wanted him dead.
He was afraid, of course.  So he wisely fled.

But he was more than afraid. He also clearly had reached the limits of what he thought he could do. All the pressures of being one of God’s prophets had piled up on him. He was ready to give up  … give up being a prophet, give up on life itself.

He went a day’s journey into the wilderness and sat down under a solitary broom tree. “He asked that he might die,” the text tells us.

Elijah had been doing God’s work – literally. He had confronted powerful people. He had worn himself out.

We may not often be in a prophet contest with a king or queen. None of us have taken 450 prophets into a valley and executed them.  But I’ll bet most of us know how Elijah felt.

He had taken on a very tough challenge and even though he seemed to succeed, he was still being chased, forced to run for his life.  

We may be trying to end a war or stop hunger or clean up the environment. We may be caring for an ailing relative or fighting a disease ourselves. We may be trying to get fair treatment for someone with a disability or get fair pay for someone who has had their wages denied them. We may be facing down an insurance company or we may be worn out from the daily battle against … well, you fill in the blank.

We are exhausted. We may be so worn down we feel we cannot go on … not with the battle, not even with life.

All we want to do is to lie down under the broom tree and die.

What happens in this story offers some ideas for what we might do next.

First, someone comes to feed Elijah. He thought he wanted to be alone in the wilderness and at first he can’t believe someone is trying to help him. He eats and then lies down again to die.  

We talk a lot around here about our role in helping others, in being the angel who brings food to the person despairing in the wilderness.  That’s central to who we are as Christians, to who we are as human beings.

This is a reminder that in those times when we are the ones in need, that we also have a role to play in accepting the help that is offered.

Thirty-plus years ago, there was a protracted strike at the newspapers in town. It didn’t take long for money to be running low for my family and the families of the other strikers. One day, there was an envelope in the door with several hundred dollars from unknown members of our church community.

I was grateful, but also uneasy. I had always been the helper. I liked being in control. It was very hard to be the one in need of help.  It was hard not being in control of what might happen next.

I could eat the cake baked on hot stones and drink from the jar of water, but I had trouble with the idea of being on the receiving end, of having to depend on others. Maybe I should just lie down again.

And then more help arrived – a meal here, a small amount of cash there, another cake on a hot stone and another jug of water. I could go on. My family could go on.

It’s so easy to just get comfortable in our despair.  Elijah has no trouble settling in to die. And he has no trouble complaining to God’s messenger about how bad things are for him. God is fine with all the complaining.  God can absorb that quite nicely.

But God is not willing to let Elijah just waste away in his despair. So God pushes Elijah out to a place where the exhausted prophet can encounter the divine.

A lot of folks interpret the next section of this story as saying that the only place to encounter God is in the silence of a deserted place. But that is not true to the whole of the stories in the Bible.

There are places where God does appear in storms and in burning bushes and in stunning moments. God is not limited to any one kind of presence. This story from Elijah reminds us that God can be found in many different ways, in many different places – even in silence. Sometimes, especially in silence.

Last weekend, when Leah and I were at the annual meeting of the United Church of Christ in Wisconsin, I had a chance to attend a workshop on the idea of Sabbath.  That’s the day we set aside from all the work in our lives to renew ourselves in God’s presence.

We don’t observe Sabbath in our era like the Jewish people who followed the detailed prescriptions of Sabbath observance – prayers at home, no work of any kind.

We don’t observe Sabbath in our era like Christians a few generations back who would go to church on Sunday morning and then spend the day with the extended family, doing little more than making sure the cows got milked. There were no Sunday morning soccer games or afternoons shopping at the mall.

Our culture and our pace of life is different, but our need for Sabbath – for the times we can renew our exhausted spirits and encounter the divine – is no less important.

At this workshop, the leaders had placed some objects on a table, objects that might be things we use as an entry point into times of Sabbath in our lives. I have gathered my own collection of objects here this morning.

There’s quite a mix here, because we each have our own way of slowing down enough to let God enter our lives.  I suspect there are many other things you might have put here. But just take a moment to see if any of these things stir thoughts in you of ways you might claim Sabbath time.

Fishing pole
Coffee mug
Trowel and gloves
Hiking boots
Stone
iTouch and ear buds

Are there other things that come to mind for you?

Just take 30 seconds now to think how one of these things – or something else of your choosing – helps you find a time and a place for a Sabbath moment in your life.

Let me suggest that a time of Sabbath is more than just a vacation or a time management technique, although those things are related. It’s more than a nap in the middle of a busy day or a jog along a lake path.  Those are good things, they can help us keep some sense of balance in our lives.

But I think a Sabbath also includes opening our spirits to the wonders of God, to God’s presence in our lives. There is something intentionally spiritual about this, not just a moment to give our bodies a break.

These words from poet Denise Levertov in “The Avowal” catch a bit of that sense:

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I attain
free-fall and float
into the Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

The poet who wrote the Psalm we heard this morning as our first reading was longing for God like a deer longs for flowing streams. Elijah in his cave was longing for God in the midst of all the chaos of his life and discovered that God was the moment of sheer silence. 

We might be holding a mug of hot coffee or digging in a garden and sensing that God’s grace is once again filling our lives. There's nothing we need to do but be still and know that God is there.

And then the temptation is to stay there. We no longer want to stay under the broom tree and die in despairing solitude. No, we want to stand by that cave and feel the amazing, ineffable peace that comes with sensing God all around us.

“What are you doing here Elijah?” God asks the prophet. And the litany of woes starts all over again.

Just imagine a bit of a smile on God’s face.  Oh, that Elijah. Oh, that Phil. Oh, whoever you may be.

In stepping aside from the routine, from the chaos, from the threats of daily life, we have experienced God again. We trust God enough to pour out all our woes. We feel God’s love all around us. We can whine all we want to God and God will still be there.

“Hope in God,” he writer of the Psalm concluded. Sing God’s praises once again because God’s help is there.

Ah, all is good again.

And then God said to Elijah: “Go return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.”

We need Sabbath. We need to renew our spirits. We need to connect with the divine.

In the story of Jesus, he often went apart from the crowds for his own Sabbath – not a time that got in the way of caring for others the way the religious leaders of his era defined it, but a time of prayer, reflection, renewal. One time, his followers even thought they saw Elijah and Moses with him on a mountain.

“Let us set up tents here for the three of you,” they said.

Nothing doing, said Jesus. It’s time to go back down the mountain and help bring this world back to the vision God has for it.

Take that time for Sabbath – I know I cut that short too often.

But then leave that cave and bring your renewed spirit back to caring for the world around you until the next time of Sabbath. It’s a sacred balance we need in our lives.

There’s a wonderful short hymn you’ve heard our choir sing on occasion as a call to prayer. I’d invite you all to join with me now as a way to capture that moment in the cave … and then we’ll move on to carry each other with the concerns of our lives. I’ll sing it through once and then please join me on the second time through.

Be still and know that I am God.