From Mountaintop to Mountaintop
As a caveat, I feel like we are in an especially “bible-geeky” portion of scripture in this season. It brings me joy to connect the dots, but it requires a lot of work on all of our parts. Maybe you’ll join me in this geekiness.
I am also aware that the Hebrew scripture is difficult to read. In places, it feels steeped in patriarchy and in violence. Sometimes we want to separate the God of the Old Testament from the God who is Jesus’ father in heaven.
I ask that you remember a couple of key points as when we read through Hebrew bible texts.
First, these are source stories. While they connect to lived history, the stories of scripture themselves are not intended for literal consumption.
These stories were written in an historical context – meaning that the framework of patriarchy and violence and sacrifice was part of the culture of times in which these stories were first passed from community to community by word of mouth. They are steeped in their own culture because that made them relevant to those who first heard them.
These stories have also been recorded from oral tradition and then translated from their original written language to Latin and then into modern languages. Translation is imperfect, it is contextual, and it matters. In today’s story there are translation questions about the article before the word “cave,” the place where Elijah will wait on God on Mount Horeb. Is it “a cave” or “the cave?” These nuances of translation can alter meaning.
And so when we read Hebrew scripture, I invite you to do it with an explorer’s heart, a heart for God, holding onto your lived experience as you explore.
Over the past several weeks, we have been introduced to a different kind of leader in these ancient stories – prophets – those who have a unique call to speak God’s truth to the people, who call people back to the covenant established at Sinai, and who also reflect the people’s experience back to God.
By this definition and understanding, Moses acted as a prophet.
So did Samuel.
Today, we meet Elijah, one of two connected characters (Elijah and the confusingly closely named Elisha) in the books of first and second Kings who herald a new era among prophets called by God to shed light on the problems of human Kingship among God’s people. These same prophets will give voice to an emerging vision of a Messianic king as part of the big God story – a king who will emerge among ancestors of David, who will establish God’s kin-dom over all the lands, and who will fulfill the ancient promises that God made to Abraham.
The story you heard this morning is really the second half of a larger story and I’d like to frame that larger story. It’s also important to note that the larger story is part of an even LARGER story which really cuts across both books of 1 and 2 Kings. And all of that is a sub-story in the BIG God story.
To set the stage for these larger stories, let’s recall some of what we heard about King Solomon last week.
Solomon’s reign included a season peace. In that season of peace, Solomon built the temple that David could not build. That temple was steeped in images of the Garden of Eden, recalling the place where God walked alongside all of God’s creation. While Solomon might have intended it as the place for God, God’s presence could not be contained in one single place.
After the building of the Temple, Solomon’s reign took a turn. He married hundreds of women from neighboring kingdoms to forge political bonds. He adopted their gods and he waged war. After King Solomon’s death, the kingdom of Israel was divided in two – Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The southern Kingdom, Judah, remained faithful to the house of David, and the city of Jerusalem was part of Judah.
The former single kingdom now had two different kings. The books of Kings offer historical and theological perspective on the kings of both kingdoms over a period of time, forty kings in all. The theological perspective – the God story of these kingships - is framed through the lives and work of prophets – prophets doing the work of speaking God’s truth to the people, calling kings and people back to the covenant established at Sinai, and reflecting the people’s experience to God.
The king of the northern kingdom at the time of today’s story was Ahab and he was married to Jezebel. Jezebel was a follower of Baal, a god of fertility and abundance.
There had been three years of drought in the region, and the people, desperate for relief, were turning to other gods, and specifically to Baal, in hopes of bringing the necessary rain. Remember there is no Weather Channel. There really is not meteorological understanding. Rain is a gift from heaven, and so surely if the one God of the Israelites cannot make it rain, another god might.
Elijah the prophet was alarmed by the people’s worship of Baal. He goes to King Ahab to call the King back to God and the covenant. Elijah issues a challenge, essentially setting up a contest. On top of Mount Carmel, which in the Hebrew is something like “the mount of the cultivated land, or the mount of the garden,” Baal’s followers are to set up an altar with a slaughtered bull and Elijah will do the same. Baal’s followers will call on their god Baal and Elijah will call on the God of Israel.
The powerful God, the true God will answer with fire when called upon.
