Don Friesen
Dorothy and I lived in Thompson, Manitoba for a time, and there is something about the north that invites exaggeration, if not outright lying. For example, when newcomers first encountered the large and ferocious mosquito population in the north, we were apt to tell them that the local airport had to put in an extra landing strip just for the mosquitos. When newcomers first descended into the nickle mine, they were told to watch out for the wild creatures that inhabited the labyrinth of dark caverns down there – mythical creatures, it turned out. First timers at a construction site were told to go fetch a sky hook or some other tool that did not exist.
One reality of the north that did not require any exaggeration were the ravens, which were so large that we called them "Thompson Turkeys". With a wing-span of up to four feet and a beak-to-tail length of 27 inches, they were impressive! Ravens are aggressive and intelligent scavengers, and most people, if they too were smart, learned to invest in metal garbage cans with tight lids. I have heard stories of ravens picking up a full bag of garbage, lifting it a few feet in the air and letting it drop repeatedly, until its contents are spread out for better access. Of course, I can't verify that story, but I did once see a raven pick up my co-worker's large lunch-bag and fly away with it! "Thompson Turkeys," we called them. There's even a Thompson Turkey recipe, prompting a newspaper columnist out of Toronto to discuss at length the appropriate wines to serve with it.
God Can Use Unusual People ...
It doesn't surprise me that God can use unusual people, but in the story of Elijah he even used ravens! God used ravens to bring Elijah food while he was hiding out. Jesus may have pointed to "the birds of the air" (Matthew 6:26) to draw a spiritual lesson, but I doubt he had ravens in mind, for the Old Testament law says, "These you shall regard as detestable among the birds. They ...are an abomination," and the birds listed include "every raven of any kind". (Leviticus 11:13-15) When God told Elijah that he had commanded ravens to bring him food (1 Kings 17:4), I don't imagine it pleased Elijah all that much. He may have preferred a robin or a meadowlark, or even a courier pigeon – but no – God chose an unclean scavenger bird! As the Apostle Paul noted, God really does choose "what is low and despised in the world" (1 Corinthians 1:28) to serve the Divine purpose.
Elijah would also qualify as low and despised, for when he makes his Old Testament debut in 1 Kings 17 he is immediately at odds with his king. Elijah was a prophet from Tishbe in Gilead, and when he told King Ahab to change his evil ways, Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, and their court probably laughed uproariously – here was this inexperienced prophet from Tish-where? Telling the king what to do? He was a nobody! He wasn't from a powerful family, he wasn't wealthy. There was nothing at all in Elijah's background to entice Ahab to listen.
In this first encounter with Ahab, Elijah announced that because of Ahab's unfaithfulness it was not going to rain again until Elijah said so. And Ahab and his friends may not have even remembered the momentary entertainment they had at the young prophet's expense until that spring, perhaps, when the usual rains didn't come. A drought had set in.
Elijah is in hiding within a few verses of his introduction, and within a chapter or two all manner of stuff happens. Elijah would go on to make quite an impact on Judaism and on New Testament writers, but not on Ahab, who came from a long line of unfaithful monarchs, all of which made for a rather grim and long narrative of wars and infidelities.
Elijah is an unusual figure, charismatic at times, reserved at other times. At times he shows great courage and boldness, while at other times he despairs of his task. Yet he so caught the imagination of his people that over the decades and centuries it was believed that he would return to herald the Messiah's arrival! That expectation is so strong that even today, at the Passover celebration, the door is left open for Elijah, and a place is set for him at the table.
Another unusual character in the early stories of Elijah is the widow of Zarephath. In time the water in the brook where Elijah was hiding stopped trickling altogether, due to the prevailing drought, and God told Elijah to move on to Zarephath, where he met a Phoenician woman. God chooses a Gentile woman to assist Elijah, long before the Apostles Paul and Peter crossed that divide. One of the ironies is that a widow, almost always synonymous with poverty, provides for Ezekiel while's he's in her country.
Zarephath was in Sidon, which, coincidentally, was Jezebel's home. Jezebel was the daughter of the Phoenician king, but she had married Ahab and when she moved to Israel she not only brought along her large retinue of Baal prophets, she persuaded Ahab to adopt Baal worship as well. Soon Baal shrines dotted the landscape, and not content with this, Jezebel also tried to minimize the power of the Hebrew prophets, when not ordering their execution.
Yet another unusual character in these stories is the god, Baal. Baal was a specific god in charge of rain, thunder, and lightening. The Elijah-inspired drought was making Baal look ineffectual! And Jezebel was not pleased.
