I Kings 19: 11-16, Luke 6
We live in a world that talks a lot about taking care of yourself, getting rest, eating right and avoiding stress. But if you watch the morning news shows, at least once a week if not once a day they seem to alert us to just how little American’s sleep, which in turn ages your skin, causes you to make poor food choices and stresses you right down to your very DNA. If you watch long enough they will tell you what products you can buy to escape those wrinkles and how to meditate...but who has time to meditate. On your way to work, NPR will alert you to all the problems facing the world all while making you feel inadequate about just how little you knew about these problems. Between the economy and even the weather by the evening news it is no wonder we need a vacation. With all this stress a vacation sounds like a good idea, but asking for one can be hard when you want to be model employe in this tough economy. Even if you take a vacation, it can mean double the work to upon return or sometimes it can look like watching the sunrise from a mountain top while you check just a few emails on your phone.
Today we have two biblical narratives about stepping away from work. Two leaders from two different times in history who take time, don’t worry about keeping up with the work they leave behind and make time for God in their lives. In John’s gospel, Jesus has been trying to get away and relax but folks seem to find him. We can be sure that the disciples didn’t accidentally check him in on Facebook or tweet a picture of their location, but even without the help of modern social media...people find Jesus. They seek healing, they seek teaching, they seek care and nurture. He feeds people and loves people but the moment comes in the Gospel of John where he draws they line. The gospel says they want to make him king. Jesus senses the crowd wants to make him king and knowing this goes against every fiber of his being, knowing this does not fit with his sense of identity he takes his leave. He escapes the crowd pressing in around him by heading up a mountain.
I wonder if he thought of the story of the Prophet Elijah. Did he think of the story of Elijah climbing the mountain as he put one foot in front of the other. Did the story he learned as a child, the story he read in the temple carry him over the uneven ground to the space where he could connect with God?
You see hundreds of years before Jesus, the prophet Elijah headed up a mountain. Now his story is different from Jesus, he didn’t win a popularity contest that day and no one even considered trying to make him king. You might say Elijah is escaping a hostel work place, the environment has grown stressful enough that his life is in danger. He is at odds with the Royal establishment and while the Hebrew King’s marriage to a foreign wife might be good for the economy; her foreign faith is creating friction with the tradition Elijah values. As Elijah reminds the Hebrew King and community to honor their God, things get ugly. Tensions run high and blood is shed on both sides. It is nothing anyone can be proud of and now Elijah is on the run for his very life. So he climbs a mountain, the same mountain that Moses climbed to hear God’s word.
It’s probably a good thing that he took some time away in the mountain retreat. He is getting a little self-righteous. He is convinced he is the only one left that really cares about the covenant the Hebrew people, his is the only one left in his country that cares about who they are and where they came from. He is the only one that is faithful to God. He is the only one that cares about the convent they have made with God, he alone bears the weight of his faith and his nations future.
There he is alone, listening for God. Perhaps he remembered Moses before him and he longed for God in the earth shaking or the wind rushing past through the vast sky. Perhaps he remembered the story of Moses and longed for stone tablets to set everyone right and make them behave. But God wasn’t in the quaking earth or the storming sky. This time God is in the sound of sheer silence. Silence you can hear and silence you can feel, you know the kind. Unlike Moses’ moment on the mountain, Elijah does not receive a word to be carved in stone but a word that is carved in his heart. The voice of God isn’t outside, on that mountain he wakes up to the voice of God that was with him along, the inner voice that he carried with every step of his journey. And when he got over him self and really listened, that voice reminded him that he wasn’t alone, that his work was in community and his work was to anoint and call other leaders into the mission at hand rather than carry the mantel all by himself. He goes to the mountain and find’s God was with him all along...he just needed space to listen.
A few years ago I performed a wedding in Hawaii and I will never forget my visit to the Bishop Museum. The Bishop Museum celebrates the art and culture of the Polynesian community that pre-dates western involvement. There surrounded by the reminders of the Island’s faith traditions, I learned something that seemed so surprising I almost laughed: Hawaiian Gods go on vacation. It struck me as so unexpected, so foreign to my understandings of God. I stood there in awe thinking, would I let God go on vacation. I pondered this question as I read about how the Polynesian Gods have seasons of work and seasons of rest, when one God is at rest well another God stepped forward to lead. As I considered what this said about Hawaiians and imagined how it impacted their community, I thought would western Christians’ let God go on vacation? What would it mean for us modern modern people to let God take a break? See for so many of us God is defined in terms of all those OMNI words, God is all present, all knowing, all the time and in all places and how can you let such a being take a vacation, a rest, or even a break. What would it mean if rest and Sabbath and vacation were so sacred that it is woven into our very understanding of God’s nature? Would we rest more if rest was sacred enough for God to rest?
And I realized, our God rests too. Duh it’s called Sabbath. Keeping the Sabbath might have just been one of the items on the laundry list of things the prophet Elijah was trying to help people remember about their relationship with God. You see before philosophy introduced all those OMNI words and before kings every where wanted to seem all present and all powerful all the time, just like God. Before Jesus climbed up a mountain to rethink what it means to be king and before Elijah struggled with the royal household. The Hebrew people told stories of the God taking rest. And the stories at the very start, the foundational story of who they are and who God is weaves rest or sabbath into the very model of our being. God creates, God gives life, God gets involved in the world and then on the seventh day God rests. And it was good. Sabbath was built into the very identity of the hebrew people, they had a relationship with God and the covenant they agreed to made rest sacred. Rest was sacred enough for the people to rest from labor rather than get ahead one more day, it was sacred enough that the land and the animals rested too. All of creation rested, the immigrant laborer and the high priest. They taught us a story that says you are sacred and you are created in the image of a God that rests. You see they knew that resting like God makes you free like God. Taking a sabbath like God makes you creative like God. Honoring the sabbath like God empowers you to follow a path that gives life into the world like God.
Maybe that’s why we gather here, maybe we gather to listen like Elijah did so long before us. Maybe we gather to center and remember who we are really called to be like Jesus. Maybe we gather to find sacred space that honors the hopes within our very soul. And maybe together, we can take rest so seriously..that when it is hard to come by we make time to take it.
Rev. Debra McKnight
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