The Power

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

August 12, 2012

The Power

1 Kings 19:1-8

The movie’s premise is wonderfully absurd:

God wants to take a vacation

and needs someone to fill in for him while he is away,

someone to oversee the world,

indeed, the whole universe.

He reaches out and picks a

washed-up television news reporter as his replacement,

and then without much explanation,

God endows the man with all his godly powers.

Just as quickly God then exits for vacation,

for parts of the universe unknown.

You know the movie, don’t you;

It’s “Bruce Almighty”,

with Morgan Freeman portraying God with wit and warmth,

and Jim Carrey as the effervescent supply god.

Once God leaves for his vacation,

we see Carrey struggle as he tries to understand

what has happened to him.

He looks the same, acts the same,

but still – he’s got all God’s power!

He starts to experiment,

to try out his new powers,

to see what he can do.

He starts small, parting a miniature Red Sea

in a bowl of tomato soup.

But slowly he begins to understand:

he’s become as all-powerful as the Lord God.

He’s got power!

And with that realization the soundtrack amps up

with the pulsing beat of the song, “The Power,”

the screen showing Carrey swaggering down the street,

the song pumping,

the singer wailing,

“I’ve got the power,

I’ve got the power.”

This is what the Elijah’s life should have been like;

Our lesson from First Kings should have recorded that

2800 years ago Elijah walked with

Jim Carrey’s strut and swagger,

as though the soundtrack in his head

anticipated the song,

“I’ve got the power, I’ve got the power.”

The screenwriters should have been able

to lift Carrey’s scene straight from Elijah’s life.

Just two chapters after he is introduced

so simply as “Elijah the Tishbite”,

Elijah had become the Michael Phelps

of the prophet-of-God world.

He singled-handedly confronted

and defeated the prophets of the pagan god Baal,

all 450 of them,

all at the same time.

He withheld the rain;

he raised a boy thought dead back to life.

Elijah was “the man”!

He should have been walking the dusty roads of Israel

like a rock star.

Yet we find him in our lesson alone,

out in the desert wilderness,

under a broom tree,

which is really more shrub than tree,

saying to God,

“It is enough;

now O Lord, take away my life.”

What happened to make Elijah so

despondent, dejected,

depressed,

low and lonely?

Where was the power of God

that had been so evident in Elijah’s life?

Why can’t Elijah feel it?

What we learn is that Israel’s Queen Jezebel

was a follower of the pagan god Baal,

and she was outraged when Elijah

not only humiliated her prophets,

but then killed them on God’s instructions.

She vowed vengeance.

She vowed to track down Elijah and kill him.

Elijah was consumed with fear and ran for his life,

down into the southern kingdom of Judah,

down to Beersheba,

far from the vicious Jezebel.

We find him in our lesson collapsed under the shrub,

breathing heavily after his flight from danger,

his robe soaked with sweat,

his eyes scanning the horizon,

his ears alert to every sound.

We can almost hear his thoughts:

“This isn’t what I agreed to when I accepted God’s call,

when I agreed to serve.

God never said anything about people wanting to kill me

for doing what God told me to do.

This is not what I bargained for!

Jezebel is a vicious queen and

she won’t rest until her soldiers

bring her my head.

So that’s it, enough,

I might as well die here and now.”

We find him so low,

so despondent,

so filled with feelings of abandonment,

alone,

completely hopeless.

But we know, don’t we,

that he was not alone,

that God had not abandoned him,

not even for a moment.

God sent his angels to watch over him,

to care for him,

to feed him,

to grace him, so exhausted physically and emotionally,

with restful, renewing sleep.

And in the morning God’s angels fed Elijah yet again,

and then led him further south

deep into the wilderness,

far from danger.

And if you remember your lessons from Sunday School,

you will remember that Jezebel

was the one who met an untimely end,

not Elijah.

Elijah continued to do the work God sent him to do,

until he had a successor in Elisha,

and then in that wonderful scene

was carried up into the heavens,

in a flaming chariot.

(2 Kings 2:11)

Elijah never lost God’s power;

he never was separated from God,

away from God’s presence.

As low as he felt,

as despondent, as dejected as he felt,

he was never completely alone;

God was always with him.

