I am reading a familiar passage of Scripture, a familiar and beloved Sunday School story.  I speak of the story of the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 17. This story of Elijah is set against the backdrop of the divided kingdom of Israel, when the ten tribes of Israel, collectively referred to as the Kingdom of Israel, had fallen deeply into idolatry.  Ahab, along with his Sidonian wife Jezebel, instituted an official nationwide worship of the ancient Canaanite fertility god Baal.

As early as Exodus 20, when God gave Moses the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments, God had strictly prohibited Israel from engaging in idol worship.  He clearly commanded “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”  and “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image…thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them.”

Against this backdrop of corporate and cultural unanimity in idol worship comes Elijah.  He asked God to judge Israel as He had said that He would.  In Deuteronomy 28:23-24, God had warned Israel of the consequences of idolatry.  He promised that when Israel sinned by worshiping idols, the heavens will be brass, the earth will be iron, and the rain will be powder and dust.  Drought will be the means that God will judge Israel’s idolatry.  So, when Elijah prayed to God for it not to rain for three years, Elijah was asking God to judge Israel.  God heard Elijah’s prayer and it did not rain.

Most people think that prophets are arrogant.  They think that when a prophet asks God to intervene to avenge His law and His right to be worshiped as God alone, the prophet is putting himself on a moral high ground.  Elijah could have just stayed quiet.  Elijah could have just prayed to God for Israel to awake from their sin and repent.  But Elijah was pushy.  He felt deeply for God, he felt deeply for Israel and he felt deeply about holiness.  He was a man who felt deeply about things.  In the New Testament, James wrote: “Elijah was a man of like passions as we are.”  Passion was one thing Elijah had in abundance.

Elijah was not exempt from the judgment.  In fact, he was the first casualty of the judgment of God. Ahab treated Elijah’s intervention as a destabilization of his reign.  Ahab sought Elijah as a fugitive.  So, God ordered Elijah to hide.  Elijah left his home, his friends, his livelihood, every comfort and everything familiar.  He lived in the desert.  And for company, God commanded ravens to feed him as he hid by a brook named Cherith.

I have never seen ravens in the Philippines although the word “uwak” which is translated as “raven” exists in the Tagalog language. I know little about them myself so I googled and found an article on Wikipedia. Let me tell you about them: First, their body is entirely covered with black feathers.They are large and they are opportunistic hunters often living off of carrion or desert kill.  They are highly intelligent, they possess problem-solving capacities.  They mate for life and with their mated pair, they defend a territory where they raise young.  In Western culture and mythology, ravens have been thought of as birds of ill omen because of their coloring.  In Sweden and Germany, ravens are thought of as ghosts of murdered people or souls of the damned.  In the poem by Edgar Allan Poe entitled “The Raven”  the raven was a metaphor for a haunting memory of a woman named Lenore.  Still in other cultures such as the Celts, the raven is revered as a spiritual or prophetic figure thought to be a harbinger of judgment. The Greeks in their mythology of Prometheus, the demigod who stole fire from the gods on Olympus, was punished: he was tied to a stake while the ravens feasted on his liver.

Ravens are common enough in Israel.  Imagine the kind of food they brought to Elijah.  Imagine Elijah, a man with such passion for spiritual purity, reduced to dependence upon the most impure of birds.  But Elijah survived without complaint, waiting for the birds who came in the morning and in the evening to bring him bread and flesh: where did the bread come from?  Most likely, the raven stole it from some human.  Where did the flesh come from?  Most likely, it was stolen from another animal’s kill. The ravens took time out from providing for their own young to provide for the prophet.

And then, the brook Cherith, Elijah’s only source of water dried up.  God ordered him to go to Zarepath, a small town in Sidon.  Sidon is where Jezebel comes from.  Elijah is not only a stranger in Zarepath, he is a wanted man living in the outskirts of enemy territory.

In Zarepath, God had commanded a widow to sustain him.  Widows in Israel belong to the lowest economic class.  Being married once, she is thought of as chattel and simply a part of her husband’s estate.  Once her husband died, she not only lost a loved one, she also lost the man who guaranteed her status in life as well as food and sustenance for herself in her old age.  As the property of her husband goes to the nearest male relative, she will also go and belong to the household of that male relative and live at the mercy of that male relative.  A widow in those days had no prospects and no future. And this is where God sends Elijah, a place bleaker than the desert.

When Elijah came to the widow’s house, the widow was picking up two sticks to kindle a fire in order to cook the last of her flour for bread.  It was their last meal.  Elijah imposed on her.  She obliged.  And because she sustained the man of God, the flour and the oil in her house never ran out.  Please note that she did not live in comparable luxury after she housed the prophet.  She lived with just enough.  There was never an abundance, theirs was a monotonous fare, but they subsisted.

Later on, the widow’s son got so sick, he died.  Note that this son is the only reason for the widow to live.  The only reason why the widow still has a measure of independence is that she has a son, a male who is in line to inherit her husband’s property.  This is her ticket to subsistence in the future because this son will take care of her as he inherits all his father’s property including his father’s wife. To lose this son is to put out a flickering ember of hope in a dark life of suffering.

Imagine how Elijah must feel: he feels guilt that his prayer for judgment has affected innocent people.  His presence is like a plague not only because he has caused this drought and famine, not only because the widow is sure to be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a known enemy of the state, but Elijah seems to bring death and misery wherever he goes.

Elijah cries out to God to bring back the child to life once more.  God heard Elijah’s prayer.  Don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why.  But God, and Elijah’s relationship with God is the only thing that works in his tortured existence.  God brought that child back to life.  In the Old Testament, this is the first of only two such resuscitations.  In the whole Bible, there are only five.  Elijah prayed for one, Elisha prayed for another.  Jesus brought back to life Jairus’s daughter, he brought back to life the son of a widow from Nain and he brought Lazarus back to life.

Elijah is an example of every believer in that believers are called to “stand in the gap.”  Believers intercede for others, they declare the word of the Lord, and they warn others of the divine judgment that is coming. In the Epistles, the work of prophets is more about “forth-telling” or declaring the Word of God and not so much foretelling or foretelling future events. Prophets and believers often function as the conscience of a people that has gone deaf and blind to sin. There is no prestige in this life for prophets. Even Jesus himself declared that prophets have no honor.  Few would willingly take on this task of prophecy because prophets often become open targets of scorn, derision and bile.

We believers are called upon to be prophets.  We are commanded to go forth and preach the gospel. We are to be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks us of the reason for our hope in Christ.  We are to be apt to teach.  We are to be ready in season or not.  We are to leave all to follow Christ.

As with everything to do with Christ, there is always a question posed and we must decide:  Whom do men say that I am?  Will you also go away?  Jesus asks these questions of us believers even today.  Every believer must respond.  Every  believer must choose.

Lest your choice to follow Christ be spurred by some romantic notion, Elijah’s story is a reality pill. Note the consequences of the choice you are called upon to make.  But make the choice just the same.  A prophet’s life is one where the only thing going for you, is God. A prophet’s life is one where the only comfort is the presence of God. Are you ready for this kind of life?