Back in 2004 a man by the name of Camilo Antonio was convicted of murdering
his stepfather. He was sentenced to 10 years in the Manica Agricultural
Penitentiary in central Mozambique, where he probably worked off his sentence
raising crops or something.
After serving about half his sentence he was paroled last year for good
behavior. Just imagine how he might feel after five years of living in a
Mozambique prison. You would imagine that the day he left the penitentiary would
have been one of the greatest days of his life.
Not so. Antonio found that life outside the prison walls was very challenging
too. He looked for work wherever he could find it. No luck. No one was hiring
paroled murderers. Big surprise, right?
Another problem for him was the sneaking suspicion, probably rightfully so, that
his father-in-law’s family was out looking to avenge his murder. Everywhere he
went, Antonio worried that someone would jump out and try to kill him. I imagine
he had quite a time trying to get a good night’s rest.
So Antonio decided he would do what made the most sense to him. Prison wasn’t
fun, but it was better than the anxious, hand to mouth existence he had while
out on parole. So he went back to Manica penitentiary, went up to the front
door, and asked to go back to jail.
As you might expect, the guards said, “Sorry buddy. This place is only for
prisoners” and they turned him away. Not satisfied, he went and found a crowbar
and some other tools. Rather than walk back in, he broke back into jail. He used
the tools to destroy one of the prison walls.
Sure enough, when the guards came in to do roll call, Antonio was there, waiting
to be counted. They re-arrested him, charged him with destruction of property
and he received a one-year sentence. "To me, prison is the safest place,"
Antonio said. "I don't want to live in jail, but at this stage in my life it's
the best place I've found."
You know sometimes it’s at our time of greatest victory, our highest points in
life when we’re confronted with questions about what life really means and what
our lives are really about. Sometimes those answers don’t seem to live up to the
joy of the greatest times in our lives.
When that happens, people can get disillusioned with life and wonder if it’s all
worth it. That seems to be the situation Elijah found himself in after he had
what would have been considered the greatest victory of his career as a prophet.
In the chapter before this one Elijah wins in a confrontation between himself
and these prophets of another god named Baal. The perspective of the author of
this passage is that Baal is no god at all. The God of Israel is able to do what
Baal cannot do, thus proving that Israel’s God is the only legitimate God.
Elijah had also told the king that there would be no rain in the land until God
decided it would rain again. And after three and a half years it began to rain.
This day would be the prophetic equivalent of winning the super bowl for Elijah.
But instead of throwing him a ticker tape parade, King Ahab tells his wife
Jezebel, yes that Jezebel, that Elijah has just killed all the prophets
associated with her god Baal. You can imagine that she’s not pleased.
But she’s also not stupid. If she wanted Elijah dead she could simply have sent
some commandos to hunt and kill him. But she can’t do that because Elijah has
just discredited her in front of all the people. It would be a terrible move
politically.
So instead she tries to get Elijah to leave voluntarily by sending a messenger
to let him know that she’s out trying to kill him. Now one would think that
after the great display of God’s power through Elijah, that he would say, “If
God can send fire from heaven, God can certainly protect me from the likes of
her. I’ve shown everyone just how weak she really is.”
But instead of having confidence in the God who just saved his hide, Elijah
flips out and runs scared. He was up in Jezreel, where Ahab and Jezebel were.
And when he hears that she’s out to get him, he goes all the way down to
Beersheba to get away from her. (Slide)
The rest of this story is very symbolic in nature. Elijah’s encounter with God
at this point is purposely told in a way that sounds like the experience of
Moses in the desert 400 years earlier, after leading the Israelites out of Egypt
toward the Promised Land.
Like Moses, Elijah comes to a point where he doesn’t think his life has any more
value. If Jezebel can still hunt him down after what’s happened, then he figures
he can’t win no matter what God does. He’ll never turn Ahab and the Israelites
back to their God.
Like Moses, Elijah is given food by God in the desert, in this case bread and
water. Like Moses, Elijah is given this food by God so that he can get through a
forty day spiritual experience with God in the desert. Moses and the Israelites
were fed by God during their forty year trip to the Promised Land.
