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The Rev. Mark Byers
St. Ives’ Episcopal Church, Arlington, VA.
February 25, 2006- Year B, Last Epiphany

Location, Location, Location: How to Hide from God

We all know this expression: it’s a common axiom among real estate agents and people who buy homes that the three things we should be concerned about when considering a house are: 1. Location 2. Location and 3. Location. Why is this? Well, where a house is situated determines what the view is like, how much crime there is, what quality the local schools are, what sorts of opportunities for entertainment or shopping there are, what the property taxes are, and I’m sure a few things that I haven’t even thought of. In other words, location is perhaps THE key factor in determining the value of a home, all other things being equal. We all live in one of the most expensive areas of the country, and even within the tremendously valuable real estate market that is metropolitan Washington, there are places that command greater prices and esteem from those who own or wish to own a home. A small house in one of the nicer neighborhoods of North Arlington is as valuable as a small mansion in Ohio.

What is it that makes the Washington area such a valuable place? It’s a major cultural center, with great museums and restaurants and shopping and places to visit. There are interesting people all over the place in this town. There are world-class schools at all levels of education. And of course, there is power and money, and the trappings that come along with it. Most of us are here for a combination of reasons, primarily to do with work, I would imagine, but probably touching on some of the other reasons I’ve named, too. Some folks are here because this is where the power is and they want to make the world a better place. Some folks around here tell others they want to make the world a better place, but perhaps they’re not really very sure if they are. A few folks are here because they just love power and money, although they might not admit it. Some folks were actually born here and love this area as their home and the place where their memories were formed.

Underneath the museums and monuments and office buildings, underneath the shopping centers and businesses, underneath the lobbyists and high tech professionals and politicians and government agencies is the same ground that Lincoln walked, and Madison, and Lee, Grant, Washington, and countless, nameless other women and men who lived and died around here. It’s easy to forget about them when one is doing important things in the world of government or politics or commerce or just walking around and doing the things that city dwellers do.

It is no different than most cities in that way, except in the matter of the degree to which those who live and work here are caught up in the intensity of the way of life they’ve developed. This is, after all, the capital city of a great empire. One person committed to an enterprise might be swayed by the memory of what has gone before, or by the voice of the one who created him. But thousands, even hundreds of thousands, gathered together in the place that has become the center of the world, would not only not hear such a voice, but they would in all likelihood disbelieve and shout down, even destroy, the one who dared speak such blasphemy. And because an empire believes its rules and ways to be the most important ones, it would never occur to anyone that anything bad had happened. Or if it did, that it was just an unfortunate cost of doing the good things that the empire inevitably does.

At first glance, the kingdom where Elijah lived was a bleak place, and its capital city of Samaria was a den of wickedness, injustice, and idolatry. But I’ll bet if you had asked the folks who lived there, they wouldn’t have thought so. They would have thought, just as nearly all people in all cultures in all times think, that on the whole, they were pretty good folks and Samaria  was not a bad town to raise a family. People learn to live with, even love, the familiar, no matter what it is.

So why all the trouble with this prophet, this man of God, Elijah? Elijah, as we meet him in this story, has just fled from the northern kingdom of Israel to Sinai. The king of his land, Ahab, had said to him only very recently, “Is it you, you troubler of Israel?” Ahab had been looking for the prophet, and Elijah had turned up in front of him unexpectedly. We’re told that Elijah was being sought by the king all over, even in the neighboring kingdoms, because Ahab wanted the drought and famine that his kingdom was suffering to end. Ahab, a very powerful man, was also contemptuous of God, and a great persecutor of the poor. Furthermore, his wife had been responsible for the spread of Baal worship in the kingdom, which of course was an enormous affront to God and a violation of rule number one on the top ten list. Elijah had said to him, quite truthfully, “I have not troubled Israel; but you have, and your father’s house, because you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals…”

There ensued a contest between Elijah and the prophets of the false God. Elijah and the prophets of Baal are both to try and call down rain. Baal, being the supposed god of the heavens and lord of the weather, should no doubt have been able to do the trick, but his prophets prove unable to persuade him. Elijah suggests sarcastically that perhaps he’s gone out for a walk, or maybe he’s just asleep.

Elijah has so such problem: God comes through with a fine gully washer and the drought was ended. No problem, right? God wins, Baal loses, prophets of Baal are put to the sword, and Ahab and his wife come around.

Except they don’t. God wins, Baal not only loses, but apparently doesn’t even exist, Elijah makes his point that abandoning God and God’s ways is foolish, and even dangerous. But Ahab and his wife don’t come around. In fact, Jezebel vows to Elijah, the prophet of the one true God, that she’s going to do to him what he did to her false prophets. So he ran for it. He ran from the place that God had sent him to do ministry, discouraged because what should have been patently obvious to the most rudimentary intelligence didn’t sink in to Ahab and Jezebel and their followers. And most of the people of the kingdom probably didn’t care very much, either: some of them might have said, “Hunh. Maybe God’s upset by idolatry and false gods and injustice. But this isn’t really idolatry and false gods and injustice that’s going on in Israel. Not like they’ve got idolatry and false gods and injustice in other kingdoms. Relative to them, we’re still doing great. Elijah needs to calm down and get a sense of proportion.”

