Sermon for 11th Sunday after Pentecost – 1 Kings 19:4-8

Have you ever met a zealot? Not just opinionated. Not just passionate. It’s like being fixated. Obsessed. It happens a lot with politics and religion. Maybe food or music. Folks that are always itching for an argument. God have mercy if they find out you disagree, because then they’ll go out of their way to nag you about it. You learn really quickly what NOT to talk about, right? All that outrage just feels exhausting. Besides, don’t you catch more flies with honey than vinegar? Sometimes prophets can be zealots. I remember one of my OT professors preaching on Jeremiah once, and she said, “sometimes you might be a prophet, and sometimes you might just be a jerk.”

Today we’ve got a story about Elijah. Now, sometimes he can be really compassionate, like with the widow of Zarephath. She and her son are starving and he performs a miracle so that they’ll never be hungry again. One of my favorite stories. But then there are stories like today’s reading, where he goes off the rails a bit. Now to be fair, Israel’s a hot mess. It’s always been that way. King after king takes the throne and scripture says the same thing every time. “The king did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him.” They never learn. So right now it’s King Ahab on the throne, and he’s a real piece of work. He marries Jezebel because she’s a Phonecian princess, and Ahab wants to finagle a political alliance. Phonecians worship Baal, the god of rain and thunder and lightning. Baal makes your crops grow. And Ahab cares a lot more about politics than the God of Israel. So Ahab and Jezebel start building temples to Baal, like the Starbucks of ancient Israel. What do you think God thinks about all this?

God’s angry. So God calls Elijah and sends him to Ahab to prophesy great drought. God’s going to teach Ahab the error of his ways. How does Ahab take the news? He rages. He’s ready to kill Elijah. So God tells Elijah to go hide.

Three years go by. Israel’s completely dry. Ahab’s desperate, but he hasn’t learned his lesson yet. Maybe God figures this isn’t working. So God sends Elijah back to Ahab to prophesy that God will send rain. Because as bad as Ahab’s been, God’s still faithful anyway. Ahab likes that news. But Elijah’s kind of a zealot. He wants to drive the point home. So he has Ahab gather all of Israel and all the prophets of Baal – hundreds of them – and meet at Mount Carmel. Because Elijah wants to give them a little demonstration. He says, “Are you going to follow Baal, or the God of Israel?” He has the priests fetch two bulls. He tells them, “ok, you slaughter one on your altar and then call on your Baal. I’ll prepare mine and call on my God. Whoever sends fire is the true God.” Everyone’s on board. The priests start calling Baal. Hours go by. Nothing happens.

So Elijah starts ridiculing them. “Surely Baal’s out there. Maybe he’s meditating, or wandered off, or sleeping. Cry louder and wake him up.” So they cry louder. They cut themselves. Elijah waits until everything’s just sad and pathetic. Then he says, hey, watch this!” He builds his altar. Sacrifices his bull. Has the people douse everything with water. Then he calls to God and God sends fire down that engulfs it. The people fall to the ground in amazement. They worship God. But Elijah’s not done. He goes one step further. He has the people round up all the Baal priests and Elijah kills them. So Ahab goes and tells Jezebel what Elijah did. She’s enraged. She sends a message to Elijah swearing to kill him like he killed her priests. Elijah freaks out. He’s not so bold anymore. So he flees to hide in the desert. Not that God told him to do it, but he’s not going to wait around for God to protect him.

I know that’s a lot of backstory for our reading, but it matters. Today we hear Elijah praying to God, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m no better than my ancestors. Just kill me now.” Elijah sounds depressed and humiliated. We want to pity him. He did what God asked. He preached to Ahab. But maybe God relenting and sending rain wasn’t the kind of justice Elijah expected from God. Maybe Elijah wanted God to really show them who’s boss. It’s not like God twisted his arm to tease the priests and feed off their misery. And God certainly didn’t call Elijah to be a mass murderer. But here we are and Elijah says something true. He’s no better than his ancestors. And I’m not sure he’s any better than Ahab or Jezebel either.

Here’s the thing. It’s hard to pity Elijah for being such a zealot. If there’s anyone to pity in this story, I think it’s the priests. It’s true – Elijah really is holy, but how often does our holiness turn to zealotry? When we yell and fight in the name of religion. Maybe we’re a lot like Elijah. When we condemn our enemies and rejoice in their misery when they hit rock bottom. Or maybe we don’t “rejoice”, but we get this sort of subconscious satisfaction when we see folks get what they deserve. You can think of lots of examples. Lately we’re hearing all these Covid statistics about the majority of cases and hospitalizations and deaths being unvaccinated folks. It gets us into a mindset of us versus them. At the same time, this constant argument about freedom and rights like a dead horse. But it’s all zealotry. And it has this way of sucking us all into it. Folks are dying but our pity is pretty selective. So, why should we expect God to pity us when these storms come our way?

We shouldn’t. Yet, God pities us anyway. Because this is the God who abides with us in mercy and compassion, The God who sees us at our worst and still refuses to abandon us. Look at Elijah. He hits bottom. He’s exhausted. He begs God to take his life. He falls asleep. But God pities a zealot. So the angel of God wakes him. Tells him “Get up and eat.” And behold, there’s a cake and a jar of water. Because sometimes sacraments look like a nap and a snack. So he eats. He drinks. He sleeps. He does it again, and it gives him what he needs to go on for 40 days and nights. He didn’t ask God for this, yet God does it to him anyway.

And God does the same to us, by giving us Jesus, God’s only begotten son. The Bread of Life come from heaven, who abides with us right now. Jesus shows us the truth about zealotry. He was crucified by zealots, yet he did not condemn them. Instead, he asks his father to forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing. He doesn’t fight back. He just dies. But after three days he rises, to give us the same word of forgiveness that he gave to them. Forgiveness to set us free from the zealotry that keeps us bound. That’s our real enemy here. But in Christ we’re free. Free to see others as beloved children of God – the way God sees all of us. Free to see that there really is redemption and new life in this dying world, no matter what anyone says. God has never forsaken us, and God never will.

That’s good news, because it’s easy to feel forsaken right about now. Folks are stubborn. People are constantly condemning each other. All kinds of misinformation spreading around. But Jesus gives us compassion to know that this is what happens when folks feel scared and hopeless. When folks are desperate for answers. So God sends us like Elijah, back out into the world to give folks a different kind of answer that they can grab onto. Words of hope and forgiveness, and a promise that even if we don’t know where things are going, we know the one who’s with us every step of the way. The one who gives us a nap and a snack. This Sabbath, and this bread and wine, Jesus’ body and blood, given for us, that we might be strengthened for the journey. Thanks be to God.