Originally published 1/30/19
Mount Carmel was the site of an existential battle between good and evil. Good was the winner, but the good one - the prophet Elijah - who had come out of a cave where he had been hiding for three years from evil, was chased back into hiding just after winning over evil, and even wanted to kill himself. Isn't that just how evil is? It doesn't win the war (eschatologically speaking) but it often wins the battle, which can be defeating if you don't get the big picture - the eschatological picture. (Michael and I laugh about that word, eschatology. It's my most hated seminary word. We have a short list of "seminary words," theological terms that I think are ridiculous and should not be used in a sentence. Hermeneutics is another one. Which is ironic because while on Mount Carmel, Dr. Wilton used the word eschaton about five times, and this blog is really a hermeneutic exercise.) Evil is so attractive. It's exciting. It's sexy. It makes your gut flutter with butterflies, and shoots adrenaline through you so that your limbs tingle. What is evil? Evil is different things to different people, and people call it different things, depending on belief systems. Sin. The devil. Wickedness. Nefarious. Malevolent. Loathsome. Pernicious. Obscene. Iniquitous. Spite. Wrath. Poisonous. Atrocious. You get it. My friend Amanda, who if I remember correctly is a Wesleyan, was stringent about watching her weight, and was very careful about what she ate. She is from Pickens, a small country town whose county is also the home of Clemson University. But Pickens and the university are light years apart. Amanda is country, but college educated in the capital city of Columbia and very smart. She has a great sense of humor, and can mix stories of rural Wal Mart with complex marketing plans and fundraising strategies for inner city non-profits. So if you offered Amanda a piece of cake, she'd say "Get behind me Satan."
This was taken about 20 years ago, maybe even before we had children. Inez, center, and Amanda, right, and I worked together at Greenville Hospital System in the marketing department for just one year. These women are smart, Godly, and funny. We would laugh for hours at work. This picture always hangs in my house.
I would always giggle when she said that, because it was true and it provided deep insight into Amanda's belief system and her strict self-discipline. It also made me admire her. That phrase was said in a much more serious context by Jesus, when Peter learned that Jesus was going to die at the hands of Jewish leaders, and then rise again after three days. Peter thought that was horrifying, and tried to encourage Jesus not to participate in that which he knew had to happen, in accordance with the scripture. Peter probably thought if you know this is going to happen, you can prevent it. Don't we often try to thwart the inevitable? But Jesus was stalwart, and though we know he didn't want to die, either, (Father, if it is possible, let this cup be taken from me) he knew this was his cup to drink (Yet not as I will, but as you will, he said in the Garden of Gethsemane, where we will go in a few days). But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me; for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Matthew 16:23. KJV It's easiest to think of things from the human point of view. Our free will - that God gave us - often wins out over the things that be of God. It's so hard to do the right thing, the good thing, the Godly thing, whatever you want to call good: positive, favorable, wonderful, valuable, agreeable, commendable, honorable, precious, sound, pleasing. On Saturday, I spent the entire day at church assisting a team from another church as hosts for the funeral of a retired Bishop. Their church was too small to host the funeral, so they were borrowing ours. On Saturday morning I didn't want to go. A whole Saturday spent serving people I didn't know, on my feet, moving meat trays around, cleaning up spills, washing dishes, managing trash, then, at the end of the day, getting ready for the next day's brunch by steaming tablecloths and rearranging tables. But at the end of that long day, I was content and satisfied and tired, and glad that I had given my day to others. It's so hard to ramp up to the good. To plan a healthy meal. To prepare a Bible study. To get dressed for exercise. To know you have to pray for your enemies. It's so much easier to go out to eat, to cue up the next Netflix series, to know a nap is in the offing, to conjure ugly things to say to people who have hurt you when you see them next. These are daily, if not hourly battles I face. They aren't as epic as facing 450 prophets of Baal and one evil queen, but sometimes they feel like it, and I feel like hiding in a cave for three years. Mount Carmel served as the backdrop of a long-standing feud between the Old Testament Prophet Elijah and the wicked, pagan worshiping Jezebel, who had seduced her husband, King Ahab, and convinced him to lead Israel to become a state of pagan worshipers. Ahab's servant, Obediah, had squirreled away 100 prophets when Jezebel was trying to kill them, feeding them only bread and water for three years. God spoke to Elijah, telling him it was time to come out of hiding and face Ahab. Elijah used the drought conditions as a way to get Ahab and the prophets of Baal to meet him on Mount Carmel to prove which prophets were actually of God. Every sunrise here in Florida is different. I envision God in each sunrise, looking differently, and telling me that something is different for today. Again, not as direct as his dictate to Elijah, but then I'm glad I don't have to get into a sacrifice burning contest every day.
