Trinity Sermons

Trinity Presbyterian Church

2200 North Bell Avenue # Denton, Texas 76209

Rev. Craig Hunter

April 26, 2009

Elijah's Mid-life Crisis

Scriptures: Luke 24:36b-48; 1 Kings 19:1-18

Next week marks a very special event in the life of our congregation. A beautiful iceberg, long in the process of formation, will finally crest the horizon and come into view. We won't be able to see below the surface, we won't be able to directly appreciate all that supports and gives shape to the ice-shaped cathedral then floating in front of us. It won't last long before it will melt. But for one brief moment we will be privileged to enjoy its beauty, to open our ears and eyes to its majesty and wonder.

I am referring of course to next Sunday evening's performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah. If you have been asleep or have somehow missed it, our choir, as well as the choirs of three other churches, have been practicing for months, straining to lift up the flying buttresses of this musical masterpiece. If you have no appreciation of beauty, if music has never touched your soul, if you have no heart, then I suppose you have no reason to come to the performance. Otherwise, I hope and expect to see you there.

In light of that event, I promised Josh a few weeks ago that I would preach a sermon on Elijah. There are, of course, many Elijah passages in the Bible, and I re-read most of them in preparation for this sermon. It didn't take long, however, before my attention focused on what is one of my favorite Elijah passages, indeed, one of my favorite passages in the Bible, namely the text I chose from 1st Kings this morning.

This text has so often spoken to me over the years of the nature of God's revelation. In a busy world full of sound and fury, in the midst of what sometimes feels like a shock-and-awe culture, the thought of God speaking through a still small voice is an appealing one. As poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, "Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still small voice of calm!" This text has so often served to lead me beside still waters, to restore my soul. I know I am not alone in finding such comfort in this passage.

But that isn't what struck me this week. No, my thoughts and exegesis led me in a different direction. For one thing, the words that are often translated as "a still, small voice" in verse 12, the same words that Mendelssohn incorporated in the text of his oratorio, are really a poor translation. It is not a voice at all, nor is there anything small about it. We find a better translation in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible from which I read the passage, which translates it as "the sound of sheer silence." Given that the root of the Hebrew word which has been translated in the past as "small" is more accurately related to the word "to crush," another translation would be, "after the fire, the sound of crushed silence."

These realizations shifted my attention to the larger context of the passage. These words about the sound of crushed silence are not the focus of the text, rather they are an interlude that sets the stage for what is to come. The focus of the passage for me shifted away from the form of God's revelation, and more to its content and context. What increasingly took center stage was this moment in Elijah's life history.

As I sat in my bathtub last Thursday night, thinking about this passage and this sermon -- I sometimes do some of my best sermon preparation just sitting in a hot bath, you might be surprised -- anyway, the image that came to mind was of a man standing in front of a mirror. A man, or a woman. A person. Let's pretend it's you.

It is late in the evening, the kids have been put to bed. Your spouse is in the other room, reading or watching television. And you stand in front of the mirror, looking at yourself, looking for something below the surface, you don't know quite what. You wonder if you can find evidence on your face of this strange feeling you have within, you hope that perhaps buried in the topography of your face lies a clue that will help you name this nameless feeling.

You look tired. You can see evidence of crow's feet below your eyes. It has indeed been a long day, but there is something more than just physical fatigue going on. You linger longer at the mirror than usual.

Today didn't go quite as you hoped. Your sales pitch fell flat, you were enervated by the dull sense of apathy reflected in your students' eyes, the plant that you had been lavishing with love died despite your best efforts, the problem that you thought you had solved once and for all has come back in another form.
But despite these setbacks, you haven't lost perspective, at least not completely. You know they are small things, really. So why do you still feel so . . . off, so hollow, it doesn't seem to compute. There is no reason for you to be feeling this way, but you are.

You look down to notice the continued expansion of your belly, and feel a sense of frustration at your body's betrayal of your will. And there, in the corners of your eyes are some deeper wrinkles in the same place your mother had them, or your hairline has strategically advanced to the rear, taking up a defensive position in the same place that your grandfather's hairline once did. As time goes by, it is becoming increasing clear, increasingly undeniable -- you are becoming your parents, your mother and/or your father.

