June 22, 2025
Second Sunday After Pentecost
Thanks so much for having me, Seekers, for my first time bringing the word from this suddenly-rather-intimidating lectern. The good thing about being part of a congregation with an open pulpit is that you know the congregation is full of people who either have done this before, or who might do this in the future, and that’s encouraging somehow.
Our lectionary series has brought us some powerful passages–there are some real bangers this week! Galatians 3, a passage that has said so much to generations of our faith, would be the obvious focus–but instead, I want you to come with me on a journey to the ancient kingdom of Israel, to 1 Kings 19.
I did look at the larger context of this passage, and I did do some research, but I’m not a scholar of the Hebrew Scriptures, nor in possession of a theology degree, but thankfully this congregation contains both, so I hope you’ll let me know during feedback time if I got anything egregiously wrong!
Our main character here is the prophet Elijah, and we meet him at a personal and professional low point.
In the chapter just before this one, Elijah, with the power of the Lord working through him, has just defeated the prophets of Baal and ended the drought plaguing Israel. And then, perhaps out of revenge for an earlier massacre of Hebrew prophets, perhaps to prevent it from happening again, he and his supporters attack the prophets of Baal and kill them. (This is one of the places in the story that is hard to tie up in a bow for modern readers…)
Having achieved spiritual victory through the power of the Lord, and temporal victory by the sword, it seems like this should have been a peak moment for Elijah. But the rulers of the land, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, are still in power and this display has not induced them to change their ways–far from it! Queen Jezebel has just sent Elijah saying, “My all the gods be against me if I do not do to you what you did to these prophets.”
And so the cycle continues, and this is where we find Elijah–alone and running for his life. It’s sort of odd when I actually think about it, though: after that display of God’s power working through him, why would Elijah fear a mere ruler? Maybe he was just tired, burned out, lacking the strength for another seemingly endless fight.
One could definitely see in Elijah’s story a parable of activist burnout–he has been opposing these unjust rulers and calling for change in the kingdom of Israel since the days of Ahab’s father, Omri, and he’s been through a lot in that time, done things (good and bad) that maybe he never thought he’d do, and yet the change that is his life’s mission is still elusive…
A note here on Ahab and Jezebel: It’s really unfortunate that Jezebel’s name has been thrown at basically any woman in history who dares to exercise power and influence. And it’s especially ironic that that accusation has taken on a sexual tinge, when lack of fidelity to Ahab is just about the only thing the writers and compilers of Kings don’t accuse her of–and I got the feeling that they would have if they could! They really don’t like her!
Instead, Ahab and Jezebel come across as a real power couple of the ancient world–and maybe that was exactly the problem. My read on them (and this is just my interpretation) is that Ahab and Jezebel were interested in power–geopolitical, military, monetary, land-owning power–and they were not particularly interested in abiding by the checks and balances that the prophets represented. David being held accountable by the prophet Nathan, and accepting that accountability, for his abuses of power toward Uriah and Bathsheba, sort of represents how it was supposed to work…
Which brings us back to Elijah, for whom it’s not working the way it’s supposed to work. He’s alone and running for his life–and he’s not a young man any more. Now, I think that the reason this passage is included in the post-Pentecost season of liturgy is the transcendent, awe-inspiring vision of the Spirit that God grants to Elijah at the end of the passage, but let’s stay here for a moment, at the moment of Elijah’s greatest despair–he prays to God to let him die.
If you’ve ever felt anything similar, you don’t want to linger here–at least I don’t; I probably shouldn’t assume my experiences are universal. But I want to spend some time with Elijah’s experience of God’s response.
Elijah falls asleep exhausted, and when he wakes, an angel is there. Notice what the angel does–and what it doesn’t do–it doesn’t talk much, doesn’t offer words of wisdom or comfort. It offers food–and water–and its one instruction to Elijah is to eat.
And Elijah rests again, this time less drained and more fed, and when he wakes up a second time, the angel is there again, and again it urges him to eat, but this time it adds, “For the journey is too much for you.” And this might not seem like a word of comfort, but I think it is, because it’s telling Elijah that God has a future for him.
If there’s one thing I’d want us to take from this, it’s that our physical, mental, and emotional well-being matters to God, matters to our ability to follow our call in the world, and should matter to us. And Elijah journeys deeper into the wilderness, arriving at Mt. Horeb, the mountain where Moses encountered God’s Spirit, and he has an experience of the Spirit that hadn’t been granted to anyone since Moses, as far as we know.
And here’s where this passage intersects with Luke, where Jesus also meets the possessed man in a state of isolation and despair; it had a different cause than Elijah’s, but Jesus still meets him there, and likewise tends to his physical as well as his spiritual needs. You notice that the man has clothes on when the townsfolk come out? He got those somewhere–and I think it’s safe to conjecture that Jesus and his followers were probably involved.
The now healed man wants to stay with Jesus, but as with Elijah, Jesus sends him back into his own community with a new call. I’m indebted for this insight into the connection between these passages to The Salt Project, a progressive Christian resource group who does a weekly lectionary blog, I highly recommend them.
So that’s my second point, that God calls folks to take what they absorb from encounters with God in solitude and silence, back into community & the next phase of their call. After Elijah returns from Mt. Horeb, he’s no longer alone–he meets Elisha, who leaves his family’s farm to follow him, and Elijah eventually names him as his successor. (This is another one of those points that’s hard to tie in a bow for modern readers, because the specific call that Elijah hears sounds a lot like more of the same violence that’s been plaguing the kingdom of Israel…)
I was going to say that there isn’t a third point–but actually there is. That dark place can be a fertile ground for creation. “As the Deer,” which we sang earlier, is derived from the Psalm selections in today’s lectionary. I first sang it with evangelical campus organizations in college–I thought it was beautiful then, and I still do. Thank you for helping me reclaim it today. But it glosses over the more anguished parts of that psalmist’s prayer (in Psalm 42)–and I think that incomplete picture does a disservice to the psalmist’s journey, and to our own.
Thank you.