Friends
Peace be with you.
I generally don’t associate the appearance of God with pyrotechnics. A ringmaster at a circus or a performer at a theater may appear center stage after a flash of light and bang of sound but that’s generally not the way I think about God appearing. I bring this up because it’s not true historically. It was common for natural events that are remarkable to imagine to be associated with the gods. Thor is the god of thunder, he appears with thunder both in Norse mythology and in the Marvel cinematic universe. In the mind of the Canaanite people, the major adversaries of the Jewish people, their god, Baal, was the god of fire. He appeared to them in fire. So lightening, the sun, molten lava, and other fiery things were associated with Baal.
In the 18th chapter of the First Book of Kings, the chapter immediately preceding the story we heard in the first reading, the King of Israel, whose name is Ahab, has convinced all the prophets of his day that Baal and the one true God are basically the same and, therefore, they should work for Baal. There is one brave prophet left, Elijah, who is tasked with putting down this false notion of syncretism, the belief that all religions are basically the same, and putting forth the truth that there is one God and that his name isn’t Baal. Elijah’s way of reminding the people of the things St. Paul mentions in the second reading, “They are Israelites; theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; theirs the patriarchs,” is to challenge the false prophets to a fire creation off. What’s a fire creation off, you ask. Well, it’s when Elijah invites the false prophets to stack a bunch of wood in the middle of a field and then beg the god of fire to start it on fire and create a place where they can offer him sacrifice. For an entire morning the false prophets of the false god dance around trying to do this while Elijah taunts them that there God might be asleep or away on vacation or possibly even drunk and passed out. Finally, Elijah stacks up some wood, pours a bunch of water on it, and asks the one true God to show them who’s boss. God lights the wood on fire and proves he’s the one true God. Now, normally, if you hear this story this is the end and you get a homily about how important it is to worship God and not false gods like money, power, or pleasure.
However, this isn’t a normal homily. Because, immediately after the fire is going really well and all the water has been lapped up, Elijah tells the townspeople who had come out to watch this fire creation off, to take the false prophets down to the valley and kill them all. Not very nice, right? You can understand why we don’t bring it up normally. But you have to know that to understand what happens next. King Ahab finds out that all his prophets are dead and that they’ve been killed on the word of his nemesis, Elijah, utters a blood oath. A blood oath says either that guy dies or I die, with no intent on the person who said it being the one who dies. He sends out his soldiers to kill Elijah and the one true prophet of the one true God has to go into hiding. He runs for 40 days and 40 nights (remember how the Old Testament loves the number 40?) and finds himself by the same mountain that Moses first encountered God and got the ten commandments. In this Book, they call it Horeb but we’re probably more accustomed to it’s earlier name, Sinai.
And that’s when our reading starts. Except, they’ve left out a bit of dialogue. When Elijah arrives, God says to him, “Why are you here?” and Elijah responds, ““I have been most zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts, but the Israelites have forsaken your covenant. They have destroyed your altars and murdered your prophets by the sword. I alone remain, and they seek to take my life.” He feels totally alone and abandoned. That’s when God says to go stand outside and he showers down three things that are fire based. Well, sort of fire based, if you think in the mind of the time. Wind is fire based because it’s violent. Think of the gospel, how the wind and waves blow the boat around. It destroys things. And wind amplifies fire. You need oxygen to make a fire grow. Earthquakes are also violent and they may be associated with volcanic eruptions. And, the last one is fire. All three are false manifestations of the false god Baal. You see, God is saying that Elijah gets it. God isn’t all about destruction and violence. Jesus’ message to the disciples in the boat is the message of God, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”
Now, if I were to stop there, I think I’d, once again, miss the real point that God is getting across. Because, the very next thing that happens for Elijah is that God tells him that he has a plan and that it involves him choosing his successors and being taken up in a fiery chariot, presumably to heaven although that word isn’t explicitly mentioned. The point is that, even though it’s not the plan that Elijah would want, God still had a plan that worked out in the end. I don’t know about you but, so far, 2020 isn’t going the way I planned. I wouldn’t have planned a global pandemic that keeps forcing us to cancel and adjust things. I wouldn’t have planned for us to be sitting in a less than half filled church with masks on worrying about particulates. I wouldn’t have done it this way. And, even though we may be tempted to sit back and question whether God even has a plan, we can hear in the first reading that he does and we will hear it and see it unfold, not in the noise of the coronavirus or the election or our fears but in the quiet spaces where we encounter God. God has a plan, and we can see it unfold if we stop paying attention to the fires in our lives and, instead, let the one true God unfold it for us.
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