The Story of Elijah chapter 5 – 08/18/2024

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Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun

Come Lord, come
Pull us out of our overworked minds
Set us free from our expectations
Walk us into the life you have promised us

Grant us the presence of your love
and the grace to receive it
To hold it close.
Let us not fight it
Argue it down
Preempt it
Defend ourselves against it
Let us not return to our substitutes
Or our counterfeits
Or our workarounds

Compel us with your love
Your gentleness
Your kindness
Your patience
Remind us of your everlasting care
Your regard for our well-being
You desire for our restoration

Today we ask that you break through
our despair and distraction
And even to shake us a little if you must
So we can be with you
Aware of your presence
And enveloped in your great good love
Amen

Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.

And Elijah said to Ahab,
“Go up, eat and drink,
for there is a sound of the rushing of rain” 1 Kings 18:41

Elijah found King Ahab sitting off by himself still as a statue, staring into nothing, and his face coated in confusion. Ahab wondered, “What just happened? How could it have happened?” His feud with Elijah had ended suddenly in a phenomenon of fire and blood. His army of prophets failed to rouse their Bah-al god, while from the sky Yehovah answered Elijah with a spectacle never before seen. The king was defeated, but it was a strange loss that left him groping for his next move. Elijah had proved himself to be the real deal, and Yehovah proved himself to be the true God. Would Ahab now have to switch gods? Reform his rule over Israel? Defy his wife Jezebel?
Elijah’s voice broke his trance. “Ahab,” he called to him, “Go up higher, get something to eat and drink. There’s a sound of thundershowers coming our way.”
Ahab couldn’t hear anything that sounded like the rumble of thunder or spatter of rain. No one else heard sounds of an advancing storm. What did Elijah see that no one else could see? What could Elijah hear that no one else could hear.
“This is where it all began,” the King said to himself. Elijah had shown up out of nowhere, prophesying, “No rain will fall on Israel until at my word.” Then came the drought, and for those three years Elijah had disappeared. A few days ago he reappeared, which meant the land would finally receive the water it needed to come alive again. Ahab looked up; there was not a cloud in the sky. But still he stood up and did as Elijah told him. He hiked up the next slope, and ordered his attendants to bring him a meal. He thought to himself, “Well, this is one thing I can do–I can eat.”

Elijah told King Ahab to go up, and Ahab went up. Then Elijah, headed up the mountain too. The direction they moved was “up,” toward the sky–perhaps because the fire of God had fallen from the sky, and now if there rain was on the way, it too would come from up in the sky. So Elijah hiked upward, all the way to the top of Mount Carmel, and once he reached the summit he went down. He bent his body over until his head was between his knees and his face on the ground. From that humble desperate posture, he spoke to his servant.
Wait! When did Elijah acquire a servant? Was this someone in the crowd who had witnessed the miracle and then volunteered to become his assistant? Here is one of the missing pieces in the story. Another missing piece is the sound of “rushing rain” that apparently only Elijah was able to hear. Then another oddity, that when bowing on the ground, we expect Elijah to start praying to God, but instead, he spoke to his servant. It’s obvious that we do not have the whole story, but what we have instead is a story with holes in it. Maybe there’s a rational way to fill in the holes. Or maybe we’re to use our imagination to traverse the gaps. Or maybe we’re supposed to live with the mystery.
Elijah told his servant, “Go over to the bluff that looks out over the ocean, then come back and tell me what you see.” From the top of Mount Carmel a panorama of the Mediterranean Sea is visible all the way to the horizon on a clear day. When the servant returned, he gave Elijah a brief report, “There’s nothing.” Elijah told him, go back and look again.
The story at this point becomes a little fuzzy. All we read is that Elijah told his servant, “‘Go again,’ seven times.” That can mean one of two things: either each time the servant went to look out at the sea, he came back with the same answer, and each time Elijah told him to go again. Otherwise, Elijah’s instruction was to go and come back seven times without Elijah repeating his order each time. If this were the case, seven would be the magic number serving as a catalyst for the miracle. How could this make sense? It’s a credible possibility, because Elijah’s successor, Elisha would later on tell a Syrian commander that if he wanted to be healed of his leprosy, he would have to go immerse himself in the Jordan River seven times. If so, we would have to figure out the importance of the number seven on our own. The stories of the two prophets give us no clue.

The seventh time that the servant returned to Elijah, he had a different report. “Well, finally I saw something. It was the wisp of a cloud about the size of a human hand rising from the sea.” Immediately Elijah was on his feet. “Go up,” Elijah ordered his servant, “and tell Ahab to get to his chariot and ride down into the valley all the way to Jezreel before the rain makes travel impossible.”
Within a few minutes, dark clouds driven by a fierce winds filled the sky and shadowed the earth. A sudden cloudburst unleashed a torrent of rain that would soon fill the Kishon River, and every stream and cistern to overflowing.
Ahab whipped the reins of his chariot and sped off into the darkness and downpour. Elijah quickly gathered his robe, securing it around his waist with his sash, and began running. He sprinted down the mountain and into the valley with an agility and speed that had to be supernatural. Indeed, the hand of Yehovah was on Elijah, so that he reached the gates of Jezreel ahead of Ahab.

That’s enough excitement for today.

I have often wondered why the Scriptures do not say that Elijah bowed with his face to the ground and prayed. It feels like his action is incomplete or unfinished. A prayer would be the perfect touch. Here he was, on the ground, reaching for the sky. Prayer would make the connection between heaven and earth.
But, then again, we are not told Elijah did not pray. In fact, there were so many times when people kneeled to pray, that maybe we’re supposed to assume that is what he was doing. I have come to believe that Elijah was praying with his body. There is such a thing as wordless prayer. And now that I think about it, prayers in the Scriptures were frequently offered with body parts.
“Let my prayer be counted as incense before you,
and the lifting of my hands as the evening sacrifice” (Ps. 141:2)
“O LORD, open my lips
and my mouth will declare your praise” (Ps. 51:15)
“Then I turned my face toward the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy” (Dan. 9:3)
I remember also the woman who poured perfume on Jesus’ feet, and the other woman whose prayer consisted mostly of tears and kissing Jesus’ feet.
In his book, Reclaiming the Body in Christian Spirituality, Thomas Ryan wrote, “When we pray, we should do so as a whole person and with those gestures and postures that seem most natural to us and are most meaningful for us.”

If we’re going to put our whole self into prayer, then we must pray with our bodies. What we do physically gives expression of what is going on in us spiritually. Sometimes, the position or actions of our bodies can make us more awake in prayer and more aware of our intention, our purpose, and the words we use in conversations with God.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters,” Paul wrote, “by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Ro. 12:1)

If prayer is more than making requests, or confession, or expressing our anxieties, or praise–if it is also a conversation, then it includes listening to God. There are many things that go on within us that our bodies try to tell us. Much of it we choose to ignore. If it is not painful enough, or the itch is not annoying enough, or our movements aren’t restricted enough, we go on doing what we want without paying attention to our bodies. Too frequently, it seems there are other things going on that are more important than these bodies.
But what if one of the ways God speaks to us is through our bodies? What if he gives us warnings through what we sometimes call “gut feelings”? What if he wants to alert us to a gift that is nearby, and we need to look around in order to see it? Our bodies give us clues to situations that don’t register in our conscious minds, and it might be beneficial to develop a greater sensitivity to the subtle way that God may use our bodies to get through to us when our minds are too busy to pay attention to his voice.

A few years ago, someone I considered a friend destroyed our relationship by an intentional breach of trust. God worked patiently with me for a long time before I could honestly feel, that with a pure heart, I was able to forgive this person. Eventually, I got to a place that I could pray for him and even ask God to bless his life. However, one day I ran into him in person, and my instant response was revulsion. My insides felt like they were being shredded and I had to strain to speak a coherent sentence. I wanted to turn and bolt in the opposite direction.
Afterward, I was miserable, like all that time and effort I spent in prayer to reach forgiveness was lost. That either my forgiveness wasn’t real or else I relapsed and had to start all over again. But later on, after learning more about myself and gaining insight from much study, I came to a realization. My forgiveness for that person was real. In all honestly, I no longer harbored ill will toward him. What happened to me when I saw him was not related to any conscious thought or emotion, but was an automatic visceral response set off by my nervous system–and more specifically, my autonomic nervous system. My body remembered the painful ordeal of the past and immediately sensed danger.
That reaction, in itself, was not God speaking to me. However, as I worked through the entire ordeal, God did speak to me, bringing me to a better understanding, a greater sense of wholeness, and peace.
It’s not that my body can’t get it wrong sometimes, or never overreact, or is always a reliable indicator of safety or danger, but that regardless of what it tells me, I need to take time to listen. Being aware of what my body is saying to me, gives me the opportunity to evaluate it rationally and discern whether or not God is speaking to me. Then I have the option of taking it seriously or discarding it. Either way, I’m no longer unconscious of it nor ignoring it.

When Elijah bowed down on Mount Carmel, he prayed with his body. We bring our whole person to God. Paul talked about praying with his mind and with his spirit. So I’m okay with the Scriptures not specifically saying Elijah prayed using words. However, I cannot say that I’m clear on every detail in this story.
Is it possible that being confused at how God works is oftentimes a normal human response? That doesn’t change what is expected of us. We can still follow as God leads, and do what he wills. We can keep on going seven times to look at the sky and see if there’s a rain cloud in sight. And we can learn to be at peace with not knowing. Good grief! I don’t even know how my cell phone works, how its technology allows it to communicate with satellites, How am I going to understand God’s ways? When he doesn’t explain things to me, I will trust him.

You see, three years was a long time to go without rain, to watch the food supply dwindle, to swelter under a relentless sun. But, the drought finally broke! At first the sign did not look like much–a cloud no bigger than a human hand. That would be like earning the first two dollars to pay off a ten-thousand dollar debt. Nevertheless, once the sign appeared, the entire storm came rapidly, and relief came to the parched earth.

Can we remind ourselves this week, “The Lord has not forgotten me”? Our drought, however that comes into your life and my life, will break at last. Then life–wonderful, free, joyful, abundant life.