Just a little task ...

Closing worship reflection at my last Synod Meeting as Moderator of Eastern Synod prior to taking ip a post as Moderator of the National Synod of Scotland.

The reading was 1 Kings 19:11-16

I feel just a little bit like Elijah.  Elijah is coming to the end of his ministry.  There are just a few things left to do to wrap things up.  And I thought those things were all in Eastern Synod; but now I discover, they are not.  They’re in Scotland.  And, as my brother said in a message to me, it’s cold up there.  But still – like Elijah, it’s important to listen to God.

Elijah had had a tough time.  There’s the encounter with the prophets of Baal, recorded in chapter 18, with its remarkable ending, but then he flees the dreaded Queen Jezebel, and now, on the mountain, he’s looking for God.  How interesting that God is so often not what you expect to find God.  Not in the great wind.  Not in the earthquake.  Not in the fire.  And then the sound of silence.  And God’s voice comes, with a few little tasks to undertake.

Actually, Elijah’s were pretty big things.  Because – what’s the task set for Elijah in today’s passage?  Well, all he has got to do is to anoint a couple of kings and a prophet.  All in a day’s work.  Actually, if we read through the rest of 1 Kings and into the first couple of chapters of 2 Kings, we find that Elijah ends up with one or two other things to do as well.  But in today’s passage he is to anoint Hazael as King of Syria, Jehu as King of Israel and Elisha as his own successor as prophet.

I am rather hoping that my task might prove not quite as daunting.  But, whatever it is, I think there are three pointers in this passage that might help me, and might just help you as well.

The first is that challenging question – what are you doing here?  I wonder how we would answer if God were to ask that question of us now, here.  What are you doing here?  What are we doing here?  What are we up to?  What are we doing for God?  Now, I am sure there are answers that we can give to those questions.  But we need also to ask whether we are doing what it is that God wants us to do.

The second thing here for me is that central comment of Elijah’s in his response – I alone am left.  And I think that comment is important because we all sometimes feel like that.  I have felt like that, here in Eastern, but it happens, and it’ll happen in Scotland – and I will think: why did I leave Eastern?  When it is really not going well, when it even seems as though God is absent, how do we carry on?  When we feel that we are the only one left, have we what it takes to continue?

But that really brings me right to the third comment I want to make which is something about whether we are ready for God to surprise us.  I have comment on that aspect several times over the last few days.  You see, I think we are pretty good at mapping out what we think God should do, and I wonder how we cope when God has other ideas.  I can’t help thinking that Elijah wasn’t expecting to undertake a trio of anointings at this point.  But that was the task for the moment.  Are we ready to do what God wants us to do without question?  We need always to be ready to respond to God’s call, just as Elisha was.

As the commentator, Walter Brueggemann, says of this passage: “The address to the prophet who is still licking his wounds is a massive imperative: Go!  Go back to the conflict.  Go back to the trouble.  Go back to the risk.”