When Elijah fled from the threats of his monarchs, an angel brought him simple things to revive him: a meal and a rest.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking that I’m very grateful to Lori Yamashiro, the Office Coordinator of the Hawai’i Conference of the United Church of Christ, because she will be delivering the message this coming Sunday while I’m traveling. I’m deeply grateful and I’m looking forward to hearing her wisdom when I return and can watch the recorded service.
I am, however, also thinking about the nineteenth chapter of First Kings (1 Kings 19:1-15). The prophet Elijah had had a great success calling down fire from heaven to ignite a sacrifice soaked in water, when the prophets of Baal could not. The queen of Israel, Jezebel, however, was not impressed. She sent word that Elijah was to be sought, arrested, and executed.
Despite his recent success, Elijah fled, and he headed out into the wilderness — in fact, towards the wilderness through which the people of Israel had wandered many years before. Along the way, he settled down next to a book and he went to sleep, asking that he might awake and die. When he woke, he found an angel standing there, and there was food and water for him. The Angel told him to eat and drink and sleep. Elijah did, and then found the angel with food again. He ate, he drank, and he slept again.
And then he continued his journey.
I’ve been known to say that (it’s not original with me) this is a Scripture text that demonstrates the power of a nap and a snack for carrying on with the work of God. And however trite it may seem, it is also true. Elijah, after all of his exertions: he was tired. And Elijah, despite his success, also knew that the power of the nation was not to be disregarded lightly, and so he feared.
Tired and afraid, he fled.
Each of us finds ourselves in places where we get worn out even by the successes, even by the triumphs. And you and I also find ourselves in places where we fear: where we fear perhaps to fail, or perhaps we fear some outside agency, or we just fear that we’ve worn ourselves out and we’ve got nothing left.
Elijah took a break. He thought it was going to be a longer break than it was, but he took a break, and that is a guidepost for us: because there will be times that we need to rest and recover. There will be times when we need to renew and reform. There will be times when we need someone to take care of us, give us something to eat, and encourage us to sleep.
There’s one other thing that occurs to me. This did not end to the story of Elijah in First Kings. He had more to do (and God gave him his instructions later on), but it occurs to me that giving somebody a snack, giving somebody the opportunity to rest: this might be the single easiest way for us to act as angels to someone else.
So where are you? Are you weary and afraid? Rest and eat.
Or is there somebody weary and afraid around you? For them, be an angel.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
I don’t know why I think summers will slow down, except that it’s a lingering memory from my childhood. The hustle and bustle of school seemed overwhelming in those days, and the stretch of days without those obligations seemed absolutely blissful.
In truth, of course, my brother and I ended up spending time in our parents’ workplaces, which sometimes interested us and sometimes bored us and usually required us to create our own entertainment – something at which every parent holds their breath.
This summer certainly hasn’t slowed down. I set down one set of responsibilities as Chair of the Conference Council in June, and was given another set as Chair of the Hawai’i Island Association Committee on Ministry in July. I’m took a week off in May and I’m taking two weeks off in August, but with my family now more spread out across New England, I’ll spend quite a bit of time on the road.
Where to find rest and peace?
As always, the answer to that question is to create those spaces for myself and hold them for myself. Whether it’s a prayer time at dawn or dusk, or Bible reading at noon, or a place to visit which soothes – these are things within my power to reserve and to protect. I can make the quiet time, and regrettably I can also set it aside for some reason which, in the end, rarely is as important as renewing my heart and soul.
No, you can’t count on summer to slow things down for you. You and I, we have to carve out those times ourselves, and keep them safe, so that God may reassure our hearts.
Although human beings are quite adept at choosing evil over good, wrong over right, shadow over light, God gives us every chance in Jesus of doing well.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the third chapter of John’s Gospel (John 3:14-21), the conclusion of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. This section includes one of the most famous verses of the New Testament: “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And I always think that that verse is incomplete if you do not include the verse that follows: “God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world but so that all the world might be saved through him.”
The thing is, is that what follows is Jesus’ commentary on the choices that people make when they are offered the chance to choose between what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, what is bright and what is shadow. People chose darkness rather than the light, Jesus told Nicodemus, because their deeds were evil.
It’s hard to argue that point in our contemporary world. it was hard to argue that point in the first century. Indeed, if Nicodemus tried to argue it (and he probably didn’t), John didn’t bother to record it. That closes John’s description of the encounter between those two significant teachers of the Law.
Isn’t it peculiar that human beings so often choose the evil over the good, that we choose the wrong over the right, that we choose the shadows, the night, rather than the light and the day?
So much of it arises from the simple selfishness. So much of it arises from self-aggrandizement. So much of it arises from greed. So much of it arises from privilege and power. Some arises from desperation, it must be said. Some arises from a constant sense of pain, and the desire to feel better. We choose the shadows rather than the places where there is light.
In Jesus, God made available to us the ability to make different choices, to stand in the sunlight rather than hide in the darkness, to choose the right and the good over the wrong and the evil. in Jesus, God offers us the ability to be forgiven for previous choices, and to follow someone who chose well at each opportunity.
