Elijah the Great

Message - Elijah the Great

Last week, we had a story about Elijah.  And in my message I sort of described how I thought Elijah may have acted, or what my vision of him was when dealing with the prophets of Baal.  This week, I want to talk some more about Elijah, give a little more information about just who Elijah was.

Elijah is a very interesting character.  Of all the Old Testament prophets, the New Testament mentions Elijah more than any other. He is the prophet who appeared with Moses at the transfiguration of our Lord. He is a man who appears from out of nowhere, and whose exit from this life is even more fantastic. The appearance of Elijah signals a new era in the history of Israel. Where prophets were few and far between before his time, there are now hundreds of prophets, and even a school of the prophets. Elijah appears at a time when prophets began to play a much more prominent role in the history of Israel.
I suspect there is another reason why Elijah is so popular—he is a man like us, a man with whom we can identify:
Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years (James 5:17, NIV).

Elijah is the “Peter” of the prophets. Elijah is a prophet who served God, but whose humanity (i.e., his weaknesses) is apparent as he does so.

Elijah just sort of appears in the Bible—we don’t know much about him prior to his appearance in I Kings.  We have his book in the Bible but that does not give us really any more than we already knew from Kings.  Elijah is considered to be one of the major prophets—that is, at least in biblical terms, his book in the Old Testament is one of the longer ones of the prophets.  Elijah, is probably the most beloved prophet and is closely linked with the Messiah and the future redemption of Israel.  The Jewish nation still believes that Elijah must return to earth prior to the Messiah returning.  This is one of, if not the main reason why the Jewish people still do not believe that Jesus was the Messiah.  Elijah had not returned so there could not be a Messiah, at least not yet. Now, some scholars believe that John the Baptist is the “Elijah” that paves the way for Jesus but that is a topic for another day.

So, a little history about Elijah.  After Elijah first is introduced in First Kings he immediately starts running into trouble and his main protagonist is King Ahab and his really wicked wife, Queen Jezebel.  And yes, this is the person that the term “Jezebel” comes from.  We saw sort of how that plays out in our Old Testament passage for today.  

Jezebel had ordered all prophets of God killed and chopped up with a sword (no wonder she gets a much deserved bad wrap!).  So Elijah has to disappear into the desert for a while (near present day Lebanon, ironically where Jezebel is originally from) and this is where he performs his first miracle. Elijah meets an old widow woman gathering sticks.  She is going to build a fire to make one last meal for herself and her son.  Elijah tells her that if she will feed him instead he will help them.  Now, put yourself in this woman’s place.  You have enough food for one last meal for yourself.  This man, who probably looks pretty rough because he has been wandering in the desert, asks you to give your last bit of food to him and then he will “help you”!  Now, I don’t know about you, but I would be a little bit, no maybe a whole lot, skeptical.  This lady did not know that Elijah was a man of God, a prophet.  All she knows is this man shows up wanting their food.  But, she does it, gives him her food.  Then, Elijah performs a miracle.  Oh, did I forget to mention that there is a drought in the land, that Elijah had been commanded by God to start, and there is no grain to be found anywhere!  Elijah then performs his miracle—he fills every pot in the house with grain, flour, and olive oil.  And, if that is not enough, he keeps the pots full until the drought ends!  This lady made a pretty wise choice, don’t you think!  


Elijah had other miracles he performed—one was that he stopped the Jordan River so he could walk across.  But Elijah is probably best known as the man who did not die.  One day, walking with his protégé, Elisha, a chariot of fire comes down, scoops Elijah up and takes him to heaven.  This is one of the reasons the Jewish people still today believe that Elijah must come back prior to the Messiah coming.  This is built into their tradition so much that, on the last meal on Friday, before their Sabbath, the youngest person in the home that is able, opens the door to look for Elijah.  If that person does not see Elijah, then they eat.  If they do see him, then, I guess they don’t eat because they wouldn’t think they would need to!

Today’s scripture from 1 Kings 21:1-21a tells us another story with some of those same, familiar actors.  Elijah, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel are recurrent players in the script in 1st Kings.  To make a sordid story short, Naboth had a vineyard that Ahab wanted so much he could taste it, and when Naboth refused either to sell or to swap, Ahab went into a good, old fashioned pout. "He laid him down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no food" (1 Kings 21: 4). It was the kind of opening Jezebel was always on the lookout for. Was he a king or a big baby she asked, and proceeded to take charge. Found guilty of a trumped up charge, Naboth got stoned to death, and Ahab got the vineyard. He also, needless to say, got a visit from Elijah.
 
Down through the years they'd kept meeting like that, usually in secluded places, always at critical moments. Ahab arrived incognito-the dark glasses, the Panama hat, the business suit-and Elijah with a ten-day growth of beard. Ahab addressed him in his usual informal way as a royal pain in the neck (1 Kings 21:20), and then Elijah let him have it with both barrels. When God got through with him, Elijah said, there wouldn't be enough left of Ahab to scrape off the sidewalk, and what was left, the dogs would take care of.  As for Jezebel, not only because of Naboth but also because of all her imported witchdoctors and totem poles and other idols, she would end up the same way.
 
Now, Ahab at least eventually would say he was sorry, and as a result was allowed to die honorably in battle, the part about the dogs coming true only in the sense that they got to lap the water up that his bloody chariot was hosed off with afterwards. Jezebel, on the other hand, continued unrepentant to the very end. When the time finally came, she was thrown out of the window, and when the dogs got finished, all that was left for the undertaker was "the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands" (II Kings 9:35).
 
One might divide the Ten Commandments into two parts, summarized so beautifully by the two Great Commandments, first, about loving God, and second, about loving our neighbor. In the same way, these two stories about Elijah illustrate the two strands of our spiritual/ethical DNA, so to speak: love of God means not worshipping false gods (idolatry – and we still do this today, in our own way), and love of neighbor of course requires the practice of justice as well as compassion.  
 
In every age, humans have a hard time getting these two things right, and the story of Naboth's vineyard is an ancient but enduring illustration of a powerful person's tragic failure to use that power for good rather than for his own selfish ends. Ahab has a coach in this: his wife, Jezebel, who not only doesn't know about the Law engraved on the hearts of Ahab's people but also doesn't care about it, except, as Old Testament scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann observes, to use it as a tool to accomplish her own selfish purposes.
 
In his failure, Ahab offends both God and God's people, and in that sense he breaks both commandments, because this is not simply a story of Naboth's private, personal property rights being violated, as they might be in any secular society. Here we read a story about God and God's attentive care for those underneath the high and mighty, those who are nevertheless very much on the mind of God. That's where those laws come from: the mind – and heart – of God, so Ahab and Jezebel offend God when they treat Naboth so unjustly.
 
So what is this story teaching us?  Is the message just that if you don’t use your power and authority correctly or to the glory of God, you will die a miserable death and have your blood lapped up by dogs?  Is it just that if you eventually say you are sorry, like Ahab does, you get to die a more glorious death?  
This text certainly provides a challenge for us in a culture that seems to replicate many of the things that were going on in the court of Ahab and Jezebel.  There are consequences for our actions and for the actions of others if we know they are doing something wrong and we do nothing about it, or if we stand by and let others do things that benefit us, we are participating in the wrongdoing just as if we had done it ourselves. 
We may not have the power of kings and queens, but we do have some power, and with it comes the responsibility to use it for good and not for our own selfish ends, individually or collectively.  In the end, though, what these stories are really about is hope. Hope that no matter what is happening around us or within us, that God is at work in the world and in our lives.  And even though it may not be in a way that we would think or even in a way that we would like or approve of, God is alive, present and working with us and through us.  Praise be to God!  Amen!