Wanted!

Scripture: 1 Kings 19: 1-18

Sermon: Wanted!

Preached: June 20, 2004 am Woodlawn

Rev. Mike Abma

1 Kings 19:1-18

WHAT JEZEBEL WANTED

Elijah was a wanted man!

This wild and woolly prophet, perhaps the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, is suddenly on the run. This seemingly invincible man of God is now a fugitive.

This seems unbecoming:

He had told king Ahab there would be no rain – and there was no rain for over 3 years.

He had poked fun of the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, only to call down fire from

heaven and later to call down vengeance on the prophets of Baal.

And this had got him into big trouble with Queen Jezebel, the Lady MacBeth of the Old Testament. Her sexy fertility gods, Baal the male god, and Asherah the female goddess, and their accompanying prophets were her ticket to popularity. They promised people everything from perfect children to bountiful crops. So when Elijah had these prophets killed, Jezebel took it personally – very personally. She vowed to “do unto Elijah what Elijah had done to her prophets.”

Elijah was a wanted man.

WHAT ELIJAH WANTED

Elijah — this larger than life prophet, this man who faced kings and hostile crowds – Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.

He ran and he ran and he ran.

I almost have this Forest-Gump-like picture in my mind of Elijah running and running, because he does run a long, long way — from Mt. Carmel to south of Beersheba is over 100 miles. After leaving his servant in the dust, Elijah keeps running into the desert and finally collapses under a broom tree – a little desert shrub – probably the only thing to give him a touch of shade.

At this point, this wanted man only wanted one thing – rest.

He is burnt-out and bummed out.

He is down and depressed.

He hands in his letter of resignation to God:

“I’ve had enough. Just let me die.”

The larger than life Elijah who orchestrated the great showdown on Mt. Carmel is pretty hard for us mere mortals to relate to. He is too big, too bold, too brash.

But here, in chapter 19, we have a person reduced to our size:

tired and weary;

depressed and dejected.

at the end of his rope.

WHAT GOD WANTED

Because Elijah was at the end of his rope, he wanted to end things right there and then.

But God had other plans.

An angel feeds him bread and water.

Elijah eats then falls right back to sleep.

The angel comes back, wakes him up, and has him eat some more because he’s got “miles to go before he sleeps, miles to go before he sleeps.”

Although Jezebel wanted Elijah dead,

And ironically Elijah wanted to die, just not by Jezebel,

God had other plans for Elijah – God wanted Elijah.

God’s angels lead Elijah to Mt Horeb

which is just another name for Mt Sinai,

the same mountain that God appeared to Moses about 600 years

earlier.

It is sort of ironic that an angel points Elijah in the direction of Mt. Horeb, and the first question God asks is “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

I know this isn’t the best analogy, but it is something like a teacher sending you to the principal’s office, and the first question the principal asks is, “What are you doing here, Mr. Abma?”

Elijah is ready with an answer:

He has been stewing and brewing over this answer for days, weeks, maybe even months.

Isn’t that how we often handle our hurt feelings – that we have been treated unfairly, when we’ve been overlooked, or sidelined, or snubbed. When we have the chance, we are going to let the powers that be have a piece of our mind.

And Elijah lets God have it.

“Listen, God, I have been zealous, I’ve been on fire for you.

But those people of yours are soggy noodles.

They’ve rejected your covenant, broken your altars, killed your prophets.

And now, I’m the only one left.”

Maybe Elijah was hoping to get a vacation package, or a retirement offer, or at the very least, a pat on the back. Something to the effect of “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

But this is not what Elijah gets.

God tells Elijah to go out and get ready for the passing of His Presence.

Elijah feels the blasting wind of a hurricane.

Elijah is shaken by the force of an earthquake

Elijah is sees the brightness of a fire.

But the Lord is not in any of these – not the wind, not the earthquake, nor the fire.

Then there comes a

(NIV) gentle whisper,

(KJV), a still, small voice,

(NRSV), a sound of sheer silence – which is probably closest to what

it says.

Whatever it was exactly, Elijah has the ears of faith to hear it.

And he wraps his mantle over his head and comes out of the cave to face the presence of the Lord.

Thomas Cahill in his book, The Gift of the Jews, reduces the “still small voice” to the murmuring of our personal conscience (p. 211). But, as the Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann rightly points out, this is not simply the voice of conscience.

This is the holy, majestic, mysterious presence of God.

Elijah recognizes God’s presence with reverence and awe.

He suddenly realizes that God is God.

He realize that God is to be feared above all else.

God is to be feared and obeyed above Jezebel.

God is to be feared and obeyed above his own murmurs of despair.

THE MISSION

Now, surprisingly, we have God asking the exact same question but it is as if the intensity has increased.

God asks: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Elijah answers with the exact same words:

“Listen, God, I have been zealous, I’ve been on fire for you.

But those people of yours are soggy noodles.

They’ve rejected your covenant, broken your altars, killed your prophets.

And now, I’m the only one left.”

Then we have what is NEW in this passage.

We like to linger over that mysterious small, still voice, that sound of silence.

But the passage never gets bogged down there. It is not as if our religion is all about some personal, mystical experience of God. Our religion is all about our mission, our task, our joining with God in transforming this world.

This whole passage is moving towards God’s jarring and jolting command for Elijah to Go Back, to Return home, to get busy doing the work of the Kingdom of God.

Why did Elijah come to Horeb?

What was he looking for?

Was it some nostalgic pilgrimage to the holy mountain to remember the good old days of Moses?

Was it simply a trip to get his de-commissioning papers, his gold watch, his retirement package?

Was it simply a therapy session in which Elijah wanted to be cuddled or coddled by God and told “That’ll do, prophet, that’ll do.”

Well, Elijah gets none of that – no nostalgia, no retirement, no coddling.

Instead Elijah is sent right back into the fray, right back into danger

Into enemy territory to anoint a new king for Syria;

Into treasonous territory to anoint a new king for Israel;

Into mentor territory to anoint a new prophet in the land.

Elijah was looking for safety. He gets steered right back into danger.

Elijah was a wanted man –

But we have to see what kind of wanted man he was.

He was wanted by God – the passionate, powerful, God who had

plans for him,

Plans that were bigger and wider and more wonderful than he could

imagine.

And then God adds a “By the way.”

He says, “By the way, Elijah, before you go, know that you are not alone.

There are at least 7000 who have not bent the knee to Baal; at least

7000 I am counting on to carry out my work.”

WE ARE WANTED

Sometimes I think we drag ourselves to church the way Elijah dragged himself to Mt. Horeb. We come in tired, and weary, and worn out.

We come in perhaps even feeling a little self righteous and thinking we deserve at least a pat on the back.

We come in thinking,

“Hey God, we made it here. We are on fire for you, at least a little.

Look at everybody else –

They don’t care about your covenant – they’d rather sleep in or golf or fish or whatever than come to church;

They are busy bowing down before their own altars –

their Entertainment Systems,

their homes,

their jobs.

They are deaf to your prophets – they like to decide for themselves what is right and wrong.

We come here wondering,

“Am I and this handful of believers the only ones left?

We come here wondering, “Will there be believers in the next generation?”

We come with our complaints and our despair.

But God is the God of resurrection.

In the silence of that first Easter morning, he began making everything new.

God is in the resurrection business:

making deserts bloom, the dead rise,

and even making tired old prophets dream

dreams and see visions once again.

In the mystery of Pentecost he anoints us to be his disciples, following Christ our King.

Christ says, “Come, follow me into the danger of discipleship.

Remember that you are anointed to confess my name,

You are anointed to present your lives as living sacrifices

on the altar of gratitude,

You are anointed to be my agents of truth and grace in an often

dangerous and hostile world.

You … you are wanted, desired, appointed, elect — to be

salt in this spoiling world

and light to its dark places.

Now go, back the way you came, to do my work in my world!