August 9th, 2020
YOUNGER SAINTS “I’m Sad!” Click here to watch this video.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
Prayer requests
Here next week for service
CENTERING
(By Rev. Whitney Bruno; based on 1 Kings 19:9-18; Romans 10:5-15 and Matthew 14:22-33)
We have stepped away from the crowds God.
No fair rides. No summer camp. No concerts. No in person church.
We have given up the things of the world.
No celebration parties. No smiles to strangers. No handshakes. No samples at the grocery store.
We are in exile. We are still in our Lent wilderness. We are in the valley shadowed by death.
Exiled into our homes. In the wilderness of the unknown. Shadowed by death of so many types.
Would you come to us like a great wind so strong that is splits mountains and breaks rocks?
Would you come to us like an earthquake so strong our very foundations shatter?
Would you come to us like a fire so strong nothing impure, nothing evil is left at all?
Why do you come as sheer silence? As a still, small, voice? Why do you come as a crucified God? Why do you come on a donkey; as a baby; as a refugee; as a victim; as a woman who lost her coins and a father with feuding sons? Why, God, do you choose to come as one of us?
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Comfort us, All-Loving God, that we are not alone and all that is left. Reassure us, Merciful God, that your confounding wisdom of joining our common lot is how you have brought salvation to all. Whisper to our hearts, Creative God, that you are doing a new thing and speaking new words of life. Convince us you are Emmanuel, God-with-Us, and whether we are alone physically, alone in our hearts, alone in our minds, alone with unspoken worries and fears, wishing for a moment alone from our at-home families or feeling we, alone, are the only sane people left… Convince us that in our loneliness, you are with us.
You call out to us.
You seek us.
You come to us.
You say, “take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
Amen.
SCRIPTURE
Our reading cuts out the context for why Elijah is in a cave; and how he got there. So today, I am beginning to read at the beginning of Chapter 19 so you have the whole story. Note… before today’s reading, Ahab had killed all of God’s prophets but Elijah… and Elijah killed all of the god Baal’s prophets… and Jezebel is an ardent follower of Baal.
Our next reading is Matthew 14:22-33. Jesus has just fed the 5000 men, and their women and children, after the crowds had followed him when he tried to get some alone time after hearing John had been murdered.
SERMON: Journey to Self-Care
Elijah is… depressed.
He once was on top of the world. He was ordering about King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. He was making fun of the prophets of Baal and asking them if their god got lost on the way to the toilet. Elijah was on fire!
And now he’s afraid and fleeing for his life. He flees out of his home country into Judah and says goodbye to his servant. Maybe telling the person to go save their own skin. And then Elijah goes out into the desert wilderness.
Out there, he sits under a bush and he prays: God – just kill me. It’s too much. I’ve got no worth. He’s… suicidal. And he lays down in the hot desert with no food and no water under that bush and waits.
While he is sleeping someone comes and touches him. We don’t know if it is Jezebel’s men seeking to capture and torture him to death; or God answering his prayer with an angel of death or… this angel of mercy who says get up and eat.
There is a baked cake and water set at Elijah’s head. Nourishment. He nibbles at it and falls back into his depressed sleep.
The same angel returns and wakes him up again, reminds him eat and drink again, and repeats Elijah’s words: Eat and drink, or it will be too much for you. Elijah obeys again and then, he has new strength.
… I’ve been there. I’ve been in that kind of depression when you want to sleep all the time and forget to eat and drink. I’ve been there – thinking about death, wondering if it would be better than living, feeling more like my dead ancestors than my living relatives.
I’ve been there. In the mental wilderness. In that loneliness and isolation. Where I’ve sent my friends away because surely they’re better off without me and now I sit waiting…
… Have you been depressed? Are you feeling depressed from tragedy after tragedy we as a world are facing? Are you skipping meals, having a hard time sleeping, then sleeping too much, and feeling like you might be better off dead than alive? Or are already a walking zombie just going through the motions of living?
Most of us are depressed at some time in our lives. It’s not shameful. It’s human.
Jesus is depressed or on the verge of it in our reading today. He’s lost his best friend in the whole world – his cousin – his prophet – the man he leaned on for his own support while doing ministry — John. Each time he tries to be alone crowds follow him. And he loves all these people, he has compassion on them, but he is hurting too. Jesus needs time to… grieve.
Finally today he gets that time. And he spends all day grieving and talking with God. Praying. All day, by himself, doing what he needs to avoid his depression and regain his strength and power. After the whole day of self care he returns to his disciples like a ghost — like a spirit back from the grave. He must have appeared very drained and dead when they last saw him. Now he has the strength to walk on water and gives that strength to Peter too.
But it required time. Required self-love. Required prayer and reflection and feeling those awful emotions. It required attending to his own spiritual, mental, and physical health.
Elijah is way more worse off than Jesus. While Jesus is verging on a burn out, verging on a depressive spiral… he cuts it off by taking the time for self-healing. Elijah is too far gone. He’s more damaged than what he can heal with a single day of self-care.
