Healing Hope

(Scriptures: I Kings 19:1-18
Galatians 3:23-29 Luke 8:26-39)

The advent of communication technologies such as text messaging and twitter has created a sort of parallel language of abbreviations, in order to communicate with fewer keystrokes. For example, LOL means laughing out loud, ROFL means roll on floor laughing. Not all such abbreviations are about happy moods. A Facebook posting by some distant acquaintance went on and on and on about the bad day the person was having, and then at the end of the complaint came the initials: FML. Being a little naïve, at first I could make no sense of the letters. “FML? Feed my llama? Four more lemons? Huh?” But I later discovered that the latter two initials, ML, stand for “my life,” and the F is best left unelaborated. Apparently the initials are an expression used in texting and twittering, when a temporary setback may seem like the end of the world and the sender is totally frustrated and fed up with his or her life, when a person just wants to roll their eyes heavenward and say, “shoot me now” – I’ve had enough.

While the language in our Old Testament reading is a bit different, Elijah could relate to the sentiment. Today’s OT reading is a continuation of Elijah’s confrontation with Israel’s king Ahab and Ahab’s queen, the Baal-worshiping Jezebel. Elijah had just come off a moment of great triumph. After more than 3 years of drought, there was a contest between 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah, respectively a male and female pagan fertility god, and Elijah. The pagan prophets offered a bull and shouted to their gods and danced and raved and even cut themselves so that they bled, but nothing happened. Elijah offered a bull and soaked it with water, and prayed to the Lord, and fire came down and consumed the waterlogged bull. And Elijah had the false prophets put to the sword. And the rain came, and the drought ended.

But as sometimes happens, Elijah’s good deed did not go unpunished. Jezebel was furious at this public embarrassment to her god, not to mention the execution of all those false prophets, and sent a message that she had put a death sentence on the head of Elijah. So Elijah fled south, to Beer-Sheba in Judah, and then a day’s journey into the wilderness. And he rolled his eyes heavenward and asked God to kill him. “I’ve had enough. The people are in rebellion, and they don’t listen to me any more than they listened to Moses or Joshua or Samuel or anyone else who came before me. I give up. I quit.” He fell asleep, but an angel came and brought him food and water. He ate and drank, and slept again. Awoken once again by the angel, he ate and drank again, and then traveled for 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, the mount of God – this is the same mountain on which the Lord appeared to Moses out of the burning bush, as described in Exodus chapter 3. He went inside a cave to rest. The Lord came and said, “what are you doing here, Elijah?” As in, why aren’t you in Israel doing the prophetic work to which I called you? Elijah’s response – or rather complaint – comes in three parts: “I’ve been so faithful and the people haven’t been; the people have harmed and killed your prophets. I, I alone, am the only faithful follower you’ve got, the last godly man standing, and they’re trying to kill me.” Elijah had lost all hope, and was ready to walk away from his prophetic calling and, indeed, from life itself.

Elijah is told to go out on the mountain and stand before the Lord, for the Lord would be passing by. Initially Elijah doesn’t respond; he’s too lost in his own self-pity to be bothered. Then there are spectacular signs – a wind strong enough to split rocks, an earthquake, and a fire – but we’re told that the Lord was in none of these. Scholars debate the correct translation of what came next - “a still small voice” is the most familiar translation, but other translations read “the sound of silence, crushed” or “the sound of sheer silence”. It was this incredible silence and stillness that got Elijah’s attention. He wasn’t yet ready to venture outside, but he at least ventured to the mouth of the cave – where God again asked, what are you doing here, Elijah? But after all that had just happened, despite God’s appearing to Elijah in a way that only Moses had ever experienced, Elijah was still too wrapped up in his own self-pity to care. He repeats his earlier complaint nearly word for word: “I’ve been so, so faithful (never mind that at this moment Elijah was only partially following God’s instructions) and the people have been anything but; the people have harmed and killed your prophets. I, I alone, am the only faithful follower you’ve got, the last godly man standing, and they’re trying to kill me.” This time God responds in a way that – as God often does – both helps and humbles Elijah: He tells Elijah to return home, and on the way he’ll be anointing both new leadership for Israel, in the form of Jehu, and a successor for himself, Elisha by name. And then God gives Elijah a broader perspective on his situation, gently telling Elijah – “And, oh, by the way, there are 7,000 others who have not bowed down to Baal, 7000 others who are still faithful. You’re not the last faithful man standing. You’re not alone. You never were.” For Elijah, from a situation of no hope, God brought hope, pointed out a way forward where Elijah saw no way.

