“Macbeth,
Macbeth, Macbeth! Be bloody, bold and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of
men, for none of women born shall harm Macbeth!”
Then live,
Macduff; what need I fear of thee? But yet I’ll make assurance double sure, and
take a bond of fate; thou shalt not live.
Those of us with even a passing knowledge the Scottish play will
understand the significance of those prophetic words, spoken by an apparition,
because they come back to haunt Macbeth in the dramatic closing scenes.
It turns out that his enemy, Macduff, who he’s fighting to the
death, has been born by Caesarian section, ‘Ripped untimely from his mother’s
womb..’ as the text has it. And so Macbeth fights on to the death, grimly
realising that that the words which he thought safeguarded his future, actually
pointed to his bitter end.
I wanted to start with those words this morning because they serve
as a good illustration of what people understand by ‘prophesy’ today. Prophesy
has become synonymous with seeing into the future and fortune telling, and the
average person’s more likely to associate prophesy with the likes of
Nostradamus or Mystic Meg than any Biblical figure.
But prophesy, in the Biblical sense of the word, isn’t so much a
case of fore-telling as forth-telling; it’s telling forth the Word of God to
the people of God in their present circumstances.
A prophet’s key attribute wasn’t foresight, but insight - the
ability to tune in to and keep seeing God’s Upper Story, and presenting that
Story to the people, even when they didn’t want to hear it.
Prophets saw and described the gap that lies between God's command
and our response, and they sought to stand in that gap, cajoling, comforting
and envisioning the people of God.
Although prophets have already
been mentioned in the Story up until now, it’s as the nation splits and things
begin to go badly wrong that they came to the fore. And as Kings came and went
within Northern Israel and Southern Judah, some good but mostly bad, prophets
rose up to call the people back to God’s ways so that disaster could be
averted.
Elijah was such a man, and in this morning’s reading we find him
confronting the most notorious of Israel’s kings – King Ahab, and his equally
bad wife, Jezebel.
This should
have been, and in some senses was, Elijah’s moment of glory,
On the top
of Mt Carmel, with the people of Israel gathered, he took his stand alone against
the prophets of Baal, a pagan god championed by Ahab and Jezebel.
That day, he
forced the nation to decide between Israel’s God, YHWH, and the idols of the
nations around them.
“If the Lord is God - then
worship him he yelled to the crowds;
But if Baal is God - Then worship
him”
It all came
down to a challenge. Two sacrifices were prepared, one by Elijah, and one by
the prophets of Baal. They were to call on the name of their God in turn and
whichever answered by fire would show himself to be worthy of worship.
For all
their hours of blood letting and chanting and rabid dancing, the prophets of
Baal couldn’t stir their god to action.
Elijah offered
a simple prayer, and fire fell from heaven and consumed his sacrifice.
The prophets
of Baal were shown up for the charlatans they were, and Elijah dealt
mercilessly with them, putting them to the sword.
It was his
ultimate vindication.
So why, in his
moment of victory, do we find him running away in today’s reading?
Well, he’s trying
to put as much room as he can between himself and Jezebel’s threat to kill him.
Because when she heard what Elijah had done to her pet prophets, she cried out:
“May the gods strike me dead
If by this time tomorrow
I don’t do the same thing to you
As you did to my prophets.”
And when he
heard that, Elijah was afraid, and fled for his life.
And that’s
what I don’t get.
How can a
man defy a king, his army and his spies
For over 3
years,
Then stand
alone against over 800 opponents
And invoke
the power of God
Only to
suddenly crumple
Before the
words of an angry woman?
What’s going
on with Elijah?
I don’t think
he’s afraid of Jezebel.
I think he’s
just afraid.
Afraid with
the kind of fear that comes when your courage has been
called on so
often it’s become perilously thin.
Elijah’s had
enough.
He’s tired. He’s
burnt out.
We find him
under the branches of a broom tree,
Sodden and
cold
Feelings as
dark as the rain clouds above him
Unable to
hold together a heart that’s close to cracking.
And the only
prayer he has left is for release
For escape:
“It’s too
much Lord. I might as well be dead.”
But death
doesn’t come.
Instead, the
steady patter of the rain drops lulls him into the little death that we call
sleep.
A blessed oblivion
where, for a while, you’re out of reach
Of failure, fear
and responsibility.
But sleep can
help heal us too.
It can make
room for better perspectives to grow.
It can sew
patches on courage worn thin.
Sleep and a
little food, ministered to him by angels,
leaves him
rested enough for the long, lonely journey
up to the
holy mountain where Moses once met God,
And the
slaves of Egypt became the people of God.
And when he
gets there he finds a cave to shelter in.
And in the
mix of stillness, space
memory and
being alone, God’s voice emerges in the form of a question:
“What are you doing here Elijah?”
