Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
Rev. Dean Snyder
1 Kings 19:1-18
The Bible names 42 kings who served as the kings of Israel and Judah during Old Testament times. Other than David and Solomon and a couple kings of Judah, the Bible does not speak favorably or positively about any of them.
But of all the kings the Bible criticizes, no king is criticized more than the 7th king of Israel after Solomon: Ahab, son of Omri. I King 16:30 says that Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel before him.”
One of the things Ahab did was to marry a Phoenician woman named Jezebel, one of the most hated women of the Bible. Do not name your daughter Jezebel. You can name your cat Jezebel but not your daughter.
Queen Jezebel worshipped the god Baal –the most popular god of the middle east—and she was determined to rid Israel of the worship of the god the Israelites called Yahweh, which means I Am Who I Am.
Jezebel built a great temple to Baal in Israel, she built an altar to Baal in the palace, she brought 450 priests of Baalism into Israel to convert all of Israel to her religion and to eradicate the worship of Yahweh.
The book of First Kings in the Bible, chapters 17 to 19 tells the story about an absolutely amazing person in Israel … a prophet and miracle worker named Elijah. Elijah seemed to be the one person in Israel willing to take a strong public stand in opposition to Queen Jezebel’s program to eradicate the worship of Yahweh from Israel.
Elijah was stunning. Absolutely amazing.
He was smart. He was brash. He was fearless. He made miracles happen.
He was magic.
Baal was a weather god. People prayed to Baal to protect them from bad storms and to grant them rain and fertility for their crops.
Elijah decided to show Queen Jezebel and her priests who was really in charge of the weather. On Yahweh’s behalf, he declared a drought in the land of Israel, and it stopped raining for three years. No rain or even dew in the morning for three years.
Take that, Baal.
For part of that time Elijah lived with a widow, and because she fed Elijah, her flour barrel miraculously never went empty even when others were starving. When the widow’s young son died Elijah raised thim from the dead. Elijah was a miracle worker.
After three years when the drought ended, Elijah challenged the priests of Baal to a contest.
He and the priests would both built altars to their respective gods. They would each sacrifice a bull on their altar and pray for fire to come down from heaven and consume the sacrifice.
The priests of Baal went first. They sacrificed their bull and prayed for fire from heaven. No fire came so they prayed louder and louder and still no fire came. They cut themselves and cried out in pain, still no fire.
Elijah was something. He stood there jeering, mocking the priests: Maybe you should shout louder. Maybe your god has wandered away. Maybe your god is on vacation. Maybe your god is asleep. Elijah invented trash talk.
No fire came for the priests of Baal. .
Then Elijah sacrificed his bull. He had people fill four barrels of water and soak his altar. He had them fill the barrels again and soak the altar even more. He had them soak it a third time.
Then he spoke his prayer up to heaven and fire came from heaven and consumed the bull, the altar, the stones setting next to the altar, and the pools of water.
Elijah ordered the priests of Baal killed.
Elijah knew no fear. He could not lose. He was the mighty miracle worker of the Lord God Yahweh who could stop the rain and call down fire from heaven. Elijah was a winner.
It is a heady experience. To be willing to take on every battle for God and right. To be willing to fight to the end. To be a winner for God.
But overnight something changed in Elijah. It happened literally overnight.
Queen Jezebel sent a personal message to Elijah that she swore that he soon would be as dead as her prophets. In spite of all the miracles that had happened, all of the manifestations of God’s power that he had seen and been part of, Elijah suddenly became fearful, full of fear, and he ran for his life.
Elijah lost his confidence. He lost his faith. He lost his boldness. For Elijah, the magic died.
He ran for 30 days and then hid in a cave like a scared child. The mighty miracle worker of Lord God Yahweh hid in a cave like a frightened child.
In the cave, a Word came to Elijah. The Word told him to stand at the entrance of the cave because the Lord God Yahweh was about to pass by.
Elijah stood at the entrance to the cave. A hurricane passed by, but God was not in the hurricane. After the hurricane, there was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, there was a fire but God was not in the fire.
After the fire there was shire silence.
And God was in the silence.
Elijah – who had trusted in power and might and miracles and magic—discovered that God was not in the hurricane or the earthquake or the fire but in shire silence.
He also realizes for the first time that he is not alone. There are 7,000 others in Israel who have not bowed their knees to Baal.
He turns from being a solitary hero to become a part of a faithful community of followers of Yahweh.
Carlyle Marney was one of my heroes when I was a young preacher. It has been 36 years ago already since Marney died of a heart attack in 1978.
Marney was a Southern Baptist preacher who advocated for racial justice and equality for women and respect for other religions. He was surely one of the first Christian ministers to speak out against homophobia in an address and article he published in 1966. 1966!
After serving for many years as pastor of Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, Marney retired at a relatively young age.
From the study I’ve done of his life, I suspect he’d gotten a little tired of the constant struggle. I suspect he also gotten a little tired of the sound of his own voice. He’d been preaching for a long time. I suspect he felt as though maybe the spark was gone … that he was just saying the same things over and over again.
He retired to a piece of land on Wolf Penn Mountain in North Carolina.
He said he thought that if he could just get out of the fast paced, demanding, conflict-driven life he was living, that God would speak to him again in a new way. There would be a new word for him from God. He said he thought if he could just get some time and space on Wolf Penn Mountain (these are his words) he said he “reckoned God would begin to jabber at him.”
Instead, he said, like Elijah at the doorway of his cave, all he heard was shire silence.
As though there would be no new word from God until we had done what God had already told us to do – to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly.
Marney spent the rest of his life counseling pastors who had been worn down and beaten by the battles within the mainline churches that began in those days. He invested the rest of his life in the 7000 others who had not bowed down to Baal.
I am glad for every word God wants to speak. I am glad for every miracle and mighty work that God wants to do.
But I suspect times come when God just decides to be silent and God waits for us to speak. I suspect times come when God decides just to be still and God waits for us to do miracles and mighty acts of justice.
This past season we’ve been studying stories of strength and weakness from the Bible. And if there is one statement that would sum up all the stories we’ve looked at –from Jacob to Ruth and Naomi to King David and Solomon to Elijah-- I think it would be a statement made by the Apostle Paul in Second Corinthians. Paul wrote: “When I am weak, then I am strong … for the Lord’s power is made perfect in weakness.”
Paul writes that the Lord said to him: “My grace is sufficient for you because my power is made perfect in your weakness.”
So it may be that when we are weak and afraid
and broken and most dependent on grace that is when we are really strong.
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