June 20, 2004
By Jack Price

            Do you have a hero?  Is there someone you’d like your life to be like?  As a father, of course a piece of me would like my son and daughter to want their lives to be just like mine.  But I know better!  As a son myself, I love and admire my father.  There are aspects of who he is I have tried to emulate.  In all honesty, though, I have never wanted to be him.  The greatest complement I can give him is to be myself and to live my own life as fully as he has lived his.  The same is true for my children and for each of us who are sons and daughters of fathers and mothers.

            Having said that, there is one character from the Old Testament whose life is so compelling that I think I’d like to live that life.  He was Elijah.  Elijah was a prophet.  His name means “My God, Yahweh.”  His life as depicted in the Old Testament book of 1 Kings was heroic. 

Two events from his life illustrate the point.  When it was time for Elijah to depart this earth, he literally departed this earth!  A fiery chariot from heaven appeared and carried him off, not in death, but to await the coming of the messiah and to herald that coming. 

            Elijah’s life was as heroic as his departure from it was spectacular.  The high point was his victory over the priests of Baal on Mt.  Carmel.  This storied contest was the centerpiece of a much larger story of conflict with King Ahab and Queen Jezebel of Israel.

Elijah does not like what is going on.  He challenges the king and his foreign-born wife by openly criticizing their worship of Jezebel’s god Baal.  To demonstrate God’s anger, Elijah predicts drought for Israel and drought comes to the land. 

By the third year of the drought, Ahab is actively trying to have Elijah killed.  So the prophet sends the king a message.  “Yahweh God challenges the false God Baal to a contest.”   The nation of Israel assembles at Mt. Carmel.  450 prophets of Baal build an altar of sacrifice and pray for Baal to send fire from heaven to consume the altar.  They go on for hours and there is no fire!

            Elijah then builds an altar to Yahweh.  Very dramatically, he soaks the wood with precious water and prays.  Almost immediately, fire comes and consumes both altars.  Elijah has all the prophets of Baal killed (difficult for our modern sensibilities) and the contest is over.

There is a curious postscript to this amazing story – actually the most important part of this story.  When Queen Jezebel hears what had happened, she promises to kill Elijah, and Elijah is frightened and runs away, fearing for his life!   We don’t know why Elijah fears Jezebel’s threat, after all that has happened, but he runs. 

We find our hero alone in the wilderness crying to God, “No mas, no more!  It is enough, God.  Just let me die.”  An angel brings food and water and Elijah goes on until he finds refuge in a cave.  Frightened, defeated, and hiding in a cave, Elijah encounters himself and God in an experience more profound than the spectacular miracles in which he has taken part.  We can discover , in our experiences of God, that when it really counts, God gives us what we need.  And God needs us to come through when it counts.  (read 1 Kings 19: 1-15a)

Why are you here?  What are you doing here?  Twice, God asks Elijah this question.  You and I come to the cave entrance -- after fire, after rain, after the destructive winds – when we hear God in the sound of sheer silence.  God asks us, “Why are you here?”  Maybe we are like Elijah and start to whine a little about all the things that we have done and tried to do, and how hard life is, and just why we can’t really serve God at this particular moment.  In response, God says, “Go.”

Today is Father’s Day.  Author and poet Robert Bly (The Naïve Male lecture) reminds us that the traditional father’s role is to bring children face to face with the outside world, the real world with all its rough edges.  Loving fathers and mothers give children the gift of their own pain along with the confident reassurance that they can stand it and continue to stand.  Loving parents don’t shield their children from the challenges of life.  They teach them how to deal with those challenges, how to deal with life’s hurts.   Loving parents are there for their children, not to fix all the problems, but to stand with them, to stand up for them, and to stand beside them when it counts.

Being church is one of life’s challenges.  Here at Crossroads Church, we have faced, and are facing many challenges.  We are dealing with the metaphorical demons of our history, coming out of another church with a rich blend of strengths and faults, and deciding which part of that heritage to embrace and which to release. 

Now, in our sixth year of life as a congregation, we are not always certain just who we are and where we want to go.  Our foundation is clear.  We live and move in God’s Spirit.  We value diversity of thought and background.  We value exploration of theology.  We value commitment in discipleship and church membership.  We value the church’s prophetic role for peace and justice, and we value service to the community around us.  We value worship that is lively, Spirit-filled, and has integrity.  We value our life together as a community of faith.  Maybe we know more about ourselves than we think?

            Being church is full of challenges.  Even as we have welcomed new members, we have said “goodbye” to some dear friends.  We feel the loss financially as well as emotionally.  There are challenges to face:  deciding on our church house (where to locate it and how to pursue it and pay for it!), committing ourselves to reach out and welcome new members, and meeting the challenge of financially support the ministries we want to do in the coming year.

            These are challenges.  Now is the time “when it counts” to be who we are called to be.  Now is the time to do what we are called to do.  We stand as a congregation to hear God ask, “Why are you here?  And we tell God about the great things we have done for God.  Our very existence is something of a miracle.  We think about the lives that have been transformed through this congregation.  We remember the money given to support missions and ministries:  peace and justice, partnership ministries, and opportunities for spiritual growth.

As a people of God, we have seen fire and rain, and the mighty wind of trials and testing.  When the Spirit asks, “Why are you here?,” we can honestly answer, “We have been very zealous for the Lord.  We have sought the guidance of Spirit.  We have been faithful in following, and in living the freedom of the Spirit – not always well, but always faithful.”  And we can whine just a little, like Elijah, and say, “With all we have done, life is kind of hard right now.  It’s difficult to really serve God at this particular moment.”

And God, whom we know by many faces and many images, including that of loving Father, wraps metaphorical and yet tangible arms of love around us, and whispers, “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.  You can do all things by my Spirit.  Step up to challenges.  Step out with confidence.  Live in the fullness of freedom.”  God is calling us to task, saying:  “Go.  My Spirit is sufficient.”

Sisters and brothers, God tells us today, as God has told the faithful in every generation, “Go.  Be about my work.  Heal the hurting.  Challenge the oppressors.  Love the unlovable.  Be the church.  Support the ministries of the church with your time, your talents, your energy, and your money.  Share the good news that heaven is in your heart, on your lips, in our midst, and in this world in people like you, in churches like us, in communities like the one through that door.

Why are you here?  Why are we here?  We are here getting ready to go out there and love the world in Jesus’ name.  Will you go with me?  Will God’s people say Amen?