The “contest” commences….
Nothing happens when the followers of Baal call on their god, but when Elijah calls on the God of Israel, the text says “the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones and the dust and even licked up the water that was in the trench” that surrounded the altar Elijah had built.
Surely the God of Israel showed up.
And Elijah, in what I imagine is a moment of victorious zeal, responded with his own show of force – he rounds up and executes all of the prophets of Baal.
This (FINALLY) is where we pick up today’s story.
Elijah is on the run, because Jezebel is angry about Elijah’s execution of the prophets of Baal. We meet Elijah under a broom tree, in a state of self-pity, asking for his life to be taken away because he is no better than his ancestors.
I wonder what he means by that? I wonder if he has remorse about his violence in the wake of God’s show of force on Mount Carmel? I wonder if he feels like he somehow dishonored God on the mount of the garden, which might have been associated with the peace and goodness of Eden?
We can’t know for sure all that Elijah was feeling, but here under a broom tree in the wilderness (which might remind you of the prophet Jonah), Elijah is fed by an angel twice before setting off on a 40 day journey. At the end of his journey, he comes to “the” cave.
Now this cave is on the mount of God, on Mount Horeb, also known as Sinai. The storytellers here want us to understand that Elijah is in the same cleft of the rock where Moses waited for the 10 commandments.
There in the cave God speaks to Elijah, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
Elijah answers, “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.”
To be clear, this describes some things that Elijah has just done – thrown down Baal’s altars and killed Baal’s prophets, albeit in the name of the Lord God of Israel. It is true that he is now alone – but kind of by choice (because the text prior, there is evidence that one of Ahab’s officials had hidden other prophets of Israel’s God in order to protect them from Jezebel). I really feel like Elijah is not seeing the big picture.
God tells Elijah to go outside of the cave because God is about to pass by. (Again, the writer intends to remind us of Moses waiting for the glory of the Lord to pass by.) And Elijah waits. There is great wind. There is a great earthquake. There is great fire. And God is in none of these things.
But in the sound of sheer silence, Elijah had an experience of God. God was in the silence, not in the violence.
Now God asks Elijah again, “What are you doing here?” And Elijah responds the exact same way - “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.”
At this, God instructs Elijah to leave the mountain, to return to Damascus and anoint two new kings. God instructs Elijah to anoint a new prophet, Elisha. And God offers some comfort that although the kings will continue war and violence, there will remain 7000 who are loyal to the God of Israel.
Like much of scripture, this is a story that might leave us with more questions than answers. But questions are the ground of our wrestling with scripture. Questions are the place we try to draw meaning for our own lives from these ancient words.
Is it possible that God’s prophet, Elijah, has isolated himself from others who follow God, believing that only he has the right answers?
Is it possible that in this story, God’s prophet, Elijah is caught up in some of the same power hunger and violence that the kings are?
Is it possible that we incorrectly interpret the actions of others – of kings or prophets – as the actions of God, and thereby miss the point?
Today, it feels very much to me like we are in a crisis much like Israel and Judah before the Babylonian exile. We place our citizenship in a nation above our relationship with God. We long to trust the power and control of human leaders, many of whom are not rooted in a relationship with God. We let the economy drive our longings and therefore drive our work in the world.
Today, as we celebrate the saints that have gone before us, I wonder what wisdom they might offer in the midst of our world today. I wonder if their advice to us would be about politics and economics or if it would be about love and compassion.
I know that in the last weeks of my father’s life, he was so focused on how each of us has goodness that the world needs. His final message left behind for his grandchildren was that love looks like the needs of others becoming greater than our own needs.
As we remember the saints today, as we sit with this big, complex God story about the rule of kings and the voices of prophets, as we prepare to gather at a table with plenty in a world where others are hungry, I pray that we would listen to the communion of saints that surround us, calling us to love, calling us to justice, calling us to compassion, calling us to act out all of those things in each step we take in this broken world.
May it be so.
Amen.
Pastoral prayer
Gracious God,
How is it that today we find ourselves caught in a world where we call on kings more than we call on you? And yet, you are with us still even when our striving creates harm.
Today God, we ask for your peace and healing in a world that needs it so.
Amen.
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