Like Moses, Elijah traveled to Mount Horeb, AKA mount Sinai. There he
encountered God, just as Moses had encountered God while receiving God’s
commandments on that same mountain. Like Moses, Elijah tells God that he feels
like he’s the only one taking God seriously, and that all the people who are
supposed to follow God have abandoned God.
God says to Elijah, “Go and stand on that mountain. I’m am about to pass by.”
Three events occur that we would call geological. First, like Moses, Elijah
experiences the earth shaking as God is present on the mountain. You would
assume that God is showing Elijah just how powerful God is to remind Elijah that
all is not lost. But the author is careful to tell us that God was not present
in the earthquake. So much for that theory, right?
God also sends a powerful wind, an event that was often believed to signal the
presence of God at that time. It was so violent that the mountain was splitting
and the rocks on the mountain were smashed to pieces. Elijah probably thought,
“Now there’s the God I believe in!” But the author tells us that God was not in
the wind.
A fire also broke out, as happens frequently in the desert. Imagine the sound of
trees burning, the smell of an all consuming blaze that seemed to envelop
Elijah. God just has to be present in that fire. But the author says that God
was not.
When all of these events ended, Elijah heard what we refer to as a still, small
voice, a barely audible sound of God speaking to him. After all of what Elijah
had seen, knowing how powerful his God was, the last place you would expect to
hear God’s voice was in the silence after a wildfire.
Elijah knew God was present, so he covered his face. God says, “I want you to go
back and anoint two kings. It’s time for a change in leadership. In addition, I
want you to anoint your successor. Your servant Elijah will take over your
responsibilities when your time on earth is up.”
I imagine Elijah was shaking his head thinking, “You know, all I needed to do
was listen to that still small voice. God wasn’t in the theatrics; God was in
the silence.” Elijah saw his ministry in terms of fire coming down from heaven
and rain falling only when he gave the word.
What Elijah learned was that most of the time God’s work is done in the
everyday, simple tasks that we carry out in God’s name. One reason why this
story is important for us as Christians is because when the authors of the
stories in the New Testament wrote about Jesus’ life, they frequently told those
stories using images from Elijah’s life.
Jesus also went into the desert for forty days. Like Elijah, Jesus was faced at
that time with the question of what he was all about and what he was called to
do for God. But in contrast to Elijah, Jesus faced temptation in the desert.
Jesus is said to confront the devil. Rather than being taken to the top of a
mountain, Jesus is taken to the pinnacle of the temple.
The point the authors were making about Jesus is that Jesus was greater than
Elijah. He didn’t just experience God’s presence in the desert. He was God
incarnate in the desert. He didn’t just watch an earthquake or a wildfire. He
verbally sparred with the devil himself.
Some of the people of Jesus’ time expected that one day Elijah would return to
announce the end of the age and the beginning of a new age in which God would
rule the earth more directly. In Jesus they got someone greater than Elijah who
began the everyday work of bringing God’s rule to earth one person at a time as
he healed and taught and mentored people.
That’s the connection between Jesus and this story. They both realized,
especially Elijah from this still small voice, that for the most part God works
not through large spectacular events and miraculous happenings, but in the
everyday tasks of announcing God’s reign on the earth.
That’s really the point I want to focus on this morning. Elijah had started to
grow accustomed to associating God with spectacular events like fire from the
sky, drought, resurrection of the dead, earthquakes, and wildfires.
The God he believed in could punish Ahab for murdering someone; that God could
also delay Ahab’s punishment when Ahab repented. The God Elijah believed in
could make a complete mockery of someone else’s God. People liked that kind of
God.
But those things didn’t end up bringing about the kinds of change that Elijah
had hoped for. Instead of waiting for more fire from the sky, God told Elijah to
go back to Israel and get back to work. God would change the world through the
everyday actions of a poor prophet.
In Jesus’ day God’s work was done as Jesus healed sick people and fed the hungry
and challenged religious hypocrisy and taught people to have a more genuine
faith. One person at a time, one day at a time, over time, the world was saved.
What does that mean for us today as we try to figure out what it means to be
people of faith in a skeptical, busy, modern world?
For some churches, who see themselves competing for peoples’ attention along
with other entertainment possibilities like movies or TV or sporting events or
concerts, they feel they have to try to do something more stimulating, more
shocking, more outrageous than the other church down the road.
