Faith in Action: Elijah

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Elijah stood on top of the mountain. The prophet of God stood alone against 500 of the priests of Baal, in a contest of which deity would prevail. It was no contest. Elijah and the God he represented showed up the priests, and their king and queen. And they were not happy. The queen immediately threatened to do whatever it took to end Elijah’s life.

And Elijah, well aware that discretion is the better part of valor, got out of town. In a time when foot travel was the norm, Elijah hightailed it off the mountain and to a town called Beersheba, over 100 miles away. The journey would have taken the average person about 5 or 6 days, probably less if you were running for your life. And then he travelled another day’s journey out of town into the middle of nowhere. And that is where our story picks up…..

1 Kings 19.4–10

⁴ But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” ⁵ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” ⁶ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. He ate and drank and lay down again. ⁷ The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, or the journey will be too much for you.” ⁸ He got up and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. ⁹ At that place he came to a cave and spent the night there.

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” ¹⁰ He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”

Elijah stood on top of the mountain. A very different mountain, in a very different state of mind. If the contest on Mt. Carmel was a demonstration of Elijah’s Faith in Action dial, his was turned up to 11. But now, on a different mountain in a different state of mind, it was registering into negative numbers. For Elijah, and I would guess for a lot of us, sometimes along the way, Faith in Action hits a wall. Elijah felt abandoned. He felt alone. And that is how he got here: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life.”

It is always a bit dangerous to assess the mental health of a person who lived thousands of years ago using only the words of someone else who also lived thousands of years ago. So, instead of reading our psychological language into his context, let’s reverse it. If Elijah was showing signs of what we call clinical depression, it would look like this, according to the DSM-5.

The individual must be experiencing five (5) or more symptoms during the same 2-week period and at least one of the symptoms should be either (1) depressed mood or (2) loss of interest or pleasure.

• Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day.

• Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly every day.

• Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain, or decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day.

• A slowing down of thought and a reduction of physical movement (observable by others, not merely subjective feelings of restlessness or being slowed down).

• Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day.

• Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt nearly every day.

• Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness, nearly every day.

• Recurrent thoughts of death, recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide.

For help, call 1-800-950-NAMI

If in immediate crisis, call or text 988.

Why am I getting this clinical if I just said that we cannot really clinically diagnose Elijah? Because I care more about you than I do about Elijah. If you feel like you or someone you love might be at risk of falling under this diagnosis, please share with them these phone numbers above. This is a heavy day. This is a heavy time of year. Don’t ever feel like you are alone, even when you reach the point that Elijah did: “It is enough.”

Now, while not all of us might reach this point, I would suggest that most of us, at one point or another, run into a wall with our Faith in Action. And some of that might be the fault of the Church, and us as preachers, and the language we use. That language can feel a bit perfectionistic at times. And a bit shame-inducing at times. And even overly-spiritualized at times. When we talk about Faith in Action, it can sound like, “If you don’t believe enough, God won’t love you enough. If you don’t do enough, you aren’t enough.” So, we start to doubt ourselves, or our Faith in Action scorecard. So, often what that turns into is that we double down, thinking that we need to go bigger to reach that emotional high that we had the last time.

Maybe that is some of what is happening with Elijah. Did you notice which mountain he chose to climb when his despair reached its lowest point? None other than Horeb, sometimes called Sinai, often referred to as the Mountain of God. If Elijah wanted to go bigger, he found the right place! This was the mountain where Moses saw God in the burning bush, creating a miracle of holy ground, and in the process calling a leader out of the wilderness into history! This was the mountain where Moses returned with the people to worship God and receive the Torah commandments, where the mountain itself crashed with holy thunder and lightning and earthquakes and fire! So, if Elijah was looking for bigger, then he was looking in the right place. And as the text continues from where I left off earlier, it sure looks like he might have found it: 

1 Kings 19.11-12a

¹¹ He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, ¹² and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire…

