CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Rev. Thomas Boone
January 21, 2007
SERMON TITLE: “What are you Doing Here, Elijah?”
1 Kings 19:1-13

One of the conclusions I’ve come to during my 41 years of living is that when we’re at the end of the rope life isn’t any fun. I’ve also learned that, try as I might to avoid it, coming to the end of the rope has a funny way of happening no matter what. Each of us ends up there from time to time. Sometimes it’s by no fault of our own, other times it comes as a natural consequence of our decisions. The end of the rope is where the heart breaks and where we wake up in a cold sweat over anxieties created by uncertainty. The end of the rope is where the Grand Evil Inquisitor barges into our faith door and asks, “Are you really sure about your faith in the One you call God?” It’s that place we reach where when we hear a Christian cliché like “God’s going to work this all out” we smile curtly but inside we scream, protest, or just get ill. It’s the place where we ask ourselves, “How did we ever get here?” When God asked Elijah, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” we know he was at the end of his rope.

I met a missionary from a “closed” nation once at a home Bible study group. I’ve prayed for people who risk their lives by being Christians in other countries, but until that moment I hadn’t ever met one. He told us about a night in a country where he and his wife were leading a church service for an underground church. On the door they heard a deafening pounding, a battering ram squaring off with the wooden door that no longer hid them behind its protective veil. The door flew open, six guards rushed in with AK-47’s, and one shouted a simple but ominous message, “Anyone who isn’t a Christian must leave or else we will shoot you.” There was a pregnant pause after which a handful left abruptly. Then they closed the door. “One last time, if you are not a Christian we will let you leave, but if you stay you will die.” The guards took aim at the group as another pause ensued. A few more people rose slowly, and without looking at those who were still sitting, fled. Eight people out of nineteen remained. As the man told his story to us he recounted how the guards locked the door and slowly took positions behind the group while they simply huddled together and prayed. Then, the lead guard asked, “Are you Christians?” “Yes,” someone declared. Then “Yes,” they all responded with a holy boldness. “And you are prepared to die for your faith?” the guard asked again. “Yes,” the group replied. What happened was astonishing for the guards each put down their weapons and said, “We’re sorry for having to do this, but we needed to make sure none of you were spies. We want to become Christians.”

The chief end of man is to glorify God, we say, but this doesn’t mean that He won’t allow us to know what it means to do this through the course of a long and sometimes frightening rope. In life so much happens to carry us away from Jesus. Once upon a time we could chew on our faith, it was so alive in our senses. Maybe it happened after a Cursillo weekend, or when we had our first taste of true grace. But ardent fervor gives way to inattentiveness so that before long our conversations with Jesus become sterile and monotonous. Our memory of being alive in the Lord grows dim and our sense duty becomes the reason for attending church.

We may find that acceptable, but don’t think for one moment that Jesus agrees with us. Jesus didn’t die for us so that we could have a dim experience of eternity on this side of heaven. Maybe ya’ll remember the verse that reads, “I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly.” Unfortunately, it sometimes takes arriving at the end of the rope before we open ourselves to what Jesus was talking about with these words.

That’s exactly what’s going on with Elijah. Here’s a story of someone who knew God and had done tremendous miracles in His Name, but who thought he’d reached the end of his rope and wanted to die. But, it was at that precise moment that God met him in a new way that catapulted a man of faith from being as low as he could be into a pillar of inspiration for an entire people. Elijah, the man who acted miraculously as God’s agent against evil in a desperate time for Israel, whom God lifted into heaven in a chariot, with whom Jesus spoke at the Transfiguration, this same Elijah also knew the pain that comes at the end of the rope, when all hope is lost and reason fails us, when we do the things that we never thought we’d consider, or suffer the emotional bondage of baggage we thought had long since been discarded.

“What am I doing here?”

Maybe you’ve said these words to yourself. I know I have. These words that God spoke to Elijah at the pit of his despair must’ve seemed as water that at last hits the land after a season of drought. The soil can’t resist the urge to yield its green landscape. And, the heart can’t help but to beg God for redemption when it has reached its breaking point.

“What are you doing here?”

God cares. God speaks. God will not be silent forever. I’ve stopped the passage with this question because that’s the moment where grace broke into Elijah’s broken condition and turned him around. In the question itself is the voice of God, and in the voice is God Himself at a critical point in Elijah’s life. The mere fact that there was a question meant that God knew what was going on in Elijah and He wanted to rescue Him from his despair. Elijah saw suicide as his only recourse, but where he saw death God saw life. Elijah saw no hope for tomorrow, but God saw what Elijah couldn’t see: the days beyond today. Elijah thought that life would never get better, there were too many people wanting to kill him so he was going to do it himself. Elijah thought he had reached the end of his rope only to come face to face with a steep and perilous cliff. And so God asks the question that Elijah most certainly had wondered himself. “What are you doing here?”

Maybe we’ve not been to the point where we’ve wanted to end it all, but maybe we’ve been at the edge of a marriage that we wanted to see die. Maybe we’ve been through the course of a protracted terminal illness with a loved one and wanted to see it end synthetically rather than naturally. Maybe we’ve long since rendered a past sin in our lives as unforgivable and borne its baggage in the hidden recesses of our souls in ways that prohibit us from marriage, having children, healthy relationships, or other things that cry out for healing. Maybe we’ve endured the pain of seeing members of our family become so estranged physically or emotionally that death would have been easier to sustain.

