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Dr. George A. Purnell
June 20, 2010
“What Are You Doing Here, Elijah?”
1 Kings 19:1-15
When we pick up the story, Elijah is nearing the end of a long and important prophetic career. Indeed, so central a figure is Elijah in the faith of Israel that he is taken to heaven without dying (2 Kings 2:11), and this fact caused many to believe that he would return. In fact, the Old Testament ends with these words:
“Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.” (Malachi 4:5-6)
And when Jesus asked his disciples during his ministry, “Who do people say that I am,” they answered, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah...” (Luke 9:18-19)
After the events described in the chapters leading into our lesson this morning, Elijah should be at the pinnacle of his career.
Our lesson this morning comes from chapter 19. King Ahab has “told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.” Jezebel reacts by sending a messenger to tell Elijah that he will be dead “by this time tomorrow.”
The hero of chapter 18 is not shown to be heroic here at the outset of chapter 19. This threat scared Elijah, and he “fled for his life,” to Beer-sheba, which the writer notes belongs to Judah and is thus beyond Jezebel’s jurisdiction. He left his servant there, and “went a day’s journey” further into the desert, apparently to put even more distance between himself and Jezebel’s hit men.
Far from feeling confident and vindicated from the spectacular victory on Mount Carmel, we find Elijah sitting alone “under a solitary broom tree,” depressed and wanting to die. He seems to have crumbled emotionally and physically in the face of this threat from Queen Jezebel. How could this threat throw this man of God into such despair?
The answer is that although he is a man of God, Elijah is still a man. It is natural for someone whoexperiences a monumental moment in life to experience a let down. Elijah had put his reputation and his life on the line when he challenged King Ahab and the prophets of Baal. And his faith in the God of Israel had been vindicated.
So what would happen now? Elijah likely expected the show of power on Mount Carmel to result in the people experiencing a great revival of trust in God. Instead, we read that Elijah believed he had failed to cause the people of Israel to believe in the one true God; despite his victory on Mount Carmel. He was exhausted emotionally and physically, and was so despondent that he asked God to take his life.
An angel of the Lord came to Elijah at this point and fortified him with nourishment – “a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water.” After eating, Elijah fell asleep again, when “the angel of the Lord “came a second time, touched him and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’” Elijah“got up, and ate and drank; then he went in strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God,” (Mount Horeb, also called Sinai, was where Moses received the Ten Commandments) where he spent the night in a cave.
We read that the word of the Lord came to Elijah as he lay in this cave. God asks, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah answers by telling God that he has “been very zealous for the Lord,” but “the Israelites have forsaken your covenant” and “I alone am left” to defend God. And now those who hate you and me, God, seek to take my life.
Elijah had come to a predictable but dangerous place. He had risked everything to prove that the God of Israel was the one true God. But even his best efforts had failed to bring the people to faith, at least as he saw it, and now he saw himself to be amartyr.
It’s easy to develop a distorted perspective when we are zealous about something. We can begin to believe that we alone are the one who believes what is right…we alone care about what is just…that we alone have stood for God and for all that is good,and now we are being attacked by an evil queen, who has promised to destroy us.
God is not going to let Elijah live in this delusional state. After Elijah had made his whiny and self serving complaint – that he has done the right thing and risked his life to defend God – God tells him: “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
In one of the best known scenes in scripture, we read:
“Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.”
Every time I read a passage of scripture I find something new, even though I have read the same passage many times before. This is true because I am a different person each time I read the passage, and because scripture is the living Word. I believe God speaks to us through scripture every time we read it, and that God has a particular word for us each time we read a text from the Bible.
As I just said, the passage about God not being in the wind and earthquake and fire is very familiar to many people. Elijah naturally expected to see God in the wind…or in the earthquake…or in the fire. And this familiar passage ends with the words – “and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.”
The next verse is the ‘something new’ that I found in the scripture as I read it this week: “When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’”
This was the second time that God asked Elijah this question, and both times Elijah answered in a waythat showed he did not understand the question:
“I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”
I don’t think God was being redundant. I believe God asked the question again in the hope that Elijah would dig deep for the answer.I believe God hoped Elijah would be able to descend from his high horse and get off his pity pot, and realize that God alone deserves glory!
I believe God hoped Elijah would realize that he was in the cave because his grandiose thinking and misplaced focus had led God to place him there so he could think in the quiet, and possibly come to understand how he had put himself in God’s place.
I believe we can best hear God when our hearts and minds are emptied of pride and self – promotion and we realize at the core of our being that we are not the faith superstar we can delude ourselves into believing we are.
Mountaintop moments are exhilarating.We begin to receive praise and expect credit for our good work. But it’s hard to hear from God and learn from God amidst the distractions and noise of these moments.
God does not need us to be the hero, the savior of Israel. God has that role covered. God will survive the Baal’s of history, pretenders to the throne. God will even survive those of us who occasionally come to believe that we alone know the mind of God and do the will of God.
Elijah was having a spiritual identity crisis in our lesson today. His ecstatic moment of victory had quickly been followed by a dive into the valley of the shadow of darkness, where death seemed a welcome relief. He was led into a place of deafening but audible silence, and there he heard the Lord ask: What are you doing here, Elijah?
Isn’t it there, in those dark and quiet, often painful places, that we hear God ask the same of us? What are you doing here, George?
If we will struggle with that question in faithful and meaningful ways, we will emerge with a healthier understanding of who we are in relation to God. And we will be able to look back on our exaggerated claim – that everyone else has forsaken the covenant and that “I alone am left” – and smile at our all too human sense of self importance.
Then we will realize that while we are not the lead player in this drama of creation, God does have an important role for us to play if we will take our place. Amen.
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