1 Kings 19:1-8
Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.
But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.
Elijah was having a really bad day. You can tell from the reading. He says it pretty much right out loud in as clear language as you can get, without turning to us and saying, Hey guys, I'm having a bad day. What he says is this, it is enough now. Oh, Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my father. Yikes, right? Elijah, he's out in the wilderness all by himself. Seems like no food, no water, and he says, God, I am done. I can't do anymore. This is the end. Kill me. That's a rough day. And it's this, this emotion of Elijah's that I'd like to look at, both in the story and around us and say, How do Christians respond to this kind of depression. So let's back up a little bit and see what is happening. Elijah is coming off one of the best moments of his career. Our reading begins with Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. This is my favorite story in the entire Old Testament, the story of Elijah on the top of Mount Carmel. Cuz it's so cool. Elijah decides that he wants to have a contest between the prophets of Baal and between him, the contest is very simple. They will both set up an altar, ready a sacrifice, and the God that lights the altar on fire is the real God, and both sides agree. The prophets of all they do some dancing and singing, and they work on it, and they even start to cut themselves. Nothing happens. Elijah waits until they exhaust themselves. He even makes fun of them a little bit. And then it's Elijah's turn. He has some people pour enough water on the altar that the trench around the altar is a giant puddle. And then he prays, and fire from heaven comes down and engulfs the altar. How cool, right? Can you imagine? Like, why a guy like me, sci fi, fantasy guy that I am would love fire from heaven coming down and doing this. It's awesome. Following that, Elijah leads a band of warriors to kill off all of those prophets of Baal. And that is the story. Ahab goes to Jezebel and tells her what Elijah has done, and she decides that she wants to kill him. She says, So May the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow. And it's the strangest thing, what happened, this amazing moment. And you gotta say, it's pretty amazing fire from heaven, a clear demonstration that the prophets of Paul are not real, and that that God has no power and nothing has changed. Now, if we looked at that story, we would tell Elijah. Elijah, come on, dude, this is the best moment of your career. Huge victory, and you're still upset. Come on. But nothing changed. We've been looking at the Olympics, many of us watching. The events, lots of people are winning medals, right? I get to see all these clips of people like holding up their gold medals and chomping on them. Pretty cool, right? But one of the things I think we forget is that, what happens when these athletes return home with a gold medal, right? They'll put it on a stand, they'll set it up in their house somewhere, and then they have to go back to their lives. And you know, maybe a month, you know, gold medal, maybe six months before the excitement fades and you're back to your normal life, except this time, you don't have the Olympics to train for, this thing that you've been working for, this purpose that you've had, all of a sudden, it's gone. And if your life was sad before, it'll be sad after. Except you'll have a reminder on your wall that you should be happy.
Nothing really changes except you've got a piece of gold hanging up in your house. And you might say to yourself, I should be happy, but I'm not. The gold medal might actually make things worse, if your life is depressing, if you were sad before, you'll be sad after, and so maybe even this moment, this high point of Elijah's life, he goes and he says, why is they are things not better?
And he's in the same situation. Jezebel isn't overthrown. Ahab is still king, and the soldiers are still trying to kill Elijah. So he runs out into the wilderness. He leaves behind his assistant. He goes off on his own. He's under a broom tree, and he says, Just kill me. God, I'm done. I'm at my lip. I can't do it. We might look at this and say, is Elijah depressed? Like that's what we would think about, right? Is this clinical depression? We can't make that diagnosis, least of all me, I know more about Hebrew than I do about psychology, but he seems pretty upset. Seems like he's at his limit. So he lies down in the wilderness, no food, no water, no protection, expecting not to wake up the next
morning. Elijah. Is the greatest prophet of the Old Testament, right? He is the model for every prophet that came after him. He is so important in the Old Testament that we have prophets predicting he would come back before the Messiah come. He is so important in the Old Testament that when Jesus is on the top of the mountain, Moses appears to next to him, and the other god is Elijah, most famous prophet in the Old Testament, And yet ready
to die. This is contrary to everything we think, about happiness, about purpose, Elijah is at his end. So how does God respond? God sends down an angel to Elijah, and he says, Get up. Be a man. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Oh, wait, I think I read that wrong. Sorry, let's, let's see. How about this, Elijah, pray harder and you won't be upset. I'm really not very good at reading today. What? What about this one? All you need to do is read your Bible more, and you'll you'll live in the healing that God has won for you. No, how about I? Right? One more time you healed others. Why can't you heal yourself? We know that's not what he says. What does the angel do? Taps him on the shoulder, get up and eat. This isn't really a command. The angel has come down and said, Hey, Elijah Here, have some food. We know how big a deal that can be. How many times has someone been in the hospital and a member of the congregation shows up at their house with a casserole, and that's all you need, not just because it's a little bit of food, which you do need, but because of all the love and care and concern that are baked into that pot, right? That's what Elijah needs. He goes to sleep again, and the angel says, Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you. So Elijah gets a little bit more food, and this time, this food is so amazing that he can walk with it on the strength of that food 40 days and 40 nights. Kind of miraculous fact. I'd really like to be able to find that grocery store. But here's the thing, God realizes that Elijah needed something. He was at his limit, and Elijah needed more than just a pep talk God provides for him physical food and rest. He sends an angel to show him that he is on his side. And then, once Elijah reaches