If you look at Elijah’s story carefully you’ll see that God had been with him through his entire ordeal. From the time the threat on his life had been initiated, to the wandering in the desert, to the angel providing food and directing him to a cave, and up to the point where the Lord Himself allows Elijah to hear His voice, God was there the whole time. Elijah was simply too wrapped up in the dire circumstances to see how the Spirit was taking care of him all along.

God is with us, too. Sometimes loudly with so many signs that we and those around us can’t miss them; other times with the faintness of a still small voice at the edge of a shameful precipice that only we know about. God is in the “pick me up” business. Brennan Manning has written a wonderful book called, “The Ragamuffin Gospel.” In it he says that the gospel is not for the perfect, or the elite. It’s for those of us who wear tilted halos, and who need to be freed from fear. Grace is a gift for those of us who have grown accustomed to eating hot dogs made of sawdust and wearing plastic jewelry pasted on paper gold. God allows us to get to the end of our ropes because He wants us to know for sure that it was He Who picked us up again. That’s the Elijah-story, and it can be just as true for us.

Unlike Elijah, the privilege we have as believers is that the Holy Spirit dwells in us today. What we think is the end of the rope doesn't have to be because we have the Lord on our side. Those pills you want to digest to drown out the chaos can stay in that bottle. That drink you take after work to cope with the mess in your life can stay on the shelf. Never underestimate God’s ability to deliver you from evil’s grasp on your heart, soul, mind and strength.

One of my jobs in graduate school was to serve coffee at Starbucks. One night on break I talked with a woman whom I had seen out of the corner of my eye at church. She wore a wedding ring, and had three children whom I knew from the children’s program at church, but I had never met her husband. “What does your husband do?” “Oh, he works for the government,” is how she began, “but beyond that I really can’t say much.” Between sips of coffee she wove a story that drew me from Evanston, IL into the borders of other countries as I heard the story of a man who hadn’t been in touch with his family for over 9 months. “I don’t even know if he’s alive anymore, but this isn’t the first time.” “How do you cope?” “You know,” she said with tears in her eyes, “if it weren’t for Jesus there’d be no way.”

Now before you think this is just another cliché story, listen to some of the details. She had had several affairs, some of the heart, some of the flesh, each one a cry out of her loneliness bred by a life with an absent husband, and without the Lord. “Now I remember,” I spoke gently. “You were baptized a few months ago.” As it turns out she had reached the end of her rope and then Jesus turned her life around. One morning she sent the kids off to school, bought tickets for them to go to her parents, had written a note explaining that she couldn’t do this anymore, and had bought the pills that would take her life once the kids were gone. And then, she walked by the church’s marquee that had the sermon title for the upcoming Sunday, Jesus Met Me at the End of My Rope. She decided to put off her plan until Monday morning, but what happened instead was that the Holy Spirit broke into her darkness on Sunday morning and helped her see that she hadn’t yet exhausted all her options. “From that morning on,” she admitted to me, “I knew that Jesus wanted to help me out of the pit,” and a couple of months later she stood before the congregation declaring her faith and experiencing baptism with as many tears as there was water being poured over her head.

Isn’t it amazing what happens when the God who had the power to create this earth and everything on it breaks into our darkest moments when we think all options have expired and speaks words to us that only the heart can hear?

Although I don’t know you, I know that some of you must have incredible stories of redemption at the end of the rope. Remember those stories. God has put his stamp of approval in you and has shown you that He will never be away from you completely. Jesus has shown you, and will prove it again, that He will deliver you from the darkest moments of life because there is nothing that He allows you to face from which He cannot rescue you. For, "Greater is He that is in me, than he who is in the world." Let’s say that promise together, OK? "Greater is He that is in me, than he who is in the world." The question I have for you is, “Do you believe those words, or not?”

I know a bit about this congregation. Once you stood as a proud, large group of Presbyterian men and women testifying to the work of God in the city of Mobile. Now, standing beneath the shadow of your great history you find yourselves asking, “What are we doing here?” I hope you can hear me right now. God does not want to let you go. You’ve simply come to the cave where God’s voice will speak to you, but you must be ready to listen for it. And when you hear it you must obey. The temptation to pack it in may be great, just like it was for Elijah. The temptation to roll over and fall asleep until the misery goes away is real, just like it was for Elijah. But, just as it was for Elijah, now is the time for you to eat your food and drink your water and get this congregation to the place where God plans on speaking to you because God wants to give you hope for the days after today. Pray together even though you’re without a pastor. Study together often so you can have clarity about the guidance of the Holy Spirit. When you call an Interim Pastor, minister to one another as you would with someone in the hospital. But, also, wrestle with the hard questions that must be asked and pray for courage to face the answers. Be gentle, but truthful. What will be the place of Central in this city that has changed all around you? What is it that God plans to do within these walls among you, so that you can bear His word beyond these walls among others? God’s place for Central is a good one, and like Elijah who heard God’s voice and obeyed, let it be so among you. God has not let Central leave His marvelous hands even at what must seem like the end the rope. Hallelujah. Peace. Amen.