Who Would Want It?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

August 7, 2011

Who Would Want It?

1 Kings 19:1-9

Who in their right mind would want the job,

even in a time of high unemployment?

It’s not just that the hours are long,

and the work is hard -

that’s true of many jobs.

No, what makes this job so difficult,

so awful,

is the isolation:

friends turn from you,

family, too.

Say yes to this job, and it won’t be long

before no one will want to be near you;

no one will pay any attention to you;

they cross to the other side of the street

when they see you coming.  

Say yes to this job and don’t be surprised

by how quickly people criticize you,

condemn you,

speak of you with contempt and ridicule.

Say yes to this job and don’t be surprised

if you find that there are some who despise you so much

that they would just as soon see you dead.

There are lots of tough jobs out there

but I don’t think there’s anything to rival

being a prophet of the Lord God.        

Being unpopular is about the best a prophet can hope for;

hated, hounded, and hunted is the more likely result.

In Elijah we have the very model of a prophet:

he’s hard working, dedicated,

faithful,

just what God would want in a prophet.

                          

We hear the name Elijah,

and we think of his wild ride

in the chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire,

as he was carried up into the heavens in a whirlwind:

From Genesis to Revelation

you won’t find a more colorful exit from the stage.

(2 Kings 2:11)

But in our lesson we find the poor man on the run,

fearing for his life,

on the run from King Ahab and his wife Queen Jezebel.

It’s Jezebel he was really afraid of:

she wanted Elijah as dead as her precious prophets of Baal,

those four hundred fifty prophets Elijah humiliated,

and then killed.

(1 Kings 19:20-40)

Elijah has run from the life he knew,

and now he’s stopped near Beer-sheba,

exhausted, hungry, frightened,

alone. 

He curled up under the branches of a broom tree,

really more shrub than tree,

a broken and defeated man

and says to God, “Enough.”

“Enough God; take my life.

This isn’t what I expected

when you called me to serve you,        

Take my life; I have had enough.”

Now God hears every prayer,

and God answers every prayer,

but God doesn’t always answer our prayers

with exactly what we ask for.

For Elijah, that’s a good thing:

God didn’t take Elijah’s life.

Instead, he looked after Elijah,

feeding him, caring for him,

showing him both compassion and empathy.

God understands that doing the work

God calls us to do is hard.

Living as God calls us to live is not easy –

it can make us unpopular;

it can be exhausting, frustrating,

draining.

Moses anticipated the price of serving God

and tried to say “no” to God’s call to him,

going through one argument after another

before finally resorting to desperation,

“O Lord, please send someone else.”

(Exodus 4:13)

It’s our fault, you and I:

we make the prophet’s job so hard,

so unbearable because we refuse to listen.

We hear the words of the prophet

and we turn from them;

we don’t think the words are directed at us;

we don’t think we need to do anything with the words;

we find the words annoying,

an intrusion on our lives;

we hear the words and we get angry at the speaker

viewing the prophet is self-righteous, judgmental:

“who is he to criticize, to tell us how to live!”

We forget that the prophet is doing nothing more

than speaking God’s words to us;

that the prophet is the vessel through whom God is working,

just the middleman, the messenger.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that

“…Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony,

a voice to the plundered poor,

to the profaned riches of the world.

God is raging in the prophet’s words…

The prophet’s word is a scream in the night.

and the purpose of the prophet

is to change the inner man, [the inner woman]…”

The prophet speaks for those who have no voice;

it is the prophet who speaks for the hungry,

the unemployed, the children,

the alien.

It is the prophet who calls out the injustices

we close our eyes and ears to.

“The prophet does not reminisce;” said Rabbi Heschel,

“he reveals, reveals God in all God’s glory..

The prophet doesn’t prove, he doesn’t argue,

he doesn’t try to persuade;

God simply speaks through him;

the prophet’s words are not his, but God’s.

Divine power bursts forth in his words”

And so as we heard last week, the prophet Micah called out:

         “…do justice

         love kindness,
         walk humbly.”

The prophet Isaiah says to us:

         “cease to do evil;

         learn to do good;

         seek justice,

         rescue the oppressed

         defend the orphan,

         plead for the widow.”

                  (Isaiah 1:17)

These are only two examples of many

but it is too easy for us to think they are words spoken

in a different time to a different group of people,

and so have no bearing on us,

But the words of Scripture are timeless,

and while the prophet may have spoken the words

thousands of years ago

they are the prophets words to us

as much as they were the prophets words

to our ancestors in faith.

And our Lord Jesus Christ speaks to us prophetically:

his call to us to be peacemakers are prophetic words;

his call to seek forgiveness and offer forgiveness

are prophetic words;

his call not to judge lest we be judged are prophetic words.

his call to store up treasure in heaven rather than on earth,

are prophetic words.

His call to feed, care for, nurture are prophetic words.

And prophetical voices aren’t just found in the pages of the Bible;

they speak to us from pulpits,

through blogs,

even through texts and tweets.

If only we would listen,

we would hear today’s prophets calling us to address

the insidious injustices all around us.

Just yesterday a prophetical voice in the newspaper

spoke with outrage

-that the number of children living in poverty in this country
increased by 4 million over the past 10 years;

-that an average of 15 million children rely on food stamps

to have enough to eat,

a 65% increase over the past 10 years;

-that the number of homeless children in public schools

increased 41% between 2007 and 2009,
a result of foreclosures that we now know

have been laced with fraud on the part of banks,

mortgage brokers, and lawyers.

(New York Times, Charles Blow, August 6, 2011)

Will we respond to those prophetical voices

as the people responded to Micah, Jeremiah,

Isaiah, Elijah – ignoring them,

arguing with them,

shrugging our shoulders at them,

chasing them away so we don’t have to hear them?

Our Lord Jesus came to fulfill the words of the prophets;

Fulfill the words.

That means he is waiting for you, for me,

for all his followers

to listen to them,

to respond to them,

to act on them.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is waiting for us to hear those words

words that we may not like,

words that may make us uncomfortable,

words that we would rather not hear,

as nothing less than

the Words of the Lord.

AMEN