When You’ve Slain Too Many Prophets of Baal

You have to love the Old Testament prophet Elijah. Do you know about the prophet Elijah? He lived nine hundred years before Jesus in the land of Israel, and he challenged the people of Israel when they strayed from the true God to worship false gods. He was a little peculiar and excessive but he was zealous for the Lord.

I think if you asked Elijah in a worship service to “pass the peace” … it would take him two hours! He would have to shake the hand of every person in the church, engage in an earnest conversation about their spiritual life and give each one a word of criticism or encouragement.

I think if Elijah was one of the characters in the loaves and fish story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, he would have organized a head count, taken up an offering, calculated what each person was likely to eat and then run off to the grocery store to pick up 1200 loaves of bread.

This is the kind of person we want in our congregation here!

Tell him to find enough water in the desert, and he will figure out which rock to squeeze.

This is a guy who’s not easily intimidated by the size or difficulty of the problem, or the people who stand in his way. We know this because of what we read about Elijah in the chapter of I Kings that comes right before our scripture reading today.

We read chapter 19 today, but in chapter 18, Elijah has just won a contest with 450 prophets of the false God Baal, and then after winning the contest he kills all 450 of these false prophets.

That’s chapter 18 … so now, what’s up with this 19th chapter?

“And Elijah went on a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a tree and said, “Enough already!”

Maybe he was just having one of those days … you wake up, eat breakfast, slaughter 450 prophets of Baal … and then you just feel drained and tired … well … It's hard work! It is no fun. Every other volunteer organization takes care of their workers – has nice dinners to honour their contribution, hands out plaques and awards for lengthy and dedicated service, makes sure the volunteers don’t get burnt out by overwork … “the most we can manage today … we can’t slaughter more than 250 false prophets today … the rest will just have to wait … we’ll follow up with the rest of them tomorrow.”

Everyone else learns how to say, “Enough already!”

But, when you’re the only one left … well, what choice do you have … except to keep slaughtering the evil that’s right in front of you … to keep working to accomplish the purposes of God. What choice do you have but to try and keep that evil at bay, so it doesn’t get to someone who’s being evicted in the middle of winter, or a girl in the youth group you suspect is being abused, or a person who’s battling addiction, or a man on the phone weeping to you saying he’s just lost his job and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do, or a free meal at the church for anyone who needs it.

So many evils … so many challenges … so many needs … and what choice do you have except to keep slaughtering those false prophets of misery, materialism, hatred, and fear … so that the people God has entrusted to the care of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church will not be lost to despair.

I suppose, even a guy like Elijah gets tired, especially when those false prophets just keep coming and coming and coming. And that’s really it, isn’t it, it’s the pace of the thing – how many balls you have to keep in the air at one time … that’s what wears you down. Anybody can handle one prophet of Baal, but when you’ve got three … five … ten … twenty … all at once … whoa!

And when you’re overwhelmed, all that stuff you can usually handle with your eyes closed, is suddenly way too much.

Your kid walks into the kitchen at dinner time and says, “What’s for supper?”

And you say, “Meatloaf.”

And he says, “What! Again!”

And then suddenly you have morphed into Godzilla. This is one of those moments when you are fully in touch with the necessity for gun control laws.

And when you have finished conquering the beast within, your kid looks at you calmly and says, “Let me guess. Have we slaughtered a few too many prophets of Baal today?”

Maybe it isn’t so hard to understand this thing in verse four about a Broom tree. And maybe pouting under a Broom tree is a whole lot better option than Godzilla in the kitchen. Because, make no mistake, Elijah is definitely pouting.

A Broom tree in the desert is not exactly a willow beside still waters. It’s a scrubby little bush, and it’s low and it’s prickly and it’s uncomfortable, and you don’t choose to lie underneath it unless you’re making a statement!

Elijah went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree and asked that he might die, “It is enough now, O Lord. Take away my life.”

Elijah is definitely feeling sorry for himself. In chapter 18 he’s the Eveready Bunny – poster boy for prophet of the year, and now in chapter 19, just because Queen Jezebel has threatened to kill him again, he’s suddenly worried that she has more power over his life than God.

