Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Texts:
1 Kings 19:4-8;
Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2;
John 6:35, 41-51.

He ran. After Elijah had all of Jezebel’s prophets of Baal killed in the wadi, he ran to inform the citizens of Jezreel of the glorious news. Israel’s God had come at Elijah’s call in a fiery appearance while the Caananite god Baal was a complete no-show.

Elijah was never able to fully explain how he ran so fast. His body was charged with an energy he did not entirely understand. Faster than a gazelle. Faster than the wind. On foot he got there ahead of King Ahab who was in a chariot.

Ahab’s own version of the news was grim – his wife Jezebel’s god had failed to be summoned in power. Subsequently, Elijah gave the command to kill her prophets. Hundreds of hundreds dead by the sword. The dry river bed flowed red with their blood.

Jezebel was enraged. She vowed revenge, the blood of Elijah for the blood of her prophets. Once again Elijah ran. He ran all the way back, south to Judah. This time in dread fear of Jezebel.

It made no sense really. Elijah was God’s prophet doing God’s work. He’d shown the power of his God over Baal. With God’s protection what did he have to fear? Why now did his own blood run cold within him?

Besides, Jezebel had killed Israel’s prophets first. So Elijah followed the ancient code of retribution. A life for a life. But closing his eyes he saw again the river of blood. And in his soul was a new kind of weariness he could not explain.

Arriving in the wilderness exhausted, thirsty, and hungry the prophet at first wondered if he was seeing a vision. A solitary broom tree appeared in the desert haze. But it was real.

Elijah threw himself down under the shade of the branches. He no longer cared if he lived. But at least he could wait here until his spirit departed his body.

He began to pray. Take my life oh Lord God. It was a prayer of confession. I am no holy man. I am just as my ancestors were.  Yes I believe in you, the only, true, high God. I have kept the commandment to worship only you. But another commandment I have not kept. You shall not murder. How can I live with this? Live with myself? Live before you, O God?

Elijah slept like a dead man under the tree whose roots were traditionally reserved for desperate people to burn as fuel. He slept under a tree whose branches were used to sweep out and cleanse their homes. He slept because he could no longer run from Jezebel, from himself, or from God.

So God sent angels. They summoned Elijah from his deathly sleep and said: It’s not over. You have more to do. God requires your presence at Mount Horeb. Eat this bread that God has given you. Drink this life-giving water. And the angels tended the prophet until he was strong enough to face God again.

The story of Elijah, Jezebel, and the prophets of Baal is a major biblical story. It functions as a witness to the promised protection and the pre-eminence of Israel’s God. It also deals with the sacred power of blood, especially blood that is shed to right a wrong.

This is also a story of the conflict between ancient Israel and the Canaanite peoples. These places are now modern Israel, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territory. We see how deeply embedded and intractable is the feud. And why it is so deadly even for the innocent. Because the wrong is never righted.

Elijah was a child of God and a faithful prophet. He was also an ordinary mortal man. Overlooking the deaths of hundreds of men at the wadi by his command is a perilous thing.

What happens when we look away and ignore the obvious effect of bloodshed on the soul and psyche of human beings?

The words of Jesus in John’s gospel today remind us that we are all a heartbeat away from the destructive impulses that thundered in Elijah, Jezebel, and Ahab. Each had a narrative about the rightness of their grievances. Each could defend their actions in terms of custom, political rule, or divine authorization. But it all ends in heartbreak and despair. Over and over again.

Jesus gave himself as bread. Food for a world that does not know how to trust that our hungers will be satisfied. We hunger for life itself in a world that always seems threatened by something or someone that is life-taking.

This hunger drives our fears. And fear drives people, even and sometimes especially people of faith, into doing things that are destructive. Not just people of ancient Canaan and Israel, but first century Christians in Ephesus and beyond. And not just them but also modern nations and peoples. Including you and me.

As the letter to the Ephesians says, we have to keep re-committing ourselves to a different way of life. To listen to those better angels who can feed us with more nourishing food. To work God’s forgiveness of us into our forgiveness of others. And to forgive ourselves too, because that is the only way forward when we’ve lost our way in the wilderness of fear, ending in anger and hate.

Elijah ran. He ran fast and long. Yet as he did, he discovered that you cannot outrun yourself. But then also he learned that you cannot outrun God. And if you give up the running and place yourself entirely into God‘s mercy and provision, that’s when a whole new fearless life is really possible. It’s the life God wants us to live. The life that is lived fearlessly in love.