“Lord” he answers. “I’ve always
served you. Only you.
But the people have given their
hearts away,
Have broken your covenant.
I’m the last one left. And now they’re
going to kill me.”
Telling God
where we are and what’s happening to us,
Is less about
keeping God informed God and more
about
putting into words what lies deep within us.
It’s as much
about helping us sound out our depths before God
As it is
anything else.
Because what
we’ve suffered, or rejoiced over
Often needs
to be given its own words and spoken to another
Before we
can move beyond, accept or understand it.
So maybe Elijah’s
speaking as much to himself here
As he is to
God.
Maybe Elijah
hasn’t realised it, but the whole of this journey
From
frightened flight to exhausted sleep
to sitting
in a cave speaking his experience to God,
has been a
journey leading up to this point:
The point where
Elijah will hear the voice of God
Speaking in
such a way that he’s able
To move on in
faith, hope and service.
And the
voice speaks once,
Then after
earthquake, wind and fire,
It speaks
again in a gentle whisper he could so easily miss
Were he not
listening with his whole being.
“What are you doing here,
Elijah?”
“What are you doing here?”
Hold those
words in your imagination for a moment.
How are they
spoken?
None of us
can say for sure, but it strikes me that they’re voiced without a hint of
accusation or anger.
They sound
more like the kind of thing a longstanding friend would say when they need to
lovingly but gently confront you about something. They’re full of concern.
And I’d
doubt that there’s anyone here who hasn’t heard an echo of those same words in
their heart at some point in their lives.
“What are you doing here?” God asks us in a still small
voice, or through the words of a friend, or in the eloquent silence of our own
conscience. And implicit in the question is a truth that we don’t want to hear:
“This is not where you should be”.
How we
receive those words depends largely on how we got to where we are.
Some find
themselves under a broom tree or in a lonely mountain cave because with the
slow slippage of time their lives have been moulded into something they would
never have chosen.
I see a
woman who worries that she’s losing her life in the middle of caring for
others; exhausted by the round of responsibilities that fall to her and growing
resentful at the cost of it all.
I see
another who feels trapped in a loveless relationship. Where the early promise
never materialised, and all that’s left now is duty and the daily struggle to
maintain civility.
I see a man
stuck in a job he doesn’t enjoy, but wedded to it because of the financial
commitments he’s taken on.
They put a
brave face on, but internally disappointment hangs over them like a pall of bitter
smoke rising from the bonfire of their dreams.
For others,
it’s not circumstance built up over the years that’s ground them down, it’s a
sudden, drastic change.
Someone they
loved dies; serious illness visits them, or someone in the family. And they
find themselves reluctant travellers in the barren landscape of loss where it’s
so easy to lose direction and end up wandering round and round in the same
circles. Revisiting grief, bitterness, loneliness and resignation.
Still others
make bad choices that lead them into desolate places. Prodigals who reach out
greedy hands for whatever promises pleasure in the short term, but who end up
squandering all they have on things that never last and don’t satisfy.
Disgraced – even if it’s just in the courtroom of their own conscience – they
sit alone among the pigs with their head in their hands; but even there, God’s
voice reaches them.
“What are you doing here?” he asks
When we hear
those words, it’s always a sign that we’ve got stuck in a place we’re not meant
to be.
But the good
news this morning, is that those words also hold out to us the possibility of
moving on.
As far as
Elijah was concerned, the game was over. Humanly speaking, he could see no way
out of his situation, and even if there were a way out he had no energy to go
looking for it. But he didn’t reckon with what God had planned.
There were
7000 other faithful people in the land of Israel, men and women about whom
Elijah knew nothing. He wasn’t alone at all. There was hope, and a future, for
him and for his people.
When God
asks “What are you doing here”, he’s
not only saying, “This isn’t where you
should be”. He’s holding out the promise that there’s somewhere better up ahead.
Maybe that
somewhere better is the same place, but with a different mindset. Maybe the journey
you need to make is in your imagination – looking at where you are through different
eyes.
Seeing those
circumstances, that task, that relationship in a different light.
Or maybe
God’s saying ‘it’s time’. It’s time to get up and go. I know you’re afraid of
the uncertainty that’s ahead of you, but you can’t stay here any longer. You’ve
spent too much of your life in this place. This situation you’re in just now doesn’t
have to have the last, or most dominant word on your life, so don’t let it.
There’s somewhere better up ahead.
This isn’t where you should be, God’s saying to Elijah. Are
those words speaking to you in some way this morning? If so, take courage
because they mean that God has somewhere better in mind he want to take you,
and you’ll get there in the end if you keep listening for his still small
voice.
Your
circumstances are never the last word. God always has the last word, if we only
have ears to hear it.
Thanks be to
God for the ways in which his word has found us this morning.
Amen
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