“The Joy of Being a Victim”

I Kings 19:9-16

June 13, 2010 + Father’s Day

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

The title for this sermon comes from an article written by Joseph Epstein in which he suggests that “victimhood” is becoming a special status in our time. Today, he says, it is possible to enjoy being a victim.

He is rather caustic in his remarks, perhaps even unfair, but I enjoyed reading the article because it wasn’t about me; it was about the university, the community in which he claims citizenship. I don’t. I enjoy reading criticism of other people’s institutions! I am sure he was accused of being insensitive and he certainly borders on being that. Nevertheless, he raises a valid question.

It’s a question as old as the Bible: are we victims or are we in charge of our lives? Are we merely products of our past or are we shapers of our future?

We are at last of a series of three sermons from the life of the first prophet, Elijah. His message to the nation Israel was, “Choose whether you will worship Baal or you will worship God,” thus revealing that God rules history by giving us choices. That’s the great contribution of the prophets to understanding human existence. They said we are all free moral agents with the ability to make choices in this life.

In today’s story Elijah is on Mt. Horeb in an emotional funk. He’s depressed. He wants to give up. He sees himself as a victim of life’s unjustness and unfairness.

The message to Elijah on Mt. Horeb is that we are not victims. What has happened to us in the past doesn’t have to determine the rest of our lives.

Now look at the story. It takes place on the day after Elijah’s victory on Mt. Carmel. That was a wonderful day. It was one of those days when everything goes right – what we’ve hoped and prayed for happens.  What we have risked pays off. The greater the risk, the greater the payoff emotionally, and this was a tremendous moment. Elijah risked everything on Mt. Carmel, one man against four hundred and fifty priests of Baal. Those priests of Baal had knives on them. Elijah was unarmed, standing there all alone. He had a conviction that is what God wanted him to do, but I tell you when we walk into a situation like that, no matter how strongly we feel that we’re doing the right thing if the odds are against us, we’re going to have second thoughts. So when he won after risking so much it was wonderful. He defeated the priests of Baal and, in effect, put them out of business in Israel.

When it was over and Elijah looked back on it, it all seemed so easy he wondered why he had worried about it. It was a piece of cake. That elation lasted one day or as long as it took for the word to get to Jezebel about what Elijah had done to her precious priests. Then the word got back to Elijah about what Jezebel was going to do to him. He may have been able to slay four hundred and fifty priests at Baal and get away with it, but in slaying them he humiliated the Queen. And queens and kings play for keeps.

The news came to Elijah by messenger. He opened the letter and it read: “So may the gods slay me if I don’t cut your head off by this time tomorrow. Yours truly, Jezebel.” It was short, terse, and right to the point. Jezebel was a minimalist when it came to writing style. Just, “you’re going to die.” That message ruined Elijah’s day. It put an end to his peak experience. It sent him out into the desert to hide from Jezebel.

We’ve been there, too. I know you have because we all go there eventually. Life holds out such wonderful expectations and dishes out so many terrible disappointments. We enter relationships expecting them to be forever, to remain as wonderful as they were at the beginning, but they can’t be sustained at that peak. Sooner or later there will probably be disappointment. There comes the realization that this relationship is not going to be as easy as we dreamed it was going to be. It’s going to require a lot of work. We feel at this point in our lives that we deserve better. Other people don’t seem to have to put up with this. We feel like a victim.

Or another disappointment: the dream that we had is not going to come true. The news has come to us and it’s hard to take. It’s not Jezebel who has sent this news to us but it could have been. It’s something like Jezebel, because it appears as a power greater than we are and we can’t do anything about it. A limit is placed on our lives and we know now that what we wanted isn’t going to happen. Because of death, or accident, or illness, because of someone else’s decision or because of our own decision, because of someone else’s stupidity or our own, it’s just not going to happen. It’s over. Gone. Finished. We’ve all been there. One day on Mt. Carmel a victor and the next day in the desert a victim.

Whenever we read in the Bible that somebody travels for a length of time where the number is forty – forty days or forty nights or forty years – we are supposed to think of Moses. Moses traveled across the desert for forty years, you remember, during the Exodus, from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. So whenever anyone is doing something in the Bible for forty days, especially if it’s in the desert, it means God is in this. God, once again, is leading somebody out of trouble or out of slavery into the Promised Land, into freedom and a new life, just as God did with the Hebrews. That’s what’s happening here to Elijah. In fact, the way God is doing it is to lead Elijah back to his roots, to Mt. Horeb, also known as Mt. Sinai, where God appeared to Moses during the Exodus and revealed the Ten Commandments.

Elijah goes up that mountain to a cave. Moses, we remember, hid in the crevice of a rock on that same mountain. Elijah is in a cave. That’s close enough to make the point that we’re going to get another revelation here similar to the one that was given to Moses. God is about to speak. At this point Elijah is feeling like a victim. God does not say, “Poor baby;” God does not say, “Tell me where it hurts:” God does not say, “I know;” God says, “What are you doing up here, anyway?”