“Has it been such a hard day Elijah that you have completely lost your mind and your faith?”

“Elijah, you have been miraculously fed by ravens, fed by widows, you’ve been given the power to raise the dead, water the earth, and in the last two chapters alone, you have single-handedly proven that the prophets of Baal are phonier than a three dollar bill, you’ve killed 450 of them … and now … and now … suddenly you’ve flopped down under a broom tree … to pout?”

In the immortal words of teenagers everywhere, “Elijah, get over yourself!”

So Elijah, just tell the truth, “You are exhausted … you are fried … aren’t you?”

“You have slain a few too many false prophets and so you’re having a Godzilla moment, but let’s be very clear, just because you’re tired does not mean that you are abandoned by God.”

Thankfully, God has a sense of humour …

I’m not that patient with whiners … least of all myself. I’m pretty sure I would have been quite snippy with Elijah lying under his broom tree. I might have given him a dose of his own medicine – taken up his dare, “Okay, come on, if you’re ready to kick the bucket, the gates are open!”

But God does not do that. God understands how ridiculous we human beings can be when we are so busy or frightened or overwhelmed, we can’t think straight. God understands why we might say stupid and hurtful things to the people we love. God understands that the business of slaying too many false prophets in one day can render us temporarily insane. It happens.

And when it does, God understands that there isn’t anything to do with us but to sit us in the “time-out” chair, or under the “time-out” broom tree, as the case may be, “Just sit here Elijah until you calm down. Just sit here Elijah until you remember that I am the God who will never abandon you. Just sit here until you can be Elijah again. And finally, just to show you what a loving God I am, here’s an angel with some food and water for you. Now does that help? Good, now get up and eat, or the journey will be too much for you.”

How about that – a beautifully simple response, “Get up and eat.” And there, a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water – everything you need.”

A casserole delivered to your door on one of the worst week’s possible;

A friend who’s there with a listening ear when you’re wondering what life is all about.

Sisters and brothers who will pray you through a crisis when you don’t even know the story of your life anymore, because literally it feels like it has changed overnight.

It is that simple … “Get up and eat.” And interestingly, it’s not all that different from what mothers and grandmothers have been saying for centuries, “Eat something and you’ll feel better!”

I notice God does not have too much more to say to Elijah in this story. No lectures. No shouting out of a whirlwind like in the Book of Job. Apparently this is not the moment for that. And that’s interesting to me because other gods might roar around in earthquakes and winds and fires making a big commotion, but our God is content to be known in the sound of sheer silence, because it’s only in the silence that you really hear what’s going on with you.

I have heard a lot of sermons about how we come to know God best in quiet stillness, and I think that is true, but I don’t think this sound of sheer silence is meant to show Elijah who God is. I think it’s meant to show Elijah – remind Elijah – who he is.

I think it’s a gentle time out – a pause. And like the food left out at Elijah’s side – the food that brings him back to himself, God has one more simple thing to offer. It’s not a lecture. It’s a question …

“What are you doing here Elijah? I mean really … really … What are you doing here? Why did you come here? Did you need to remember who you were? Did you need someone to remind you? Did you need a sound of sheer silence? I know you’re tired, but get up and eat … and then go on, get back in there.”

You know, the older I get, the more I like simple responses. Not answers … responses.

You know, there isn’t any solution, there is no answer to Queen Jezebel. She and King Ahab are just going to keep on coming and coming. They are going to send false prophets and corruption and evil for him to defeat faster and faster, and it’s not going to stop – it’s just going to get worse. There is no easy solution for that. There are no easy solutions to the challenges we face in our world today … or in our own lives … but there is a response, and that is not to curl up and die. Not to give up. Not to get so overwhelmed, you forget who you are and who God is.

There is a response for one of those days when 450 prophets of Baal need to be slain – just let God and angels take over, with a touch on the shoulder and a cake baked on hot stones, because it will come. It will come.

And then that gentle question: “What are you doing here? Get up and eat something … get up and get back in there … God goes with us.”