One famous pastor of a large church lived near an army base and was allowed to
borrow a tank, which he wheeled into the church. (Obviously they have pretty big
doors at that church). He preached a sermon about spiritual warfare while
sticking his head out the top of the tank.
That’s something the congregation will never forget. The problem with doing
something like that is that you create a situation where you have to keep doing
something more spectacular the next time in order to keep your people
entertained.
We don’t need to wheel a tank into the parking lot or build some mammoth
building or put on a professional stage show in order to do God’s will around
here. What we do need to do is remain faithful, to stick with the small tasks
that change people’s lives one by one.
God changes the world through the small, silent things we do. God works through
the person who sits quietly with someone who can’t get out of his or her home
because of disability. God changes the world when we support someone who has
lost a job or who finds themselves in bankruptcy.
God will change the world for people in our own town this afternoon as we make
sure the poor and the homeless of Waukesha have a warm, healthy, home cooked
meal like the ones I have every day of my life.
God changes the world through the support we offer to someone who has just
learned that they have cancer, or someone who has just lost a loved one. God
changes the world when we silently help someone move their possessions out of
the home that they just lost to foreclosure.
God works through us to change the world when we work quietly along with others
in our own congregation who don’t speak our language, yet have the same desire
as we do to see God’s kingdom come and God’s will be done. When we do these
things, the world is changed, one life at a time. And like Elijah, we are
changed too.
I want to end with a story about what I should consider to be my early days in
ministry. When I was in high school I became involved in a ministry called Youth
for Christ. Probably some of you have heard of it. It’s a non denominational
organization that does ministry among high school students.
We had worship services every Sunday night at a neutral location and we had lots
of outside fun events where we fellowshipped with each other. And once every
spring we went down to Daytona Beach. But instead of partying we stayed in a
campground while the counselors tried to lead as many youth as they could to
Christ.
Each of us was assigned a counselor who worked with us and tried to mentor us.
My counselor was a guy named Bill who worked with me and a bunch of my friends.
Once a week Bill picked us up and we had a Bible study before school.
My group was considered the nerdy group because it had a bunch of guys like me
in it. There was another group with another counselor named Scott. Those guys
were the more popular kids and the jocks. Scott was actually the leader of the
whole program. Bill was more into setup when it came to meetings and things.
Scott was the more charismatic, former jock who everyone looked up to. Bill was
just the guy who worked with…well, guys like me. One of the jobs Bill and I had
was setting up the sound system for the Sunday night meetings.
We got there an hour early. We carried the equipment in from Bill’s car. We set
up the speaker stands, plugged in all the power, set up the microphones, and
made sure everything was ready so that when Scott and his crew walked in, things
were good to go.
It was grunt work, but I enjoyed it. And yet all the time I really wanted to be
like Scott, the guy with the magnetic personality who led the services and did
all the speaking and seemed to have the more important role.
I wanted to lead the singing and play the music. That stuff seemed so much more
important than setting up and taking down the equipment every week. In my mind
those things were the equivalent of the earthquake or the fire or the wind, the
place where I really saw God working.
But when I look back now, none of those things would have taken place had I not
been involved in setting up and getting the room ready so that my friends could
worship. It was in doing that grunt work that I really learned what ministry was
all about. People’s lives were changed, people were able to encounter God in
real ways in part because I did the simple everyday task of setting up sound
equipment.
I’m not applauding myself here. I’m telling you just how different things seem
to me now. Begin a Christian is not the equivalent of a 100 yard dash. It’s a
marathon of service to Jesus.
The people who are successful in living out their faith are not the ones who get
the most notoriety for what they do. It’s the ones who stay faithful to God for
the long term, even if what they do doesn’t appear at first glance to be all
that world changing.
Take a minute and think about what you do here. Think about what you do during a
normal week for the cause of Christ. Whether it’s serving cookies or fixing the
lights or teaching children or performing music, those things are the little
ways in which we bring God’s reign to the city of Waukesha.
It’s our ability to stay faithful to those tasks that determines how successful
we’re going to be as a congregation. We’re never going to be the church
equivalent of an earthquake. We may never be a spiritual wildfire that takes
Waukesha by storm.
But my hope is that we will always be the still, small voice, always about the
work of the kingdom, meeting individuals here in town and reflecting God’s love
one person at a time.