“alY TO REALITY Tetris Ml uisdsarai

binges 14:1-15 Broad Street + resbyterian Churct.
Seitember 7, 14h¢ Columbus. ina:

The Second Lesson this morning is from the Old Testament - the First Book of Kings,
L9th Chanter. JI will read'a fresh translation by American Old Testament Scholar Davie

Napier...This is not the authorized version, Napier calls it an histerieal, critical
translation which intends to recreate what the scholars believe may have been the criginal
Elijah story in the 9th century BC...

Elijah is the prephet -

Jahweh is God's name in Hebrew -

Ahab is the Kine -

Jezebel is Ahab's wife, a foreign born Queen.

‘i ah hag just embarassed the Queen publicly, and the 19th Charter begins. Listen for

the Word of God...

On the Way to the Cave: I Kings 1%:2-ba, 8

Now Jezebel sent this word to Elijah: "If you are Elijah, 1 am Jezeb.1‘!" Frightened
for his life, he ran away;and when he got to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there
and went on himself for a day into the wilderness; until at last he sat down under a broom
tree and prayed that he might die. "I've had it, Yahweh," he said. "Take my life: I'm no
better than those who've gone before me.'' He lay down there and went to sleep; until
suddenly someone touched him and said, "Wake up and eat."' He leoked about - and there at
his head was a stone-baked biscuit and a jar of water. So he ate and drank and then, on
the strength of that nourishment, he went on to Horeb.

The Stay at the Cave: J Kings 19:9a, lib, 12-15, 18
Coming there to a cave, he spent the night.

And there was a mighty wind

Not in the wind was Yahweh.

And after the wind, earthquake

Not in the earthquake was Yahweh.

And after the earthquake, fire

Not in the fire was Yahweh,

And after the fire -

A sound of gentle silence.

Upon hearing this, Elijah covered his face with his robe and went out to take his
position at the mouth of the cave, It was only now that the Word of Yahweh was: "What are
you doing here, Elijah?" Elijah replied: 'I have been passionately devoted to Yahweh, God
of hosts, even while the people of Israel have abandoned you. Your altars they have
destroyed, your prophets they have put to death with the sword. JI am left now, myself,
alone; and they are after me to take my life!" But Yahweh answered him, "Go back the way
you have come; because there are still seven thousand left in Israel whose knees have never
bent to Baal, nor whose lips have kissed him!" (Word of Cod...Werd of Earth, David Napier,

p.38-57}.

That is a very oid and precious remnant of tradition. It is also, ina remarkably
accurate way, our story. Péople are stili afraid, looking for an escape from the dangers,
frustrations, and disappointments of life. People are still jumping into the nearest cave,
sometimes claiming that they are seeking the God who eludes them in life - sometimes trying
to hide from Him. And, I would submit, the Living Word of the eternal God, continues to
call people baek to life, back to the world, back to reality.

It is also the best of all texts for this particular Sunday in the church year. Most
of us have been in one kind of cave or another this summer; vacation, travel, an intentiona
and unapologetic escape from busyness and frantic schedules and every night of the week
meetings. This week the period of the cave ended and we were called back. Some of us come
gladly; some of us very reluctantly; some of us are going to try mot to come back at all...

-3-

The original story takes place sometime around §506 BC. Anab was King of Israel. His
wife, Jezebel, was the daughter of a Phoenician priest and a devout adherent of Phoenician
religion known as Baalism. When Ahab brought her 1o Israel as Queen her royal entourage
included an eyebrow-raising 450 Baal priests and 400 prophets of the Mother-Goddegs
Asherah for good measure.

There were some very appealing aspects of Baalism in addition to the fact that the
Queen was 4 "Born Again Baalist". The religion emphasized the life force in nature, human
fertility and sexuality as the primary focus of the divine - and that is always intriguing
and appealing. When Israelite prophets stood up in the land and spoke against Baalism or
its leading adherent in the royal palace they were promptly executed for trouble making and
treason against the state...

Elicvah enters the tale at this point. <A prophet in Gilead, he traveled to the palace,
made an appointment with Ahab and announced bluntly that because of the King's religious
infidelity there would be a drought. For two years the drought continued; Ahab summoned
Elijah to the palace; Elijah repeated his prophetic word and challenged the Baal priests
and prophets to a test of strength on Mt.Carmel. The people came to watch, Two bulls were
to be slaughtered. The priests were to call on Baal to send down fire. Elijah would call
on Yahweh, God of Israel. The test was held. The Baal priests tried but nothing happened.
In a remarkable sequence when you consider that it's 2800 years old, Elijah poked a little
fun: "Perhaps your God is taking a nap...Maybe he's out to lunch." Ultimately, Elijah
prevailed. The people shouted "Yahweh is God"and put to death the priests and prophets of
Baal. And Ahab gratefully drove his chariot home through a rainstorm with Elijah ecstaticall
running before him - one of the most dramatic scenes in the Bible, TI think...

