In God’s Presence (Jun. 14-20)
Sunday, June 20
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Focus Theme
In God’s Presence
Weekly Prayer
God our refuge and hope, when race, status, or gender divide us, when despondency and despair haunt and afflict us, when community lies shattered: comfort and convict us with the stillness of your presence, that we may confess all you have done, through Christ to whom we belong and in whom we are one. Amen.
Focus Reading
1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a
Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.
But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” [Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 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.”] He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.
Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He answered, “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.”
He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” 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. 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?” He answered, “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.” Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus….”
All Readings For This Sunday
1 Kings 19:1-4,(5-7),8-15a with Psalm 42 and 43 or
Isaiah 65:1-9 with Psalm 22:19-28 and
Galatians 3:23-29 and
Luke 8:26-39
Reflection and Focus Questions
by Kate Huey
Focus Questions
1. Who are the Jezebels and the Baals of our present culture?
2. When has your future, or the future of your church, been “radically redefined,” as Brueggemann says, by an encounter with God?
3. Who are the people around you whom you might not “count” when you’re feeling alone in your ministry?
4. When have you been tempted to complain to God about your calling?
5. Are you “where God needs you to be”?
Text for Meditation
After the fire / the sound of sheer silence.
For ideas on how to meditate with the Bible, read our article on Praying With the Bible
For many of us, the idea of a calling is just for some folks, like pastors and missionaries, and maybe doctors, nurses, and teachers. We think the voice of God, whether it’s loud and clear or a still, small one, is reserved for people who are doing something “special,” something that serves God and humankind in a distinctive way that almost requires an anointing. And even ordained pastors may steer clear of the call to be a prophet; who would want such a job? There’s just too much risk and too little reward in speaking truth to power or in traveling the long hard road between one mountaintop experience and another. Elijah can certainly testify to that.
His troubles started on one mountain, Mount Carmel, when he pretty much eliminated the power of the Baal priesthood, making them look ridiculous before the power of Yahweh, the One True God. Jezebel, basically, ran him out of town with her threats. Elijah became a hunted man, and since he was only human, he did the human thing and ran. When it seemed like Elijah had run out of steam, when he was run dry and run down, he prayed to God from out of his depths: “God, let me die. I’m through. I can’t measure up to the prophets that came before me.” Falling asleep, he presumably hoped that he wouldn’t wake up and have to face any more challenges. Instead, he awakened to an angel sent by God, who provided for him the things he needed to make his way for the always-significant forty days and forty nights (it means a really long way), deeper into the lonely wilderness but never alone, up onto another mountaintop, and open to what would happen next.
Running from his vocation
Like the forty days and forty nights, this mountaintop had significance, too: Horeb is another name for Sinai, where God gave Moses the Law, and just as significantly, appeared to Moses. Lawrence Farris reminds us that “Nothing unimportant happens on mountains in Scripture…. What begins as flight from a tyrant soon becomes a journey to God led by God.” In other words, Elijah isn’t just running from Jezebel; he’s running from his vocation, from where God wants him to be, and from what God wants him to do. Farris continues: “The tension in the narrative is between whether Elijah will be defined by his fear of Jezebel or his by his faithfulness to God.” God both cares for Elijah in his flight (through the angel) and asks him why he is fleeing, or, in Farris’ words, “How can you fulfill my purposes if you are not where I need you to be?”
How many of us have found ourselves in similar situations? Perhaps not on the mountain where Moses trod, but certainly on the run from what God is calling us to do and to be. When God asks Elijah–twice–why he’s there and not where he should be, Elijah answers both times with the same words, a response that could almost be read as a self-righteous whine: “I have been working SO HARD and trying to do the right thing, and those people have totally abandoned you, and I’m the only one left who’s faithful, and I’m all alone, so just kill me now.” There’s a lot of “I” action going on there, and a bit of catastrophizing, too. When are we more likely to find ourselves alone and self-justifying than when we’ve run away from the tasks before us?
The main point of the story
Lawrence Farris observes that the “theophany” (that is, the encounter with God, or the manifestation of God) in this text, which seems to grab everyone’s attention, is not the main point of the story. It’s not about God being an easily summoned presence to be with us up in the caves of avoidance. “Remarkably,” he writes, “it is neither the experience of God’s dramatic nor quiet presence, for which many so long in the midst of such feelings, but in attending to the work at hand and needing to be done through which life is renewed….Action, rather than feeling, is the arena in which humans have freedom to choose….Elijah is called back to action, to the fight into which God has enlisted him, not because he feels like it but because it is what needs doing that he can do.”
So much for the scholars’ arguments over translation of “sheer silence” or “still small voice”! The message is the same: “Listen, Elijah, you need to get back to work; I have things I want to accomplish, and you’re the instrument for getting them done!” Walter Brueggemann seems to disagree with Farris when he does see the theophany, or manifestation of God’s presence, however brief, in this passage as a significant example of “an encounter in the life of a person or community whereby the future is radically and abruptly redefined.” Ironically, though, the things God tells Elijah to do don’t get done exactly that way, and Terence E. Fretheim suggests, “These changes do not signal disobedience, but recognize that God’s word regarding the future may have to be adjusted in view of new circumstances, and prophets are given freedom in the shaping of the divine word.” One could say that in another way: God was “still speaking” throughout the ministry of Elijah, and beyond.
The last faithful one standing?
Elijah thought that he was the last faithful man left standing, and yet the text goes on to speak of 7,000 more faithful ones, and before long, Elisha becomes his companion and understudy. How often do we think we’re alone when there’s a whole community out there, waiting for us? Farris points to Jesus, who “did not try to go it alone, and in fact formed a community as his first act of ministry.” If anyone could have tried to “go it alone,” you might expect Jesus to do so. But he surrounded himself with a community, and we find ourselves today doing the same thing as his followers. In fact, each of us, as followers of Jesus, has a vocation, and there are things that we need to do in this world, no matter what great challenges we face. If Elijah got discouraged and even gave up, it’s not surprising that we might do so, too. It’s a good thing that other voices intervene, however powerful, however small, and call us back to who we are, whose we are, and what we are about.
A preaching commentary by Karen Georgia Thompson on this text can be found on http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel
For further reflection
St. John of the Cross, 16th century
Desolation is a file, and the endurance of darkness is preparation for great light.
Vincent van Gogh, 19th century
In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.
Mother Teresa, 20th century
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature–trees, flowers, grass–grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence…. We need silence to be able to touch souls.
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