When You're in the Cave

[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

1 Kings 19:9-18
I have a friend we'll call Joe. His dad was a pastor. A kindly man, Joe’s dad ended up serving a congregation filled with people who thought that they, not God, should be in charge of Christ’s Church. To claim their ownership, they often went after Joe’s dad. Joe and his dad had the custom of talking on the phone every Saturday morning. “Do you suppose I’m being too sensitive?” Joe’s dad asked after having detailed the latest assault he’d endured. Joe, who had been in the congregation a time or two and knew the players said, “No, Dad, I don’t think you’re being too sensitive. Remember that just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean that they’re not after you.”

I think of Joe’s dad every time I consider the passage from 1 Kings that makes up our first lesson for this morning.

Elijah was the greatest of all the Old Testament prophets. But when we meet up with Elijah in our first lesson for today, he is terrified and running for his life, concerned that he might be killed at any time. Elijah’s feelings are understandable. He may be paranoid. But there really are people coming after him.

A little background is in order. When we encounter Elijah today, he’s just coming from a gold-medal caliber encounter with the prophets of the false godlets called Baal.

Baal worship had been brought to Israel by Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab. The marriage of Ahab and Jezebel was one of those alliance-forging unions royal families often undertook. It made Israel more powerful and wealthy than it had been in one-hundred years.

But it also made the people of Israel spiritually complacent. When life is tough, you turn to God. But when you’re on easy street, you start to erect little gods you can control and have do your bidding.

Israel was so well off during Ahab’s reign, that the people abandoned God and became enrapt with the fad of Baal worship. Now, the people of Israel, as God reminds Elijah in our lesson, didn’t completely abandon God. But it seems that most tried, as Elijah put it, to limp along with two ways of religious life—one faithful to the God Who had delivered their ancestors from slavery in Egypt, taken them as His people, loved and forgiven them, the other bent on following the pliant gods of convenience favored by the beautiful people.

But that won’t work, Elijah told them. “I the Lord am a jealous God…You shall have no other gods,” God had told His people in His first covenant with them. God hadn’t revoked that covenant. (God still hasn’t revoked it.) In spite of that, Jezebel hired Baal priests, built Baal altars on the highest hills, and even erected a Baal temple. All of this was polluting Israel’s life, the people walking more and more away from God.

God had enough! He told Elijah to invite 450 Baal prophets to Mount Carmel where it could be demonstrated who the real God was. The God of Israel--the God you and I know through Jesus Christ--won. The prophets of Baal were executed. It was a moment of triumph for Elijah.

But Jezebel sent a message to him. "You'll be as dead as the prophets of Baal soon," she warned. Elijah was afraid.

So, Elijah ran! He only stopped long enough to ask God to take his life. “I’m a goner, God,” he said in so many words, “Just take me now.” But God gave Elijah a good meal and told Elijah to be on his way. "You've got a trip ahead of you and you'll need your strength." After Elijah ate, he took a forty-day hike that ended in a cave cleft in Mount Horeb, one of the places where, five-hundred years before, God met Moses.

Now, there are three things I want to point out about the encounter that Elijah had with God in that cave, all of which I hope will help you when, like Elijah you feel life is closing in on you. Your enemy doesn’t have to be a ruler who wants you dead. It may be disease, the loss of a loved one or a job, the encroachment of age, the ordinariness of life, or a fear. Whatever your cave may be, pay heed to Elijah’s experience at Mount Horeb.

Lesson #1: God can meet you in your cave. True story. Dena, a friend of Ann’s and mine, was abandoned by her husband. When that happened, many of her so-called friends abandoned her too. It wasn’t that they agreed with what Dena’s husband did. It was that her sadness was an impediment to their good times.

But, Lisa, another of Dena’s friends, was there for Dena. Dena’s motives were simple. She wanted to extend the love and strength of God that she knew belonged to her as a follower of Christ. Lisa knew that through her, God could meet Dena in her cave.

It’s no accident that in the months after Lisa spent time with her, Dena began going to church. Today, happily remarried for nearly twenty years, Dena is deeply involved in her church, where, among other things, she writes original Sunday School curriculum and participates in mission trips to Latin America. It was true for Elijah. It was true for Dena. God can meet you in your cave, too.

Lesson #2: God wants you to be clear about your purpose. When his wife died at far too young an age, Roger, a man I met years ago, wasn’t sure what to do. Every time you turned around, it seemed, Roger was weekending at some remote place, attending a conference with some new guru, or quickly throwing himself into a new hobby which he dropped just as quickly. Without his wife, Roger felt that his life had no purpose.

