Well, our Bible story does end with a good question. What are you doing here, Elijah?
What are you doing here? Well, that's not so much a question as three questions,
depending on where you put the emphasis. What are you doing here? A question of availability.
What are you doing here? A question of identity.
What are you doing here? A question of activity.
Now this question, this threefold interrogation is worth taking seriously because of who is asking
the question. The asker is the Lord, the God of Israel.
The one who made Sarah laugh with a child of promise. The one who made Jacob limp after a night of
wrestling. The one who caught Moses' eye and then Moses' ear on this very same mountain.
Do you remember that conversation at the burning bush when Moses is called to a mission of
liberation? But he won't go and start that mission until God shares with him God's personal proper
name. In 1 Kings 19, if you were reading along, it is that God called by that personal proper name.
That name is signaled to us anytime you see the word Lord. in all capital letters,
that means that underneath it in the Hebrew is God's proper name, Y-H-W-H.
We don't even know how to pronounce it, so we substitute in Lord. It's that God who speaks,
that named, known, covenanted God, who initiates that third conversation all the way on Mount Horeb
with Elijah. But it's still a very odd word of the Lord,
right, that comes to Elijah on that morning. It's a question, right?
Normally the word of the Lord is a declaration or a command. We're accustomed to hear from the Lord
indicatives and imperatives. Indicative declarations like,
I am the Lord your God. Or imperative commandments like,
You shall have no other gods before me, or you shall love and care for the stranger in your midst.
Usually indicatives and imperatives, declarations and commandments,
rather than interrogations, questions.
Interrogations seem more the style of attorneys, right, doing cross-examination, or professors
like me giving a final examination. Or a therapist who's beginning to help you process a life
trauma or to gain some needed self-awareness. And perhaps all three of those dimensions are
wrapped into this word of the Lord that came to Elijah in that moment.
The attorney. The prosecutor. Permission to treat the witness as hostile.
What are you doing here, Elijah? Or the professor. I want you to close your computer.
I want to take out your pencil and your blue book. And I've got a question for you. What are you
doing here, Elijah? Or the shrink? Just settle back and get very comfortable.
You can lay down or sit up. You can close your eyes or keep them open. Whatever feels good to you.
What are you doing here, Elijah?
Whichever approach it is, let's unpack those questions that the Lord is asking in all three
dimensions. beginning with the question, what are you doing here? It's the question of
availability. Where is Elijah?
I've said it three times.
He's on Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai. He's in the very place where Moses encountered the burning
bush, where Israel received the Ten Commandments. Where is Elijah? He's not in Israel anymore,
where evil Ahab and idolatrous Jezebel rule. where power has trampled truth,
where Jezebel has signed a death warrant against Elijah. Elijah left there and ran as far south as
he could go. He crossed the border, left behind the political jurisdiction of Ahab and Jezebel.
It's like, you know, you think if the highway patrol is chasing you and you just get across the
state line, they have to turn around, right? Whew, made it. But he didn't just get all the way
south to Judah, which would have seemed like a safe place to stop and hide.
He fires his servant. He goes another full day's journey into the desert. He lays down under a
tree, a broom bush in some of our translations. And he says, Lord, let me just die here under this
tree. If Elijah had had his way, that tree would have become his gravestone,
right? His tomb marker. And there would be no conversation. We'd never have gotten to the what are
you doing here part. But in that same wilderness, where the Lord had provided manna for Israel for
40 years, the Lord provides again for this Israelite Elijah.
He lays down to die, but what does he wake up to? The smell of fresh baked bread and the sight of a
jar full of cooling water. And an angel touches him and says,
get up and eat. Not a command so much as an invitation.
This is viaticum, the Latin word of food for the journey ahead.
But Elijah doesn't know it. He just gets up and eats and thinks to himself, I guess it'll take me
another day to die. Goes back to sleep. The angel of the Lord wakes him up again and says this
time, wake up and eat for the journey ahead is too much for you.
The journey ahead is too much for you. And Elijah's thinking, well, the journey behind me is
already too much for me. How much more of the journey ahead? It's the same food, it's the same
drink, and it's graciously offered a second time as a way of strengthening Elijah for the journey.
A too-much-for-you journey where he will encounter God on Mount Horeb,
a God that we could also describe as a too-much-for-us God. Going to where...
about to take a journey to a God whose amazing grace and abounding love is more than we could ever
ask or imagine. So this morning I'm calling that God our too-much-for-us God.
And God is going to ask him when he gets there, what are you doing here?