And so we find our prophet today, holed up in a cave on the very mountain where God spoke to Moses and gave the Israelites the law. From the title of the sermon, you might think that the “location” and the “hiding” refer to the cave and to Elijah. And they do, but not entirely. Elijah is hiding, but not from God. And the location, the cave, is important, but only to people who still remember what came before, and what God promises in the present and in the future. For others, it would be just a hiding place, just a hole in the ground. Not nearly as important as, say, Samaria, with its easy access to temples of Baal, royal money, and the power that comes from proximity to the throne. Location, location, location: who would want to live in a cave when Samaria is such a great town with such opportunities? In a city and kingdom that promises so many wonderful things quite apart from God, wouldn’t the temptation, or even the daily status quo, for most people be to hide from God in the comfortable, familiar place that they’ve made?

Back to Elijah. The question no doubt occurs to some people: perhaps Elijah WAS getting upset over what must, after all, have been a better place than the surrounding places. Isn’t SOME cultural exposure to the Lord better than none? Poor Elijah, to serve such an uncompromising Master. We all get discouraged. Even prophets. Even people who have actually had direct conversation with God struggle in the face of forces that defy God without shame. Elijah struggled hard because people had laid aside their own story, the story of their deliverance by God, their story of having been watched over and taught by God and Moses as they made their way slowly toward a new, promised place. They forgot the struggles that only a few generations earlier they had had against the very things they were doing again: forgetting about justice for everyone. Forgetting about proper humility and reverence for their maker. Forgetting about love for others who shared the same story. For the sake of power and money and gratification, Ahab and Jezebel and their followers forgot about their past, corrupted their present, and squandered the future of their land. And most of them probably didn’t realize it.

God asked Elijah as he sat in the cave, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And he answered, frustrated and heartbroken and scared, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” At a time such as this, wouldn’t any one of us yearn to know what God would have us do in the face of indifference and evil? Even a prophet, even the church, these people who are supposed to have all the answers. Maybe that’s why there’s always some prominent church leader who ascribes a calamity to God and talks about it as a powerful judgment on whomever the victims were. Not all church people, but one or a few, and they invariably have great press contacts.

God tells Elijah to go out on the mountain, for God is going to pass by. And I’ll bet that got Elijah’s attention. Maybe God’s going to do a grand thing, a calamitous thing, and get things back in balance. “Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind…” And then an earthquake, and then a fire, and the Lord wasn’t in them either, and then there was a sound of sheer silence… Silence.

Imagine, for a moment, the sound of sheer silence. No wind, no earthquake, no fire, no disasters, no car alarms, or cell phones, or television blaring in the background. No computer beeping at us, no automobile horns honking or fire engine sirens screaming. No news anchorpeople telling us the latest terrible news from near and far. No pundits telling us who and what to believe. No war. No arguing. Imagine, for a moment, a sound pregnant with possibility, but not yet realized. Elijah heard such a silence. And it sounded like a word about to be spoken, and he didn’t know any longer what it might be, but as scared as he was, he wanted to hear it. Maybe only he COULD hear it, of all the people in his land. So he went out, with his head wrapped in his mantle, and there was a voice as he stood outside the cave.

And it was the Lord, of course. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He answered, as he had before, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”

And God gives him instructions. Not, “Go try and talk to Ahab and Jezebel again. See if some more demonstrations will do the trick. A little ‘shock and awe.’” Because the point isn’t continually trying to persuade those who don’t choose to be persuaded. The point is to make the world, the place that God has given us, more like God would like it to look. In Elijah’s day, when nations changed primarily because of the kings and highly-placed people, Elijah was told by God to anoint other kings to displace his wayward servants in Israel. Now, in a time when all of us are involved in choosing our direction as a people, the nature of things changes somewhat. In some ways, it’s even harder to discern God’s path and how we might have left it. In other ways, perhaps it’s easier for us, because as much pressure as there may be to conform, the forces that place the pressure aren’t entirely from one place. Rather than just a king and his court, we have government, but also mass media, political parties, advocacy groups, all sorts of different voices. We may face ridicule, or bewilderment, or even hostility for trying to discern a different path, but in most cases, at least in this country, we don’t face destruction.

There comes a point at which someone given a word from God must speak it. And God won’t steam roll the opposition, nor will thunder and fire and earthquakes consume them. Rather, we will speak God’s quiet word into ears that are able to hear it, and all around that prime location where people are hiding from God, things will change. Not dramatically, or perhaps even all that visibly, especially at first. And not all at once, but hopefully enough to help us remember our story as God’s own children, and care about our present, and live toward God’s future. The problem with hiding from God is that eventually we forget that apart from God, we have no story. Apart from God, we have no location, no meaning, nothing of value except for our illusions.

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