... to Do Unexpected Things ... in Out-of-the-way Places
If the characters in the Elijah stories are unusual – Elijah; a Gentile woman; and two monarchs who worship a god of rain during an extended drought – the things that happen are also unusual, or unexpected. Firstly, an unknown prophet speaks truth to power. Most of the other Old Testament prophets are introduced with a resume, however brief. When we first meet Jeremiah, for example, we are told about his family, his jurisdiction, and that God chose him long before he was born. (Jeremiah 1:1-5) When we first meet Isaiah, we are told about his family and we receive his entire commissioning service (Isaiah 1:1; 6:1-13), but Elijah comes on the scene with no fanfare, and immediately approaches the king and draws a line in the sand. No warning! An unknown prophet confronting the king! The aristocratic Isaiah could at least gain entry to the royal court and receive a hearing. Jeremiah resisted God's call to speak truth to power, for he knew it was a thankless task. Elijah, on the other hand, barges in, but is ejected almost as quickly.
Another unusual event in these stories – ravens aside – is Elijah's move to Sidon, there to fraternize with the enemy! Indeed, Elijah has the chutzpah to ask a widow down to her last provisions, for food and hospitality, and even more unusual, the widow provides it! They form a mutually satisfactory relationship, but it hits a snag when the widow's son dies. She blames Elijah! (1 Kings 17:18) It could have ended the relationship, only Elijah brought the boy back to life and the widow recognized God's hand in this wonderful gift.
The most dramatic event, of course, is the showdown between Elijah and the 850 prophets of Baal. The drought had worsened, Israel was experiencing a famine, and God wanted Elijah to go see Ahab, even though at least a hundred of Israel's prophets were now in hiding (1 Kings 18:4), fearing for their lives, and Ahab had gone to great lengths to hunt down Elijah. Elijah, however, went to meet Ahab and challenged him to a contest to see who was more powerful: Baal, or the God of Israel.
It's an elaborate contest, Elijah audaciously raising the stakes as the contest continues – and using large amounts of water during a drought – until the prophets of Baal are defeated. Thereupon Elijah orders an end to the drought, but Jezebel is furious (1 Kings 19:1-2) about the loss of her Baal prophets and threatens to kill him. Elijah once again goes into hiding, only this time he's very discouraged, and it's only God's still voice – in contrast to the noisy sounds of Baal worship – that entices Elijah to re-emerge and continue his prophetic work.
The out-of-the-way places in which God chooses to work literally include the corridors of power and Jezebel's own country, as well as in the mountains, the wilderness, or wherever Elijah could hide while being pursued by his enemies. Figuratively, God seems to like working on the margins, in those out-of-the-way, across-the-border places which turn out, in the grand scheme of things, to be surprisingly important. There are so many contrasts in the Elijah stories, not only between power and powerlessness, and between hope and hopelessness, but between the important places in the centre of things – palaces, marketplaces, capital cities – and the really important things and events that happen out on the margins.
Lessons for us in the Stories of Elijah
That God often uses unusual people to do unexpected things in out-of-the-way places may hold some lessons for us. There are many lessons that come out of the Elijah stories, but I will mention only two, and the first is to trust God. For Elijah it started with the ravens. God sent the ravens to Elijah twice a day, in the morning, and then again in the evening. (1 Kings 17:6) The ravens didn't bring a week's worth of food at a time, although the ravens I knew in the north could have done so! They brought just enough and nothing more, meaning Elijah had to learn to trust God on a daily basis. It's a lesson from which we could benefit, to learn to move from self-sufficiency to trusting in the providence of God – to learn to move from self-reliance to reliance upon God.
Elijah would one day challenge the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, but before that could happen he had to grow in his level of trust. Elijah was also affected by the drought, and he had to trust, once his stream dried up and the ravens quit coming, that God would provide. That God would do so in enemy country, right in the heart of Baal worship, would not have been Elijah's first guess, but he learned to trust that God would provide, whatever the circumstances, much as Jesus taught his disciples, telling them, "Don't worry about ...what you are going to eat or drink, or what you are going to wear. Surely life is more important than food, and the body more important than the clothes you wear." (Matthew 6:25, PHL)
The second lesson we might take from Elijah has to do with imagination. In the Elijah story we read today Elijah prays for the widow's dead son to be restored to life – an almost unimaginable thing for which to pray – and he does so without much fanfare. In fact, there is a lot of praying in the Elijah stories. Walter Brueggemann says that these stories "open to the listeners in daring imagination the claim that the world does not need to be perceived or engaged according to dominant shapings of power, to privileged notions of authority, to conventional distributions of goods, or to standard definitions of what is possible." (Testimony to Otherwise: the Witness of Elijah and Elisha, page 35)
We pray because we dare to believe that something other than what already exists is possible! The usual, worn-out, despair-producing, cynicism-inciting ways of thinking and acting that we believe to be the way the world has to work does not have to be the case. It can be different! Elijah inspires us to pray with imagination! To give with unexpected generosity. To act with surprising compassion. To serve God in whatever place God places us. AMEN
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.