A tune that always ranks at the top of the Faith Lutheran Praise Team’s Hit Parade is Robin Mark’s Days of Elijah. We really rock out on that one—or at least we did in the pre-COVID days when we had a full team and a Music Director. I wonder, however, if any of us know that much about the prophet Elijah. He doesn’t come up too often in the RCL readings, and I’m not sure he gets covered much in Sunday School. When I was a kid we’d get plenty of Elijah stories in our Sunday School lessons, complete with lurid and nightmare-inducing illustrations showing the prophet calling fire down from heaven to consume his sacrifice in a winner-take-all contest between the followers of Yahweh and the prophets of the Phoenician thunder god, Baal.
The above-referenced contest comes right before the events in our First Lesson for Pentecost 3, Year C (1Kings 19: 15-16, 19-21). The backstory goes like this: The northern kingdom of Israel has a pretty crappy king named Ahab. He’s consolidated his power in the region by marrying a princess from near-by Phoenicia named Jezebel. Jezebel is sort of a Lady Macbeth. She goads her wimpy husband into all kinds of corruption, but chiefly she gets him to abandon Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, and promotes the worship of her gods Baal and Asherah. This doesn’t sit well with God (Yahweh), so God sends the prophet Elijah to denounce the royal couple and proclaim God’s punishment on Israel for the apostasy.
So what’s wrong with a little apostasy? Can’t we be tolerant? Basically, what these rulers did was destroy the thing which made Israel unique—her faith in the God who delivered and provided and her faithfulness to God’s just and merciful Law. They replaced it with self-reliant, god-appeasing superstition. It was an attack on the very identity of the people—rather like if someone tried to remove democracy and the orderly transition of power from America.
The whole business culminates in a contest between Elijah and 400 prophets of Baal to see whose sacrifice will be consumed. The prophets of Baal wail, shout, and self-mutilate to appease their god while Elijah trash-talks them. Elijah prays to God, who promptly sends a bolt of fire to incinerate his sacrifice and the stone altar it rests upon. One might wish Elijah to be a bit more of a magnanimous winner, but, in true Old Testament fashion, his prize is he gets to have the losing team—all 400 prophets of Baal—massacred.
Jezebel, like every childish, power-hungry, and corrupt ruler, can’t accept the fact that she lost the contest. She puts a hit out on Elijah. The prophet high-tails it for the safety of the wilderness and gets pretty discouraged, but God gives him the instructions about anointing we read in our First Lesson. These instructions—again in true Old Testament fashion—promise the extermination of any in Israel who still worship Baal.[i]
Elijah
doesn’t actually get the chance to do all the anointing God asks him to do. Instead,
God decides to carry the old boy up to Heaven in a fiery chariot[ii]
(which seems a bit excessive to me, but who am I to judge?). Elisha, his
protégé and successor, takes up the slack, anoints the fellows Elijah was to
anoint, and carries on Elijah’s work. You may wonder why God would give Elijah
a task God knew the prophet wouldn’t be around to fulfil. Personally, I think
it just shows God cares less about success than God cares about faithfulness.
I’m thinking the theme that marries the story in 1 Kings with the gospel lesson (Luke 9:51-62) is discipleship. Elijah calls Elisha to be his follower, and Elisha complies after he’s said his good-byes to the folks at home. What’s interesting here is that he doesn’t just kiss his mom and dad good-bye. He kisses his whole former life good-bye. This guy won’t be able to go back to ox herding again even if he wants to. He slaughters his oxen and burns the equipment, gives away all the beef he could’ve sold, and follows Elijah. That’s commitment if you ask me. It’s kind of like the call to discipleship Jesus issues to a man who seeks eternal life: “Sell all you have, give the money to the poor, and follow me.”[iii] Sometimes, God calls us to blow up our lives if we want to find purpose and meaning.
Speaking of blowing things up, another parallel between these two passages is the reference to calling down fire from heaven. Elijah was pretty quick to do this. Not only did he call down fire to consume his sacrifice, but in 2 Kings chapter 1 he nukes two companies of fifty soldiers each with fiery blasts from out of the blue—just because he can (Hey. It’s the Old Testament). In the gospel story James and John are anxious to see if they can try the same punishment on some Samaritans who’ve just insulted Jesus for stupid, archaic, cultic reasons.[iv] Jesus, however, has a better temper than Elijah and these two hot-headed disciples (who aren’t called the “Sons of Thunder” for nothing!). He knows God doesn’t give a rip about where anyone worships, and he even explains this to a Samaritan lady in John 4:19-24. He’s content to let the matter slide and move on.
Luke glues this story of Jesus’ forbearance to the Samaritans to a tale of three nameless would-be disciples. The first guy is as anxious as a squirrel on Red Bull to join Jesus. Jesus reminds him he’d better think it over first. A religious life can mean homelessness, and I think it’s not just a lack of living accommodations. A righteous devotion to Jesus can mean an inability to feel at home in a sinful world. Virtue may be its own reward, but it’s also its own punishment, and standing up for principle can be a real kick in the groin at times.[v]
Jesus tries to recruit two others to be followers, but they’re not ready. One guy has to bury his father (who may not even be dead yet as far as we know), and the other wants to say good-bye to his folks before he sets off with Jesus. In the second instance, Jesus seems a little less understanding than was Elijah in our first lesson. At least Elijah gave Elisha a chance to settle things with his family. But Jesus seems to be saying, “If you’re going to do it, do it now and don’t look back.”
My problem is I don’t think anyone sitting in the pews Sunday is considering drastic life changes for the sake of the gospel. Seriously. Is anyone contemplating selling their homes and becoming a missionary to Uganda or Bangladesh? So maybe these stories aren’t meant for us individually but corporately. You think? Perhaps this is a call for God’s church to take some chances. If we look back to the good old days or wait until everything is stable and perfect, we’ll probably be waiting forever.
Bottom line? Discipleship is doing, and the thing which is done is not as important as the doing of it. Perhaps God is smiling on the attempt as much as God smiles upon the achievement.
May God’s peace be in your hearts this week. Thanks again for reading.
[i]
See 1 Kings 9:17-18. These verses were edited out of our lectionary, possibly
because the compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary feel massacring people
because of religious differences is no longer considered kosher.
[ii]
See 2 Kings 2:1-14
[iii]
See Mark 10:21ff
[iv]
This goes way back to the days of the divided kingdom. Samaritans, influenced
by Assyrian religion, made a sacred space on Mt. Gerizim. Judeans claimed the
holiest place on earth was the temple mount (Zion) in Jerusalem.
[v] If
you’ve been watching the Select Committee hearings on the January 6
insurrection, you’ll see some good illustrations of this point.
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