I’m not averse to getting sermon images from movies. I happen to believe that Hollywood, despite its excesses, errors, and general unreality, has a collection of some of the finest creative minds and visual artists. Every now and then they produce masterpieces that remind you of the potential of film, as when they put out things like The Wizard of Oz, E.T., or more recently Bridge to Terebithia. Of course, far too often, they give us films like Attack of the Zombie Moonmaids, part 4, but the potential is there and movies often stimulate me to see biblical passages in fresh ways.
So I’m going to start with a movie reference today but I have to say - this is not a masterpiece. In fact, I can’t even tell you the plot of this film because it’s so ridiculous and incomprehensible. Last weekend one of the first things we did with Eddie was to take him to Belle Haven to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End at the Monoplex. I really hope we’re at series end, too, because the point of these movies set sail a long time ago as far I’m concerned.
But having said that, this movie is a beautiful thing to look at and there is a moment from it that came to mind as Eddie and I were talking about today’s scripture. There is a scene early in the movie when Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp, is wandering around in a kind of limbo in Davy Jones’ Locker following his death. Don’t ask me how he died or how he got there or what Davy Jones’ Locker is. I don’t remember and it really doesn’t matter. (It’s a ridiculous movie.)
However he got there, Jack Sparrow is aboard his ship, the Black Pearl, in the middle of a vast desert, all of which is in this limbo land. Jack is delusional, fighting off images of himself and trying to understand where he is and what he’s supposed to do. Finally he jumps overboard and tries to drag his ship across the flat, desert basin. It’s a dry and forbidding environment. A rock turns into a crab and watches him try to make this futile march with his ship behind him. In the end, Jack falls backwards onto the ground looking up at the sky. He is lost, confused, weak and hopeless. So he falls asleep until a ton of rocks turn into crabs that roll the ship out to the ocean. (I told you – the movie makes no sense.)
That’s a good image to start with because it is, in a way, similar to where we find Elijah the Prophet in this bible passage from 1 Kings. He is out in a trackless desert, lost, confused, weak, and hopeless and falling asleep beneath a solitary shrub that is not even fit to give decent shade. It’s an odd place for Elijah to be since it comes right on the heels of Elijah’s greatest success.
This story is a prequel to the tale we told last week in the sermon. You might remember from that story that Ahab – the king of Israel – had strayed from God. He had married a foreign princess named Jezebel, who encouraged the worship of Baal – the Canaanite nature god. This was something that good Israelites were never supposed to do. They had been chosen from all the people of the earth to be servants of the one true God, who had chosen to be known by their name – Yahweh, the God of Israel. If they were faithful to their God there was no room for other gods. Every time they forgot this, (and they often did), they got into trouble. It’s not so hard to understand. When we forget who we are and who we are supposed to be faithful to, we get into trouble.
But Elijah had challenged the prophets of Baal to a mountaintop showdown. He faced down 450 of them as they offered sacrifices to their respective gods. The God of Israel clearly prevailed and Elijah wiped out all 450 of the prophets of Baal. It should have been a moment of great triumph. Elijah had restored right worship and had revealed who was really in charge. But Ahab, the king, was not ready to stand up to his role as Yahweh’s anointed and Queen Jezebel was even less repentant. She vowed to have Elijah killed by the following day.
But this was Elijah – the man of God. Elijah had called down a punishing drought on the land. He had raised a young boy from his deathbed. He had conquered 450 on a mountaintop and mocked them as he did it. So when Jezebel made her threat, what did he do? That’s right. He ran. He fled for his life.
It’s a good reminder that success does not always bring contentment. Sometimes it brings the taste of dissatisfaction. After all he’d done – there was still an adversary who wouldn’t recognize his greatness. There was still a foe who wished him ill.
Everything collapses in on Elijah. He can’t see his way forward anymore. His confidence evaporates. So he runs away to the desert and that’s where we find him – laid out like Jack Sparrow, sleeping by a broom tree, which is nothing more than another spiny desert shrub.
