A sermon on 1 Kings 19:1-18
Last week, we explored the story of King Solomon building the temple at Jerusalem.
A lot of things have happened in the 77 years since then.
Solomon died, and his son Rehoboam took over. Rehoboam was a real piece of work, imposed taxes and fines on the people, bragged about being a bigshot and neglected the advice of his elders—and his hubris had a predictable result: the people rebelled. A large portion of the kingdom in the north essentially seceded from the union and formed a new kingdom with 10 of the tribes under Jeroboam.
In the time from last week’s reading to this one, there have been seven kings in the north and four in the south, most of whom have been pretty terrible—especially the northern ones.
As we pick our story back up today, Ahab has been anointed king in the North and has married Jezebel, a Phoenician queen who’s brought worship of Baal to Israel. Ahab, who becomes known as Israel’s WOAT (you know, the opposite of GOAT—worst of all time) has gone along with her idolatry and is even actively persecuting those who worship the LORD.
So God calls Elijah to set them straight.
And, you know, Elijah is really a prophet’s prophet. In his book The Prophets, Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel says that Old Testament prophets are wild, kind of fanatical, who always seem to be shouting a couple of octaves too high.
They’re always taking things WAY TOO SERIOUSLY to the point that it’s not even fun anymore, it’s just scary. For example, Ezekiel lies on his side for over a year to represent sin and even ties himself with ropes so he can’t turn over. Jeremiah buries underwear in the ground until it’s totally ruined and pulls it out and says, “SEE, THIS IS LIKE WHAT YOU’VE DONE!” Isaiah walks around stripped and barefoot for three years to symbolize humiliation and shame that is coming to Egypt.
These are not the people you’d invite to a dinner party, I expect.
And Elijah is the among the first, and perhaps most vibrant, examples of this. The guy is borderline unhinged. He calls down balls of fire on people. He curses the land with drought. In one of his more famous (infamous?) scenes, he sets up a contest between God and Baal, where each side builds an altar and puts a sacrifice upon it and asks their god to light A fire.
On Baal’s side, there are 450 prophets dancing and cutting themselves and working themselves up into a frenzy, and Elijah heckles them. He says things like, “Where’s your god? Maybe he’s sleeping, or busy, or traveling, or in the loo!” (Yes, he literally says that.)
And when the prophets of Baal ultimately lose the showdown, Elijah has them, well, killed. A close reading of the text reveals that God didn’t ask him to do that. That was all Elijah.
Because this is how zealous—how deeply passionate—Elijah is about having the people turn back to the LORD and set aside their idolatry.
There’s just one problem.
It doesn’t work.
It doesn’t work at all.
Jezebel becomes enraged when she learns what Elijah did to the prophets of Baal and vows vengeance. Elijah flees the north and runs to the south, drops his assistant off at the last town near the border, and goes an extra day into the wilderness. He comes to a bush, sits down under it, and prays: “I’ve had enough of this, Lord. Please just kill me now.”
I think it’s fair to say that Elijah’s got the absolute worst case of burn-out I’ve ever heard of.
Has anyone here ever felt burned out?
I have.
Burnout’s the feeling that comes when you’re at the absolute end of your energy. It happens a lot in the helping professions—teaching, counseling, nursing, even ministry—but it happens elsewhere, too. Business. Parenting. Community service. Church. Life.
In my experience, it happens most when we feel helpless, like what we’re doing isn’t making any kind of difference at all. And that usually happens because we aren’t seeing the outcomes we want. Nothing’s moving the needle. It feels like you’re banging your head against a wall.
I’ve seen it a lot lately in the public sphere. People feeling like we’re in this hopelessly violent, divided, difficult moment in our country and world, with assassinations and people screaming at each other on the internet and neighbors turning against neighbors, and there’s just this feeling of utter helplessness and despair in a lot of the people I talk to—from almost every point on the political spectrum.
We’re all kind of Elijah at the edge of the wilderness lying under a bush that barely gives us enough shade, asking, “Is this really all there is?”
I want to point something out. A lot of the things that Elijah does—the contest with the priests of Baal, the drought he curses the people with, the fireballs from heaven, this one time he runs ahead of a chariot for 17 miles—God never actually commands him to do them.
There are some things in the text that God commands Elijah to do. To call the people to repentance. To go to a certain place. To deliver a certain message. But a lot of these flashy, exciting, overdramatic displays? God seems to go along with them, more or less, but He doesn’t actually command them.
And that feels to me like a very, very important distinction.
God is gracious. God often works with our plans, misguided as they may be from time to time. God honors our faith even when our methods are off. But—and this is crucial—just because God allows something doesn’t mean it’s God’s blueprint for how things should go. God can turn our mistakes into something redemptive without endorsing the mistakes themselves.
And it makes me wonder: How often do we find ourselves pursuing the bold or flashy or reckless thing, when what God really asks of us is the quiet thing?
It’s why I love that in Elijah’s despair the first thing the angel says to him is, “Elijah, eat a snack. Eat a snack, then take a nap, then eat another snack.”
And I love that when Elijah finally talks to God, there’s a powerful wind and shattered rocks, but the Lord is not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord is not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord is not in the fire.
Because where is the Lord? In the sheer silence.
It’s instructive what God tells Elijah to do next.
He says, essentially, “Go find Elisha and Jehu and anoint them to take on the work. Then you can retire. And I will gather the ones who have not bowed down to Baal. Oh, and Elijah? You thought you were the only one left? I’ve preserved seven thousand. You were never alone, and it was never all on you.”
Because, you see, it isn’t Elijah’s job to solve everything. He can’t do it. We can’t do it. Only God can, and God will, in His own good timing, in the slow, steady pace of history unfolding one day, one life, one story at a time.
My friends, one of the most difficult lessons I think we humans have to learn is that we do not control the outcome.
We do not control other people. We do not control how things go—not in our world, not in our neighborhoods, not in our families, not even, ultimately, our own deaths.
That doesn’t mean life is meaningless. God gives us tremendous agency. God often ratifies and supports our choices. But the moment we take the burden upon ourselves to make everything okay—to force certain outcomes, to save the world through sheer willpower—we end up like Elijah: exhausted, bitter, burned out.
God has promised to set things right in the end. Our job is merely to take whatever small and simple steps God has called us to in His good and gracious will, and then to leave it in His hands, and the hands of the others He calls.
It is not on our shoulders. It never has been.
So if you’re worried that the world is caving in and you alone can save it, here’s my advice to you.
Eat a snack. Take a nap.
Then go to God.
And when you go to Him, remember that you probably will not find Him in the earthquake or the fire or the flood or the spectacular displays of military might or the next great technological advancement but in the simple sound of silence—the intimacy of a gentle whisper, the breeze as it brushes your cheek, the hand of a little child, the love of a friend or family member, and, ultimately, in the quiet, hidden agony of the cross.
Leave it there, with him. Let it go. Let it go.
God’s got it. And God’s got you.
Amen.