The same question we could ask ourselves right now, right here. What are you doing here?
What am I doing here? Well, on a communion Sunday, surely we can answer that we have come back here
again and again, not to fall asleep under a broom bush or fall asleep in the pew.
But to be reawakened by this unexpected yet expected offer,
take and eat. Come to the table and receive here our too much for us God.
Receive here strength for an otherwise overwhelming journey.
Now to that second dimension of the question, what are you doing here?
It's a question of identity.
Elijah was the Michael Jordan of prophets.
He was the Meryl Streep of prophets. He was so great as a prophet that when Jesus was transfigured
on the mountain just before his passion and crucifixion, the two people that Jesus conferred with
were Moses and Elijah. Elijah.
Now, for chapters on end in 1 Kings, Elijah has been the confident prophet of the Lord God.
But not now. Not here in chapter 19. Maybe it's the natural letdown after great triumph like he had
over the prophets of Baal. Maybe it's a very healthy fear of devious politicians like Jezebel with
her death threats.
Maybe it's the dead of winter and Elijah has seasonal affective disorder on top of all these other
issues. We can psychologize what's going on with Elijah all day long.
We don't know for sure why he was afraid and ran for his life, but we know that he did. And we know
that his flight south becomes far more than just a safety precaution.
He's not just evacuating the building. No. He is,
in a sense, entering into witness protection. He is trying to surrender his old identity as prophet
of God and troublemaker of Israel. That's what Ahab called him.
He's trying to give all that up. So he leaves the place where God has called him to be a prophet.
He fires his servant. who is clearly a sign that he is a prophet,
and he prays under the broom bush, I give up.
It's a resignation speech, even if he didn't hand in a resignation letter to go with it.
It's, I've had enough. I can't go on. I quit. He no longer wants the identity given to him by the
Lord. He wants to give up. his calling to be God's agent,
God's herald of good news.
So when God says, what are you doing here, Elijah? That question of identity is an invitation to
him to take back that letter of resignation, to be reclaimed and reconnected and recommitted to his
calling. Now, We may not have jumped in our car this morning and driven as far south as we could
go, the Florida Keys or Guatemala. We may have not handed in to God our letter of resignation,
but there are times when we want to resign from our baptismal calling.
To do the very thing that one of those four resolutions said. We want to resign from our baptismal
calling to resist evil and injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.
We want to resign from our calling to be witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
To be His representatives in the world. That's our calling. To be prophets of a crucified and risen
Lord. And it's a huge calling. So huge, in fact, that like Elijah,
we sometimes find it exhausting and discouraging and scary.
And we want to run away. We attempt to be released into rest by quitting.
By quitting. But wherever we run, whether we get to the Florida Keys,
I'd like to try this out, actually, or to Guatemala, God is already there.
God is already there. Jonah found this out in the belly of a whale. God was already there.
The Lord is waiting there to welcome and strengthen us and to invite us to reconsider our
resignation, to invite us to remember that our true strength for the challenge of discipleship is
not the effort that we put forth. but the God that we follow. Our true strength is not the
determination that we can muster up, but the Lord Jesus Christ whom we follow.
So on this Communion Sunday, our Lord invites us to this table of recommitting,
of restrengthening, of revitalization.
The answer to What are you doing here is receiving your life,
Lord. Receiving your strength, Lord. Receiving, again, your purpose.
And at that point, it sounds like I've already crossed over into the third dimension of the Lord's
question. What are you doing here? That question of activity.
Sunday after Sunday.
Our answer to the question, what are you doing here, is we're worshiping the God of Abraham and
Sarah. We are worshiping the God of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath.
We are worshiping the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So no matter how threatening the
world or how desolate the moment, week after week, we ascend the mountain of God to hear again the
word of the Lord. to feast again at the Lord's table and to be strengthened to continue the
journey. And then we go on and go out into a world that is both beautiful and dangerous.
We go out into lives that can be wonderful but also very mundane. And we do what comes naturally to
followers of Jesus Christ. Love and serve, forgive and heal.
Our strengthening to do that work may not last 40 days or 40 nights.
You think the sermon has lasted 40 days and 40 nights. Our strengthening may not last 40 days and
40 nights because we're not Elijah, but it will sustain us for the coming week. It will keep us
until we come again to this mountain, to this place where the Lord asks us most pointedly,
what are you doing here?
Let's answer, Lord, we are meeting you. Lord, we are loving you.
Lord, we are receiving you. Let the people say, Amen.