You've begun to hear his or her echo even in the way you laugh, to sense his or her ghost as you praise or chastise your children, you can remember them clearly saying the same things. You are becoming your father, or mother, and as that realization sinks in, you feel simultaneously a wave of compassion for your father as he feels closer now than he ever has, as you feel like you understand him and love him better than before, and at the same time you feel a sad resignation that you haven't transcended your past, that you too share your father's weaknesses and limitations. It is a bittersweet moment.

What's the point, you wonder as you look into the mirror. Why aren't you satisfied with what you have, with your accomplishments and your relationships. You think of your children's faces, of the look of adoration and affection that they so often send in your direction. Their warm hugs often have the power to resurrect your spirit, their love for you is real, it so often anchors you in the midst of the storm, it feels good to be needed. That grace doesn't compute either, sometimes it fills you to overflowing, it is a mystery of the universe. Full stop.

Sometimes, but not now, not in this moment. No, for whatever reason, their love seems real but distant now as you look into the mirror. They don't see you as you see yourself, they don't love you as you long to be loved and known in moments such as this. You feel alone. And as much as you love them, they are old enough now that you have encountered increasing evidence that they will not save the world, they are not perfect angels, sometimes you even find yourself wishing you could change certain things about them. You are ashamed to admit it, but it's true. You don't live in Lake Wobegon, as special as your children are to you, they aren't really above average, rather they too are like you, like everyone, they are differently average. Differently average.

This moment that you are experiencing in the bathroom mirror, most people experience it at some point or another, it lasts months for some, years for others. You could call it what most people do, a mid-life crisis.

I am reminded of two figures from American literature. One, Willy Loman, is the main character in Arthur Miller's play The Death of a Saleman. Willy is a salesman, a husband, and a father. But although Willy isn't self-aware enough to articulate it so bluntly, he is haunted by the notion that his life hasn't been what he imagined for himself. He experiences a sort of mid-life crisis, struggling to hold on to some sense of meaning or purpose, struggling to bury the nagging doubt that he has missed the boat, that he has lived in life in pursuit of an empty dream. His sense of despair is too great, it swallows him up, and he commits suicide near the end of the play.

I am reminded also of Mrs. Laura Brown from Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer-prize winning book The Hours. Her mirror-moment, her crisis, is triggered by a cake that didn't turn out as she hoped, which becomes for her a symbol of her life. "What Laura regrets, what she can hardly bear, is the cake. It embarrasses her, but she can't deny it. It's only sugar, flour, and eggs -- part of a cake's charm is its inevitable imperfections. She knows that; of course she does. Still she had hoped to create something finer, something more significant, than what she's produced, even with its smooth surface and its centered message. She wants (she admits to herself) a dream of a cake manifested as an actual cake; a cake invested with an undeniable and profound sense of comfort, of bounty. She wants to have baked a cake that banishes sorrow, even if only for a little while. She wants to have produced something marvelous; something that would be marvelous even to those who do not love her.

She has failed. She wished she didn't mind. Something, she thinks, is wrong with her." (Michael Cunningham, The Hours, New York: Picador USA, 1998, pp. 143-144).

Our Biblical text this morning catches Elijah at a not entirely different point in his life. It is a depiction, if you will, of an Old Testament-style mid-life crisis.

But to understand where he is, it helps to understand where he has been. He has repeatedly confronted Ahab, the corrupt ruler of Israel who will stop at nothing to expand his power. And he has challenged the priests of the pagan god Baal to a duel, in an ancient form of a Divine Ultimate Fighting Championship. Spectators flock in from far and wide, anticipation grows, there is plenty of trash-talk back and forth, until finally, in grand fashion, Elijah's faith and ministry are vindicated as Yahweh, the true God of the Israelites, defeats the priests of Baal.

