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Kings 19:4-8 (Psalm 34, John “The Lions Grow Weak and Hungry” In the name of him who is the Living
Bread come down from heaven, dear friends in Christ: I’d like to address this morning’s message to
two groups of people in particular.
First, to those who know what it feels like to be really down and out, those
who have, at one time or another, been physically and emotionally spent and
left feeling spiritually depressed and empty inside, who know what’s it like to
have suffered an especially painful loss, defeat, disappointment or humiliation,
and who have come to a point in their lives when they’ve either said or felt
like saying, “That’s it! I just can’t
take it anymore!” If any that sounds
familiar, then this message is for you.
And if you happen to be someone for whom none of that sounded even
remotely familiar, then this message is for you too; because I assure you, your
day is coming. It is an inevitable
consequence of living in this fallen world. And that’s one of the things I truly appreciate about the
Holy Scriptures. It describes the human
condition as it is, not as we would like it to be. That’s refreshing, because we live in a
culture that holds forth the ideal of the perpetually strong and independent
person. Our heroes are the kind of
people who have faced adversity with grim determination and who, through
sacrifice and suffering, have found it within themselves to overcome seemingly
insurmountable obstacles to achieve their goals. They are the kind who never quit. They never say, “die”. They just roll with the punches and carry on. We’d like to be that way. And to some extent this idea spills over into
our faith-life. Here the notion takes the
form that says once you attain a certain level of maturity in the faith, you
come to a point of spiritual independence.
And having achieved it, you ought to be able to keep going and maintain
a positive and upbeat attitude at all times.
In fact, if you ever show any sign of discouragement or frustration,
it’s a pretty good indication that your walk with the Lord is not what it
should be. It’s a sign of weak
faith. So, when things are going badly,
and on the inside you feel yourself getting low, you dare not let it show. Better to hide it behind a mask of good old fashioned
German stoicism or with an artificial cheerfulness reminiscent of the Simpson’s
character Ned Flanders. But that isn’t what we see in
Scripture. Instead, like I said before,
it tells it like it is. I mean, think about
some of the great heroes of faith, people like Abraham, Moses, and David (to
name but a few) – these mighty lions of God – yes, we see their moments of
triumph; but even more, it seems to me, the Scriptures present them to us in
their darker seasons. At times we find
them depressed, with crushed spirits, at a loss to understand the Lord’s hard dealings
with them. We see them in moments of
spiritual crisis, pouring out the bitter complaints of their hearts to God. We find them losing the will to continue. We find them giving up. As we said in the Psalm a bit ago, “Even the
lions grow weak and hungry”. And if it
happens to the great lions of faith, how much more might we expect the same
thing to happen to the rest of us? Which
is exactly why, I think, we are shown the heroes of faith at their low
points: so that we can learn from their
examples – and more to the point, learn how the Lord saw them through their
hard times. In today’s Old Testament lesson, it’s
great prophet Elijah whom we find at what is certainly the lowest point of his
life. He is lost, alone, fearful, exhausted,
and without food or water somewhere out in the Sinai desert. And as bad as these external conditions are,
what’s far worse is what is going on inside him. In his very soul he’s beaten. He is disillusioned and demoralized. And now he’s throwing in the towel. We find him lying in the dust trying to take
shelter in the meager shade of a spindly desert shrub, begging God to just let
him die. And what’s most surprising is
that we find him here in this wretched condition only a few days following the
greatest triumph in his life. Less than
a week before, he was riding high at the peak of his glory. He was the most popular and respected man in Elijah, you may recall, was God’s prophet during the time of
the divided kingdom, and he did most of his work in the northern kingdom of Now it happened that Ahab, in order to seal an important
political alliance that would strengthen his position, married the daughter of the
neighboring pagan king of Now, Baal worship had always been a problem in You see, Baal was a
god who was very easy to understand and worship. In Canaanite mythology, he was the rain
god. That gave him a very important
place in that semiarid part of the world.
Rain at the right time translated directly into crops. So if Baal was happy, it rained, and there was
plenty of food. If Baal was unhappy,
everybody went hungry. It was that
simple. So the goal was to keep Baal
happy. You did that by participating in various
fertility rights at his temples and sacred groves. Suffice it to say these were nothing more
than wild, drunken, orgies. And the best
part about Baal was that he was not at all concerned about moral issues. He didn’t care how you lived your life or how
you treated your neighbors. As long as
you did your religious “duty”, which was participating in the sexual excesses of
his worship, he sent the rain and everybody was happy. So it’s not hard to figure out: you had your choice. You could worship (a) a God who can’t be
manipulated, but who blesses his people because he loves them, and who also
demands of his people a life of holiness and purity, or you could worship (b) a
god whom you can control by the things you do for him, and who’s especially
happy if you attend his wild sex parties.
Oh, and if you chose God (a), you’d come under the wrath of the queen
who would probably have you killed or drive you into exile. Faced with these alternatives, the vast
majority of people abandoned the true God in favor of Baal. In response to all of this, Elijah stood alone and
confronted King Ahab on behalf of the Lord.
