The lectionary provides an alternative
Old Testament lesson for next Sunday.
Elijah has had a dramatic confrontation with Jezebel the queen and her
prophets of Baal. Elijah had publicly
ridiculed and humiliated the queen and the state religion. As a result, he had received a message from
Jezebel, not a very nice lady, to the effect that she would see him dead by
this time tomorrow. Elijah takes flight,
and now in the far south, at Beersheba where the desert takes over, he is
exhausted and depressed: Elijah went
a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary
broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take
away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the
broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get
up and eat.” He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones,
and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of
the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat,
otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” He got
up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days
and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. (1 Kings 19:4-8)
Elijah asked that he might die. This is a little more than low spirits,
melancholia. We have to think then about
depression. Melancholia is one thing – anxiety,
weariness, under par, fit of the blues -- it may be an entirely appropriate
reaction to all that’s going on[1]. Depression however is another matter, and it
seems to be increasingly prevalent. It
may at times be hidden, more or less successfully. It can come out of the blue. It afflicts young as well as old, good and
bad, faithful and faithless, wise and simple.
I am sure those who know will tell us that real depression is complex, takes
different forms and has different causes – what seems to be common is what it
feels like, a black hole, devoid of energy, an abyss of despair. And of course, depression is a major
challenge to faith.
This lovely story tells us how Elijah,
out in the desert, exhausted and wanting to die, with sleep seeming all that is
left to him… is nourished by an angel. A
cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water, sounds wonderful. And the reason for this sustenance…? The reason is the journey – otherwise the
journey will be too much for you, says the angel. So it is about faith at the end of your
resources. It is about the presence of
God even when the evidence is the absence of God. It is, as we often say (I hope not tediously),
about being able, or being enabled, simply to take the next step, to be able to
put one foot in front of the other, to do what has to be done next. Elijah got up, and ate and drank; then he
went in the strength of that food.
And when we read on in this narrative
we find how Elijah arrives at Horeb (Mount Sinai) and stands on the
mountainside. This great story describes
the apparent absence of God, the experience of many… there is a great wind,
but the Lord was not in the wind. There
was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord
was not in the fire – and after the fire, a sound of silence[2]…
and Elijah knows himself addressed by name, accompanied, set back on his feet,
given purpose and direction, a path to walk.
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