The Story of Elijah, chapter 3 – 08/04/2024

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Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun

The Lord be with you.
Come Lord.
We need you just now.
Refresh our knowing you
Renew our delight in you
Reinfuse our trust in you
Rebuild our confidence in you.

Oh and Lord, tame our anxieties.
Our worries. Our fears.
Transform our resentments.
Our inclination to judge
Our desire to control others
Tamp down our anger.
And our outrage.
And our pride

We are just people caught up in the conflicts of the day
Pushed and pulled
Seldom consulted
Minimized
Powerless

Still, the Kingdom of heaven is at hand
We are your servants
We are your children
We are your friends
Open to us again your ways
Let us abide with you in all you are doing
For our friends
For our families
For our little communities.
And for those others we don’t understand so well
Strangers
The difficult
Our enemies

The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand
Fill us with all that means
Help us organize our days to receive it
Prepare our hearts
To gather in all the hope, joy, and healing you bring
And make us ready to celebrate fully
Amen

Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.

After many days
the word of the LORD came to Elijah,
in the third year, saying,
“Go show yourself to Ahab,
and I will bring rain upon the earth.”
So Elijah went
to show himself to Ahab 1 Kings 18:1-2

The village where Elijah had been living was on the Mediterranean coast, so I find it easy to imagine him walking the shoreline, allowing the onshore breeze to be refreshed. He listens to the rhythm of the waves and the squawking seagulls, and opens his heart to receive the moment. Then, hearing something else, he pauses, and shading his eyes from the glare of the sun’s bright reflection glancing off the ripples that stretch to the distant horizon, he looks and he listens. And now, after many days, the word of Yehovah comes to him–again.
Before we have finished reading the story of Elijah, we will have learned more about the mysterious Word of Yehovah, how it came to Israel’s prophets, how it empowered them to obey it, and then how we can condition ourselves to become sensitive enough to the voice of God when he speaks his word to us.

After three years of widespread famine, God is instructing Elijah to make his way back to Israel, and there to present himself to King Ahab. He is to give him the announcement that the drought is over, and rain is on the way. This would be welcome news in Samaria, where the famine had been severe, situated as it was in a hot, arid climate about seventy miles from the coast.
So Elijah tucks what few possessions he owns into his bedroll, slings the strap it over his shoulder, says goodby to the widow and her son, then makes his way to the Via Maris, on which he begins his journey south-east back to Israel and its capital city.

In Samaria, King Ahab’s attention has turned from his regular royal responsibilities to desperate efforts to guarantee his and his nation’s survival. At his side is his official aid, Obadiah, who managed the king’s personal affairs. Ahab summoned him to assist him on a quest to find whatever small source of water that had not yet dried up.
Since Obadiah is a new addition to the story, let’s get to know him.

The first thing we discover is that Obadiah was a devoted follower of Yehovah, and in spite of the fact he lived in the northern kingdom which had separated itself from Judah and the temple of God. The name, “Obadiah” means servant of Yah (Yah being a short form for Yehovah–like its meaning in the word hallelujah). And it turns out that Obadiah had an unusually deep reverence for God. At times, he was even willing to take certain risks for God.
Do you remember that when Queen Jezebel came to Israel. she brought her Baalim (gods) with her? Determined to replace Yehovah with the deities of her own country, Jezebel engaged a campaign to either kill the prophets of Yehovah or drive them out of Israel. When she began to cut off God’s prophets, Obadiah used his own resources to shelter and provide food and water for one hundred of them, dividing them into two groups of fifty and hiding them in two different caves.

Time out.
I can imagine someone asking, “Why do we need to know about Obadiah? Why can’t we skip over him and go straight to Elijah’s confrontation with Ahab? That’s the main event. Why go off-trail at this point?” My standard and annoying answer is, “That’s a good question.”
Anyway, as long as we’re asking questions, I have one that eats at me: Why are we told Obadiah’s name? We never learned the names of either the widow in Sidon or the name of her son the whole time Elijah lived with them. One could argue that he spent more time with them, and their role in his story is more important than Obadiah’s, and takes up more narrative space, so why do they have to be anonymous? Or, if we don’t know their names, why do we have to know Obadiah’s. After all, he has only this one small role in Elijah’s story.
Of course, a partial answer is that this is characteristic of male-dominated cultures. Men enjoy unique privileges of status, control, and opportunity, while women and children turn invisible as if they were mere shadows. But it is not always true that in the Scriptures men are named and women are unnamed. Some male characters have important roles, yet they’re not named, and some women with lesser roles are named. So there’s more to it than gender assignments–though that still is a factor.
I doubt that there is one single or simple reason for naming and not naming characters in the biblical stories. What that means for us, is that it might be well to pay attention to this detail in each specific story. We may need to look at what we learn about a person’s identity by what they do or say rather than by the meaning of their names. We might also pay attention to whether we can see ourselves in some of these unnamed characters. In many instances, does it matter at all if the person is anonymous? On the other hand, is not having a name sometimes an addition to the development or tension inherent in the plot?

Let’s get back to Obadiah . . . . He’s here, and I think it is okay for us to ask, “Why is he here?” One possibility for his inclusion, is that it highlights the potential cruelty of King Ahab. We learn from Obadiah’s participation in the story, that Ahab could be quick to execute someone for a petty offense. Israel’s kings tended to gravitate in one of two directions. The administration of some, like King David, demonstrated genuine care for the people, and they fulfilled the analogy of a shepherd with a flock of sheep. The other type of king was that of an autocrat, whose administration was cruel and self-serving. Those kings treated the people as if they were his slaves.
Another possible reason for including Obadiah’s brief appearance, is that he highlights Jezebel’s role as a threat to Israel’s true religion and an instigator of persecution of God’s appointed prophets. Her influence over Ahab is emphasized in his obituary, where we read, “There was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of Yehovah like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited.”
One other contribution Obadiah makes to our understanding of scripture is an insight into the mysterious nature of the inspiration and extraordinary behavior of the prophets. Though these characteristics are discernable in their stories, Obadiah provides a clear expression of the way Elijah was subject to the unexplainable movements of God’s Spirit.

King Ahab called for Obadiah and told him, “You are going to scour the entire countryside to the north looking through all the valleys and known springs of water. I’ll go south and do the same thing. Hopefully we will find enough vegetation to save our horses and mules, so that we don’t lose all of our livestock.”
That was the plan.

While Obadiah was out searching for water, look what happens! Suddenly Elijah is right in front of him. Obadiah immediately dropped to his knees, then looking up he asked, “Is it really you, my lord Elijah?” I don’t think it’s my imagination that I hear a slight tremor in his voice. Elijah answered him, “It is I.” Then Elijah–as if he were Obadiah’s lord–gives him an order. He tells him, not without irony, “Go tell your lord,” meaning King Ahab, “Look, Elijah is back!”
That’s it. No greeting, no congratulations for rescuing God’s prophets, just the clipped command.
Immediately, Obadiah panics. “What is my sin, that you’re sending me on an errand to King Ahab that will end my life? I swear, as Yehovah your God lives, it’s the truth–that my lord Ahab has sent emissaries to every nation surrounding us to see if you were hiding out in any of them. If they answered no, that you were not there, he would make them take an oath to confirm they had looked, but not found you.
“And now, you’re telling me to go to my lord and say, ‘Look, Elijah has returned’? As soon as I leave on this fool’s mission, the Spirit of Yehovah is going to lift you up and carry you off to God-knows-where, and when Ahab comes here looking for you and can’t find you, he’ll execute me on the spot! Do I deserve this? I have been a reverent servant of God from the time I was a small child. Haven’t you heard how I rescued a hundred prophets of Yehovah when Jezebel was trying to kill of all of them? I supplied them with safe shelter and food and water. And now you’re telling me, ‘Go tell your lord, “Look, Elijah is here!”’ and when I do, Ahab will kill me!”
Elijah drew a deep breath, so that when he spoke his words were both reassuring and forceful. “As Yehovah of heaven’s armies lives, before whom I stand, I will for certain show myself to him today.” That was all. It was settled. Obadiah got up on his feet, went and found King Ahab, and told him Elijah was back. Then Ahab went to meet the prophet.

I’m going to stretch Elijah’s words a little for the sake of illustration. In God’s initial command to Elijah, he told him to go and show himself to Ahab, and now the prophet swears that he will show himself to the king. It is as if Elijah must put on a show.
It would not be like Elijah to simply walk into Ahab’s court and present himself to the king, or send him an invitation to meet for coffee, or use some other conventional form of working out a conference. There needed to be suspense, fanfare, some drama. He needed to make a show of it. Ahab had to know that an encounter with a prophet of God was not like any normal appointment, not even like meeting with a diplomat or king.
Prophets showed up in public at critical moments. They came when people absolutely needed to hear what God had to tell them. And oftentimes when the prophets showed up they came with a prop, a gimmick, or perhaps a performance of some bizarre act. One time a prophet wore a disguise and another time a prophet wore nothing at all. Usually, the strange actions of prophets were performed at God’s command, but I suspect that in some instances they planned their own choreography. But nothing they did was meant to draw attention to themselves. Everything pointed to the message they had been given–pointed to the powerful word of Yehovah.

Ahab’s initial greeting repeated the exact words of Obadiah, “Is it really you?” Only Ahab did not refer to Elijah as lord, but asked, “Is it really you, you troublemaker of Israel?” Elijah uses Ahab’s insult to go directly to the issue at hand, “Oh no, I am not the one who has brought this trouble on Israel, it is you and your father’s dynasty. You have abandoned Yehovah’s commandments and devoted yourself to the Baalim. So let’s run an experiment to prove which one of is the troublemaker. Go and round up all of 400 of Jezebel’s prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, and summon all the people of Israel to Mount Carmel. There we will see who is the true God!”

From the time I first heard this story from my grandmother, I’ve wanted to do something like Elijah did. I wanted his boldness. I wanted to receive and deliver a powerful word from God. I wanted to call down fire from heaven and prove to others that God is, and that he can be known and trusted and followed.
I’ve wanted to be Elijah, but I’m Obadiah. I’m comic relief. What Robert Alter said about Obadiah is that “he is a good man . . . but he is also an ordinary man, susceptible to fear.” I realize, I don’t need to be any more than that. I am a bit player, a link in a chain. I’m not the beautiful pendant hanging from the necklace or bracelet. I’m not the clasp that holds the chain together. I’m only a link like any other link–not celebrated, yet necessary.
I hope that we can accept the role God has given us in the drama played out on the stage of our lives. Even if we have just a few lines, I hope we memorize them well–that we ingest and internalize them until they become our truth, and we can deliver them smoothly and clearly.
What does it mean to be a bit player? All Obadiah had to do was deliver the message God gave to him through Elijah. We only have to play the role God gives to us, and though it may require courage, adaptation, and some hard work, it is doable. We’re like the servants at the wedding reception, where the hosts ran out of wine. Mary pointed to her son, Jesus, and told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” That’s the role of the bit player. Do whatever Jesus tells you.
Yesterday morning I was reading Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. It seemed to me that what he told them was wise and godly counsel for us in our politically divided and hostile culture. He wrote, “See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone” (1 Thes. 5:15)
This is our role for the short time we spend on earth. We do good. But more than that, we are to be good, or become good. Jesus tells us, “Go. Go into the world, not as troublemakers but as healers, reconcilers, lovers of all regardless of who they are or what they have done. And remember, I am always with you to the end of time.”