1 Kings 19:1-15a

Once again, this week I’m looking at the Hebrew Scripture passage, where we find Elijah, the prophet of God, tired, discouraged, and suicidal. And yet, God is with the prophet.

The story begins with King Ahab reporting to his wife Jezebel that Elijah not only trounced the prophets of Baal in a contest of “Whose God is the Real God?” but followed this up by slaughtering them all. Yikes. This is why we preach the New Testament, right? Jezebel responds by threatening Elijah, which means Elijah must run for his life. He heads for the wilderness, which as one commentator notes is less like Vermont or Oregon and more like an Arizona desert. He’s on foot but he keeps running, fearing Jezebel’s men are in pursuit. Finally, utterly exhausted and spent as well as terrified, he sits down under a tree and prays, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life.” (verse 4).

Maybe most of us never had to run for our lives, but I know few people who haven’t at some point been so tired, so exhausted, so emotionally spent and dejected, so completely discouraged and maybe hungry as well that they haven’t wondered whether there was a reason to continue.

God sends an angel who tells Elijah to get up and eat. Drink some water. Such great advice, and besides, the angel provides the picnic. Strengthened, Elijah heads to Mount Horeb, known elsewhere in Scripture as Mount Sinai. It’s the mountain of God; Elijah wants to meet with God. Elijah ducks into a cave and God asks him an excellent spiritual direction question, an invitation to take stock and reflect: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah recites his complaint: “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away” (verse 10). It sounds as though Elijah is feeling sorry for himself, but really, who can blame him? He’d done all the right things: he humiliated the prophets of Baal and their sponsor, Jezebel; he’d proven the Lord God is the Lord God. Instead of glory and gratitude, however, he’s running for his life.

God tells Elijah to stand before the mountain because God is about to pass by. There at the mouth of the cave, Elijah witnesses a mountain-shattering wind, an earthquake, and a raging fire. But the passage tells us God is not in the wind, earthquake, or fire. After the fire is “the sound of sheer silence” (NRSV), translated elsewhere as a “gentle whisper” (NIV), or a “still small voice” (KJV) (verse 12). This is when Elijah wraps his face in his mantle, presumably to protect himself from the face-to-face encounter with God. God is revealed not in the dramatic forces of nature but in silence, in a still, small voice.

God repeats the question, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (verse 13). The prophet gives the exact same response, word for word. Did he learn nothing from the encounter with God? Is he still feeling sorry for himself? Or, perhaps, something is different. Perhaps the prophet is no longer afraid. Perhaps he’s ready to listen when God gives him his marching orders to go to Damascus. Go, continue the work God has given you. Elijah isn’t alone. In fact, there are at least 7,000 others faithful to God, some of whom will be anointed as God’s prophets (verses 15-18).

The story describes God’s chief prophet hitting his lowest point. One lesson might be that success doesn’t always lead to victory, vindication, and glory. As Peter Gomes put it, “failure is often the price of success.” But perhaps at rock bottom, Elijah is able to recognize that the work to which he is called is God’s work, not his own. Like the wind, earthquake, and fire, the work is God’s doing. At the mouth of the cave, he experienced the strength of God. It is God’s strength he needs to rely on, not his own strength. Relying on God’s strength, he can go do the new tasks God gives him, including anointing his successor.

The themes of reversal, disappointment, and exhaustion may feel current to congregations (and pastors) worn down by political polarization, threats to democracy, immigrants in peril, economic hardship, deferred dreams, dislocated populations, and the specter of global war. Or where ministry itself feels like a desert. Elijah’s story assures us that God provides food for the journey as we wander through our metaphorical deserts, remembering what we have left but not knowing where we will end up. Daniel Hawk writes, “It removes the burden of pursuing the spectacular, the exciting, and the dramatic, resets our focus on the unspectacular, quiet voice of God that animates ministry within the mundane, and tells us that neither we nor God are finished yet. There is more yet to do and more yet to be disclosed, in a new and unfamiliar desert.”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
L. Daniel Hawk, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-3/commentary-on-1-kings-191-4-5-7-8-15a
Peter J. Gomes, Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1998).
Roger Nam, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-3/commentary-on-1-kings-191-45-78-15a-3