Scripture: 1 Kings 18
I decided not to do any kidding around with the scripture this morning the way we did last week. This is not a kidding around sort of scripture. Some people who interpret this passage point out that there is humor in the story, but somehow the more I read this story, the more I lose my sense of humor. I just don’t find it very funny.
This is the second in a series of sermons I’m doing about Elijah, and I said as I was introducing this material last time, that these stories are not necessarily very enlightening or inspiring, and that Elijah is not someone I find to be particularly admirable or even likeable—and I said the reasons for my less-than-enthusiastic attitude toward Elijah would become clearer later in the story. Today’s installment is that later.
There are lots of disturbing stories in the Bible. This has to rank right up there with the best of them, and my gut reaction when I read it is to want to turn around and run away as fast as I can. But as I also said last week, for better or worse, for better and worse, these are our family stories and I believe it is our job to engage these stories that we have inherited, and it may be especially important to engage with stories that are especially difficult, just because it is so tempting to ignore them. If a passage just says nice things that we already agree with, then it’s not going to challenge us in any way, just confirm how wise and good and right thinking we already are. Anyway, I’m going to plunge ahead with Elijah and the prophets of Baal.
The action from the story this morning takes place on Mt. Carmel. Mt. Carmel is a real place in Israel and most group tours of the Holy Land will take you to see it. It’s a very beautiful and peaceful place.
Looking out in one direction from the top you can see the land sloping into the Mediterranean. Looking out in another direction you can see the lush Valley of Jezreel or Esdraelon. There is another mountain that looks out over this valley named Megiddo, and Har Megiddo as it is called gives its name, in slightly altered form, Armageddon, to the place where the final battle between good and evil is supposed to take place.
At the top of Mt. Carmel is a monastery…and also a statue of Elijah. The statue of Elijah has a rather tall stone block with an inscription on it, and then standing on top of the stone, towering over the scene and causing people to look way up to see him, is Elijah, with his arm raised, with a sword in his hand, and at his feet a severed head, presumably one of the 450 prophets of Baal, one of the 450 slaughtered prophets of Baal that we heard about in the story just now. This statue commemorates the great hero Elijah, who won a contest against the prophets of some foreign gods and then chopped their heads off.
The ironies and the disconnects here are profound, as they are throughout the Holy Land. In Bethlehem there is a place called Manger Square where the Church of the Nativity is located, which claims to be built on the site of Jesus’ birth. The streets of Manger Square, when I was there, were filled with very un-Christ like images, people selling cheap souvenirs, soldiers with machine guns at the entrances to buildings, tanks patrolling the streets. For me this was the top disconnect; I just couldn’t make all the images fit together—the birthplace of Jesus, machine guns, tanks, manger key chains.
But Mt. Carmel was a close second. Standing next to a monastery, a place of prayer, at a lovely, quiet spot on the top of a mountain with the breeze blowing gently through the trees and having a guide explain that we are looking down into the valley of Armageddon and inviting us to imagine rivers of blood and the end of the world, and also looking up at a statue of Elijah, supposedly a man of God with a sword in his hand and the head of a victim at his feet, and remembering the story of Elijah on Mt. Carmel that ended with the ground covered with blood—well, that wasn’t all so easy to put together either, and the memory has stayed with me rather vividly for some twenty years now.
What am I supposed to do with this story other than be nauseated by it? Let’s review the situation. Ahab, king of Israel, married Jezebel, daughter of the king of a neighboring country, in order to cement an alliance between the two countries. These are countries with different cultures, however, and Jezebel brought her religion with her into the marriage and into Israel. And there’s been some immigration, so it’s not just Jezebel but some other people from her country, Sidon, who also worship the gods of the Sidonians. And so it came to pass that there were at least two main religions in Israel. That’s fine with Ahab, as much as we can tell. Two religions, ten religions, no problem. Not so fine with Jezebel who would prefer that everyone worship Baal and who has engaged in some persecution against the representatives of Yahweh.
It’s also not so fine with Elijah. I would be happy if Elijah had been sent to tell Jezebel not to persecute the followers of Yahweh.
I wish this story was about how Elijah came into this situation as an apostle of tolerance and understanding, showing people that they really could live together, maybe even appreciate each other a little bit.
I wish this story were about how Elijah did some really dynamite diversity workshops and converted everyone to multi-culturalism.
I wish this story told me about how Elijah convinced the Baal people and the Yahweh people to talk to each other and listen to each other.
I wish Elijah had said that it didn’t really matter what name we call God, that we can bring many names when we worship God, and that it’s important to respect one another’s traditions and try to learn from each other and find what is true and what leads to good in every religion.
I wish the story were about how there are lots of legitimate ways to know God and to worship God, lots of different roads to salvation. I wish…I wish.