Then Elijah recites his litany of victimhood. “I tried to do the right thing. I risked my life. I volunteered. Nobody else volunteered. Nobody else stepped forward. I did, only me. And once I exposed myself to that great danger, nobody helped me. I stood there all alone. And when I won, when I succeeded, did anybody thank me? No! Did anybody throw a party for me? No! Did anybody give me a certificate, and name me Hebrew of the Year? No! You know what they gave me? They gave me a death sentence!”

It’s quiet up there for the longest time. Finally the voice says, “Go stand over there.” What happens next in this remarkable epiphany is a demonstration of who is in charge. We now know why Elijah has been led up to Mt. Horeb in the midst of his depression. He needs to remember his roots. His roots are in the revelation to Moses that God is in charge.

First there is a wind so strong it blows rocks apart, but God is not in the wind. Then after the wind there is an earthquake, bit God is not in the earthquake. After the earthquake comes a fire, but God is not in the fire. You can understand better what is being revealed here when you know that those were the manifestations of a nature god, such as Baal. Nature gods are in nature. Nature gods, therefore, reveal themselves through the mighty forces of nature. This text reveals God is not to be found there, which means that earthquake, wind and fire are merely what they appear to be, phenomena of nature, nothing else.

What is amazing is how often these are called “acts of God!” Certainly they are not God’s way of bringing tragedy into human life or, as we say, “sending a message.”

The more important question is this: how does God communicate with us? This story says that God “speaks” to us in what traditional translations of the Bible call “a still small voice.” What on earth does that mean? I believe a better translation would be “a voiceless voice.” In other words, “God does not speak” to us in human words but rather in the deep ponderings of our hearts. We are the ones who must translate those wordless words in a way that we can understand some of what God wants for our lives. In Elijah’s case, I can imagine that God wanted him to hear something like this.

“Elijah, what are you doing here? I am still in charge. Is Jezebel God or am I? Is what has happened to you the determiner of your destiny, or am I? Now get out of here. Get back to work. I have these three things for you to do: I want you to anoint two kings and I want you to choose your successor. Now get out of here. Shalom.” That was it.

I get the impression reading the Bible that the Bible is not very patient with those who feel they have been victimized. In fact, I get the feeling that the Bible expects our life to be hard, expects Jezebels to be a part of things. That’s just the way life is and we’re supposed to keep on going in spite of it.

Margaret Truman wrote a biography of her mother, Bess Truman, based not only on her memories of her mother but also hundreds of letters that Bess Truman wrote to her friends, (mostly back in Missouri,) when she was in Washington. We have to remember Bess Truman never wanted to be in Washington. She never wanted to be in the White House, especially. All she ever wanted was to be back in her home in Independence. At the end of the war Bess Truman wrote this in a letter to a friend:

“We are not any of us happy to be where we are, but there is nothing to be done about it except to do our best and forget about the sacrifices and the many unpleasant things that bob up.”

I like that. That has the ring of biblical realism spoken through the accent of the Middle West. It says life is expected to be hard. Unpleasant things are going to happen. As Scott Peck says in the first line of his famous book, The Road Less Traveled, “Life is difficult.”

Let’s turn now to the New Testament lesson, Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Paul is fed up with a group in Corinth who say that isn’t true. They say that if you are a real Christian you won’t have problems bobbing up. Life will be victory after victory. Life will be like living permanently on Mt. Carmel. Paul has had about enough of this nonsense so he writes them with wonderful Pauline irony.

“You boast of your victories? I can boast, too. Five times I have received beatings by the whip, three times I have been beaten by rods, once I was stoned, three times I have been shipwrecked, a day and a night adrift at sea, in danger of rivers, robbers, Jews and Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, through many a sleepless night, often without any food at all, exposed to the elements.”

Now as if this weren’t enough, all these physical hardships, he says, “There is also this terrible inner anxiety that I live with, the worry that I have constantly for the people that I am responsible for.”

A lesser person would say, “There is somebody up there who doesn’t like me” not Paul. Paul accepts this as coming with the territory. He continues (and this is most amazing), “A thorn was given me in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being so elated.” Paul is no masochist. He doesn’t want this, whatever it is this thorn in the flesh. Nobody knows, really, what it was, but it must have been something chronic and painful, perhaps even terminal. We don’t know what it was. But we know that Paul doesn’t want it. He wrote, “Three times I prayed that this would leave me.” You know the answer he got? “My grace is sufficient for you.” Which is like God reminding Elijah who is in charge. “My grace is sufficient.” That’s all we need. The thorn is not going to go away. The Jezebels of this world are not going to go away. But neither am I going to go away. Now which do you trust is stronger, the thorn, or my grace?