But rather than living happily ever after, Elijah's victory elicits the vengeful response of Jezebel, Ahab's wife. As we read in the first several verses of our passage this morning, she threatens his life, and he is afraid. He flees into the wilderness, until we encounter him in verse four cutting a very pitiful figure. He "came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: 'It is enough, now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.' "

It is a mirror moment for him, so to speak, or in this case a tree moment. You could say he has had a bad day at work, a prophet's job isn't easy after all, but it seems to be more than that. This is a mid-life crisis. The victory that he won was not so definitive after all, the forces of sin and evil are not so easily defeated. He feels, I suppose, threatened by a sense of meaninglessness and despair. He feels alone, and is more conscious than ever of his limitations. I am not better than my ancestors, he says, seeing himself in a different light. According to Eric Erikson's developmental stages, what Elijah is experiencing is what most middle-aged adults experience at some point. "As our children leave home, or our relationships or goals change, we may be faced with major life changes—the mid-life crisis—and struggle with finding new meanings and purposes. If we don't get through this stage successfully, we can become self-absorbed and stagnate (see http://www.learningplaceonline.com/stages/organize/Erikson.htm)." That is a very real danger for Elijah a few verses later, as he repeatedly cries out to God, in a marked "woe is me" tone, "I have very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.

Elijah makes this cry from a cave at the foot of Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai. This cave is symbolic as a place of retreat. Herb O'Driscoll writes, "At some time or other in our lives we all come to a cave. It is not entirely an image of something negative in life. In some sense our home is our cave. The cave is the place we chose to make our stand, the place we feel some measure of security and safety. The cave is where we can think, nurse our wounds, and if there is anyone else in it, receive sympathy and help." (Herb O'Driscoll, Child of Peace, Lord of Life, Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, p. 127/128, from Word and Witness, June 21, 1992, New Berlin: Liturgical Publications, Inc.)

Laura Brown in Cunningham's book retreats to a kind of cave, in her case a hotel room. She leaves her child with a babysitter, and drives off to a hotel, just to escape for a few hours. Her room at the Normandy hotel reminds her a bit of heaven. "Heaven would be better furnished, it would be brighter and grander, but it might in fact contain some measure of this hushed remove, this utter absence inside the continuing world. . . She is safe here. She could do anything she wanted to, anything at all." (Michael Cunningham, The Hours, New York: Picador USA, 1998, pp. 150)

We, too, have our caves. At least I hope you do. Many of us could use some more time in them. Many of us could use more of the healing and rest that they provide. And if you are one such person, then I hope you carve out some time in your cave in the weeks ahead.

But our story doesn't end there, it doesn't end in a cave, although it could. As Laura Brown rightly observes, "It is possible to die. . . She could decide to die. It is an abstract, shimmering notion, not particularly morbid. Hotel rooms are where people do things like that, aren't they? . . . By going to a hotel, she sees, you leave the particulars of your own life and enter a neutral zone, a clean white room, where dying does not seem quite so strange. It could, she thinks, be deeply comforting; it might feel so free; to simply go away. To say to them all, I couldn't manage, you had no idea; I didn't want to try anymore. There might, she thinks, be a dreadful beauty in it, like an ice field or a desert in early morning." (Michael Cunningham, The Hours, New York: Picador USA, 1998, pp. 151-152)

God doesn't let Elijah's story end in a cave. After a journey of forty days and forty nights, that familiar Biblical number of forty days and forty nights, which signifies a different kind of time, a spiritual kind of time, God speaks to Elijah in God's own time. "What are you doing here, Elijah?" God says.

God saves Elijah from himself. God breaks the metaphorical mirror, God turns Elijah's attention outwards, God reminds Elijah that he is not alone. Not only is God with him, but there is a community out there, a community of seven thousand who have remained faithful, and they need Elijah's help. God gives him a mission.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, the God that spoke to Elijah still speaks to us today. We trust that God is still at work saving us from ourselves, calling us out of our caves when we become tempted to take up permanent residence there. The God that calls us out of our caves, out of our tombs, is the God who in Christ didn't stay put in his cave. God is still at work, calling us to serve the community, charging us with a mission and purpose, going with us and ahead of us into the Galilee. This power that takes self-absorbed people, people who can't see pass their own pain, this power that takes such people and expands their hearts and their vision -- well, I don't understand it, but I call it the power of the Holy Spirit. It is resurrection power. It happens in God's time, in God's own way. It changed Elijah, it changes us, it brings us back from the dead. May you know this power in your life, may you witness to it to those you meet.