In our stress-filled world,

we all have our moments of deep discouragement,

of profound loneliness,

of the all but certain feeling that all hope is gone,

that the darkness that covers us

will never give way to light.

But the promise is sure,

that underneath us,

even in those moments,

are the everlasting,

ever-loving arms of God,

always there to help us through the most difficult times,

to get us back on our feet.

This is something I know well in my own life.

I have had my own moments of darkness:

a serious health issue when I was in my late twenties;

living with an alcoholic in my first marriage

when I was in my thirties;

watching a business I was part of

implode and collapse underneath me

as I approached forty.

But I found that it was in those most difficult times,

that my faith actually grew;

that I could feel God’s presence and comforting power

even in the midst of turmoil and trouble,

even as I stumbled in the dark.

I learned in those moments, those times, 
those days,

even those weeks,

to sing with the psalmist:

“Seek the Lord and his strength;
seek his presence continually”

(Psalm 105:4)

And when I sought God,

God was there.

Every summer when I return to Vermont for vacation

I re-read at least one of the more than 30 books

written by the Reverend Frederick Buechner.

Buechner (BEEKner) lives in Rupert Vermont,

which is the next town over from where we stay.

He’s well known in the area,

and the local bookstore always carries

a good selection of his books,

so it always seems to be to the right time and place

for me to go gleaning in the vast fields of his wisdom.

His writings make so clear that he is a man of great faith,

yet he readily admits his tendency to worry,

his tendency to anxiety.

He writes movingly and eloquently

of how dark clouds have descended around him

so often his life.

But time and time again,

just when he might have expected

no longer to feel the power and presence of God,

there it was.

This is how he put it in one of his sermons:

“To remember my life

is to remember the countless times

when I might have given up, gone under,

when humanly speaking I might have gotten lost

beyond the power of any to find me.

But I didn’t……

I’ve not given up….

[For] as weak as we are,

a strength beyond our strength [pulls] us through…

Foolish as we are, a wisdom beyond our wisdom

[flickers] up just often enough

 to light [the way forward for us];

Faint of heart as we are

a love beyond our power to love

[keeps] our hearts alive….

[This love, this power] is the Lord;

it is God,

who has been with us throughout all our days and years

whether we knew it or not….

with us in our best moments

and our worst moments.”

(“A Room Called Remember” in Secrets in the Dark)

This is the power of God that is in our lives,

my life,

your life,     

Buechner’s life,

and yes, Elijah’s life.

It is the power that gives us strength,

gets us back up on our feet

shows us the way forward;

It is the power that lifts the dark clouds

and lets light come flooding in to give us hope.

As Buechner reminds us

God is always there,

whether we know it or not,

to comfort us,

to heal us,

to fix our brokenness,

to guide us,

to grace us with hope.

The very name we call this room reminds us of that power.

We call this room a Sanctuary,

a sacred place, a holy place,

a place of refuge, of renewal,

where we are safe,

safe even from Jezebel and her soldiers.

God is certainly not confined to this place,

but in this place we are a little more attentive,

a little more aware of God’s presence.

Who among us doesn’t feel a little different

walking through the doors of this Sanctuary?

We walk a little straighter,

we feel a little more at peace.

We see the Cross, and we know that

whatever is going on in our lives,

somehow it will all work out.

And the wonderful thing is that

we know God’s presence and God’s power

not just here, but everywhere,

even when we are out in the wilderness,

exhausted,

terrified,

collapsed under a tree.

Elijah will again hear God’s voice,

will again feel himself in God’s presence.

He will find the power to persevere and carry on,

going about God’s work,

all the challenges and even the dangers still there,

but Elijah confident,

assured,

empowered by God’s love.

We too are empowered by that love,

God’s presence in our lives,

God’s grace given us in Jesus Christ.

For God is our Rock,

our Redeemer,

our Savior,

our sure hope,

our power.

AMEN 

If you are interested in learning more about Frederick Buechner, 

I recommend the following books as good starting points:

Listening to Your Life  - daily devotionals

Secrets in the Dark - a collection of sermons

Beyond Words - daily readings

Wishful Thinking - "A Seeker's ABC"