Pastor's Lament

Propers: Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 19), AD 2021 B

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“It is enough! Now take away my life, O Lord, for I am no better than my ancestors.”

Thus does Elijah give voice to the classic pastor’s lament. You know, on some level, we all think that if we just do a good job then it’ll be roses and sweet cream in the gardens from here on out. Just preach that Word faithfully. Administer the Sacraments rightly. Teach the people, love the people, and watch the Word at work. As though we could do a better job than all our predecessors. As though somewhere along the line we thought that we were promised success.

But that is not our lot in life. The Christian is not promised wealth or glory or societal respectability. In fact, we should keep a weather eye on those who gain such things yet claim to be disciples of Christ. No, you and I are promised history’s long, slow defeat. We are promised each a cross to bear and a tomb to fill. And if in Christ we face that fact, then, dear Christians, the Kingdom’s ours forever.

Elijah is remembered as the greatest prophet of the Israel, certainly the greatest wonderworker, a second Moses for the people. He spoke truth to power, to despotic kings. He conjured weather and held back rain. He raised the dead! He did a good job. But this morning he is utterly defeated. It seems no matter what he does, the people don’t have faith. The government’s after him, in the persons of Ahab and Jezebel. And the whole country groans beneath environmental catastrophe. It all starts to sound rather familiar, doesn’t it?

And Elijah’s at the end of his rope. He’s tired of running. Tired of turmoil. Tired of doing his best and watching faith fade. “I’m the only one left, Lord,” he says. “It’s just me now. I’m all you’ve got.” And having been pushed beyond the limits of his endurance he simply wants to stop and die. “I’m no better than my ancestors,” he sighs. “I thought I was hot stuff, and just look at me now. I’ve got no more to give. I’m done.” And so he falls asleep.

But there ain’t no rest for the wicked, and the righteous, I’m told, don’t need it. Elijah is rudely awoken by the touch of an angel. But this is not some gentle touch, some light caress: “Wake up, dear. I’ve made you breakfast.” No, this is the same term used for the angel that “touched” Jacob’s hip and knocked it out of joint for life. Elijah is struck by an angel, whacked by an angel, who tells him, “Get up. Eat.” And there sits a hotcake and water.

So he does what we would do, if we met an angel, right? He rolls his eyes, eats the food, and promptly goes back to sleep like some petulant teenager. So the angel strikes him again: “Get up. Eat.” And there’s more food, more drink, which Elijah dutifully consumes, then gets up at last to do his job and go meet God. It’s funny in its own way, but only because it rings true.

The Bible would be baffled by the bevy of our needs. The biblical world, the biblical God, is concerned with basic necessities such as food, housing, clothing; all needs that most of us have solved by the swipe of a credit card. The anxieties of the affluent tend to be topics that the Bible doesn’t give a rip about: personal purpose, meaning making, life balance, a sense of wellbeing. In the words of William Willimon, for us the “fulfillment of desire becomes elevated to the level of need, and need gets jacked up to the status of a right.”

“What’s the point?” says Elijah. “Nobody listens. I’m no better than my fathers. My life has been wasted. I just want to lie down and die.” And the angel, having no concept of such human foibles, kicks him until he gets up and asks, “What’s the problem? Rest, food, drink. Still no good? Let’s try it again. Rest, food, drink. Now you’re fine. Get up. Do your job.”

And Elijah arises from his would-be deathbed, arises from his self-pity, and goes to meet God on the mountain, goes to do the work of the Lord.

The Church is out of touch with postmodern Western society, and so postmodern Western society is constantly trying to figure out what the Church is for. Is the Church for entertainment? Should we fill up the sanctuary with flat-screens and fog-machines? Is the Church for moral instruction, lessons for children on right and wrong? Or is the Church about meeting my needs, both real and perceived?

I saw a lady on social media not long ago talking about how she had stopped attending worship during Covid and probably wouldn’t go back because no-one in the congregation had done anything for her in this time. It’s not that she reached out for help and was rebuffed. Rather, she sat back and wondered, “What about me? How are you meeting my needs?”

And yes, part of me mourned that her congregation apparently had not contacted her at all during this past year-and-a-half of fear and pain. But another part of me wanted to tell her, “You are the Church. Whom did you reach out to? Whom did you try to help? Did you check in with your congregation or your pastors to see how they were doing in this new and impossible situation, running a congregation without any congregating?”

Of course not. Because for her, the Church existed to meet her needs: emotional, psychological, spiritual. She couldn’t imagine what her congregation was for if they weren’t there to make her feel better. Of course such people won’t come back. I’m not sure that they were ever really here to begin with.

What is the Church for: entertainment, education, socialization, therapy? That may all well be part of it, part of life together. But the Church is here to give us Jesus: to give us Jesus in the Word rightly preached and in the Sacraments rightly administered;  to give us Jesus in a community dedicated to being one Body, with Christ as our head; to give us Jesus through the sinner sitting next to us in the pews with whom we have nothing in common except for the fact that we are all in need of salvation and we are all truly saved.

We come to Church to be forgiven, to receive Jesus, and thus to become Jesus; to be sent back out into the world, and do it all again, every week, every day. Our job is to be Jesus for the world, period. And we can’t even do that! Jesus in us does that. Jesus does His own holy work in us and through us. And when we fall, when we fail, we come right back here to confess it, to be true about our failure, and we are forgiven! We are remade. And we are sent right back out. Rest, eat, drink, and get back up.

Are you having trouble finding balance between family, work, and life? I’m sorry about that. I am too. Now go feed the hungry. Are you wondering what your personal purpose might be, how to fulfill your true potential? I hope that proves fruitful for you. Now go house the homeless. Are you wondering what the Church can offer to help you find a settled state of peace amidst a frantic, angsty world? Well, I do find that a properly managed practice of study, prayer, and meditation can help with that, but in the meantime, go speak truth to power. Go be Jesus for a world in need of Him. Be His Church.

Get out of yourself, out of the self-absorption and self-obsession so cherished by our society and community at large, by the market and the media and the cult of the individual. In the words of Stanley Hauerwas: “Quit taking yourselves so seriously [and] enjoy having your narcissism defeated by being drawn into the Church’s eschatological mission to witness to Christ’s Cross and Resurrection.”

Life is full of real problems: hunger, illness, ignorance, poverty, disease, death. If they haven’t come knocking on your door just yet, rest assured that they will soon enough. And when they do, Christ is with you. Christ, who healed diseases. Christ, who suffered rejection and disdain. Christ, who died horribly, unjustly, undeservedly, and who thereby conquered the grave! We do everything we can to paper over the real crises of life with minutiae, yet Christ will have none of it.

Christ instead will conquer. To all who suffer, He is healing. To all who despair, He is hope. To all who sin, He is forgiveness. And to all who die, He is the Resurrection and the Life.

Rest. Eat. Drink. And get back up.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

Credit where credit is due: As indicated by the quotations above, this homily was inspired by and draws heavily from a fantastic, iconoclastic conversation between William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, as transcribed by The Christian Century.