Sunday, November 8, 2015

A Perfectly Rational Story

1 Kings 18:20-39

“If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”
            This sounds so simple. It should be that simple. Who is the real God? Follow him. Except… most of us don’t get to run this kind of test. We just don’t. Instead, we get hints and wonders and little things that make us yearn for something better and a quiet assurance that such a thing is there. Most of us don’t get to see God hurling down lightning bolts from the heavens. This is a wonderful story and a difficult story for that reason.
            I mean, I love this story. I expect some of you do, too, because it is a story that is thoroughly modern (even if it is three thousand years old). What I mean by calling it a “modern” story is that the grounds that are established for God’s existence are thoroughly rational. Elijah sets the premise: Worship a God who actually does something. And then he goes about constructing a challenge where only the real God could succeed.
            He gives Ba’al every advantage. The home field of Mount Carmel. The weapons of choice: Ba’al being the god of fertility, what better advantage than lightning? He plays in front of the home crowd—four hundred of Ba’al worshipers. Elijah makes it so lopsided that the only way Yahweh—his God, our God—could possibly win is if he is real and Ba’al is not.
            I wish we could do a similar demonstration for you today. Wet down the altar and have a little competition between the God who we know in the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and all the other gods we have. Wealth, fame, sports teams, deer season... But this is not how God normally works. This story with Elijah is the exception and not the rule. Deuteronomy 6:16, which predates Elijah by hundreds of years, says “Do not put the Lord your God to the test,” which is exactly what Jesus quotes to Satan when he is tempted in the wilderness. The honest truth is that Elijah gets a free pass here that the rest of us do not. He gets to put God to the test in a way we cannot.
            This may be unfair, but it is also a reminder that, as much as we might think otherwise, we are not the heroes of the faith. God tends to work through nations, telling a big story, crafting a big plan. This is why that oft-quoted passage from Jeremiah, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to proper and a future with hope” (Jer 29:22) is misinterpreted again and again. It is not an individual promise to you and me but rather it is a national promise; a promise, we might say, for the whole body of Christ. Sometimes you won’t prosper. Sometimes you won’t be very hopeful. Sometimes—probably often—you’ll have a tough time crafting a rational test for God’s existence. This is not evidence against God; it is simply proof against your methodology.
            That’s not to say that God doesn’t come to us today in personal, individual ways. He absolutely does. Many of you can tell stories. Often, it’s not even stories so much as a little voice, inaudible to the rest of us, that gives us comfort and assurance and hope. It’s more than coincidence; it directs us to something bigger. I have a tough time talking about my call story because I imagine that I should have that Martin Luther praying-to-St. Anne-in-the-storm kind of call, or that Saul blinded-on-the-road-to-Damascus kind of call. But my story is different and I’m willing to bet it is the same for many of you. Your experiences of God are deep and mysterious and difficult to articulate. After all, this is God we are talking about!
            This story of Elijah on Mt. Carmel is a fantastic one, and, ultimately, it is a story that matters because a god who does nothing is useless. Ba’al is useless. The question is whether Yahweh is the same. This story satisfies our desires for a God who is active and powerful, but honestly, this story is less useful to us today than we might imagine because if you’re waiting on a similar proof of God today you’re misunderstanding what faith is, and if you’re not waiting on this kind of evidence then you already get the point. The reason this story matters is not because it is evidence for your faith, which is in itself a contradiction; instead the reason this story matters is because it explains something basic that we tend to skim over, which is that belief in Yahweh—this God of Israel, of David, of Elijah—goes on, while belief in these other gods did not. There is something about this Yahweh. There is something that once fed people and continues to do so to this day.
We imagine that the Bible, being a single collection of books filled with acts of God, meant that God was awfully active during this time long ago, but we should remember that the Old Testament exists over thousands and thousands of years. The vast majority of people, like us, have no Mt. Carmel moment of God sending down fire from the heavens. This is why we can read one second that God parted the Red Sea and then a few chapters later the people of Israel are complaining about how bland the food is in the desert. It’s not only that they are slow and forgetful; these are, in some sense, not all the same people. God’s dramatic activity is the exception and not the rule. We are less like Elijah and more like the unnamed Israelite living down the street who hears all this as legend told by others.
            All this means is that you are unlikely to get a response if you set up the same test as Elijah. It’s not because you’re less faithful, but it may be because there’s less on the line. God is working through Elijah to move nations, to push history inexorably toward one thing and one thing only, which is the cross. All of history bends in that direction. In ways both mysterious and opaque all events bring us to Jesus, everything destined for a single act of salvation brought about through his death and resurrection.
            Today, we live after that event. We live after Elijah and Mt. Carmel. We live in an extremely rational world with a faith that requires some measure of irrational experience. It can be tough to follow Jesus for that very reason. If you’re looking for bolts from the sky, look elsewhere. Not that God can’t; not that God won’t; it’s just that our yearnings for proof are not as important as we think they are. We are minor characters; not Elijah, not David, definitely not Jesus. We are followers, not history-makers. Instead of listening for bangs, we are told to listen in the silence. Instead of trying to put God to the test, we live by faith. Instead of looking for God in the miraculous, we experience the face of God in one another. Then, occasionally, God happens to break through in miraculous ways in spite. Not how we expected. Not how we would have planned. That’s all the better.
We’re not Elijah. We can love the story, but we had better do it for the right reason: Because we love God, who loved us first, and we need no better proof than that.

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