Left: Today's sunrise. Even the water was pink.
Elijah's contest would be to see whose god could burn a sacrifice, which would prove whose god was the true God. The prophets of Baal, of course, were unable to get Baal to light a fire under their bull, despite hours of frenzied dancing. Sometimes I feel like that. I spend hours of frenzied thinking preparing to say something ugly to someone who's hurt me, or an admonishment that will put a wanderer back on the right path - well, on my path, which I righteously think is the right path sometimes. At the end I am exhausted, and no one has been healed or righted. So Elijah built a complex altar with 12 stones, and then dug a trench around it. He then drenched the altar with barrels and barrels of water, filling the trench, too. (That's a lot of water found at the top of a mountain, and part of the reason the monastery we visited marks the site where they believe this battle took place - there's a spring nearby.) Elijah prayed, and a fire flashed down upon it and burnt the water-soaked offering as well as dried the trench surrounding it. Preparing his altar for God to burn was not a simple or easy task. But it was one that worked, that was good, that God blessed with fire. So much fire that even the water in the trench evaporated. That's a lot of fire. God blessed Elijah's hard work. Then Elijah and his followers immediately dragged the 450 prophets of Baal down the mountain and killed them. That couldn't have been easy work, either. Talk about a Quentin Tarantino style massacre.
Right: A monument on Mount Carmel to Elijah's slaying the prophets of Baal.
And then, another blessing from God. It rained, ending the drought. The story doesn't have a happy ending, though. Which really irritates me. Elijah was in hiding for three years in fear of his life. He came out on the request of God himself. He worked really hard to prove to Ahab and Jezebel that his God was the God, and even, with the help of God, provided empirical proof. Yet the evil Jezebel still didn't believe, and swore she would kill Elijah, sending him back into hiding. None of Elijah's heroics softened her hard, evil heart. That's where God gets me. Elijah does what's instructed, God plays his part, too, and the hard heart remains. Jezebel never repents, never softens her heart, even through old age, and she ends up dying a ghastly death, thrown out a window and trampled by dogs and horses. Only her head and hands remain, in the end. That's why you never meet anyone named Jezebel. I think about Jezebel too. What happened to her? What did her parents teach her? Why was she so hateful? We don't have any insight into that, but that's what I try to think when I meet someone who is hateful. I met someone like that at the funeral this weekend. She talked about killing people and wanted to hurt people with her fist. A woman who is serving God in his church at a funeral. I thought, I wonder what happened to her that she needs to talk that way? As per my usual, I tried to conjure the right thing to ease her anger, but didn't even come close, so I stepped away very quickly. Why is it so hard to be a prophet? Prophets say what is difficult to hear, but what, at the end of the day, and in the very end (eschatologically speaking) really is good news. And they want to die because it's so hard. Jonah did too. He prayed to die. Jesus did die. He was resurrected, of course, but first he died a very painful and torturous death. He was a prophet, too. Many people, not just Christians, believe that. His life wasn't easy, either, and he got chased out of a lot of towns for the messages he preached: love God, and love one another were the most important ones. Seems easy enough to me. Since I don't have to build an altar and call on God for spontaneous fire to prove God's existence, maybe I can just love Him, and love my neighbor, and that will be good enough for today. I'll think about the eschaton tomorrow.
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