A Fourth Church Sermon by Victoria G. Curtiss

June 27, 2010 | 4:00 p.m.

All We Need for the Journey

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

1 Kings 19:1–18

In her book Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert describes a time in her life when she was in anguish over her marriage. One day she found herself crumpled on the bathroom floor. She didn’t consider herself a religious person, but suddenly she heard what she could only take to be the voice of God saying, “Go to bed.” “Go to bed”—how practical! We cannot think clearly or have energy to act if we are not getting enough sleep. Before we can take the next step, we need physical and mental strength. God knows what we need, sometimes better than we do.

That was true for the prophet Elijah, too. Elijah had just received a death threat from the king’s wife, Jezebel. Her threat comes after Elijah kills the prophets of her religion. Elijah may have realized—as Adam said last week in his sermon on this text—that he had used some horrifying tactics to prove Jezebel’s religion was false and now has regrets. We know he is afraid. He flees for his life into the wilderness, but after a day of walking and running, he collapses under a tree and asks God to take his life. Then he falls asleep. Suddenly an angel touches him and says, “Get up and eat.” “Get up and eat”—a very practical command, a summons for Elijah to take care of himself. In this case, it also summons him to embrace life itself.

Elijah finds a baked cake by his head, along with a jar of water, and he eats and drinks. Then he falls asleep again—perhaps from exhaustion, perhaps from depression. The angel of the Lord comes a second time, wakes him up with a touch, and says, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” So now Elijah not only receives physical sustenance, but direction for what to do next: go on a journey. Elijah does just that, and on the strength of that food and water journeys for forty days and nights, which is code in the Bible for a very long time.

But even though Elijah has journeyed for a long time—probably a longer time than most of us take for vacation—he still isn’t ready to go back to work. He enters a cave, where he spends the night. The next morning the voice of the Lord comes: “Elijah, what are you doing here?” Well, he’s hiding. All of us have our hiding places, our caves, places we go when life gets to be too much. Your cave may be getting out of town for the weekend or going shopping or watching lots of TV or surfing the Internet or overeating or sleeping a lot. We all take some “cave time” now and then. The problem comes when we want to stay in the cave not to rest, but to escape. We can get stuck there.

Elijah seems stuck. He responds to God’s inquiry about what he is doing in the cave by saying, “I, only I, am left of all your prophets, and now my life is on the line.” But God does not pity him or use active listening or nondirective counseling. God simply directs Elijah to “go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then comes the familiar part of this story: A huge wind comes and splits the mountain rocks. Then comes an earthquake, followed by a huge fire. Then sheer silence. It is in the silence that Elijah goes to the mouth of the cave. It was a silence different from the kind we seek by hiding. It was is a silence that beckons us to pay attention to God. Once outside, Elijah hears again, “Elijah, what are you doing here?” Again Elijah repeats his litany of woe. But this time God basically says, “Enough of feeling sorry for yourself. I have plans for you. You have work to do for me. Get on with it. And by the way, stop this nonsense about being the only one who is faithful to me. You have more allies than you think.” So Elijah gets up and does as he was told.

Will Campbell, in his book A Brother to a Dragonfly, tells of a season in his life when he was active in the civil rights struggle. It was 1939, a time when such activism created a solitary position for anyone in Mississippi, whether you were white or black. Such activists were recipients of hatred and threats of violence. Campbell was weary of it all and tempted to give it up. Then tragically his young nephew was killed by a car while riding his bicycle. Where is God in all this? There was a wake, then the funeral, then mourning by his family. Then Will became depressed. He felt listless, like not doing anything. One day, six weeks after the funeral, in the middle of the afternoon, he was in his bedroom, staring at the ceiling. His wife, Brenda, came into the bedroom and said, “Now get up! I mean it! Get up!” And he got up. Through Brenda, God drew him back to living.

For Campbell it was that simple. It is not that simple for everyone, and I do not mean to diminish the struggle some have with chronic depression. But I do mean to underscore that God is continually guiding us to embrace life. God has hopes for us. God provides for us. Sometimes we need to go to bed; sometimes we need to get up and eat; sometimes we need to be drawn out of our cave; sometimes we need to get directions for a mission assignment and get on with it. Whatever it is, God gives us what we need for the journey.

I felt called to go into the ministry while I was in high school and told my pastor, Jim Cook. Later, while I was away in college, I periodically wondered if I’d really heard God correctly in that call. I received a letter from my pastor, which I kept for a long time in order to read and reread this sentence that he wrote: “You may have doubts about many things, but don’t ever doubt that the God who has called you will support that call, giving you all you need.” It wasn’t Jim’s confidence in me that strengthened me to continue on this path. It was his reminder that God can be counted upon to meet all our needs and that God has a purpose for our lives.

Whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Jesus taught us to pray this way, not only making known to God our needs, but trusting that God will supply our needs each day, every day. Often God seems to meet us right where we are, show us only the next step (if that!), and give us only as much as we can handle at the moment. But always God calls us to embrace life fully. So let us relish our living, relying on God to sustain and embolden us for God’s work.