For a time Elijah had been clear about his purpose. At least it had been clear to him. He was to promote a contest with the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel. After God had used him to prove the falsehood of the Baal religion, he would run the Baal worshipers out of the country and God would once more be universally worshiped. The contest went fine. But, contrary to his expectations, Elijah’s efforts weren’t met with unvarnished success. Instead, the queen put a contract out on his life! So, Elijah ran and ran until he came to that cave.

There, God asked Elijah a single question two times: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” God was asking Elijah, “What is your purpose?”

You can almost hear the whine in Elijah’s voice as he totally misses God’s implicit question and responds both times by saying, “I’ve been faithful in following You, God. I’m the only one. And what do I get for being such a great guy? People want to kill me.” You see, Elijah thought his purpose had been taken away from him.

But after each of Elijah’s lame answers, God shows him what Elijah’s real purpose is. It’s our purpose too, whether life is going well or not.

Purpose 1: To experience God’s presence in our lives. That may sometimes occur in stunning ways or it may happen as it did for Elijah in the cave, “in sheer silence.” (More on that in a second.)

Purpose 2: To fulfill the simple duties God gives us to do. In the cave, God gave Elijah three simple tasks. Most of what God calls us to do involves simple tasks. God will entrust few of us with missions like curing cancer, writing the Constitution, or preaching the Gospel in faraway places. (And it should be pointed out, even the people entrusted with such mega-tasks will also be called to daily faithfulness.) Fulfilling God’s purpose for our lives involves doing our duties as children, spouses, parents, friends, employees, and employers. That means loving God and loving neighbor in all of our relationships.

Lesson #3: God wants to find you. God wants to come to you and be with you, wherever you are in your life.

The other night, our family was recalling a memorable Christmas Eve. Phil, now twenty-six, was three years old. My mother-in-law gave a toy fire helmet to him. It had a loud siren and a flashing red light.

Phil strapped it on and went charging around our house before the start of the first Christmas Eve service we would experience at our first parish.

The problem is that the helmet made him top-heavy and not long after getting it, he went sprawling into a coffee table. His forehead hit a corner, leaving a gash that needed stitching. At the hospital ER, the doctors and nurses tried to help Phil. But he was hurt and didn’t want anybody messing with him. When they put him into a Velcro strait-jacket, he got so angry that he pushed his way out of it. (“That’s the first time that’s happened,” a nurse observed.)

How many times are we like that with God? God wants to help us. God wants to assure us that we are loved and cared for. But we’re too busy being busy, or rebellious, or trying to solve our own problems to let God give us that assurance.

In Psalm 46:10, God says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Similarly, in that cave at Mount Horeb, God told Elijah to go out onto the mountain so that he could experience God coming to him. There came a fierce wind, but Elijah didn’t sense God there. Then there was an earthquake and then fire. But Elijah didn’t sense God in them either. Then, there was sheer silence. In the silence, in the stillness, Elijah sensed God’s presence.

The same can be true for us. We may experience God in thundering ways or quiet, but however we experience God, we must be still long enough to let God come to us.

In the early years of my life, I went to a church where people thought nothing was happening if someone wasn’t talking or singing or making noise. And there’s a time for all of those things. "Make a joyful noise to the Lord!" the Bible tells us.

But this notion of constant noise-making influenced how I prayed even years later. I thought that if I wasn’t yammering, I wasn’t praying.

Then, I ran into the Biblical notion that prayer is just as much about letting God speak to us as it is about our speaking to God. It's why Jesus often would go to private places to be with the Father.

So, I decided to start my prayer times by reading the Bible, God’s Word to us, and allowing for times of silence. At first, it seemed strange to me. I’ll never forget that I’d been praying in this way for several months when, one day, God’s presence became almost palpable to me. As I allowed God's Word to soak into my mind, I sensed that God really was there, saying, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

I haven’t had that experience often; God is the one who decides when and where He will do such things. But, as was true for Elijah, you can bet that God’s timing will be perfect. God wants to find you.

If you came here this morning hounded by fear or sadness or the reality of your own sins, I invite you to use this sanctuary right now as your cave, a place of refuge where God can meet you, as He met Elijah. The God Who fully disclosed Himself to you and me in Jesus Christ wants Elijah’s lessons and experiences to be ours as well. God can meet you in your cave. God can give you purpose. And whenever you feel lost, God can find you. Let God do these things for you this morning.