I Kings 19:4-15; Galatians 3: 23

Allowing God to find us

Dear friends,

Elijah is sitting down and looks deep inside himself.  And when does he looks into a deep pit. He sees a man unraveling. Everything he always used as an argument for being a man to be admired or even revered, like “I have been zealous for the Lord,” no longer counts or even counts against him.  He has killed out of righteous rage but now he seems himself in a mirror and he sees a murderer, not a liberation fighter. He cannot bear it.  He is looking for God, but he is looking for God in all the wrong places. God is not is not in the wind, God is not in the earthquake, God is not in the fire.  These are all the places were the ancient people would have looked for God for they saw the Divine as residing in natural phenomena.  Elijah is what we say about cars: running on empty. In the text he has an experience of an angel coming toward him and offering him food.  But that’s perhaps the last thing on his mind.  How can he go back to normal? He is in too much anguish.

            Friends, isn’t it amazing how easily you and I get rattled.  A lot easier than Elijah I can tell you that.  We may be feeling great about ourselves, being on top of the world and then suddenly just one event on the highway or one piece of news or one sarcastic remark or one compliment badly needed that was denied, and we’re are down in the dumps. Sometimes we feel no better than our ancestors who fought wars and wallowed in racism and colonialism and all the other bad things we pride ourselves on having transcended.

            Elijah is truly distraught and needs to find a way to get back on his feet again, because he has a job today as a prophet. The vision of the angel is reminding him of that.

            I like the PBS masterpiece mysteries about Inspector Morse and Inspector Lewis.  Right now there is a sort of prequel of the Inspector Morse stories which are always set in and around Oxford, England.  Morse is starting out in the confusing early sixties.  Morse, or Endeavour and the series calls him by his first name, is a misfit. He is a brilliant detective, but while the young people of his time are getting into pop and rock and roll, Morse is an opera lover.  He is in love with Joan, the daughter of his boss, Fred Thursday.  Morse cannot get to Joan because she has way too many daddy issues with her cop father.  While Morse is a rather pure individual, Thursday is a brooding philosopher of life who has done some bad, violent things and he has an anger problem. Together they make a great team. Thursday has the experience and knows the history of the people they are dealing with.  Morse is able to create these masterful insights that connect all the aspects of a case.  It’s almost spiritual gift to see what others cannot see and to question what others do not question.  There is almost a darkness about these two, even though the successful hunt for evil people heals them. There is always a sadness about them that remains and that you can clearly see at the end of each episode.  Like Elijah the work cannot heal them.  They need something bigger and that is what the old churches with their stained glass images of the ancient college town point toward. What they need is faith.  It is also what Elijah needs and it is what we need.  But all of us go about it the wrong way.  We think we can find faith, maybe not in the wind, earthquake or fire, but if we try hard enough we can make it materialize. It’s like getting all our chores done. It’s like washing our clothes, it’s like writing a paper or taking a test.  We are going to make that faith come hell or high water.

            Yet when we sit down and out by the roadsides of our lives, when our bodies won’t cooperate, or our loved ones or our politicians or the weather,  then we know we can’t make faith happen even if we are one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament which Elijah surely is.  Then we realize we are going about it all the wrong way.

            Paul in Galatians  says:” but now faith has come.”  He makes it sound so automatic and self-explanatory. “Wait,” we say, “You make it sound way too easy. I am working so hard to get that faith but it won’t come. And you say it just came.” To Paul faith is the liberation from the law, a liberation from all the rules that bind us, all the little, rituals, all the little musts we fill our lives with.  Yes, faith just comes. Paul understands as have many of the great theologians after him that faith isn’t born from great heavy lifting with all our muscles tensed and cramped. Faith comes in like a breeze when we open the door.  Faith is like an angel nudging us when we least expect it.  Faith is not about making it happen, but about allowing God to come.  It is not about forcing, it is about giving permission.

            Friends, this does not mean that faith is always there like some long-expected visitor knocking on our door.  There is no easy healing for Elijah as there is no easy healing for Inspectors Morse and Thursday as there is no easy healing for us.  Sometimes we must go on through the darker days.  But we always wait for the breeze.  We must be ready for it and expect it.  Like a moment of grace, it will surely come.

            Friends, last Wednesday at the Presbytery office I was talking to my old friend Nancy, the Stated Clerk.  She reminded me that when we were in our late twenties, in the days that I was a lot more Dutch and not at all Asian or American, she said: we have to be open. She reminded me that I answered:” What does that even mean, being open?”  I probably thought it was way too American.  But in a sense that is what we must be in light of this text.  If we wish to have faith, we must be ready to be open, to allow God to come to us.  We don’t make faith happen, we wait for it to come. And when it does, and when it does, then the journey really continues. Thanks be to God! Amen.