But if Elijah has run away, God hasn’t. And angel from God comes and touches Elijah. “Get up and eat,” the angel says. There is a cake and a jar of water. If Elijah had been paying attention he would have recognized these as exactly the things he had asked of a poor woman in the middle of the drought. She thought she was dying but these became signs of life. But now, seeing the same items, Elijah doesn’t get it – can’t get it. He eats the cake, drinks the water and lies back down.
The angel returns a second time and explains to Elijah that he needs to eat because he’s got a big journey ahead. So Elijah eats and drinks and gets up to walk. It is a big journey. 40 days and 40 nights, which is Bible talk for “a really long time.”
He ends up at Mt. Horeb, which is the mountain where Moses had heard God’s voice in a burning bush and where he had received the Ten Commandments and the Law in fire and clouds and shaking of the earth. If you come to Mt. Horeb you might expect to meet God in some dramatic way. But Elijah goes into a cave and sits.
A voice comes to Elijah. “What are you doing in here, Elijah?”
“What am I doing in here? What am I doing in here?! Have you seen what’s happening? I have done all that you have asked of me. You won’t find anybody more zealous than me in representing Yahweh. But look what’s happened to Israel. They have forgotten what you gave them on this mountain. They have torn down your altars. They have killed your prophets. I am the only one left and they want to kill me, too.”
He overstated the case a little bit. God tells him a little later that there are actually 7,000 faithful Israelites still remaining. But the situation Elijah describes is still fairly accurate. It’s bad. The forces of good are on the run. Things don’t look good for the home team. But Elijah has not been paying attention. He has forgotten all the preparation God has been making. He can’t see the signs. He can’t believe that God still has a future for him and his people. He’s gone to the mountain of God but he’s still sitting in a cave.
Does this ever happen to you? Are you ever so turned in on yourself, so captivated by your fears that you can’t see what God is holding out for you? Do ever find yourself in the midst of situations where you know you should be joyous – where you know that you have everything to live for – where you know that there are people who love you, that God loves you – that there are things and people you can trust and rely on and yet…even so you are in a cave of your own disillusionment and fear.
I have had periods in my life when I have been in that cave. I have struggled with depression and if you have ever struggled with depression you know what its like. Things that used to give you joy lose their luster. It’s not just feeling sad; it’s losing the capacity for joy and connection with others. It’s as if the whole world has been sucked into a black hole from which nothing, not even light, can escape. It’s that all-consuming.
But even if it’s not clinical depression, there are times when it is easy for us to forget that God is there. It’s easy to lose sight of the messages that are all around us. It’s easy for us to neglect the practices of looking for God in every place.
The painter Vincent Van Gogh struggled with the darkness. He was continually in search of something he could never quite put into words. But he could paint what he sought. In his famous painting “Starry, Starry Night,” he depicts a night sky that is full of swirls and colors. There is a melancholy air to it all but there is also vibrancy and life. It’s the same vibrancy that you see in his fields and sunflowers. Everything he paints is pulsing with a supernatural energy and is bathed in other-worldly light. There is danger, yes, but there is God, too. Van Gogh once said, “The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”[i] He wanted to “go to sea” and find the voice that was speaking to him.
What Van Gogh glimpsed in the world he often failed to hold on to. Elijah struggled too. So it’s no surprise that when God tells him to go out to the mountainside so that he could be in God’s presence – Elijah stays in the cave. A violent wind comes and tears at the mountain. There is an earthquake and then fire. It’s like the revelations to Moses all over again. But God is not in any of those things.
What finally gets Elijah’s attention was the faint sound of a whisper. You know what they say – when you want to get someone’s attention, whisper. And God whispers because God wants Elijah to be reconnected – to hear as if he were listening to a lover’s voice.
Elijah wraps his head in a cloak and comes out of the cave. The voice comes again, “Elijah, what are you doing here?”
Again Elijah responds in the same way – the same words – the same excuses, the same sense of despair. But now God is going to send him back to life, so he gives Elijah some marching orders, almost as if he hadn’t heard Elijah’s complaints at all. But God knows that if Elijah’s despair and depression was the thing that determined who he was, there was not a thing in the universe that could fill it up, not even God. When a person is turned in upon him or herself there is no room for even the thing they most need to live.