OK, so we definitely got bigger. Here are all the great and amazing things that Moses and the people saw on the edge of the mountain: fire, wind, earthquake. But somehow Elijah understood that God wasn’t in them. So, maybe…God had something even bigger in mind! Or louder! Or more fantastic! Maybe Elijah’s despair was so great that his holy storm needed to be stormier than Moses’s! We don’t get to hear Elijah’s inner monologue here, but if that’s what he was thinking, could you blame him? I think that when we start to hit that Faith in Action wall, we start to negotiate with God. Like maybe God owes us something more, after all that we have done for him: “After all, God, look at my scorecard. Look at all of the Faith in Action that I have done! After all of that, don’t you think that you owe me a bigger storm? A hotter fire? A louder earthquake?”

But God doesn’t give him any of that. God, in fact, gives him something completely different:

1 Kings 19.12b-13a

…and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Qol damamah daggah. The NRSV translates it as “the sound of sheer silence.” The King James as “a still small voice.” The first two words demonstrate an intentional oxymoron: qol is usually translated as “sound,” and damamah as “silent.” Instead of a stormier storm. Or more active action. Or a faith-ier faith. Instead of bigger, bigger, bigger…more, more, more… the message from God here seems to be “Do less, to do more.”

Another intentional oxymoron, like a “silent sound,” there are times when we are able to do more precisely because we stop doing so much. What Elijah seemed to learn on this second mountain is that sometimes when we do less, we are able to do more. I would argue that a healthy Faith in Action gives us more room:

• It gives us room to be human…to say that there are days that we don’t feel up to action, or even feel up to faith, and that it doesn’t mean that God will give up on us. God didn’t give up on Elijah either.

• It gives us room to be imperfect…in fact it kind of throws out our categories of perfect and imperfect, suggesting perhaps our struggles and mental health journeys and physical health journeys are what equip us to be ready for a deeper faith, or the next action. Mt. Carmel didn’t equip Elijah to take the next step; Mt. Horeb did.

• It gives us room to have doubts…because it is only when we let go of our assumptions and presuppositions that we can see that the old categories—our fire and wind and earthquake—don’t speak to us they once did. Because his doubts opened the door, Elijah was ready to hear that he had another job to do.

• Finally, it gives us room to pause…sometimes we see more clearly after we stop acting in faith, for a time. You’ll note that a pause doesn’t mean that we fill that space with a robust contemplative to-do list. It isn’t just about praying more, or praying harder, or praying better, whatever that means. It is about ceasing…about waiting on God to fill the space with what you need, not just your expectations and assumptions. Elijah climbed that mountain assuming he was the only one left. But when he paused, God told him that there was another. Another prophet who needed a mentor. Because he paused long enough to listen, Elijah learned that Elisha, the next in line, needed someone to find him and empower him and show him what Faith in Action is about. But first, he had to do less, to do more.

Qol damamah daggah.  The third word, daggah, can be translated as “small,” or even “thin.” Celtic Christians often talk about this concept of a “thin place.” A descriptor for a place where the boundary between heaven and earth is worn thin, where the veil is lifted and one can experience God more fully. Have you, like Elijah, experienced the heaviness, the busy-ness, the action-ness of your world, and wondered if God is there. Perhaps like Elijah, you have said, “it is enough.” But then, there comes a moment, a thin place, where the sound is silenced, and you know, without words to describe it, that God is there.

On our recent Earthworks trip to Minnesota, we participated in a lot of Acting. We drove all day to get there, and then spent the evening getting ready for our long run, and then spent the morning getting our gear together and hydrating and eating and packing for each stop along the way. And then we jumped in the car to hurry to the trailhead.

And then, we stopped. Something turned the car into a little lot on the way to the trailhead, into what was really our first decent view of Lake Superior. And as soon as we turned the car off and stepped to the shore, we saw this:

There were lots of “oohs” and “ahha” and “wows.” And pictures and panoramics. But there were also moments of silent worship. Words could not say enough.

Qol damamah daggah.