It had been a journey!

The best manifestation of God’s power that anyone had seen. It had all the ingredients of a great heroic tale: strong enemies, unbelievable challenge, a big audience, and a melodramatic hero. Like any good action film, we are glued to the screen wondering what is going to happen. The hero does not disappoint and though the end is difficult and bloody, it seems like the good guys win. Who would not turn their ways after such display of power? Who would not turn their hearts and life after this? Who would not be afraid of this god, now that they have shown their face?

It turns out that Jezebel was not . . . she was incensed at losing her prophets, or maybe she was just incensed at losing? She certainly was tired of dealing with this pesky prophet who would not let them do their evil in peace. Who refused to stay silent, to go about his worship times, to stick to preaching his nice sermons that do not bother anybody, to inspire his community to think about themselves over and over again, to do his prophetic visits, drink the coffee and eat the cookies, to go to his meeting and open them in prayer, to just do his thing and stay out of their business, just stay out of politics! Something so simple and yet Elijah refuses to stay on his lane, this latest show by him and whom he claimed was his God, is certainly the last straw. Elijah had to be made to disappear.

In so many ways the powerful are predictable. Their thirst for power blinds them to the realities of any situation -- their way of handling any threat: violent; their egos: fragile; their moods: fickle; their actions: fraught. Empathy and compassion an unknown vocabulary, the wellbeing and flourishing of the community not their purview. Fear, manipulation, revenge, greed, the tyrant’s mission and calling.

No wonder they rather not just kill him but instead fear monger with threats of his ultimate demise -- for fear is the most powerful tool in a tyrant’s arsenal. Despair, fear’s companion, is as affective as death.

When fleeing a tyrant who is looking to kill you, history has an answer, it is called the wilderness. This wilderness can take different forms, exile, a new start, a long vacation, self-deportation, the goal is to get away for a while. None of us would choose to go there, no matter how comfy a short, stumpy tree might be to take a nap. For the wilderness itself is filled with the unknown, with uncertainty, with its own set of dangers. At first glance it is no place for answers, strength, or inspiration, and yet . . .

40 Days and 40 Nights, a walk up to the mountain of God. A walk that others had taken before him, a path worn, an experience had, at another moment of desperation, despair, and desolation. Elijah had been a good student in his Sunday school class, he knew that if there was a way out of this, he might find it there, if not it was better to die in the wilderness, than through the hands of Ahab and Jezebel.

I wonder if it was a bit of déjà vu for God. What’s the deal with these guys fleeing to God’s mountain, wanting answers and seeking refuge? What’s the deal with the communities that these people lead? Have they not seen the hand of God at work? Have they not paid attention? Yet here it is again, another community, another leader, another tyrant, no wonder the deity wanted to know why this guy was there?

Often in the ancient text God can come across as detached, ignorant, and uninformed. If I was Elijah I would be worried. What do you mean what am I doing here? I imagine myself saying.
Have you not gotten my texts? Did you not see my vaguebooking on social media?

I would remind God that I’ve complained about Jezebel and Ahab before and that God kept sending me to give them words from the Lord. I would remind God that God kept sending me back to the community with a prophetic message, that they had fallen for the guises of a dangerous tyrant. They were not paying attention, they were not faithful, they had forgotten who they were and who God was, they had not listened, and did not seem to want to. If I was Elijah, I would make sure that God remembered, understood, I would make sure to clarify my quandary.

When we feel alone in our faithfulness, abandoned in our obedience, and despairing in our loyalty we all want answers, explanations, we all want God to do something grand. Especially if you have done and seen what Elijah had. The poor guy was so amazed at it that he actually thought that the display of power and glory would change things. Such is the naïveté of religious life, thinking that the grand gesture, the big production, the glitz and glitter, the turnout tricks will be the thing that will change everything.

He might even save the church. He might even save us.

Aren’t you the God of unnamed people who became a chosen nation? Aren’t you the God who speaks in dreams about the future? Aren’t you the God who reveals yourself in a burning bush? Aren’t you the God that parts the Red Sea, gives food from the heavens and water from rocks? Aren’t you the God of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night? Aren’t you the God who comes down on a mountain and speaks in the earthquake? Aren’t you the God who chooses the unlikely to lead a people and frees us with power and might from our enemies?

Speak now, can’t you see that we are in a mess, all alone, abandoned. Speak now, you know why I am here, you know I have given everything, you know that I’d rather die by your hand than theirs! Speak now, be who you say you are!

The expectation is grand, God is about to do something, like all of us we get used to the familiar things, the scripts of the way divine life does what it does, the things that more easily get our attention in the short attention spans of these days. We all have our lists of what brings us awe and wonder, we all have our lists of what brings us to reverence, we all have our lists of what eases our weary and worried souls.

The great winds with their power to move us, making us breathless, whose force cannot be ignored, whose effects are felt by everyone. The earthquakes, making cracks in the places we plant our feet, shaking and making us unsteady, the foundations at stake, forcing us to hold on, the lower to the ground the safer we’ll be. The fires, singeing the fringes of our life, refining our souls, giving light to the immediate, cannot be ignored. Here God must be . . . here God is not.

If only we can give ourselves some room. If only we can give divine life an opportunity. If only we can let go of the many expectations, of how we have tended to believe God speaks, works, acts in history, if only we could be open to the difficulties of the journey, curious to the ways good news is emerging around us.

We are living interestingly difficult times. We are not the first humans to live through such times and we will not be the last. In 2,000 years of Christianity many of our ancestors in the faith have also lived through interestingly difficult times. Like them we feel the burden, heartbreak, and weariness of the powers of the world. Like them we are tired and despairing with the significant gap between what could be and what is. The chasm between God’s world of peace, wholeness, healing, and beloved-ness, and our world, so filled with violence, strife, division, woundedness, and antipathy.

No wonder so many of us are afraid and want to escape. But what are we longing for? If we are longing for comfort of a by-gone era there are some bad news for us. If we are longing for all to get along, there are some bad news for us. If we are longing for good news without any sacrifice, there are some bad news for us.

If we are longing for a God who is still at work in the world in the midst of discomfort, disconnection, sacrifice, then there is some good news. In these days of anxiety, disorientation, and despair God is seeding a longing in us for the wilderness, for the risky difficult journey towards the mountain of God. This journey is indeed too much for us and yet along the way the Spirit of God is providing us our own broom trees, food, and water. Along the way God is providing us sheltering caves and inviting us to pay attention to what God is saying for this season of our life.

In the sound of silence God speaks, focused, without distractions, intimate. The space being made for possibility and imagination amid our shared pain, now we know why we are here, now we look around in our kinship and solidarity and know we are not alone.

So go and create community, our congregations in solidarity with all around us who like Elijah are being threatened, the most vulnerable feeling abandoned and alone for the tyrants of these days want their heads in a silver platter. We, God’s people, creating wilderness spaces where we get real about our despair, share our fears, and together open our imaginations about how God is speaking in this moment for this moment.

Now we can hear the call, simple, concise, crisp . . . go back to your anointing work says God, go back to your healing, reconciling, forgiving, loving, go back to your good news proclaiming, go back, keep at it, there is a community waiting, hungry, expectant, to experience the freeing power of love made flesh. DO NOT BE AFRAID! The journey will be too much, but my power and glory, my peace and healing, my grace-filled love will flow through you, now what are you doing here church?