Last spring we read C.S. Lewis’ book The Great Divorce in a small group. That book is Lewis’ imaginative exploration of what hell must be like. And the most surprising thing about hell in his telling is how close it is to heaven. The people who are resident in hell are still surrounded by goodness and possibility and God but they continue in death as they were in life – prevented by their preoccupations and sins from seeing how close God really is.
So it’s right that God does not give in to Elijah’s view of the world. (Not that God needs any validation from me.) God doesn’t try to soothe Elijah or be understanding of his position. God just says, “O.K., Elijah, let’s just start walking back.” And he does.
That’s pretty characteristic of God. God doesn’t accept our view of the world; God just starts walking us in a new direction. I think that’s why Jesus does that mystifying thing that he does when a potential disciple says, “I’ll follow you, but first let me bury my father.” Then Jesus tells him he’s not ready. [Matt. 8:21-22] Jesus doesn’t let the grief of that man, or the wealth of the young ruler, or the legalism on the lawyer, or the financial obligations of another man determine their life’s course. They all had needs and burdens but they didn’t have needs and burdens worth having. What they needed was a purpose that gave them life. What they needed was to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.
So Elijah needs to start walking on God’s path instead of lamenting his own. It must be his free choice to do so. He has no way of knowing what the path will require of him at the outset, but the first step is to let God take the lead.
As Methodists we have a strong belief in the role of human free will. We don’t believe that God has predestined every action we will undertake. God wants followers who are not orchestrated like puppets, but capable of using their gifts as co-creators with god. It makes Methodists a little nervous when people say, “God has a plan for me to the extent that my every moment is determined by God.” We believe that God has an intention and that God will ultimately bring all things to perfection, but God’s intention is that all will be saved and the means is for us to freely accept the freedom God offers us in Christ.
But if we Methodists don’t believe that our wills are coerced by God, we do believe that God is telling us in so many ways and by so many means what it is that we should do. And if God is not using an earthquake or a whirlwind or a pillar of fire in your life to tell you this, perhaps there are some faint whispers that turn your head and guide your feet in a new way.
I believe that God is speaking to you. I believe that God knows the hurts and fears of our hearts. God knows the wounds and the grief. God knows the sins that we may feel can never be washed away. God know how we can turn in on ourselves and how we can lose the light in our eyes and the love of our hearts. But none of those things should determine who we are. If they do then we are doomed.
What determines our life is the life we know in Christ, who died with us and for us to take away the sins of the world. If anything else claims that place for us it is as demonic as the temples of Baal. And as people who are listening for God’s voice we should know that God has things for us to do.
Do you hear that? That whisper as light and as powerful as the breeze on the bay? That’s God calling your name. Thanks be to God.
1 Kings 19:1-21
Then Ahab let Jezebel know all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets by the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, "May the gods do thus and so to me and more if by this time tomorrow I have not made your life like the life of one of them."
Seeing his adversary, he arose and fled for his life to Beersheba, which is in Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself continued into the wilderness a day's journey and came and sat under a solitary shrub. He asked that his life might be taken. "I have too much, YHWH. Take my life, for I am not greater than my ancestors."
He lay down and fell asleep beneath the solitary shrub. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat."
He looked and, what do you know, by his head there was a cake baked on glowing coals and a jar of water. He ate and drank and lay down again.
The angel of YHWH came back a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat because the journey will be too much for you."
He got up, ate and drank and, in the strength of that meal, walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God - Horeb. There he entered a cave and stayed there. Suddenly the word of God came to him and said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
He said, "I have been wholly zealous for YHWH, the God of armies, because the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets by the sword. I alone am left and they seek to take my life."
YHWH said, "Go out and stand on the face on the mountain before YHWH." And YHWH passed by. A great and mighty wind tore at the mountain and it shattered the rocks of the mountain before YHWH. But YHWH was not in the wind. Then after the wind there came an earthquake, but YHWH was not in the earthquake. Then after the earthquake there came a fire, but YHWH was not in the fire. And after the fire there came a sound like a faint whisper.
When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in a cloak and came to stand at the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
He said, "I have been wholly zealous for YHWH, the God of armies, because the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets by the sword. I alone am left and they seek to take my life."
Then the LORD said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus;”
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment