Elijah - Sermon for Week Ending September 5, 2020

Reading:

Our reading for today is from 1 Kings 19: 4-10.

Elijah went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a lone broom bush and collapsed in its shade, wanting in the worst way to be done with it all—to just die: “Enough of this, God! Take my life—I’m ready to join my ancestors in the grave!” Exhausted, he fell asleep under the lone broom bush.

An angel shook him awake and said, “Get up and eat.”

He looked, and to his surprise, right by his head were a loaf of bread baked on some coals and a jug of water. He ate the meal and went back to sleep.

The angel came back, shook him awake again, and said, “Get up and eat some more—you’ve got a long journey ahead of you.”

He got up, ate and drank his fill, and set out. Nourished by that meal, he walked forty days and nights, all the way to the mountain of God, to Horeb. When he got there, he crawled into a cave and went to sleep.

Then the word of God came to him:   “Elijah, what are you doing here?”

Sermon: 

In the book of 1 Kings is the story of Elijah the prophet and Ahab, the king of Israel.

Ahab was a bad king, and his wife, Jezebel, was worse. They used their power to promote the Canaanite God, Baal over the Hebrew God, Yahweh. When drought and famine came to the land, Ahab blamed Elijah and Yahweh, and Elijah blamed Ahab and  Baal. So they set up a contest to see whose God was the best. Elijah told Baal’s priests to cut up a bull for an offering, place it on the wood, and pray to their God to light it with fire. They did, and nothing happened. Then Elijah did the same, even drenching the wood and the meat with water. He prayed to Yahweh, and fire came from heaven and consumed everything, including the stones beneath the wood. Elijah then made it rain, ending the drought. But he didn’t stop there. In his fervor, he killed all the Baal’s priests. Thinking that the war was over, he went to the palace of Ahab and Jezebel to gloat, but Jezebel promised him that it was not over, and that she would kill as many of his people as he had hers. As we heard in our reading, Elijah then walked deep into the wilderness, sat down under a tree, and asked Yahweh to take his life. Like most biblical stories, this one has almost as many interpretations as there are interpreters. Some say that Elijah didn’t have enough faith in God. Others say that he was wallowing in self-pity. I don’t agree with either of those. I chose this passage because September is suicide prevention month. And I believe Elijah was suffering depression, so deep that he couldn’t find a way out except to die. When Elijah left Jezebel, It wasn’t just fear that sent him to the wilderness. It was despair, maybe a result of the shame he felt for killing the priests when the war was already won, together with his thought that no matter what he did, the Israelites were abandoning their faith in Yahweh. The text doesn’t say what brought him to this place of hopelessness. And that’s how depression is. You can’t just point to one thing and say that was the final straw. But it does say that he lay down and slept. And those of us who suffer with it know that depression is mentally and emotionally exhausting. But the response to Elijah’s depression is what kept him alive that day. An angel came, gave him nourishment, and let him go back to sleep. Then Yahweh came and asked him gently, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Yahweh didn’t judge him, or tell him to snap out of it, or remind him of all he had to be grateful for. Yahweh invited him to look inward. Elijah, what has brought you to the point that you want to die? and then listened to him. And that gentle caring gave Elijah the strength to decide to live another day. He continued on his journey to do the work God chose him for. And that journey led him to meet the prophet, Elisha, who became his dearest friend and his constant companion, so that he didn’t have to face the dark times alone. We know that depression, left untreated, can lead to suicidal thoughts and actions. In a recent survey, young adults reported 4 times more depression since the pandemic began.  A quarter of those have increased their abuse of alcohol and drugs.

At the same time, access to mental health treatment has dropped because of the pandemic. 132 Americans die by suicide every day, and the suicide rate has increased every year for the last 13 years. For veterans, it is 1 and a half times higher than for non-veterans. We still don’t know enough about depression to completely understand it. We know there is no cure, although there are treatments.

But there are things we can do when someone that we love is in the throes of it.  And the most important one is to be the friend, the companion that they need so they don’t have to face the darkness alone. Pastor and author John Pavlovitz, who suffers from depression, shares some of what he was feeling on a day that he came very close to taking his own life. He said, “Depression brings a heavy and hovering despair. After months of a slow and steady slide into a now lingering sadness, all my exhausted mind could process was, I’m done. It didn’t matter that the objective evidence of my lifesaid that I should be happy. That I had much to be grateful for, to live for. None of that registered in the moment. I somehow stepped back that day. I had just enough of my reserves of energy, to realize that I needed to stay. I needed to keep going. Then I let a few people into the hell I was walking through so that I wasn’t walking it alone. I try to hide my depression, because I feel like a burden. There are likely people around you who you love dearly who are also hiding it. Do your best to see them and to step into their lives and let them know that they matter and that you want them to stay.”

That is something we can do for those we love.  And maybe, hopefully, it will be enough to give them the energy to keep going a little longer, so that we can gather resources to help them find the treatment that they need.