Jezebel, however, took a very dim view of what had transpired and vowed to have revenge.
Our text this morning began at this point. Elijah fled - for good reason, and just as he
had been vindicated so gloriously on Mt. Carmel, ends up now on another mountain, Mt.Horeb —
in a cave, breathless, but momentarily safe.

We dare not criticize the flight in fear. The danger was real, the threat immediate.
Elijah was nothing if not a realist. Tf love Napier's translation..."Jezebel sent word to
Elijah...'If you are Elijah, I am Jezebel!' Frightened for his life he ran away.'"' He knew
what she meant. J climbed out a window and jumped off a porch roof from disciplinary
confinement in order to play a basketball game one time and my mother stopped me half a
block away on a dead run simply by walking out on the perch and calling my name. I knew
what she meant. TI returned. Elijah fled.

It is not an unfamiliar dynamic. We're afraid that we're going to blow ourselves up
Lf we don't stop producing nuclear weapons, and afraid of what the Russians will de if we
do stop. We're afraid that we're running out of oil, and afraid that we'll cheke the next
generation with our coal dust or create a generation of mutants from our reactor spills,
melt-downs and accidental ventilations. We're afraid that we're losing ground financially.
We're working harder, making more money and we have less - and that dynamic, extended over
a decade or so seriously frightens all but the few. And if cur fears are real so is our
disillusionment. The pollsters keep telling us that the majority finaily believes that the
past was better than the future, and that syndrome breeds cynicism and contempt. We're not
sure the system works anymore. We're not sure that how we vote will make any difference.
We're afraid and disillusioned and cynical and most of all exhausted. We're tired of
trying to cope with what appears to be uncopeable.,

Those burdens are external, common to all of us, a product of our time. They rest on
top of othere layers of burdens, personal, private; burdens that weigh heavily on mind and
Spirit, too intimate to share with anyone. They may have to do with our children, our

-3-

relationships with them, eur inability te be everything we want to be fer them, their
behavior and values: or our burden may be our marriages, our sexuality, our aging, our
desperate sense that life is slipping between our fingers; our frustration and anger and
disappointment.

We dare not criticize Elijah for that cave. We ail go there sometimes - for good
reason, Dr. Napier identifies the current hiding places for us in a cheerfully critical
paragraph:

" .the range of caves runs from the old standards of sex and alcohol
and other drugs ta TA (Transactional Analysis), TM (Transcendental
Meditation), TV (before whom, on an average we stand, sit, lie, eat
and drink an unconscionable and unbelievable amount of adult hours per
week), TF (touchy-feely in dual or group encounter), TZ (Try Zen),

TS (Take Sominex) or even, in some circles, TJ (Take Jesus) - in this
sense an icon distantly derived from Jesus Christ, and literaily
scores of others...and one more cave in the "'T" series, TB, turn back,
turn hack to the past." (Ibid, p.65).

Sometimes the cave is religion. All of us, some of the time, and some of us ali the
time, are looking for a cave on Sunday morning. It is a very precise fleeing - away from
everything that has transpired from Monday through Saturday, away from the pain of
ambiguity, or the sense of responsibility for the wretched condition of our world.We come
to church to get away from ambiguity and moral relationship and from the harshness of
life. It is a very precise pilgrimage sometimes and those of us who are in the church
business know it and if we can arrange it so that the cave takes on reality here and
worshippers can be transported into the simple past, or into a simple-minded world of
piety, and if it is done in good taste with thick carpets and music by J.8.Bach, we will
be immediately and profoundly successful.

A good friend of mine in Elkhart, Indiana, Bill Vamos, has written a new book in
which he observes..."Qur reaction has been to scurry to a place of personal safety and to
stay there. The religions that are flourishing today are those that promise to deal with
your inner construction, by providing you with sacred insulation...But that is not where
we meet God. Nowhere in the Bible do we find God leading people to a permanent escape...
Instead, what we find is a God who shows people how to move forward." (The Life that

Listens, p.18).,

There is, of course, a legitimate and healthy function for the cave. In fact, Elijah
was renewed and refreshed after his experience, And in fact I'm so ready to go to work
near the end of vacation my family can sense it. And I'm convinced that a good proportion
of the marital stress which too often becomes malignant and destructive, would be remedied
by a romantic weekend, alone, without children, and schedules, and car poois, about once
a quarter, even if only at a local motel. Parents and children might get along much better
if they got away together on occasion. There is a healthy function for the cave - 4
therapeutic, brief and always temporary function.

