DESERT PALMS PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Sun City West, Arizona

Call To The Mountain

 A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Dr. David S. Hodgson

May 2, 2010

1 Kings 19:1-18

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time

tomorrow.” 3 Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there. 4 But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” 6 He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7 The angel of the LORD came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” 8 He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. 9 At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 He answered, “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.” 11 He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” 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 after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the

earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13 When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 14 He answered, “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.” 15 Then the LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. 16 Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. 17 Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. 18 Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”

Psalm 121:1-8

I lift up my eyes to the hills--from where will my help come? 2 My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. 3 He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. 4 He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade at your right hand. 6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. 7 The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. 8 The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.

            My text is taken from the Book of 1 Kings, Chapter 19, verse 9. The words of God: “What are you doing here?” Let us pray for understanding. Well, my Lord, we came here to find you, not in whole, but in part, a little something for the mind, the heart and the soul. Thank you for being here, O Lord. Amen.

            What we have here in our Old Testament reading is a mountaintop experience of God. Of course all that was back in the days when people actually climbed mountains in order to be with God. After centuries of mountain climbing however we finally wised up and realized that we could be close to God without all of that exercise. The nice thing is we still refer to those experiences of God as mountaintop experiences, because of the heightened sense of spirituality and the exultation that comes with them. 

            In the passage before us we have an incredible case study of a time when Elijah the prophet was called to the mountain, to Horeb, the mountain of God, because his life was self-destructing and he was in need of God. His mind had lost its sense of sacred vision. His heart had grown hard and lost its capacity for compassion. His soul had abandoned all sense of adventure. He was in a self-destructive mode when he received a call to go to the mountain to be retooled, to be reconstructed, to be refreshed and to be restored, by an experience of God. 

What makes this case study so amazing is that is gives us an example to see and appreciate how God uses divine presence for spiritual therapy. How God uses that spiritual encounter to touch the mind into gratefulness, to fill the heart once more with compassion and make it resilient; how God uses spiritual experience to excite the soul once more for spiritual adventures.  

Having said that, I need to remind you first that all spiritual experience is uniquely tailored for those who receive it. In spite of what you may hear from entertainment evangelists, no one size fits all. A valid experience of God is one which lets you know that your most intimate prayers have been answered; that your needs were addressed uniquely for you. That’s how you know that it was God who was calling you to the mountain to change your life. In this case study, however, there are enough familiar points for this passage to remind us perhaps of spiritual experiences we have known and recognize some of the symptoms along the way, or may even awake in us a sense of longing for the mountaintop experiences that yet await us. 

Elijah’s spiritual therapy begins as all therapy does, when Elijah realized that life was not working for him and he needed to turn aside and seek help. The realization that one needs help is the beginning of therapy. As you see Elijah walking away from his political responsibility, then his prophetic authority, you see him taking with him for a time his trusted servant, because companionship often describes those first few steps we take to wellness, when another comes alongside and agrees to walk with us. 

But then you will note that Elijah came to a place—or was it a moment in time or a realization?—that he had to go the rest of the way alone. This was not something he could share with his servant, but something he needed to do intimately with his own soul before God. He left his servant there and, as the Bible says, journeyed through the wilderness. What it does not say, that we all know to be true, the wilderness was of his own devising, for any attempt to reconnect to God always forces us to recognize and deal with our own depravity; that is, the wilderness. Three days’ journey: the kind of painful self-reflection that helped him to come to terms with the desolate nature of his own life. When it was through, he fell exhausted at the foot of Horeb, the mountain of God. 

If you take time to look at him there, a once great and powerful man, exhausted and sleeping at the foot of the mountain of God, perhaps there is some sense in which you recognize the posture or the feeling or the experience, because at one time or another we have all been there. When our idealism failed for all of the energy we gave it. When we somehow just could not be what life required and kept giving away, and giving ourselves away, until there was nothing left to give and we fell exhausted in our well-doing. We’ve all been there. Yet the exhaustion was part of the therapy, until God’s staff arrived.

Every therapist needs a staff and in this case, the angel of the Lord was the therapist’s staff. The instructions the angel gave came from God and apparently went something like this: “This man is too worn out to benefit from therapy at this time. Make sure he gets plenty of rest, nourishment and encouragement as he moves up the mountain.” So we find him sleeping, then being awakened to find a cake baked upon a hot stone and a jar of water, and the angel saying, “Eat and drink, else the journey will be too great for you.” And again: sleep, rest, wake, to find the cake and the water; and again the message, eat and drink, else the journey will be too great for you. This is God’s therapeutic staff, encouraging him, nourishing him, preparing him physically for the encounter with God that will surely come.

