Well, it would have been nice to have had Elijah with us this week, because as you may be aware the prophet is known for having prayed to God for a drought, and then it stopped raining for three years and a half! This prayer is actually so famous that it is mentioned two times in the New Testament (James 5:17, Luke 4:25). We don’t know about the historicity of it all, three years and a half seems a very long time for life to be sustained with no water at all, the point is I guess for us to be amazed at Elijah’s power and the kind of relationships he had with God. Actually, these words spoken about Jesus could very well apply to him as well: What kind of man is this, that even winds and waters obey him? (Luke 8:25) And we could reply: Not an ordinary man, for sure.
Today though, we read a passage about Elijah that may not sound that impressive and not that glamorous. To put it simply: Elijah is tired, he is angry, and he wants to die. Our passage is really too short for us to understand much about what’s going on, so there it is: Elijah has been engaged in a hard fight against idolatry in the land of Israel, Namely he has just been involved in a “prayer competition” with Baal’s priests to find out whose god was the real god. Both Baal’s priests and Elijah offered a sacrifice and ask their own divinity to send fire to the altar. Baal’s priests prayed over and over and nothing happened, Elijah prayed once after having poured water on the altar to make it even more difficult, and in spite of that, God set the whole thing on fire right away. After that, a bloody massacre followed and all of Baal’s priests were killed. So that was pretty intense, very violent, but Elijah found victory in God’s victory. And yet, no conversion ensues. No conversion ensues. Nothing changes at all. The people don’t turn to God, and even worse the idolatrous queen of Israel Jezebel seeks to kill Elijah, and that’s why he has to flee in the wilderness. And there you have it, that’s the reason why Elijah is so discouraged.
Elijah sayid to God: “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” (1 Kings 19: 10)
Elijah has fought with all his might, nothing is changed and he made things even worse for him. He is tired, angry and he wants to die. And he says to God he’s going to do just that, he is going to lie down and will go no further. Voilà.
There is something in the story that can make us smile I guess, it’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it. And yet I think it can also touch us because we can relate to that, we can relate to feeling like that. We try our best and yet it does not seem that the world changes at all, it does not seem that the people we try so hard to love and to help change at all, and even more discouraging, we don’t really change either and our life does not get easier. It may be the heart of the problem with Elijah: he is angry at himself because whatever he does, things aren’t better and he takes it out on himself. He feels incompetent and useless, he says to God: I am no better than my ancestors. Therefore, he may as well die.
It seems a bit dramatic doesn’t it, and yet I would smile if I hadn’t heard that several times throughout my ministry: I am useless, I might as well die. Parishioners, friends, family members telling me that in the silence of their hearts, out of exhaustion, out of discouragement, out of pain, sometimes out of boredom, they have prayed this very prayer we hear Elijah pray: “Take my life”. It’s a prayer we also find in the Book of Job, Job who curses the day he was born. I have always wondered if we really mean it, like do we really want to die diewhen we say that? I don’t know, but whether it’s quite desperate or a bit dramatic, it’s the cry that comes to mind when enough is enough and that’s enough to take it seriously. So how does God respond to Elijah’s cry?
Well for once, God does not grant Elijah’s request. God does not withhold the rain or sends fire from heavens or even strike Elijah dead. Actually God replies but it seems that God didn’t listen anything at all. Elijah wants to die and God replies by no words of deep wisdom or just profound irritation, through God’s angel, God bakes a cake for Elijah. God bakes him a cake like literally, bakes a cake on hot stones and God is thoughtful enough to even leaves a jar of water.
It reminded of something I heard once. A preacher said: When someone is in deep grief, they only need to be hugged and have someone sitting next to them because they need to know there is still love for them to be found in the world. They need to know there is still goodness. They need to know somebody still cares. And I think this is really what happens to Elijah here. He wants everything to change, he wants the whole world to change, he wants his whole life to change, and God does not change anything at all, God does not even tell Elijah that he is going to be all right or that Elijah needs to pull himself together, Elijah is only met with God’s goodness. God does not change anything at all and yet God’s goodness changes everything. Elijah is heard, seen, loved and cared for and that’s more that anything he could ask and it makes everything else bearable.
There is song by singer Dido that I find very beautiful. It’s called Thank you. In this song, Dido talks to her love interest and she lists all the reasons she has to feel depressed and sad, she tells him about everything that happens through her gloomy day and says maybe she won’t last the day, and she says how it all feels terrible but suddenly she adds: and then you call me, and it’s not so bad, it’s not so bad. Do you have someone like that in your life that you hear their voice and then it’s not so bad? Or maybe you are that voice for someone? Or maybe you don’t but you wish you had and what is sure is that God wants to be just this person for us. God seems like God does not make anything all right, at least not the way we want it to be and yet God makes everything all right if we just hear God’s voice, if we are just able to taste God’s goodness like this cake someone baked especially for you, and then everything is not so bad after all. Nothing is changed, the world is not better, your life is not better, and yourself you are not really better but maybe you are changed a little, you find the strength to carry on because someone loves you, someone cares for you, there is still goodness to find in this world.
Maybe that’s the way we can understand our Gospel today. God gave the food and the drink to sustain and strengthen Elijah on the prophetic journey, Jesus gives himself as the food and the drink for our life journeys. Jesus cannot change the world for us, and maybe he won’t change our lives, but we hear his voice and sit at his table and then it’s not so bad because we taste his goodness and his love for us, and we receive this goodness as a promise of the feast to come in God’s kingdom, and far from making us want to give up on the lives we have, we can carry on living and do the things we have to do, do the work God has given us to do and live for the people we have to live for. We just have to do this simple thing Elijah did: We come to the table, we eat and we drink. I wonder if one of the mistakes we do as Christian is to expect God to sort it all out for us. The more time I spend in ministry, the more I realize that God does not answer our long, complicated and sometimes dramatic or desperate prayers, but God answers the tiny and sometimes silly little things that will help us cope for again another day, the things and people that will make us know that we can rest in God and trust in God’s goodness, that we are loved and wanted, and then, for reasons that do not make much sense when we try to explain, it’s not so bad after all. Maybe it’s because we experience that His love makes it all worth it.