WE ARE NOT ALONE! NPMC. August 11, 2024
1 Kings 19:1-16
The 4th century Desert Fathers tell the story of a hermit who wanted to understand the meaning of a particular Scripture. He poured over this text day and night, asking God to reveal its meaning. For 70 weeks, he fasted, eating only once a week.
Finally he said to himself: “Look at all the work I have done without getting anywhere. I will go to one of my brothers and ask him.” He had barely gone out the door when an angel of the Lord appeared and spoke to him: “The 70 weeks you fasted did not bring you any closer to God, but now that you have humbled yourself and set out to ask your brother, I have been sent to reveal the meaning of this text.” What he could not find alone, an angel revealed to him as soon as he was willing to seek help from his brothers and sisters.
"Elijah is here!"
Elijah is one of the most mysterious characters in all of Scripture. These were the days of a bitter struggle between monotheism and polytheism. Israel was torn between the God of their escape from Egypt, and the local Baalite fertility gods who promised to influence rains and rams.
Elijah lived on the edge of the desert, a sort of old fashioned nomad who would appear out of nowhere to deliver an important message, and just as mysteriously disappear. The king sent messengers to consult with the prophets at a pagan shrine. On their way, they were accosted by "a man with a garment of hair and a leather belt around his waist" who described their assignment, and sent them back with a sobering message for the king.
That was Elijah's pattern. Burst on the scene with dramatic words or acts; vanish into the wilderness to lament his lack of success; there recoup strength for his next brazen encounter. His struggle seemed a solitary one. We catch only rare glimpses of Elijah consorting with other faithful prophets.
Though there are many important themes available to us in this passage, the one that seems especially poignant this morning is Elijah’s repeated plaintive lament - “I alone am left…” Yet immediately beyond today’s text, Elijah is sent to anoint kings for Syria and Israel, and his own successor. Then God adds: “Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” “I alone am left!” “Seven thousand in Israel…”
The larger truths for Elijah, and for us in our faith journeys, are, first, that there are times when it seems we walk alone. The second truth moves us beyond our lonely private discouragement and despair. There are, after all, those 7, or 7,000, or 7 million others.
I alone am left…
We’ve all heard the old saying: “Laugh, and the world laughs with you/ Weep, and you weep alone.” The author, Ella Wheeler, wrote this in 1883 after reflecting on her day spent on the train en route to a dance. Near her sat a recently bereaved widow dressed in black.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain. (Solitude)
There is truth in Ella Wheeler’s words. During such moments, we do feel very much alone.
This was certainly the case for Elijah. We find Elijah fleeing for his life, an Elijah in abject despair being fed, nourished and instructed by an angel. Both before and after a marvellous private revelation, God asks Elijah, “What are you doing here?” And twice, in verses 10 and 14, Elijah answers like a broken record. His words of self justification, his zeal for the Lord, are followed by a litany of everyone else’s misdeeds. Finally Elijah sums up his predicament in his pithy phrase “I alone am left.” And guess what? They’re seeking my life to take it.
Elijah’s isolation and loneliness feels awfully familiar. During such moments, if we were able to open slightly that shroud of blackness, we might at best catch some strains of an old tune. Many of you will recall that old Appalachian spiritual, “Jesus walked this lonesome valley.” Its origins apparently are a conflation of the Appalachian folk song tradition and the African American spiritual.
In the late 1800s, one of the early collectors of these “lonesome and love tunes” described their setting as a region that “from its inaccessibility (is) a very secluded one. There are but few roads—most of them little better than mountain tracks—and practically no railroads. Indeed, so remote and shut off from outside influence were, until quite recently, these sequestered mountain valleys that the inhabitants have for a hundred years or more been completely isolated and cut off from all traffic with the rest of the world.”
Jesus walked this lonesome valley.
He had to walk it by Himself;
O, nobody else could walk it for Him,
He had to walk it by Himself.
We must walk this lonesome valley;
We have to walk it by ourselves.
Oh, nobody else can walk it for us;
We have to walk it by ourselves.
Go, and anoint…
Elijah certainly walked that lonesome valley, and felt that he was walking that valley alone. “I alone am left,” he sobs. That, and the fear of his enemies, seemed to be Elijah’s last word on the matter. But this was not God’s last word.
