Becoming Bread:
“STARVING AND DEPRESSED IN THE MIDST OF A GIANT SMORG”
August 20th
Gary Harder
Text:
1 Kings 19:1-8; 11-12
Introduction
When the drought set in, in Israel – no rain at all. None – when the drought set in, God told Elijah to flee to a little creek. He was supposed to hide there, drink from the creek, and he was supposed to wait there for ravens to feed him. (1 Kings 17:2-4)
I take my daughter to a smorgasbord for lunch. Brand new place only a few blocks from home. Had driven past it a few times already there on Danforth Road. “All you can eat buffet for only $7.99.” So tempting. Piles and piles of food. We sit there eating away, with a room full of mostly obese people. I leave feeling bloated. How did our culture ever get into this almost forced overeating? Why do I keep on getting tempted by these “all you can eat” smorgs?
I suppose it is inevitable. The smorg is only one manifestation of a much larger consumerism culture.
Take the remote control of our TV. Don’t you hate it when your spouse has control? You sit down together to watch an evening of TV. But it’s a 200 channel universe out there, and you have to go through every one of them to see if, maybe, there is something to interest you. And if it interests you it probably doesn’t interest your spouse. Click. Click. And then there are the commercials. Again you click away to pass the time. Choices are coming out of our ears, and we are almost paralysed by them.
The remote control is a symbol, a powerful symbol, of how deeply consumerism has invaded our soul. Just press a button. Just consume. The whole world is a smorgasbord of consumptables. We click away, consuming entertainment, information, sex, relationships, pornography, jobs, families, technology – and even religion. Even so, we have this uneasy feeling that we really are malnourished, famished even, in the face of all the marvellous things that we are able to consume.
The smorg and the remote control are the symbols of our new religion – consuming. Apparently shopping is the number one leisure activity of North Americans. Shopping, amidst unimaginable choice, now gives meaning to life and shapes our very identity. “Consumption is a system of meaning”, says philosopher Baudrillard. Even our own value as a person seems to be established on the basis of the goods we can purchase. Our value seems to be dependant on the clothes we wear, the music on our iPod, what kind of house we live in, the car we drive, the vacations we can afford. It’s almost like we are what we consume.
Says the cookie monster, “see cookie, want cookie, eat cookie”.
Most consuming is driven by our desire to look good in other people’s eyes. “See how successful I am”. “I really am sexy”. “This is a really cool image I project”. Or whatever.
And yet we are not content. Our needs become more and more insatiable. We chaff that there still aren’t enough choices to satisfy our every whim. We are never satisfied. We are at one and the same time both obese and depressed. Consumerism is a mercy-less religion that in the end leaves us empty even as we feel gorged out. The gods of smorgs and remotes aren’t feeding us manna or bread – they really couldn’t care less about our health or well-being. They are concerned only about their own bottom line.
Skye Jethani, in an article in the last issue of “Leadership”, says that the gods of consumption are invading the church as well. (Summer 2006).
I have this image then of church as a restaurant – an “All you can eat smorg”. The Saturday religion page announces all the titles of the sermons, all the famous guest speakers. Dr. So-and-So will speak on “Storming Heaven’s Gate”. That doesn’t appeal to you? Click. How about “Jesus takes all your troubles away”? Or, click, do you want to hear about “Being happy 100% of the time”? Or, “Being a Christian makes you successful financially”. Come to think of it, why go to church at all, there are religious programs aplenty on TV. Then you can stay in your easy chair, clicking away to your heart’s content on the remote control button, and you don’t have to have anything to do with people at church, some of whom you don’t like much anyway. Please ignore the fact that many of our more famous TV evangelists have been involved in either financial scandals, or sex scandals, or political scandals, or all three.
In consumer religion, church becomes a giant entertainment centre. Worship becomes glitzy, greasepaint slick choreography, shallow pop gospel, music sung by the sound control room.
But when we pick and choose what we like, even what we think we may need, when will we ever choose to listen to some of the harder sayings of the Bible. When will we ever hear about discipleship, or about counting the cost, or about commitment, or about loving the unlovely? When will we deal with justice issues, or hear about the needs of others, or hear that we need to love our enemies? How will we overcome our insolation from the broken-ness in our society, or even in ourselves? When will we ever be challenged to mission or service or stewardship? When would we ever discover a caring community? When would we ever move beyond selfish individualism?
I was fascinated by, and a bit surprised by, the last issue of “Leadership”, a religious journal that has a bit of a conservative and evangelical slant on church life in North America. This issue is beginning to challenge the sacred cows of “big mega box church”, of “seeker friendly worship services”, of “church growth” models which target specific segments of society (consumer groups), of evangelism that doesn’t really result in transformation of life styles or values or of society, of consumer driven church programs.
