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June 20, 2010 | 4:00 p.m.

Things We Like about the Bible—
and Things We Don’t Like

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 42
1 Kings 19

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The scripture lesson for this afternoon is labeled in your bulletin as “1 Kings 19, selected verses,” and I’d like to start this evening by talking a little about what the “selected verses” part is all about. Selecting verses of the Bible for worship is something that we pastors do quite a lot. We are sometimes guilty of preaching about the passages and stories we like and ignoring the ones we don’t. Sometimes we edit out lines that we think will sound oppressive or unfriendly to you, because we don’t have the time and space in that day’s sermon to explain those parts to you. Perhaps the passage meant something very different in its original cultural context, but if that explanation has nothing to do with the sermon we’re preaching, we often choose not to read those verses at all. Sometimes the passage is just plain long, and we know we can get the point across without reading the entire passage, so we cut a few verses at the end or in the middle, hoping not to lose your attention before we even get to the sermon.

For whatever reason we are selecting the verses, the point is often the same: in speaking about the Bible or Christianity, ministers often want to put our best foot forward, so to speak. We fear that religion has enough bad press these days, and we don’t want to risk adding to it. Ultimately, I’m not sure that is helpful, because by concentrating on the parts of the Bible that we like the most, we do you, our congregations, a disservice. We still have not answered many of the questions you have about the Bible. A lot of things happen in the Bible that might cause you to question its validity as a sacred text. Bad things happen to good people in the Bible, and good things happen to bad people. Many people in the Bible get killed in big battles where thousands of people die, seemingly in the name of God. In the Bible, people lie to their parents and their children and their brothers and sisters, and people cheat on their wives and use sex and deceit to get ahead in the world. And far too often, these kind of questions might leave us thinking, “Why doesn’t God do something?” And when we as preachers select out the unselected verses, we usually select out some of those verses that aren’t quite as pleasant, and so we don’t help you very much with your questions.

I’m going to argue this afternoon that it is appropriate for the Bible to show that people lie and cheat, bad people do well and good people suffer, and that there are battles and people die. I think that’s appropriate, because those things happen in our world too, so apparently the Bible is still relevant, at least in that respect. That being the case, I’m going to walk through a passage of the Bible tonight without selecting out any of the verses, in the hope that we might catch a glimpse of God in the midst of all of those bad things that are in the Bible.

I’m going to read through all of 1 Kings 19 today, stopping a few times along the way, and see if there’s anything we might learn from reading a story in its entirety without selecting the verses.

1 Kings 19:1
Now let me slow down for just a moment and catch you up on the story so that you know who we’re dealing with. The Book of Kings, as it is titled, is mostly about what you would expect: it is about kings. Just as it is in the world in which we live, some of the kings are good and others are bad, and one of the major roles of prophets in the Bible is to tell the kings whether or not they’re doing a good job. Are they ruling justly, taking care of people who need their help, encouraging the people to live just and faithful lives of their own? Much of the first book of Kings is devoted to the work of one prophet, named Elijah, who speaks to several kings. One of them is a king named Ahab. Ahab is married to a woman named Jezebel. Something you’ll notice about the Bible—and it goes along with the idea of selected verses—is that there are names from the Bible that people use a lot and others that no one really uses any more. We name our children things like Matthew and Benjamin and Sarah and Mary. But no one really names their son Judas, and no one really names their daughter Jezebel. In the case of Jezebel, it’s because Jezebel is kind of the villain in the story. She is part of a strategic marriage to King Ahab, in which she comes from another land, marries into the kingdom of Israel, and then she tries to do a kind of hostile takeover of their religion by telling them that they have to worship her gods. The prophet Elijah doesn’t like this, so he sets up a contest between Jezebel’s gods and his God, the God of Israel, and God comes out looking good and Jezebel the queen comes out looking bad. I encourage you to go home and read that story. It finishes with some verses we might want not to select for church: when God triumphs over Jezebel’s false gods, Elijah kills all of Jezebel’s holy men, all of the prophets from the other side, and that’s what it means when chapter 19 begins, “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.” Ahab has to come home to his wife Jezebel and tell her that the prophet Elijah has put them in their place and then killed all of their friends.