And rather than chiding or shaming Elijah for ‘weakness’… God sends Elijah a messenger to help him. Remind him to eat. To drink. Remind him and start to guide him back to physical health, then mental health, and finally spiritual health.
My messenger was my employer. She saw I was beginning to not eat and drink. I was forgetting to shower and I was seeing fewer and fewer friends. Like Elijah’s angel, she began to remind me. And like Elijah’s angel, she sent me on a mission to go speak with the expert.
It’s a journey to find a counselor. 40 days and 40 nights is a short time, really, to get one. It can take months. Some are lucky to find one in just a few days. A psychologist is a professional who helps with speaking and reflecting and, if needed, with prescriptions to help your mind make the chemicals it needs to be balanced again. A therapist or counselor helps with speaking and reflecting, but not with prescriptions.
Elijah finds his way to God’s holy mountain. There he finds the cave, the cleft, where once Moses stayed. And there, like Moses, he hears the voice of God.
Elijah tells God what’s going on – but the story he tells doesn’t line up with what we have read. The Israelites didn’t kill God’s prophets. Queen Jezebel ordered that. And Elijah is not the only prophet of God left, we know Obadiah saved at least 100 of them.
What we hear is the depression of Elijah speaking. His reality and perception of reality has been changed as his physical mind changes. Short-term sadness and grief, like Jesus has, leaves an impact on our brains but it doesn’t utterly rewire them. Long term sadness and grief, like Elijah has, changing the brain wiring. It’s why sometimes medication is needed – to physically change the brain to start growing in more healthy ways. The depressed brain experiences things very differently than the non-depressed brain. In some cases, like Elijah, he remembers things incorrectly. He feels so alone he has forgotten others exist. He has moved the source of his woes from its actual cause — Jezebel — to the people he feels most hurt by… his fellow Israelites.
And God, the ultimate good counselor, doesn’t tell him ‘Get over it!’ or ‘Eat some chocolate and smile!’ God says… I am about to pass by. I’m coming.
And God does. Moses got to see God pass by and now Elijah does. And Elijah sees God isn’t the storm, isn’t the earthquake and isn’t the fire. No… God is found in the silence. The sheer silence. In this, God is the gentle whisper. The still, small voice.
God is the tender words of friends and family saying ‘I see you’re suffering. Here I am.’
God is the immediate words of Jesus saying, “Take heart, it’s me. Don’t be afraid.”
God is the counselor, psychologist, pastor, mother, father, sibling, spouse, friend sitting with you in that sheer silence that doesn’t have words but is so, so full of the presence of God.
God invites Elijah to tell his story over again. Sure – God has already heard it. God already knew it before Elijah was there. But telling our story helps us process what we’re feeling. What we’re thinking. God isn’t asking Elijah so God understands… God is asking so Elijah understands. What is your story? What is going on? What are you feeling?
Jesus knows why Peter panicked and fell into the water. They’re in a storm! But Jesus saves Peter. And asks Peter – why did you doubt? What is your story, Peter? What is going on? What are you feeling?
God offers Elijah a way forward… go and anoint Elisha as your successor. And through Elisha, we know, the others are made kings, and Jezebel will be dealt with, and there will end up being 7,000 people who never will turn against God. Elijah is not alone. He has allies. He has friends. And through the slow movement of time and history, God will always work towards goodness age to age. Through Elijah passing his ministry to Elisha, he will continue to be faithful to God and empower the next generation. And he will take the time for self care and healing of his soul. God offers Elijah a way forward, and hope.
Jesus, too, will empower Peter and the other disciples to carry on his mission. He, too, will give them reason to hope and reassure them they are not alone.
A good listener will do the same for me and for you. Give us space to express ourselves. Give us a reason to hope. And reassure us we’re not alone.
So how are you feeling?
What is going on with you? Like — really going on?
Did you know you’re not alone in this? I’m grieving. I’m so tired of COVID. I am certain God is feeling both of these things too.
And… I’m hopeful. For a vaccine. For a way forward. Consider! In my father’s childhood, everyone feared polio and children were quarantined then. By the time his littlest sibling was born, there was a vaccine for polio. My uncle tells me of when he had measles – but I’ll never have them. In my childhood we were scarred and marred by chickenpox – but my daughter won’t ever have it. God works wonders with us, inspiring us, infusing us, granting us medicines.
I’m hopeful for the day we meet in person safely. I’m hopeful for a world that gathers in crowds again without infecting each other. What a celebration! What hearty hugs and laughter!
I’m hopeful for racial justice. Economic justice. I’m hopeful for God’s will to be done here on Earth as it is in Heaven.
I am hopeful because God has seen us through dark times throughout history and God is seeing us through this time too. Things… are dark now. Scary. Confusing. Infuriating. Isolating and lonely. But God isn’t the storm and destruction and chaos. God is the peace and silence. God is the movement of unexplainable goodness that tips the scales of history towards kindness. God is the voice saying, “It is I – do not be afraid” and then meeting us in the storm to bring us inexplicable serenity.
May God infuse this wilderness among us with God’s messengers of shalom. Of completeness. Wholeness. Healing of our hearts, minds, and bodies.
Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 