Will Willimon has some provocative things to say about the church trying to meet people’s needs. Willimon writes, “Jesus doesn’t meet our needs; he rearranges them. He cares very little about most things that I assume are my needs, and he gives me needs that I would’ve never had if I hadn’t met Jesus. He reorders them.
________
Now, if you’re a pastor in Honduras, it might be okay to define your ministry as meeting needs, because more people in Honduras have interesting biblical needs – food, clothing, housing. But most people in the churches I know get those needs met without prayer. So they’ve moved on to “needs” like orgasm, a satisfying career, an enjoyable love life, a positive outlook on life, and stuff the Bible has absolutely no interest in.
One assumption is that the gospel has something to do with “my needs”. As I read the Gospels, Jesus seems oblivious to most of my needs. Was Jesus about fulfilling people’s desires? What a curious image of Jesus.
Another assumption is that I have needs worth having. A consumer culture is not about the fulfilment of real need; it’s about the creation of need that I wouldn’t have without the advertising. So when I say “I need this”, I shouldn’t be trusted.” (P.58-59).
Israel’s King Ahab wants more choice
King Ahab wants more choice. Ahab is now King of Israel. He thinks that adding another god to Israel’s worship life should be a good thing. Give the consumer what they want.
Ahab has just gotten married. To Jezebel. It wasn’t a love match at all. It was a crafty political and economic match. As is fitting for a king.
Ahab’s father Omri, king before him, desperately needed a political and economic alliance with Sidon, at this point a rather powerful nation along the Mediterranean coast. Sidon’s King Ethbaal also wanted this alliance. He had a daughter, Jezebel. And Omri had a son Ahab. Perfect. Marry them off and the alliance is cemented.
A bit of a problem though. Notice the name of Sidon’s king. Ethbaal. It means, that the god Baal is king. Which means that Baal is also Jezebel’s god. And she will want to take this god along with her to her husbands palace and to Israel. That’s how treaties and marriages are done. They always have religious implications. Besides, you have to be modern and up-to-date to be in power. You have to be tolerant and inclusive and accepting, especially of your wife’s religious convictions. Besides, the more gods helping you, the better. King Ahab is all for it.
Besides, Baal is such a useful god. Baal is many things, including the fact that he is god of agriculture, god of rain, a particularly useful god to have in a dry land where you are just learning how to farm. And Baal was also god of war, another particularly useful need to have fulfilled. Religious consumerism at its best.
Enter Elijah
Elijah isn’t into this “meeting people’s needs” thing. Notice his name. Elijah. The first part of his name, “El”, is from the Hebrew word meaning “God”. El means “supreme God”. The second part of his name “Jah”, is a short form for Jahweh. His name means “Jahweh is supreme God” Jahweh alone is God.
‘You shall have no other gods before me” thunders this Jahweh God from a smoking Mount Sinai. Amen, says Elijah. The battle lines are drawn between Baal and Jahweh, and between Ahab and Elijah.
And the very first thing that Elijah does is announce a drought. No rain. Ah, Baal is god of rain, and the first thing that happens when Ahab and Israel start worshipping him is a drought. Bring in the rain god and Yahweh God withholds rain. No rain or even dew for three years.
I want to turn a bit to the personal life of the prophet Elijah. In the first place King Ahab is after him. Calls him “the troubler of Israel”. The drought will effect Elijah too. Survival is the issue now. “The word of the Lord came to him, saying,…hide yourself by the Wadi Cherith…You shall drink from the wadi (creek), and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there…The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the wadi.” (1 Kings 17:3-6).
Fed by ravens. Not really a banquet. Not a smorg. Almost no choice. I suppose meat brought by ravens would be carrion. Road kill. Meat they snuck away from the vultures. Bare survival.
I suddenly notice something in the larger story. Here Elijah is being fed. The next story is of him going to a destitute Widow in Zarephath where he asks her for some bread and she replies that she has planned to use her last handful of meal and her last drops of oil for her son and her to eat before they lie down to die of starvation. But Elijah urges her to make that bread for him, and if she does, her oil and her meal will never be empty. She does, and her oil and meal remain replenished throughout the drought. Later Elijah again will need to
be fed in a special way by God.
The pattern is there, the rhythm. A caution to all care givers, maybe especially all pastors. You need to be fed, nourished before you can feed others, before you can be bread to others. You need to live in that rhythm of being fed and then of feeding others, and of being fed again. Otherwise we dry up and have nothing to offer.
