Tag: Elijah

We sing your praise, Eternal God

Elijah in the cave,
William Brassey Hole (1846-1917) 

Today’s song from Sing Praise is, perhaps we should say, the title track: “We sing your praise, eternal God” by Alan Gaunt.  Verse 3 gives a clue to its origins: references to wind, earthquake and fire (representing the turmoils of life that “kill love and stifle prayer”) suggest it’s based on Elijah’s experience in the desert cave in 1 Kings 19, where he pours out his troubles in prayer before experiencing these natural forces in which he failed to find God.

A parallel theme, also found in that desert experience, works its way through the hymn, at least in verses 1,2 and 4: that of sound and silence. “We can never match your love, however loud our songs” … “Your love which comes so silently through all the noise we hear” … “No sound on earth can drown the silence we have heard”.  God revealed his love for Elijah, and comforted him, through silence, not speech or natural forces. The right balance between work, worship and contemplation in the Christian life is difficult to achieve, especially for those of us who prefer action to stillness, but sometimes stillness is what we need.

Although Elijah went away from Horeb refreshed by the revelation of God in the silence, it was not to a monastery for more of the same, but back into action, and indeed into danger.  The last verse puts this quite clearly: “It [God’s Word in silence] comes to guilty, broken hearts, with challenge and release; prepares us for self-sacrifice and speaks eternal peace”.  As I wrote yesterday about the hymn “We do not hope to ease our minds”, the Christian life is never meant to be only about forgiveness, silence and inner peace, although they are part of it.  They are the basis of an active faith that has to take risks and face difficulty.

The Bible in a Year – 1 June

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

1 June. Ezekiel chapters 8-11

In chapters 8-11 Ezekiel has a vision in which he is transported from Babylonia where he has been living, back to Jerusalem whence he originated.   Such physical transportation from one place to another as a part of extreme spiritual experience is not unique: Elijah experienced it, as did Philip (Acts chapter 8), and Mohammed in his “night journey” to Jerusalem.  Whether such transportation took place literally (and hence miraculously) or was only a transcendental out-of-body type experience may be a matter for debate, but either way it is clearly something well beyond the experience of most people, believers or not.

 

The purpose of Ezekiel’s transportation was to show him that those left behind after the first deportation to Babylon – even the spiritual leaders of the community – were not only worshipping false gods, but even bowing down to the sun and allowing prostitution, and all this within the ruins of the temple itself!  Therefore God would allow a second enemy invasion to destroy those people and what was left of the city, until a new and more faithful generation of Jews would be allowed to return and rebuild it.

 

Ezekiel’s vision of the glory of God departing from the temple is another example of a prophet seeing a spiritual reality beyond the physical evidence.  A place is made holy by a continuous period of religious observance and prayer; that holiness can be cancelled very quickly by acts of desecration.  Some people seem to be more open than others to a sense of either ‘holiness’ or the ‘numinous’, or conversely the presence of evil or foreboding spirits; I am not one of them.

 

Ezekiel is not a widely quoted Biblical book – the most well known passage is the valley of bones in chapter 37 – but verse 11:19 is an exception. “I will remove from you a heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” is often used to describe the experience that Jesus called “being born again”, when someone realises that God is not remote but actually lives in them.

 

 

 

The Bible in a Year – 21 April

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

21 April. 2 Kings chapters 1-4

After the death of Ahab, the book of 1 Kings ends, and today we start on 2 Kings.  The authors of this part of the Bible must have had the same sense of the cliffhanging ending as the scriptwriters of a TV drama or the author of a trilogy. “What will happen to Israel after their evil king is shot in the chest with an arrow? Find out when the next book comes out!”

 

In chapter 1 we hear of Ahab’s successor Ahaziah, But the only story is that of his death from an accident. God refuses to let him survive it because he seeks advice from a false god.  It’s interesting to contrast the attitudes of the three army captains sent to bring Elijah to the king – the first two command him to come down, and they and their men are consumed by holy fire, but the third approaches humbly and requests Elijah’s presence, and survives. The lesson presumably is that God is above any earthly king, and so the servants of the earthly king must act as servants to the prophet who is himself a servant of God. This title “servant of the servants of God” is one traditionally held by the Popes, and the present Pope Francis seems to live up (or down) to it, unlike some of his predecessors in past centuries who acted more like despotic rulers themselves.