No such luck. What we get instead is a bitter contest between the people who believe in Baal and the people who believe in Yahweh, and neither Elijah nor Yahweh is interested in mediation or in compromise, any more than Jezebel is. They are interested in winning. They are interested in showing people who is in possession of the truth and who is not. They are interested in establishing once and for all who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, and they are interested in making sure that the good guys win and that the bad guys get wiped out. According to Elijah and Yahweh, and Jezebel too for that matter—they all seem to have the same approach—there is no compromise in these matters. There is no such thing as live and let live. You gotta choose. Elijah is known for one of the lines he utters in this story: “How long will you go limping along with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, then follow the Lord your God. If Baal is God, then by all means you should follow Baal.”
I think it would be fair to describe Elijah as a fanatic. He gave some indications that he might be in chapter 17. In this story he proves it. Killing people in the name of God qualifies as fanaticism. But Elijah probably doesn’t see things quite that way.
From Elijah’s standpoint, a religion is either right or wrong. Just having a faith of some kind is not good enough. It matters what kind of faith we have. It matters what gods we believe in, whether they are true gods or false gods, idols. And once we have determined what God is real, it is not our duty to follow that god in some half-hearted way. Our job is not to give ourselves to God somewhat. Our goal is not to achieve a moderate commitment to what we believe in. Our hope is not to discover a god who is interesting or who has a few things we might want to consider. There are no half-way measures in matters of faith. What kind of god is it who asks us to love her with some of our heart and some of our soul? What kind of faith would ask us to live out our faith moderately? If we’re not at least trying to be true believers, whole-hearted, passionate, committed believers, what’s the point? Faith is not a matter of being open to different ideas about God. Faith is a matter of being claimed and called by some holy voice to some specific manner of living. All these thoughts and questions I think are in the spirit of Elijah. They are questions Elijah may very well be asking us when he says, “How long will you go limping along with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow the Lord. If Baal is God, follow Baal.”
And my response, if Elijah is indeed saying things like this to me and asking me questions like this, my response to the question of how long will you go limping along with two different opinions is…I guess it’s going to have to be a while longer. Because I do have a couple of different reactions to the story about Elijah and the prophets of Baal and the kinds of things Elijah represents as a fanatic, or a true believer.
On the one hand, I have already expressed my hard core hostility to the spirit of this story, and I don’t want to sugarcoat the murderous part of this and try to turn it into a nice story say about the importance of making choices or some such thing. I don’t want to try to turn this story into something nice. It is not a nice story. It is not an ok story. Not even if we turn the killing into something symbolic so that we’re not really talking about killing people but are really talking about killing off or doing away with the false gods that may be among us. Not even if those false gods are not the gods of other religions—the gods of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and so forth—but are gods we all might more easily recognize as false gods, such as the gods of nationalism, or money, or success, or security.
This passage has sometimes been interpreted that way; I have sometimes interpreted it that way. That Baal represents any god who we may summon to do our will, whether it is to make ourselves secure or successful or to advance the cause of our nation or religion. And it’s fine to say that it’s a good thing to identify and fight against false gods. But that still doesn’t mean this story is ok. It is about a man who is so sure he is right and so sure that God is on his side that he feels justified in killing 450 other human beings. The fact that this story is in the Bible doesn’t make it ok. And even if we don’t take it literally, there is a clear message to me that there is a very thin line between fervent belief and fanaticism, that being a true believer can cause anyone to lose their moral bearings. The dangers of thinking that God is on your side need to be recognized—in the story and in ourselves—recognized and resisted.
But having said that I have to say that I do hear this story calling me, in spite of itself, to a more whole-hearted faith, not a half-hearted one, calling me always to a way of life that is deeper, more committed, more courageous, more truly believing, beyond where I am at any given moment. Fervent faith is something I deeply distrust and profoundly desire at the same time. Some of those statements or questions I was imagining Elijah asking are actually to the point. Aren’t we called by both Jewish and Christian scriptures to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength? Do I want to be half-hearted in my belief that fighting racism and homophobia are part of what it means to be a Christian? Do I have a mild interest in God? Is it easy to be tolerant of different beliefs because what we believe isn’t really all that important? Is there something positive after all in the zealousness of Elijah? I’ll say again: Fervent faith is something I deeply distrust and profoundly desire at the same time.
How do we do that? How do we hold those two apparently opposite things together? I don’t have a few sentences for you on that. I have no neat little bit of wisdom that sorts out all the issues here—when and in what ways it’s ok or not ok to be or aspire to be true believers. I find it instructive that in the scripture after Elijah asked his question—How long will you go limping along with two opinions?—the next verse says, “The people answered him not a word.” Maybe they answered not a word because it’s just not so easy to say how it is possible to both seek and resist being a true believer both at the same time. It’s not so easy to explain, but it is possible. In the silence of our souls I am sure many of us are engaged in trying to do both of these things: resist the dangers of being a true believer and trying to become one at the same time. How we do that is a matter of prayer, and I believe it’s important to keep praying. Amen.
Jim Bundy
July 17, 2005