Food for the journey

1 Kings 19.4-8, John 6.35.41-51

“It is enough!” says Elijah in despair in today’s Old Testament Reading. And I expect we all know how he feels. “It is enough!” We’ve probably all thought that at points over the last 18 months as we have slogged through this pandemic, with all its ups and downs, hopes of returning to normality, disappointments as those hopes are dashed, as plans had to be changed and changed again. “It is enough!” But of course, the virus doesn’t care about how we feel, or when our patience happens to have run out. It is just doing what viruses do, trying to replicate itself.

 It wasn’t a virus that was causing Elijah’s despair, but his enemy was just as relentless, and just as heartless. Elijah had fallen foul of King Ahab, the king of Israel and his wife, Queen Jezebel, who was from the neighbouring country of Phoenicia, whose name has become a byword for wickedness. According to the Bible they were as bad as each other, a power-hungry, corrupt, cruel couple, but Jezebel had also brought with her the worship of the Phonecian God Baal, and thousands of his prophets and priests and was imposing this on the people of Israel.

 This story we’ve heard today is the aftermath of a great contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, when they and Elijah had prayed to their respective Gods to send down fire from heaven to burn up the sacrifices they’d offered. Elijah won, and as he triumphed, he called on the people of Israel to kill Jezebel’s prophets. God hadn’t told him to do this, but he did it anyway, perhaps thinking that that would be the end of all his nation’s problems.  

 But he had underestimated Jezebel. She probably didn’t care much about the deaths of her prophets in themselves, but she couldn’t bear losing face. She sent out the command for Elijah to be hunted down and killed in his turn. Elijah, sensibly, ran for his life, far out into the desert, where he hoped no one would find him. Eventually though, he ran out of running, and the reality of his situation came home to him. After all he’d done, it had come to this.

 It is enough! he said. 

 He sat in the meagre shade of a solitary broom tree – no more than a scrubby bush really - and waited to die, something that wouldn’t have taken long in that inhospitable climate. He thought he had been called to do a great thing for God, but in the end, he hadn’t achieved anything at all, except a lot of pointless death and destruction, collateral damage in a war he now realised he had no hope of winning.

 But God had other ideas. Elijah sank into an exhausted sleep, but when he woke he found that he wasn’t alone. An angel was with him, with water and a cake of flatbread, telling him to eat. He ate, and slept and woke again, and there was more food, and the instruction of the angel to “get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.”

Elijah did as he was told. What else could he do? And he went on, “in the strength of that food” we are told, for forty days and nights  - it must have been some cake - until he came to another mountain, Mount Horeb, where he met with God and heard his “still, small voice” speaking to him with words that would encourage him on into the next part of his ministry.

 Elijah had two dramatic mountaintop experiences: on Mount Carmel and Mount Horeb, but they don’t make complete sense without this bit in the middle, the bit where Elijah thinks it is all over for him, and he wants it to be too. The bit where he hasn’t got a clue what is going on and has started not even to care. The bit where it all seems too much like hard work, too long a road, with no idea where it will lead him. The bit where he has had enough. But also the bit where he discovers that God won’t give up on him even though he seems to want to give up on himself.

God believes in him. God provides for him. God gives him bread and water, without which no one can live. God gives him rest and the presence of an angel to watch over him. There are no demands, no tricky questions, no expectations, just acceptance that this is how it is at the moment. God is just kind to him, in very basic, practical ways. If you’ve ever been in the sort of state Elijah’s in here, you’ll probably know how important kindness is– the meal someone brings round, the text or email asking how you are, the offer of help which enables you to rest, to sleep, to take time out simply to breathe for a while. The angel who comes to Elijah doesn’t offer a magic wand. He doesn’t offer to go and destroy Jezebel. He just brings the kindness of God into the situation and that changes everything.

 We should never underestimate the importance of kindness.

It can literally be a life-saver, because kindness says “you matter to me” and if we know we matter to someone, and especially to God, we’re encouraged to believe we might matter to ourselves too.

 It’s not just the cake, the water and the sleep that give Elijah hope, of course. It’s also the message the angel gives him the second time he comes to him. “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.”

What journey is this? 

As far as Elijah was concerned his journey was over. His life was over, dragging to a sorry close out here in the desert. But God tells him that there is a new journey ahead of him, another chapter to his story, purpose for his life.

 We looked at this episode a few weeks ago in our Good Book Club Bible study, and we found ourselves wondering what the cake and the water might have been for us as we have slogged on through this pandemic, how we have found the rest we needed, who the angels were for us. It was important, we decided, to notice these things, because just like Elijah, our journey isn’t over yet, and we need to have our eyes open to the food God sends to strengthen us.

 The people who encountered Jesus during his ministry were reminded often of stories like this one of Elijah, stories of God’s provision for people when all seemed lost. They saw the same loving care in him, and sometimes the same miraculous gift of food and drink. Today’s Gospel passage follows on from the miracle of the feeding of the 5000. Many of those who ate the bread and fishes Jesus gave them probably didn’t realise where all that food had unexpectedly come from; they just rejoiced that they were full up for once. But some, says Jesus, realised that he wasn’t just offering bread for a day, but living bread that could feed them for eternity, his own life, his own self. Their eyes had been opened by this miracle to the presence of God, his grace - unmerited, unearned love – which would take them through whatever life threw at them, whether it was triumph or disaster.

 The same offer is open to us as God comes to us, day by day, in his word, in prayer, in the loving kindness we receive from others, and give to them too. If we have eyes to see him, we can discover his goodness, nourishing us and giving us hope that will sustain us eternally, with plenty to share with others too.

 Amen