I think we’ve all been where Elijah was. We’ve tried so hard to do the right thing, to be faithful to God, to our family, at our job, to our friends, here at church. We work our hearts out. Despite our best efforts, we’re at best only partly successful. Or maybe it seems we’re spinning our wheels, accomplishing nothing. And we get tired. And we feel like God has forgotten about us. “What’s the use? Why bother? Everyone around me just does whatever they please, and they’re doing just fine. Why am I making myself miserable.” We feel tempted to walk away, or maybe run screaming – from faith, from family, from friends, from life.

Despite the strangeness of some of the details of our reading – wind, earthquake, fire, and God himself putting in a personal appearance – the passage offers some down to earth advice. When Elijah was in the wilderness, wanting to die, the angel of the Lord came and – brought food and water. We’re human beings, with physical requirements for food and water and rest. Twelve-step programs caution those in recovery to be careful about allowing themselves to become hungry, angry, lonely, or tired – because at those points, recovering alcoholics and addicts are vulnerable to relapsing, to picking up a drink or a drug. And, whether recovering from addiction or not, when we’re hungry, angry, lonely, tired, we’re apt to snap at people or flip out in public, to go into road rage, to put ourselves and others at risk. In our reading today, Elijah was hungry, angry, lonely, and tired – all of the above. When we’re feeling overwhelmed, sometimes getting back on our feet involves things as simple as eating something healthy, taking a nap, calling a friend and talking things out so we can get some perspective on the situation.

And, if we’re overworked, overscheduled, going in 10 directions at once, it may be that we need to make some space in our lives for silence, to give God a chance to get a word in edgewise amid the clamor in our minds. Like Elijah, we may find that God’s presence is not to be experienced in spectacular ways, but in moments of silence, when we are quiet enough to hear God’s still, small voice of love.

But there may be times when all that isn’t enough. Even on a full stomach and 8 hours of sleep, there may be times when we feel that God has forgotten about us, that our prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling and landing in a heap on the floor. We may experience what St John of the Cross call the dark night of the soul, when all sense of God’s presence is hidden from us. For some mystics, these dark nights go on for years; for example, according to Mother Theresa’s letters and personal papers, she experienced this seeming withdrawal of God’s presence for most of the last 50 years of her life. And yet she persisted in her works of charity. It is during these times, should we experience them, when it is more crucial than ever to trust in God’s care, even in times of God’s apparent absence and silence. These times are not punishment from God, but rather an opportunity for our faith to grow stronger, as, even amid God’s seeming absence, we trust God enough to continue to do as God has called us to do, anyway.

For when God’s healing, restoring presence comes – and it will come, eventually – God restores our strength, not for ourselves alone, but so that we can return to the task for which God has called us. God raised up a successor for Elijah, but Elijah still had to return home and return to his prophetic ministry. In our reading from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus healed a man who had been possessed by demons, too many to count. We’re not told how this terrible situation had come to pass, only that the man’s behavior was beyond his own control or that of anyone else, and so he lived among the tombs, in agony. The man’s behavior is peculiar – the spirits within the man are terrified of Jesus, and yet the man comes to Jesus, perhaps from some tiny remaining spark of hope for healing. Jesus asked the man’s name, and the response was “Legion,” so fragmented was this man’s identity by the powers that possessed him. Jesus healed the man, restored him to wholeness. The man begged to stay with Jesus, but Jesus commanded – “Go home. Return to your family, to your loved ones who have missed you for so long. Return to the identity you had lost. And tell how much God has done for you.” It was in returning to his identity, to his community and former daily life that the man could best glorify God, and it was for this purpose that Jesus healed him.

It is not only individuals, but churches and entire communities that are healed by hope. Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia was written to a faith community torn apart by allegiances to false identities other than that of being a disciple of Christ. To this, Paul wrote: In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. All those other false identities that are tearing you apart mean exactly nothing. Like the man freed from many demons and restored to wholeness, Paul was trying to free the Galatian church from all that kept them fragment, calling on the church in Galatia to see themselves, not as many, but as one body in Christ. Our final hymn, "In Christ There Is No East or West", written in the early 1900’s, updates Paul’s words – In Christ there is no East or West, no north or South, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth. Today, in Grand Rapids, MI, we see the Reformed side of the church coming together in one great fellowship of love and service.

God’s hope is as present today as it was then. In our crazy world, Christ still offers restoration to health and sanity. In a world where different factions are at each other’s throats, Christ still calls us to be one body. When seemingly all hope has departed, as the UCC puts it, “never put a period where God has put a comma – God is still speaking – speaking words of hope, words of healing, words of love.” May Christ’s words of hope and healing and love be our words as we reach out in Christ’s name to our struggling, yet dearly beloved, neighborhood of Bridesburg. Amen.
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Need some hope? Need some healing? Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Fillmore St (off Thompson) at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org