He finally reaches the top of the mountain of God and collapses in a cave, where he sleeps again, until he hears for the first time the voice of God. Whether it was in his wakefulness or in his sleeping I do not know, but in my mind I imagine that he heard the voice of God as he was waking. As his eyes opened up, there, on the mountaintop the voice of God still rang in his ears: “What are you doing here?” it said. 

Every good therapist knows the answer to the question before it’s ever asked. In this case God didn’t need to ask; he knew. It was God who called him to the mountain. It was God who guided his every step through the wilderness and up the mountain. God knew why Elijah was there, but God needed Elijah to give voice to it, as every good therapist does. It’s the starting point for healing. Where do you see you are in relation to this? The answer Elijah gives is remarkable for its disclosure. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad you asked. I have been very jealous for the Lord …” Who did he think he was talking to? “I have been very jealous for the Lord. I have been faithful when Israel abandoned its covenant and ran after idols. I am the only one left who has been faithful in all of Israel, and now they seek my life, to take it away.”

The rest of the Book of Kings bears witness to the fact that Elijah’s self-diagnosis reveals that he was out of touch with reality and was actually running away from it; that he was depressed, seriously depressed; that he was isolated, alone and self-destructive. He was paranoid, felt the whole world was out to get him; and he had a messianic complex.   He felt that he was to be the savior of the world and had failed at the task; that he alone was faithful.

God being the perfect therapist did not say, “Now, come on Elijah. You shouldn’t feel that way.” He didn’t say, “Well, now, come on Elijah, it’s not quite that bad.” He just accepted the perception that Elijah had of his own circumstances and urged him to go out and stand on the mountain to meet his maker face to face. We need to understand that at this point his ego was still very much intact. Elijah felt he had earned the right to meet God face to face; this was his day in court; this was his time to make his case before God, as one man does before another. This part has testosterone all over it. He goes out and stands on the mountain. 

There were three brilliant therapeutic measures that God took. I’ll change the order for just a moment. An earthquake that shattered the foundations of the mountain was designed to shatter the foundations of his mind, the rational man. Yet when the world had stopped shaking, his mind was still intact and he was still in charge. Then a wind, a wind aimed at the heart, to awaken passion in his callous and brittle heart. Yet he stood firm; he was not going to make room for passion again until he had had his day in court. When the wind stopped he was still there, intact. Then the flames, designed to awaken the sense of adventure in his soul, but he was done. Until he had had his experience of God, he was not about to be enflamed for any new cause. The beautiful part of those therapeutic measures is this: God was absent from all of them. God was not in the earthquake; God was not in the wind; God was not in the flames. There the man stood, firm upon the mountain of God.

Then Elijah heard the sound of a gentle whisper, also translated as the sound of a very, very thin silence. When he heard it, it was so overwhelming he fell to the ground on his face and covered himself with his mantle. The contrast is meant to reveal that the slightest trace of the presence of God was more glorious than all the therapies he had endured. 

The result of the counseling session there on the mountain was that Elijah was ready to retire. He felt he had done his bit; he wanted out from under the claims of God. He wanted to retire. God granted his request with one little caveat. “I’ll let you retire, Elijah, if you go back down the mountain and anoint two kings and one prophet to take your place. Then you’re done.” Still, his ego was intact and he started back down the mountain assuming he had won his case, until the voice of God came once more. He looked back over his shoulder with a startled look on his face. God said, “Oh, by the way, Elijah. You don’t happen to be the only faithful one left in Israel. The last time I counted there were more than seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal, nor kissed him.” 

That was a shot at his ego. No good therapist would ever use humor to cause someone to laugh at his own symptoms unless the therapist was first absolutely convinced the man had been healed. That’s how I know, when Elijah got back to his trusted servant, he was still chuckling to himself, and smiling.

“What are you doing here?” That question is still relevant in every age. It does not echo just from the past; it is asked in every worship experience. It is implied before every call to worship. “What are you doing here?” Each of us in turn, the soul at least, responds, as the worship begins.

The psalmist knew what that experience was like, going to the mountain to be restored by God. I’ll take it from the King James: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.” That’s the longing of the human soul to have a mountaintop experience with God, to be reconnected at the source. And the very next line: “My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” That’s the sense of satisfaction that comes from having been there. Between that longing for the mountaintop and the satisfaction of having been there, there is an extraordinary experience of God that changes everything.

Let us pray. We thank you for your call to the mountain, to this mountain, to every mountain, O God, where you prepare to meet us, to deal with us, to restore us. Amen.