Episode 509 Elijah and the Prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:17-39)

This week BibleWorm reads the story of the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal as told in 1 Kings 18:17-39. We find Elijah demanding that the people make a choice between God and Baal, insisting that they cannot serve both. Elijah then engages in an elaborate contest with the prophets of Baal, calling down fire from heaven to demonstrate that the God of Israel is truly God. Only after seeing the fire do the people finally confess, “The Lord is God! The Lord is God!” We think of the ways that we, too, are called to make a choice between the God of the Bible and the gods of the dominant ideologies of militarism and consumer capitalism. But we must make the choice without the benefit of fire coming down from heaven. We are asked to make the choice on slimmer evidence, given in symbol and ritual and prayer. That must suffice for us to confess “The Lord is God! The Lord is God!”