“Go,” God said. This God who has spoken to Elijah in a “still small voice,” a “sound of sheer silence,” wants to remind Elijah of some things he in his despair has forgotten. Elijah seemingly cannot name the others who have also been faithful and zealous, even though they have been mentioned throughout these same Scripture passages. What about the Obadiahs who have risked their lives to rescue the hundred prophets of God, and those prophets themselves? What about that servant whom he dismissed just before this story. During such lonely moments, we forget those who share our commitments and struggles. As we turn our energies inward, we distort reality, robbing ourselves of the very supports we so desperately need.
Then God comes to us whether in the wind, earthquake, fire, or still small voice, and says “Go.” And that “Go” is followed by listing particular people with whom Elijah is to establish contact, people who will share Elijah’s purposes and struggle. In fact, even beyond those named, there is a yet larger number of people who share Elijah’s faith, a further 7,000 who have not bowed their knees to Baal.
A Togetherness Project
Christian faith was never envisioned as a solitary personal individualized project. Almost all the New Testament epistles are letters to groups of Christians, churches, or are letters to their leaders, replete with advice on how to help their congregations live better together as bodies of believers. Even the one notable exception, Philemon, is a letter to a Christian slaveowner, entreating him to receive his former slave as a brother. They are in this faith together.
Hebrews 10:23-25 admonishes us:
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching."
Many of you have experienced the support of this and other communities as you have faced important moments in your lives. Fellow believers have rejoiced with you in the birth of a child, have supported you in times of deep grief.
In his seminal work, What is an Anabaptist Christian, Palmer Becker answered his own questions about what are the “sacred” core values of Anabaptist Christians. He summarized those as 1. Jesus is the center of our faith. 2. Community is the center of our lives. 3. Reconciliation is the center of our work.
That is all well and good, but how do we deal with our Elijah moments. Like most North American Christians, we Mennonites have witnessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our community life, on church attendance. One recent survey noted that roughly a third of North Americans have stopped going to church. Most of us remember times when church balconies were full to bursting, when most of our neighbours also headed off Sunday mornings to their churches. We wonder why Mennonite churches are not immune to such patterns, why we alone are remaining faithful.
If “community is the centre of our lives,” if living the Christ life is a togetherness project, why are we so few in the global scene?
Those 7,000 plus
It is understandable that we may at times share Elijah’s sense of despair. But God has a larger picture. Just as God pointed out to Elijah that there were still 7,000 who had not bowed down to Baal, so we need to remember that we are part of much larger provincial, national and international bodies of believers spawned by that Anabaptist vision. Furthermore, there are Christians in mainline, Catholic and Evangelical circles who are leaders in advancing the core convictions of our Anabaptist forebears,
Next January 21st will be the 500th anniversary of those first adult baptisms in Zurich that sparked the Anabaptist Reformation. The Mennonite World Conference now counts almost 1.5 million baptized believers in over 10,000 churches. There are far more Mennonites in the global south, Africa, Asia and South America than in North America and Europe.
And if all the Mennonite churches were to falter, there are several neo-Anabaptist thinkers and groups springing up here and in Europe, both mega churches and house churches, groups that have captured the core Anabaptist vision. The British churchman Stuart Murray helped bolster this movement with his 2010 book, The Naked Anabaptist, his attempt to focus the core gifts of the Anabaptist Reformation. Many of these groups make ample use of small intentional discipleship groups and engage in radical peace making.
We are far from alone with our understanding of the core callings of our Christian faith.
And We are Called to Go
But the story of Elijah does not end with his despair, his sense of “I alone am left.” We have that iconic story of Elijah standing on the mountain as the wind roared, an earthquake shook, and a fire burned. It was then in the sheer silence that God spoke clearly to Elijah.
First, God allows Elijah to repeat yet again his complaint. ““I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
God has heard this lament, this broken record, before, but now God speaks. And the first divine word is “Go.”
And that is God’s first word to us as well. In Elijah’s case, there are specific things God wants the prophet to do, anointing kings and a successor.
I wonder if that is not the pattern for us as well during our times of discouragement. We can, and often do, spin the broken record, underscoring our being alone, our vulnerability.
But God says “Go.” Make contact with those other faithful ones. Do something about the current situation, whether that be speaking about our faith, acting upon that faith, comforting that grieving widow, supporting that grandchild, donating to that worthy cause, praying for peace. We too can anoint those forces for change.
And then comes that divine zinger. We didn’t read verse 18. But I will read it now. “Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
You are definitely not alone, Elijah. And neither are we. There are those thousands of fellow believers, millions in fact. And some of them are right here, and also in our neighbourhood and in our city and province and country.
We are not alone. And for that, we give God thanks.