Some strange things happened outside Elijah's cave at Mt. Horeb,..wind, earthquake,
fire - none of which contained much of God for the firghtened prophet. Strange - because
you and I - and Elijah's contemporaries are inclined to look for God's reality, his
self-disclosure, in those very natural phenomena. You have known Him in the sunset and
so have I, but theology that locates God in nature solely, and wants to worship, not in
church, but on the lake, or golf course, ultimately is silly. Wapier comments, "One
suspects that the narrative stands as a splendid rebuke to all of us nature worshippers
who are episodically disposed to make a theophany out of natural phenomena from sex to
Sunset, mountain to sea, rose to artichoke." (Ibid., p.63).

Stranvest of all was what happened after the wind and earthquake and fire. ''The
still, small voice of calm" our Bible read - but it's a poor translation at best. The
Scholars agree - it wasn't a voice at all. The Hebrew reads...'"'The sound of a gentle
silence”, And I think the intent is to show us mystery and majesty and to warn us against
trying to pin Ged down and force Him, by way of our own expectations, to sound like, and
act like - what we think He should sound and act like, and most of all to say what we
want to hear.

God will not be summoned by anybody's magic, nor jump through anybody's hoop, We have
become adept at manipulating feelings and emotions to prove God's existence and our
Salvation, and for those of us who try to think objectively it's a little like whistling
in the darx when you walk by a cemetery. God is God. He was not in the cave. He wasn't
in the wind, earthquake and fire. His reality began to emerge in a silence, pregnant
with meaning and content...

And when He spoke, finally, it wasn't to stroke Elijah for his courage, and it wasn't
to hand out that blessed assurance we lust after, assurance that God exists and that He
knows our name, that Jesus is mine and that we're safe. When God finally speaks, it's a
question. "What are you doing here, Elijah?" And as soon as he becomes defensive - as we
do too in those circumstances - the saving word is spoken..."Go - return - back to
reality." That's the point...the saving word is not "Come to me: come rest a while,"
it's "Go - back to reality."

The gospel of Jesus Christ points us toward the world. That is its fundamental
direction. The Kingdom it proclaims is not of the world, but it most certainly is in the
world. Eternal life is part of the faith, the promise, but life now is the priority for
Elijah's God, for Jesus, for Christian people.

You don't need your minister to tell you that the needs of our community and nation
and earth are urgent. I was privileged to attend the First Global Conference on the Future
this summer, a remarkable gathering of 4500 economists, scientists, philosophers and some
theologians and there was a sense of urgency about the future. The futurists agree on very
little, but they believe unanimously that we live in very dangerous and important times.
Alvin Toffler wrote for the Conference - "Humanity faces the deepest social upheaval of
ali time. We are engaged in building a remarkable new civilization from the ground up."
(Through the 80's, p.9). There are problems which simply must be resolved, There will be
no more chances. Futurists differ radically as to the political situation, but unanimously
they agree that we have no more than a generation to deal with economic disparity,
population, hunger, natural resources (energy), environmental pollution. And while the
temptation simply to remain aloof and hide is tremendous, it cannot, and must not, be done.
Archibaid MacLeish said somewhere that there are just two kinds of people - "the Pure and
the Responsible", which is to way ~ responsible people may get their hands dirty in the
future.

What you may need your minister, and the Bible, and Elijah for is to help you remember
the promise that you'll find God in life. He wasn't in the cave. He isn't in the cave,
He is not in crashing demonstrations of power. He is not contained in monuments nor
cathedrals. He is not bracketed by nature nor by private emotional upheavals, Where you
and ~ are likely to find Him is right in the middle of the ambiguity of life.

"Go - return, Elijah...get back inte the business of life." The promise is that God
is there. That is te say you may look for Him in the love you experience with your
family. We celebrate His presence at a communion table here because we know He will be
at your lunch table today - right in the middle of the argument about who clears the
dishes. You may look for Him in your pain, and your frustration, your joy and even
your boredom. As we discuss and argue about nuclear weapons and abortions and taxes
and food stamps you can count on Him tc be in the middle of it all, pushing, prodding,
leading, judging.

That's the promise..."Back te God" doesn't mean to a religious retreat center, but
an invitation te plunge inte human life.

S50 or so years after Elijah the promise was sealed: ancient word became flesh: a
life began in a cow stall, was lived in small towns and dusty roads and teaming cities;
and ended after a civil trial on a hill outside a capitol city; and was given again,
resurrected, in someone's garden.

The Good News of Jesus Christ is that God will love you in those places-where you
are in your life. He summons us to live life fully, not to escape from it, not to hide
from it, but to live it. The promise is that He will love us, redeem us, save uS,
empower us, not in sacred isolation, but in life. So, expect Him today. Address Him,

listen to Him, thank Him, love Him, serve Him.
Amen.

Our Father, give us the experiences of renewal which we need. But more, 0 God,
give us courage to live our lives fully, to follow where You lead. Give us faith to

‘know You and love You and serve You, Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Amen.