It’s a peculiar thing that we should be given not just one chance but every chance to do well in our lives, with our lives, through our lives: to do well as Jesus did.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Jesus had already had a busy day. He went to Simon’s house from the synagogue service we heard about last week. He’d taught there, then he’d healed a man beset by a demon or a mental illness there. His friend Simon, whom Jesus would later nickname Peter, seems to have thought it was time to give Jesus a break, get him out of the public eye, and have a nice sabbath dinner.
Or… maybe not. When Simon left his house that morning, did he know his mother-in-law was sick? I grant you that illness can come on pretty quickly – when I get a stomach virus I get about five minutes warning – but it would not surprise me in the least if he left her in the care of his wife and maybe a neighbor when he headed off to the synagogue.
On the way back, do you suppose he thought, “He cast out a demon? What could he do with a fever?”
I think he thought it.
I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I think he mentioned it. “Say, Jesus, could you perhaps come to my house? We can have dinner there. And, perhaps, you can take a look at my mother-in-law. She’s got a fever.”
For those of you not accustomed to thinking of Jesus’ first disciples as men with families, at least not more than James’ and John’s disappointed father Zebedee left in the boat, or their mother advocating for their promotion, where there’s a mother-in-law, there’s generally a spouse. Some suggest that by the time Simon Peter began following Jesus his wife had died, but curiously in First Corinthians the Apostle Paul mentioned that some of the other apostles, including Jesus’ brothers and Simon Peter, were accompanied on their travels by “a believing wife.” The group of women that accompanied Jesus on his journeys probably included the spouses of his male disciples.
Having endured a lengthy bout of illness and recovery, I feel rather ambivalent about this healing. He took her hand, he lifted her up, and did she get any recovery time? No. Off she went to serve the meal. I’m afraid that some of this is the pure sexism of the first century Mediterranean cultures. Women served in the house, and that was that. But having sat out a couple Sunday services last month, I can tell you this, too: Where I wanted to be during the illness and during the convalescence was right here in this pulpit, even when I wasn’t sure I had the energy to stand. This is my role. This is my calling. This is my place.
Simon’s mother-in-law may have felt much the same. As the senior woman in the house, she was in charge, and failure to serve a distinguished guest – the speaker at the synagogue that day! – may have galled her terribly. As Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “But, what if the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law was bringing her back to be the mother she always was and that she always wanted to be? And in being brought back to who she was, she became a disciple, called to minister, to serve, like the angels did for Jesus in the wilderness and like the Son of Man, who did not come to be served but to serve?”
Mark used the same word “lifted up” to describe Jesus’ resurrection later in the book. Mark used the same word “to serve” that he used of angels, of the women (not the men!) who traveled with Jesus, and of the Son of Man himself. Debie Thomas asks at JourneyWithJesus.net, “What if Simon’s mother-in-law is not an undervalued woman in a patriarchal system, but the church’s first deacon? The first person Jesus liberates and commissions into service for God?”
Well. If she is, I think she still might have needed some rest. Jesus did.
“In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”
We haven’t reached the end of chapter one in Mark, and this is the second time Jesus found a deserted place to pray. The first took place after his baptism. It’s a model for us to remember and to emulate. As Osvaldo Vena writes at Working Preacher, “We need to find our ‘deserted place’ in order to re-energize and charge our spiritual batteries. It is a vital part of our ministry and a good antidote for the cult of personality.” Jesus didn’t stop taking those times away. He went up a mountain to appoint his twelve closest disciples. He was trying to get away from the crowds who followed him such that he fed five thousand people. A trip to a mountain top led to the Transfiguration, which is next week’s Gospel story. And on the night he was betrayed, he left the city to find a garden in which to weep and pray.
Jesus kept making time to restore himself in the presence of God. Jesus kept stepping away from the pressures and the requests to renew himself once again.
Simon and Andrew, James and John, set out on Jesus’ trail to summon him back into Capernaum and resume the work he’d been doing through the evening. I’m pretty sure that when they said, “Everyone is looking for you,” that they expected Jesus to say, “I’ll be right there.”
Unlike John the Baptist, though, Jesus chose to set his ministry in motion. He could have set himself up in Capernaum and waited there for people to show up. They’d have come from miles around, I’d guess. Instead, Jesus said, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns.” He wouldn’t ask people to seek him. He chose to seek them.
As we consider our own calls from God, how do we set our ministries in motion? Once we’ve been revived to our calling like Simon’s mother-in-law, once we’ve been restored by deep time with God, what do we do so that we offer the news of God’s grace and love, rather than simply holding up a sign that says, “God’s love here.” How do reach out rather than demanding that others reach to us? How do we become the one whose hand lifts up, so that someone else regains their strength and, in their own time and with their own call, begins to serve?
We don’t have to look far. There’s a lot of people around us who need that helping hand, and who need that reassurance of spirit.
Let us go on, and lift them up.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes to his sermon text while he’s preaching. It might even be a good thing.