Eventually, after three years of drought, the confrontation with Ahab and his new Baal god will take place on Mount Karmel. This is the very familiar story. Why Mount Karmel. Well, it is Baal’s home, one of the high places where Baal is worshipped. The fight will be on his home turf. Each side will slay a bull, lay it on the altar, and pray for a fire to devour it. Elijah pours water on his bull – to heighten the drama. Water is supposed to be Baal’s forte. And yet it is only Elijah’s bull which is consumed by fire. Yahweh God is declared the powerful and only true God. Baal is totally discredited. The prophets of Baal are killed.
And then rain comes. The god of rain is defeated. And then rain comes. The drought is broken.
Elijah gets depressed
And then it is that Elijah gets depressed. Really depressed. Suicidally depressed. Very strange, that. He has been spectacularly successful in destroying baalism. And instead of being ecstatic he turns inward into a deep melancholy.
It could be because Queen Jezebel has vowed to kill him. But that is nothing new. His life has often been in danger. I doubt whether that is the cause of his depression.
Maybe, when the adrenalin stops flowing, the high can turn to a low. The power of God which supported him there on Mt. Karmel was now seemingly gone. It is never a permanent thing, we all know that. The power of God in one’s life, especially in those moments of passionate activism on behalf of God, on behalf of justice, on behalf of what’s right, is never a permanent thing. After the fight one is tired, exhausted even. After the intense struggle one feels empty, even having won the battle.
And so it is that Elijah fled into the wilderness. There he longed for death. There he prayed, “It is enough; now, Oh Lord, take away my life…” (1 Kings 19:4).
It is also there that God tenderly cares for Elijah. No chastising him for his depression. No rebuke. No telling him to just think positively and he will get over it. God sends an angel to touch him and to feed him. A cake. A jar of water. Not a feast of course. But enough to sustain him. Enough to sustain Elijah as he begins his forty day trek deeper into the wilderness to Mount Sinai – the place of roots, the place where Yahweh God first made covenant with the people of Israel. It will be a place of retreat.
Elijah is still depressed. It is a time of personal crisis, of spiritual crisis, wrestling with his inner demons and maybe wrestling with God. And in his depression he loses touch with reality, his sense of what has happened is all skewed. As so often happens in depression. We can’t see what is in front of us accurately anymore.
Woe is me. ” I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God fo 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.” (1 Kings 19:10). I alone am left? He is way out of touch with reality. Depression does that to you. The text talks about seven thousand others who are faithful to God. Elijah is not at all alone. And hadn’t the people on Mount Karmel just killed the prophets of Baal and pledged renewed allegiance to Jahweh? Elijah has already forgotten that. Depression does that to you.
Says the voice, “Elijah, go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
“About time, Lord”, thinks Elijah. “Right now in my depression I need a spectacular display of your power. Some big fireworks. Kill another bunch of prophets of Baal, or something. Meet my religious needs, Lord”.
But it won’t be that way. “Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire – (not even in the fire) – and after the fire a sound of sheer silence”. “A sound of sheer silence”.
We, especially in our consumerist mind set, would clamour to hear God more loudly, more clearly, more dramatically. I wish I wouldn’t have to strain so hard to hear God’s voice. A sound of sheer silence?
I seems that Elijah heard God in the silence. Says the text, “He wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave”. That is all it says. But Elijah isn’t quite done with his depression yet. Depression can be a pernicious thing, even when you hear God in the silence. For the second time Elijah goes through the whole “Pity me, I am the only one left” complaint.
But God gives him a new task anyway. Maybe God isn’t going to cater to his needs and wants. “Elijah, get busy. Your time for retreat and solitude and introspection is past. So what if you are still depressed. I’ve got a job for you. Anoint Jehu as new King of Israel and anoint Elisha as prophet in your place. (19:6).
Maybe it will be doing a new job which will finally lift Elijah out of his depression. Maybe it will lift when he becomes a shareholder in God’s work, not only a consumer of religious experience.
Conclusion
To me that is the anecdote to consumerism. The anecdote is to become a shareholder in God’s work, to become a shareholder in the church, not only a consumer.
A consumer thinks about his or her own wants and needs and about having multiple choices and about being catered to. A consumer avoids commitments.
A shareholder asks the bigger questions of the well being of the group, the community, the world which God loves. The shareholder is ready to get involved, to help make decisions, to work through conflict, to work for the good of others. A shareholder works for a bigger vision than only whether I am happy and my needs are being met. A shareholder is willing to risk investing heavily in hopes of bringing a return in the future, rather than only in spending freely on consumptables for today’s pleasure.
And it may even be that getting caught up in a bigger vision, and getting caught up in trying to do a job God invites us to do, will help lift the depression from us.
Shareholders in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Shareholders in the local church. Shareholders in the large church.
That way we will become bread, rather than only eat bread.