the mountain of God, God tells him that he is not alone, but there are 5000 people who have remained faithful, and that there is a Prophet that he can go anoint a guy named Elisha who will be with him. He gives him physical, spiritual and emotional support in the face of this difficult now for us, when we face difficult moments like this, maybe even clinical depression, we know God is likely not going to send an Angel to bake us bread, and that bread will not last us 40 days, but I think there's a good number of things we can learn from God's interaction with Elijah about our own mental Health. And I think the first thing is that we have to realize that depression is not a fault in the Christian when you reach your limit, when you have been pushed to the edge, when life is just bad, and maybe even you are suicidal. It is not because you don't have enough faith. It is not because you didn't pray hard enough. Sometimes that just happens. The reason I'm preaching on this today is because yesterday, when I was out running, I heard snippets of a sermon where a preacher said exactly the opposite. This preacher said that God Jesus died on the cross to provide us the promises of the Bible, and if you just walk in them, you will have healing, which, if you look at that, says that if you don't, if You're not healed physically and mentally, it's your fault, and that is crap. Most of us here in this room do not believe the physical part of that you've heard me preach about this long enough, I. It. But sometimes Christians who think that that it's in a little crazy that people would be healed by their faith physically, might have questions about their mental health and faith. And I want to tell you that there is only one person in the history of the world, who had enough faith that he was never pushed to the limit, that he was never questioned, that he never lacks trust in God, and that one person is Jesus Christ, he is the only one who has so much faith that he was never pushed to his limit, and that every moment of his life he had faith that his father would send him to the cross and raise him from the dead. And the only person who can say that is Jesus. And I have to ask you, are you Jesus? We all know the answer. None of us is the rest of us, all of us. We are not God and man. We do not have the Holy Spirit empowering us like Jesus did. We are not perfect in the way that Jesus was. He's the only one whose faith was strong enough to get him through. The rest of us were sinners. We face pain and hurt and loss, and we have limits to our power and strength, means we will face moments like Elijah. We will face pain. We'll face depression and hurt, which is why the gift of Christ's faith is so important. When you were baptized, he united himself to you to make his faith in operation for you, which means that trusting in God is not a thing that you have to build up in yourself. It's Jesus faith at work in you, whether you are happy or sad, whether you will feel like strong today or you're like Elijah lying down in bed at home, the faith of Jesus is a gift given to you that works no matter what to give you the promises of Jesus Christ. And so when you're feeling depressed or the people around you are, we have to say it is not because you are have any special lack of faith. And I think the best example, the best way of saying this is, is Elijah, the kind of guy that you would say wasn't faithful enough. Remember, only a few moments before this, he called fire down from heaven. Kind of cool, big things going on. Prior to that, he raised a man from the dead. I have to say, if anybody seems to be faithful. It might be the prophet Elijah. He even spoke to God, and yet he despaired of his life. Means sometimes Christians hit their limit.
So then, when a Christian is depressed, when we're facing these limits, what do we do? Well, God provided for Elijah's physical needs, his emotional needs and his spiritual needs in this world, and we can see that these things are all important as part of that, all things that God does through his Christian community when there is need, sometimes we just need to take A break. That was actually me a while ago, covid was really hard on me, back when I was in Chicago that very first year when the lockdowns were at their worst, it was rough, and the hardest part for me was that members of my congregation were dying, not from the. Disease, but from lack of personal contact, these people were locked in their nursing homes, and I was prevented from visiting them to give them holy communion, pray with them, just to have somebody who would talk to them, who wasn't the staff of the nursing they were dying because that hit me really hard, so much so that I went to the doctor for my normal checkup. You know what doctors do these days? They run you through the Depression checklist and they ask you, how you feeling? What's your mood like? And I answered honestly, and at the end of it, he said, you want something for that? I said, Whoa. This is worse than I thought. So I took a week off. I really took a week off. Basically sat on the couch playing video games for seven days straight. It was awesome, and it's exactly what I needed, just a break, and I came out of it pretty refreshing, but sometimes we need more than that. Sometimes what we need is emotional care. God has provided all sorts of people to take care of us when we're in that state. That's you, right. The Body of Christ gathered together to love and care for each and so we visit, we offer help, and sometimes that means also professional help, through counselors or psychologists. God also provides for us spiritual aid, the bread of life, Jesus Christ through the word, proclaimed through his body and his blood to sustain us in grace. But I think the biggest challenge that many people face when they're in this time is that emotional problems, depression especially, causes us to withdraw from all of these support we stop going to church, we stop letting people visit us and drop off those casseroles, or when I call up and say, Hey, I hear things aren't going well, I'd love to come over and give you communion, they say, No, my house isn't very clean. Or no, I'm kind of upset, or no, I'm depressed, or I'm injured. And I say, yeah, that's why I call. But the temptation is to turn away from the love and support that God wants to offer. It's okay be in need. It's okay to need help. God has a way of delivering that to you, because every once in a while we will get sick or hurt or depressed, and God knows this, and he has offered us the bread of life to feed our soul and this Christian community to care for our emotions and our bodies. He knows this, and he sends us, today, and we need to be willing to accept in Jesus name Amen. Amen.
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