Beyond a Fetal Position
Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash
In the wake of the 2024 presidential election and its acute disappointment for many, consider the case of Elijah, the prophet. Elijah has been bold and brave for YHWH, facing down the prophets of Baal (I Kings 18:20-40). He has lived in defiance of the royal house of Ahab and Jezebel. And then he must run for his life before the death sentence pronounced by the throne against him (19:1-3).
When we meet Elijah next, he is very frightened. Indeed, he wishes he could die, and so escape his impossible situation vis a vis hostile royal power. Now he lingers alone in the wilderness (19:4). Elijah senses that he is abandoned by the God for whom he has been zealous in his faith and his action. In his self-pity, however, a strange thing happens to him. While his visible world has failed him, he gains access to the invisible world of faith that lives “by the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). An angel, a messenger from that other world to which Ahab and Jezebel have no access, comes to him in his sleep. The messenger issues an imperative of care and nourishment:
Get up and eat (v. 5).
He was surprised to discover at hand a baked cake and a jar of water. The messenger does not give him pious talk of either reassurance or imperative. Rather the angel ministers to his elemental, bodily needs…food and water. Elijah eats; he sleeps again. The messenger addresses him a second time,
Rise and eat (v. 7).
The intent of sleep and food is to strengthen Elijah and prepare him for a journey. He must go! He must run to Horeb (Sinai), as though to revisit the founding place and founding event of the covenant people. It is back to his roots! He knew Horeb to be a place where the hidden holiness of God would abide. At the holy mount, he announces himself to be zealous, at risk, and all alone (v. 10). The divine response to his self-pity is a quite fresh exhibit of divine presence without the bombast of the theophany. All Elijah gets is “sheer silence,” as though the force of holiness is too deep and too dreadful for sound or utterance. Now again, the holy voice questions him: “What are you doing here?” (v. 14). It is as though God would ask him, “Are you still here?” Or “Why are you still here?” Elijah repeats his self-pitying answer. I have been zealous; I am alone; they are trying to kill me!
Most astonishing, Elijah does not receive further assurance or comfort. No, he is addressed only with a double imperative: “Go, return.” He has been provided food and assurance. But no more! Now the voice of God moves from assurance to imperative:
Go back into the fray. Go back to contested politics.
Go back to Damascus, capital city of enemy Syria.
More than that, engage in political subversion! Anoint a new king, even while there is no vacancy in the royal office. And then the voice of God concludes, almost as an after-thought:
There are still 7000 faithful (v. 19).
You are not the only one. You are not alone. You have allies and comrades and colleagues in the hard combat you face. What follow in the narrative is the tale of Naboth’s vineyard and the continuing indifference to prophetic insistence. Elijah is sent back into the risky fray where he must oppose the royal house and its lethal posturing.
This narrative occurred to me as I pondered the outcome of the election and the way in which the forces of humane justice and generative peace-making have been routed in a vote of this kind. My first inclination is one of self-pity and a sickening sense of loss and failure. My propensity is to imagine that the good Lord of History might have done better to prosper our good efforts at humane justice.
So I imagined us as participants in this ancient scene. We may, for a moment, claim the role of Elijah for ourselves. We may imagine ourselves, abandoned and left alone in an exercise in self-pity. We do well to acknowledge such a moment in our self-awareness, even if the sense is fleeting. And then, we may quite innocently imagine the good gifts of God given to us in our neediness. They are likely to be given to us through human mediation, through those who care for us and wish us well. Such food as a “baked cake” and “a jar of water” might be a gesture, a note, a casserole, an embrace, a kind word, anything that signifies solidarity in way that may relieve our sense of abandonment. If this case applies to you, I urge to you to seek out such support and affirmation. It is amazing how such a singular, inexplicable gesture can reframe our lives as we find ourselves on the glad receiving end of grace generously mediated to us. In the narrative the reception of food and care comes first.
Only then, after that, comes the haunting question “What are you doing here?” What are you doing in this place of self-pity and weeping discouragement? The question in its ancient form and in its present articulation is in fact an assertion: “This is not your rightful place.” You do not belong here in self-pity. The prophet is permitted the luxury of twice asserting that he is abandoned. But the holy voice of God has turned from answer to imperative:
Go and stand on the mount before God (v. 11).
Go, return to Damascus (v. 15).
Go back to your proper place; you can linger here in self-pity only so long and then you must remember your call and perform your responsibility. So Elijah is freshly dispatched back to his dangerous work. He is dispatched by the one who has lordly authority for him. The only assurance he is offered is that there are others--7000--who stand alongside in solidarity. It took a while for the prophetic mandate to come to fruition. It often does. Only later: Elisha anointed Jehu king of Israel, this prompting a violent upheaval in Israel (II Kings 9:6). The prophetic narrative is part of the slow but certain articulation of divine intent in the public process.
I am writing this the morning after the election. I must confess I am more than a little dismayed this morning. I am inclined to think a good bit about myself and my convictions. As I reconsider that about myself, I imagine that some of you, readers, have the same sense of self. In such a circumstance, this remarkable prophetic narrative yields some suggestions to us:
It is all right to engage in self-care, to be on the receiving end of gracious presence.
There is a limit to the length of time we are to linger in such self-regard;
We are, sooner or later, dispatched back to the good work of humane justice.
I suspect that Elijah would not object if I glance at the work of Jeremiah as I finish this comment. In Jeremiah 11:18-20, 12:1-4, Jeremiah voices his first lament in which he engages in a bit of self-pity. He receives a divine response to his lament in 12:5-6 that is a rebuke for his self-pity:
If you have run with foot-runners and they have wearied you,
how will you compete with horses?
And if in a safe land you fall down,
how will you fare in the thickets of the Jordan (v. 5)?
God sees that the prophet has been exhausted for the easy work he has done thus far. Compared to that relative easy assignment, God sees how it will be when the prophet faces even more difficult issues. The prophet is, in God’s sight, feeble even in a safe place, but now is dispatched to live amid a thicket of hostility. God warns the prophet that he cannot even rely on his own relatives who are filled with treachery (v. 6). The prophet is summoned and sent back to his risky work, but now with full acknowledgement of the hazards he must face.
So it is with us! Like the ancient prophets, we are dispatched back to the good work entrusted to us. It is the work of peace-making. It is the work of truth-telling. It is the work of justice-doing. It is good work, but it requires our resolve to stay it, even in the face of the forces to the contrary that are sure to prevail for a season. We are in it for the long run, even as the Holy One is in it for the very long haul, from everlasting to everlasting. We do not ease off because it is hard. We are back at it after the election.
Walter Brueggemann
November 6, 2024