 

The scriptwriters release a spoiler at the start of chapter 2, which begins by telling us that Elijah will be taken up to heaven in a whirlwind.  This miracle, foreshadowing Christ’s ascension, occurs on the far side of the Jordan. To get there, Elijah parts the waters (as Moses and Joshua did before him), taking Elisha with him.  Elisha’s wish to receive a “double portion of Elijah’s spirit” is granted, and after the ascension he parts the waters of the Jordan on his return. Elijah’s other disciples seek him in vain, for like Jesus he had gone for good.  No wonder that people subsequently expected Elijah to return in glory, and wondered whether Jesus or John the Baptist might be him.  But Jesus was seen on the mountain with Elijah to prove that they were different, and it is now Jesus who Christians expect to return in glory.

 

Elisha starts to perform miracles, not all of them for the benefit of other people – being short of hair myself, I am intrigued by the summoning of bears to kill the crowd of small boys who mocked him for being bald.  Is that really a crime deserving death? Apart from that one, the others were ‘signs’ like the miracles of Jesus, to tell something of God’s nature.  Bitter water made drinkable, water provided for the Israelite army, an endless supply of oil, resurrecting the dead son of a poor woman who had fed him, a poisonous stew made palatable, and finally (a story that Jesus must have had in mind when he fed the 5000 people with twelve barley loaves) feeding a hundred people with twenty loaves.  Note the prevalence of food and water in these miracles: when Jesus, who promised the water of life and the bread of heaven to his followers, tells us to pray “give us this day our daily bread” (or “our bread for tomorrow” as some translations have it) he really means it, both spiritually and physically!

 

The Bible in a Year – 20 April

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

20 April. 1 Kings chapters 21-22

In chapter 21 we get another clear example of the sort of unscrupulous leaders that Ahab and Jezebel were.  Ahab offers to buy Naboth’s vineyard for himself (at least he didn’t grab it by force) but Naboth refuses to sell, as indeed was his right, and the king was not above the law.   Although Ahab reluctantly accepts this, his wife does not, and arranges for the execution of Naboth on false charges, following which Ahab takes the land for himself without reference to Naboth’s heirs.  His godly nemesis Elijah turns up (showing extreme bravery and faith, since he had barely escaped Jezebel’s clutches last time) and predicts a bloody end for them both as punishment for such a breach of human rights.

 

Chapter 22 tells us that after many years of war between Israel and Judah, there is an interval of peace, largely due to Jehoshaphat King of Judah, who unlike his predecessors was inclined to co-operate with the northern kingdom and not fight against it.  In fact, in chapter 21 he and Ahab are allied in fighting the Arameans.  But this is not a defensive battle: it is Ahab’s pre-emptive strike to try and recapture the territory of Ramoth-Gilead which he considered rightly belonged to Israel.  The prophet Michaiah warns of defeat, but Ahab listens instead to the majority voice of the false “prophets” who always encourage him. Ahab then tries another bit of trickery, going into battle incognito and hoping that his ally Jehoshaphat will draw the enemy fire.  But when God predicts disaster, disaster will come – this time by the hand of an archer who does not even realise he has shot the enemy king.

 

Both these stories of attempted land-grabs by Ahab, whether of a vineyard close to home or a territory across the Jordan, show a hunger for power that manifests itself in a desire for control over ever increasing areas. We see this throughout history in the actions of megalomaniacs such as Napoleon and Hitler, but also in everyday life when companies take each other over, often to the detriment of ordinary shareholders and customers as standards of service and product quality are subordinated to the hunger for ever-increasing profits.  We also see in the campaign against the Arameans the “Falklands effect” where politicians whose popularity is waning may use a rallying cry of “take back control of [wherever]” as a way of boosting their popularity (assuming, of course, that they win).

 

God’s interest, as always, is in the human rights of the ordinary man and woman – Naboth the peaceful winemaker, or the people of Ramoth-Gilead who did not (as far as we know) call for deliverance from the Syrians who governed their territory at that time.  Through prophets such as Elijah and Micaiah God even makes this clear to the rulers concerned, but they rarely listen, such is the grip of evil over them.

The Bible in a Year – 19 April

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

19 April. 1 Kings chapters 18-20

I have been looking forward to these chapters, for they contain some of my favourite Old Testament stories: the defeat of the prophets of Baal, and Elijah’s subsequent encounter with God in the cave, from which we get the line of a well-known hymn: “speak through the earthquake, wind and fire, O still small voice of calm!”  I have read this many times, and preached on it at least once.

 

But as is so often the case with the Bible, however often you have read a passage, something new strikes you each time.  This time it is chapter 18, verses 33-35. On the top of Mount Carmel, when Elijah builds his altar, he orders twelve jars of water to be poured into the earthen trench around it.  Now, this was the third year of a drought, so severe that the King went out into the countryside personally to look for any remaining bits of grass to feed his animals (18:5).  How, on top of a mountain in a drought, did they find twelve jars full of water? And even if they did, would it not have seemed a terrible waste of a precious resource?

 

It reminds me of one of the stories we have heard read in Holy Week as we do each year, of the anointing of Jesus at Bethany, when a vast amount of costly perfume is poured out.  Judas objects to the waste of money, but Jesus says that the woman (sometimes assumed to be Mary Magdalene) has done the right thing. Likewise, Abraham was willing to sacrifice his only, irreplaceable son when God asked him to do so (bt at the end of the day God provided a ram instead).

 

What these three stories have in common is that sometimes God calls us to lay down in faith what is most valuable to us, even to the point of folly (the water of life in a drought; a lifetime’s savings in liquid form; the only son).  And God will reward that act of faith by providing what is needed:   the ram instead of Isaac, everlasting life instead of worldly goods, and for Elijah an all the people of Israel, abundant rain that started falling within hours of the sacrifice.  The divine fire that fell to consume the sacrificial bull was only a sideshow: the true miracle was Elijah’s obedience and God’s provision of water for his people.

 

 

The Bible in a Year – 18 April

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

18 April. 1 Kings chapters 15-17

The first two of these chapters are grim reading, as we hear of several generations in which the civil war between Judah and the rest of Israel continued under several ‘kings’ on both sides.  These ‘kings’ were not worthy of the name: most of them gained power by force, and nearly all of them, with the exception of Asa of Judah, “did evil in the sight of the Lord” (i.e. acted selfishly with no regard for the common people, and tolerated idolatry).  Finally (in this list) comes Ahab of Israel, who was the worst of them all, for he not only tolerated idolatry in the land but took a foreign and evil wife (Jezebel, whose name would become a byword for a wicked woman) and set up a temple to the arch-idol Baal in his own city of Samaria.

 

Onto this scene suddenly emerges the prophet Elijah, who would become the greatest figure of the whole Old Testament after Abraham and Moses. And with him comes a welcome relief from stories of war, infighting and idolatry.  Elijah may have proclaimed doom to the king and his house for their apostasy, but he was not part of the establishment, nor the army, rather an ascetic prophet who was willing to be humbled by the God who called him to live in the desert on bread and water (and carrion brought to him by ravens) and then come to the aid of an ordinary family caught up in the civil war and in drought.

 

The three years’ drought that Elijah predicted as God’s punishment for Ahab’s sins is apparently recorded in non-Jewish literature so it can be regarded as historical.  But we have to take on faith the story of the miraculous provision of flour and oil that saw the family through the crisis, and Elijah’s resuscitation of the widow’s son.    This story brings us back home to the reality of much of the near east and north-east Africa in our time: war and drought combine to destroy whole populations.  I have recently met a refugee from one of those countries and her son, and can imagine them as I read of the family at Zarephath.  God is never concerned only with whole populations, but passionately cares for the sufferings of each individual.