1 Kings 19:2–4
Predictably, the next thing that happens is that Jezebel gets mad and sends her people after Elijah to kill him, and Elijah is on the run, regrets what he has done, and asks God to take away his life. There is a lot we don’t know here: for one thing, it’s hard to know if Elijah did the right thing in the way he handled the whole Jezebel situation. Sure, Jezebel is now embarrassed and the people will know not to worship her false gods, but Elijah used some pretty horrifying tactics in order to get to that point. There’s a great opportunity here to reflect on whether or not the end justifies the means; that’s beside the point for tonight. What we do know about Elijah is that he is in a place where every one of us has been: he has made a mistake and now he feels alone and afraid, and he doesn’t know what to do next. Let’s see what happens:

1 Kings 19:5–9
Exactly how these interactions with angels take place is as much of a mystery to me as it is to you, but what I take from this next part of the story is that somehow, when Elijah is at his wits end, he gets the message that what he needs to do is to calm down and slow down. Have you ever been so upset or so immersed in a problem that you forgot to eat or drink? Elijah’s visitor feeds him and gives him something to drink. He rests. He gets some sleep. And when he wakes up, he knows what it’s time to do: he’s going to go to Mount Horeb. Mount Horeb might mean very little to us, but in the Bible, it’s a place where people experience God. Now that Elijah is fed and watered and rested, he can see clearly enough that he needs to go someplace where he can reflect and pray. His problems aren’t solved yet, but he’s no longer immobilized and longing to die. He knows what his next move is going to be.

1 Kings 19:10–15a
Now this is the part that is always included in the selected verses. Whenever 1 Kings 19 comes up on the schedule, preachers assume that you want to hear about how God is found not in the wind or the fire or the earthquake but in the sound of sheer silence or, as the more traditional translations render it, in the “still small voice.” I can understand the appeal of that. When my life is a mess, when I feel like I’m on the run, when I’ve made a mistake that I wish would go away, I want this part of the story. I want the storm to pass, and I want it to quiet down, and I want to find God’s help and support on the other side, where it’s quiet. But I’m not sure that’s where the passage is taking us just yet.

The line that is the most intriguing to me about this last part of the “suggested reading” for today is the final phrase: “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.” And why is that interesting to me? Because of what comes after it, the part that is often not included in the selected readings, but it’s the way I’d like to finish the passage tonight.

1 Kings 19:15b–18
We don’t usually read this last part of the passage, and I think that might be true for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s full of one of the Bible’s least desirable literary characteristics: a list of names of people and places you don’t know and have trouble even pronouncing. And second of all, there’s the indication at the end that as the story continues, these kings are going to keep killing their enemies, and we don’t like that either. It would’ve been much easier to stop reading at the part about the presence of God in the still small voice.

But that isn’t the experience Elijah has. Elijah’s work isn’t done yet. He has more kings to see and instruct. The list of names is here because these are the kings who will come next, and Elijah has to repair things as best he can and make sure that the next king is better than Ahab and Jezebel. And these are human kings, earthly kings, so if he goes back to try to do some good, he might even need to expect that there will be some earthly nastiness, even some death. And it is into that place where Elijah must go, because he is a prophet, and prophets go into the world and speak truth to kings.

I don’t know where tonight finds you. I hope you are in a better place than Elijah was. I hope for you that you never will be in that place. But we all find ourselves in tough places from time to time. We all make mistakes and are forced into feeling like we are on the run from those mistakes. We all feel the need sometimes to hide; we forget to eat and drink and sleep. And we all have times when we just want to get to the other side of the wind, the storm, and the fire and hear the still small voice of peace.

And so my message to you is this: God finds a way into all of those places. God is not just in the still small voice, but God follows us when we are at our wits’ end, guilty and on the run. God feeds us and gives us something to drink and shows us the way to a place where we can meet God, and then, quite often, God sends us back out to finish the work God has for us to do. We are not all prophets, and we do not all talk with kings, and our worlds are not all immediately surrounded by war and killing, though for some people any of those things may be true. But all of us, every single one, will get up from our pew tonight and return into a world where things are not the way they are supposed to be and where we have an opportunity to be a voice for justice and freedom, love and peace.

Come to this table tonight and be fed and have something to drink. Rest for a while. And find the place where God is calling you to be a prophet.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church