A Rock and a Hard Place
1 Kings 19:1-15

June 24, 2007


The flames spread so quickly through three Retallack homes at three a.m. on June 7th that three persons had to jump from two and three floors up!

We have a list downstairs of three appeals to help them. Before and after that fact, I had chosen the title “Between a Rock and a Hard Place.” For the last five weeks we have read from passages in 1st and 2nd Kings in the Old Testament. The lectionary choices for this Sunday study God’s spokes-prophet Elijah, Jezebel and Ahab, and from his rocky hiding places Elijah realizes that God will be with him, has more for him to do, and sends him right back to choose new secular leaders and train his successor to continue God’s work.

Fatah and Hezbollah each hold on militarily to the two parts of Palestine: Gaza and the West Bank. Where does that leave their citizens’ hopes for their own united state? Somewhere between a rock and a hard place.

Bible study seems hard if you say I’ll get around to it when I have a quiet moment. One of your opportunities at Knox-Metropolitan will resume, enough of God’s people willing, on Friday noon hours in September.

Several from St. Andrew’s join us from Knox-Metropolitan to help each other explore the passages that will inform our worship two days later. And because we have read the four passages and one page of commentary ahead of time we can encourage one another.

How hard is your comfortable pew in life? Elijah knew it to be rock hard. Something to be tested and worked out. It was easy enough for him to insist the widow feed him. And it became his promise that God would not let the meal in her bowl or oil in her jar run out. During the drought that Elijah has been commanded to pronounce crisis follows crisis. Without security or rights the widow’s son is her only hope. And with his death her precarious future is taken away! Elijah spreads himself over the boy and God relents and brings him back to life. (Harry Potter, eat your heart out!) And expect it to get worse.

Elijah delivered God’s “or else” to Ahab and Jezebel. And clearly laid his life on the line: “There shall be neither dew or rain except by my word. Until I say so. Except at my order.” They did not change their ways. The prophets of the fire god Ba’al failed to get their gods to light their altar. But Israel’s God of water and life itself made Elijah’s altar blaze. The men of Israel were so impressed they slaughtered those rival prophets. But Jezebel was not pleased: “the gods will get you for this and I’ll get even with you! By this time tomorrow you’ll be as dead as any of those prophets.”

Elijah flees protesting to God, “I’ve been working my heart out for the God-of-the-Angel-Armies. The people have abandoned your covenant, destroyed the places of worship, and murdered your prophets. I am the only one left and now they’re trying to kill me.” Our study group can hardly wait out the next four verses for the promise, “Yet I will keep a remnant of 7000 in Israel who have not bowed to Ba’al or kissed Jezebel’s idols.”

God hears Elijah’s exhaustion. But he will send him back to complete his work. And it’s not an easy path. Anoint two more secular leaders to defy Jezebel and her husband-king Ahab. And go out and find Elisha son of Shapat plowing with the twelfth pair of oxen and throw your cloak over them so that when he sacrifices them he will follow you and become your right hand man and later become your successor.

We all have the right to complain when we are exhausted by all the things we feel God has called us to do. We may run away from some of it. Only to find that God wants us to find our own replacements, work with them and support them. That’s where your complaints should get us.

And to that let of God’s people say, “Amen!”

Preached by Bob Gay
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan