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The Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Grant us, O Lord, not to mind earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to cleave to those that shall abide; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 20)
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The Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): I Kings 19:8-21
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
I Kings 19:8-21
✛
Elijah: Prophet of Christ
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In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
For months now we have reading about the history of ancient Israel in our Evensong Old Testament lessons. There was Moses at the Exodus and the trek through the wilderness. Then Joshua and settling in the Promised Land. Then the period of the tribal confederacy under the various Judges until Samuel. Then the kingdom, united under Saul, David, and Solomon. Then the division of the kingdom. Northern Israel (ten tribes) under Jeroboam rebelled against Southern Judah and Benjamin (two tribes) under Solomon’s unwise son Rehoboam.
Today we are in Northern Israel. Things have gone from bad to worse from the point of view of the faith of Moses and the prophets. First Jeroboam set up golden calves and his own priesthood to substitute for the Northern tribes’ loss of the Temple at Jerusalem. Now we have King Ahab, actually one of the great architectural builders of Israel, who, at the behest of his powerful wife Jezebel, a Phoenician princess, set up temples to her god Baal Melqart and violently suppressed the worship of the Lord God of Israel. The Lord’s supporters had to keep their heads down or go underground in Northern Israel.
In the midst of this suddenly appears one of the most famous figures of the Bible, Elijah, himself a northern Israelite from Gilead. Before we meet him today, Elijah, who seems to have begun his ministry in middle age, has effectively announced a three-year-and-a-half-year drought and has survived in the wilderness by being fed by ravens and later (miraculously) by a Gentile woman whose young son Elijah brings back to life. Most famously, Elijah has a showdown at Mount Carmel with many hundreds of Jezebel’s prophets of Baal. After these Baal prophets spend the whole day fruitlessly crying out, “O Baal, hear us,” the Lord answers Elijah’s prayer by fire from heaven; and at Elijah’s word the people slay those prophets of Baal. The scene is well represented in Felix’s Mendelssohn’s great oratorio, Elijah.
Jezebel has sworn by her gods to kill him.
Elijah, who in weariness and a sense of being completely outnumbered, has already asked the Lord to take away his life, is told instead to flee. We meet him today in mid-flight. Miraculously he makes it all the way to Mount Horeb/Sinai, where Moses himself first met the Lord, where he received the Law, and where he pleaded on behalf of Israel that the Lord not destroy them for their idolatry. In that place many centuries later the Lord speaks to Elijah.
Elijah has been hiding in a cave. There first comes a mighty wind, then an earthquake, then a fire. There is silence; then, a still small voice: “What doest thou here, Elijah?” Elijah wraps his mantle about his face, stands at the cave entrance, and answers, “The children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life to take it away.”
The Lord’s answer is a message to encourage anyone who would serve him, especially in what appear to be the most difficult times. Elijah has asked the Lord to remove him from the strife; and he will, but not yet. There are things to do. First, he will anoint kings for both Israel and Syria for the future, well beyond Ahab; and second, this will actually be done by Elijah’s soon-to-be-called successor, Elisha. And third, the Lord gently rebukes Elijah for saying that he alone is left of the faithful. “I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.” There is a significant remnant for the Lord, even after all those years of apostasy in Israel – we could substitute for Israel the word Church.
Let us fast-forward to Elijah’s end, his assumption into heaven in a whirlwind with angelic chariots of fire, witnessed by Elisha, who will fulfill Elijah’s work and carry forward his own ministry in Northern Israel. Nevertheless, Northern Israel will disappear at the hands of the Assyrians. The ten tribes will be known as the lost tribes. Only Judah and the House of David in Jerusalem will remain, and in a few centuries that southern kingdom will also be destroyed. Its survivors, to be known as the Jews, will persevere, united by the Law of Moses, partly in international dispersion and partly in the old homeland, as they do to this day.
But Elijah remains as part of the faith, both Jewish and Christian. He appears in the very last verse of the prophets of the Old Testament, in Malachi. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” (Mal 4:5-6)
Centuries later still, Jesus’ disciples asked him about this. He replied that Elijah had already returned in the preparatory ministry of John the Baptist. (Mt 11:11-15) And so it came to pass, when our Lord Jesus Christ turned his face towards his Passion in Jerusalem, that he took with him the inner circle of his disciples up a high mountain to pray. It was Jesus’ Transfiguration. As Saint Luke writes, “And as [Jesus] prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering. And behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.” (Lk 9:28-31)
The Lord granted Elijah to see what he yearned for. And he is a great member of the Body of Christ, reigning with him in glory.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