Forgetting his personal safety, he went to the king and told him, “You are
leading your people astray. You seem to
have forgotten who the true God of Israel is.
Apparently you need a reminder.
So go ahead and pray to your rain god.
It won’t do any good. There will
be no more rain in the land, not a single drop, until the people return to the
worship of the Lord.” What followed were three years of absolute drought. And of course, no rain meant no crops. The land became so parched and dry that it
couldn’t even be cultivated. The fruit
orchards withered and grapevines died.
Livestock perished for lack of forage and water. People’s savings were wiped out by the high
price of imported grain. They were in
desperate straights. Many faced death by
starvation. Then, after three years,
when the entire nation of Maybe you remember the story: how the four hundred prophets of Baal went
first, and how they spent the whole day crying out to their silent god. After they’d been at it several hours Elijah
started making fun of them. He goaded
them from the sidelines to call louder.
Maybe their god Baal was sleeping, or out taking a walk. They tried; but still nothing happened. They grew more desperate as it began to get
late. They even started cutting
themselves with knives to show Baal how earnest and devoted they were. Then just before sunset, Elijah called to the crowd of
onlookers, “All right, you’ve seen what Baal can do: Nothing. There’s been no rain for three years and no
fire from heaven today. Now, come over
here to me, and you will learn who is really the Lord God of And Elijah was on top of the world. “Now things will be set right”, he thought,
“Now the true God alone will be worshipped in And no one came to Elijah’s defense. No one was willing to stand with him. It suddenly became apparent to Elijah that
the whole thing had been a big failure.
The wicked queen was still calling the shots, Ahab was as flaky and
faithless as ever, and worse, the people who had worshipped God in response to
the fire from heaven, had, shortly after reaching their homes and watching the
rain fall, decided that following the true God meant making some major changes
in the way they lived their lives – changes they were unwilling to make. God or no God, they wanted to keep things as
they had been. The revival Elijah that had
hoped for fizzled out before it began. His
disappointment gave way to despair. He
felt that God had let him down – and now there were hired killers after him. Rather than continue to trust in the Lord for
his personal safety, he ran for his life. Elijah had miscalculated badly. Why?
Well, he imagined that there was a point that could be reached in his
walk of faith beyond which he could go it alone – beyond which he would no
longer need to rely on the Lord. For him
it was the showdown at It is the same mistake that many Christians make today. Some imagine that there is a point they can
reach in their quest for godly living beyond which they can no longer be
tempted and fall into sin. Others
imagine a point where they no longer need to rely on God’s grace and
forgiveness. “Hey, I’ve already been
forgiven! Why do I need to hear that
again?” Still others imagine they’ve
reached a point beyond which they no longer need to continue to feed their
faith. In our own tradition, many
consider Confirmation to be that point.
“I’ve been confirmed, what else is there to know?” For others it might come later; but it amounts
to the same thing: “I have become a lion
of faith. I can stand on my own.” And then one day the balloon is burst. A direct challenge to faith comes: a disappointment of some kind, a temptation
that couldn’t be resisted, a feeling of guilt that won’t go away, or a personal
crisis, perhaps one involving an illness or the death of a loved one …
whatever. We suddenly find ourselves
like Elijah in a spiritual desert, without food or water, and our weak faith
dying. We feel God has betrayed us, when
in fact it is we who have wandered away from him because we thought we could go
it alone. Fortunately, for our sakes, God
knows what we often forget: that the
journey is too much for us. Even the
lions grow weak and hungry. We cannot
make it on our own. And so it is that we
see the Lord coming to Elijah in the desert.
He needed rest and food and water, and the Lord provided him all
three. But far more important was
Elijah’s need for food and rest for his spirit.
He needed forgiveness for his lack of confidence in God and his
misplaced trust in himself. He needed
his faith strengthened and his hope restored.
And he needed reassurance of God’s limitless and unconditional
love. He didn’t just need bread to eat;
he needed the bread of life that comes from heaven and restores the soul. And we need the same thing every day of our
lives. It is this bread that Jesus refers
to in today’s Gospel lesson when he says, “This bread is my flesh which I will
give for the life of the world.” It’s
the good news that the Son of God bore our sins and weaknesses in his body, and
was sacrificed to atone for our sin – even the sin of thinking that we no
longer need his help because now that we’ve come this far, we can make it the rest
of the way on our own. He sends this
bread to us every time we gather here for worship, when we hear his words of
grace and forgiveness, and when we come to his table to receive his body and
blood. Through these means God feeds our
spirits and strengthens our faith. We see this in the story: after eating the bread God provided, Elijah
was given the superhuman ability to walk forty days through the hot desert
until he reached the Mount of God. If
this great prophet needed it, we should understand that we too need superhuman
strength to complete our journey to the glorious goal God has prepared. And the bread Jesus gives us provides
it. May he give us the grace to
recognize this, and to daily answer his call to “Get up and eat, for the
journey is too much for you.” Amen. Soli Deo Gloria! |