I Kings 19:1-4, 8-15 Commentary

Illustration:

Theologian Craig Barnes talks about the temptation to preach what he calls “bad dog sermons.”  This is when the preacher stands in her pulpit, wagging a finger at the congregation.  If she could reach their noses, she might even smack them with a rolled up newspaper, while scolding “Bad dog. Bad dog!” While there are some weeks (after disappointments, discouraging leadership meetings, a congregant falling into the same sin…again) such preaching would be a relief to the pastor, the even more surprising reality is that these sermons often match the congregation’s expectation of what sermons should be.  The congregation, if not wants or likes such sermons, they at least expect them.  Because, truth be told, this matches their functional theology of God and how God feels about them.

This illustration offers a gift of comparison — the God we expect, if don’t entirely like vs. the God who shows up with baked bread, still warm from the coals , for a rumbling stomach and fresh, cool water on a parched throat. The God who chooses not to show up in powerful wind, earthquakes and fires, choosing instead to come alongside us in a gentle whisper.

Commentary:

In this text, we encounter the prophet of God coming off his triumph on Mount Carmel, where he talked trash to the prophets of baal and got to show off the incomparable power of the God of Israel. But, rather than the pat on the back one might expect from God for serving him so faithfully, all Elijah gets is a death threat from Ahab and Jezebel. It hardly seems fair and that’s not just my perception of it.  That’s how Elijah sees it too.  He’s gone from the heights of ministry success to the depths of hatred by those who have enough power to make his life miserable, if not over. He is depressed, discouraged, despondent.  He has no clue what to do next. So he goes out to the desert and makes a plan, asking God to end it.

When God shows up, what God *DOESN’T* do is tell Elijah to get over it, to pick himself up by his bootstraps, to think of a better strategy or to just go back and try harder this timeWhat God DOES is give Elijah a chance to see God, to know God, to worship God, to experience God. But the God Elijah experiences is not the God Elijah expects and this is good news too because (I suspect) the God Elijah expects would have told him all the things God doesn’t tell him.  Rather God feeds him, gives him something to drink, lets him rest.  Although there are other, more explicit maternal references to God, in terms of actions, I think I Kings 19:5-9 casts God as Mother, clucking and fussing over a tired and hangry toddler who insists, with drooping eyelids, “But I’m not tired!”

Of course it would be a mistake to extrapolate from this text that God only speaks in a gentle whisper and never in wind, earthquake or fire.  Kindly remember that Elijah on Mt Carmel is the backdrop of this story, where God most assuredly showed up in fire.  And there are other stories of God choosing a bold presence.  So why the gentle whisper for Elijah this time?

One possible explanation is that the Biblical author is working to draw out parallels with Moses, who hides in the cleft of the rock as God passes by in Exodus 33. For Moses, God’s glory is the central aspect but it mostly remains hidden.  Moses gets a glimpse of God from the back and that, it seems, is sufficient glory.  The Elijah narrative seems to make a similar but distinct point.  We cannot encounter God fully but God gives us enough of God’s presence to sustain us.  In a way, the author of Elijah’s story seems to be helping us discern God’s character by contrast, nothing on earth can fully encapsulate or control God’s character and way of being with God’s people — not the wind (though God is sometimes identified with the wind.) Not earthquakes (though God is sometimes demonstrated in natural disaster.) Not fire (though goodness knows in the Pentecost season, we certainly can relate to God in some way through the image of fire.) God’s power is a kind of unspeakable (pun intended) mystery.  After a hurricane blows through or a tornado touches down, it isn’t the roar that is deafening but the absence of rushing, roaring, breaking apart that presses the strangeness upon us.  Silence as a kind of weighted blanket and it is from this place of quiet that God is proved most powerful. In the silence God can speak volumes.

Verses 10 and 14 bookend Elijah’s experience of God in the gentle whisper and what is significant about these verses is how they are identical.  Elijah’s experience of God—arguably one we’d all want for ourselves—is that it doesn’t change his material circumstances.  When God asks, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He gives the exact same answer and yet when God sends Elijah back into the work of ministry, it is with this experience firmly in mind, heart, soul and imagination.  And that seems to be enough.

God, it seems, is not primarily focused on getting us to do the right thing. God is not just trying to get an agenda out of us — not even the pastors, priests and prophets among us!  God invites us to rest, to gain strength, to encounter God not just in exciting and borderline violent expressions of power but also in the gentle power of comfort. God desires for God’s people—perhaps even especially God’s ministers—to live with and out of their experience and knowledge of God’s character, attributes and presence.