On Contemplation

On Contemplation

Our “Words” Series

A Meditation for First Austin

By Cole Chandler

I Kings 19: 1-13

16 September 2018

I Kings 19: 1-13

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.

But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”  Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.”  He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  He answered, “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.”

He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

On Activism and the Tyranny of the Urgent

I have to say, I was a little bit surprised that Griff invited me back after my sermon last year on white supremacy. This year, he gave me a little bit of direction, “Preach only one sermon, and preach on contemplation.”

“Ok, I thought… I can definitely make this a little bit shorter than I did last go round,” but to be honest, that second direction won’t be very easy for me.

My training is grounded in a contemplative approach, but over the years I’ve grown away from that a bit. I speak on social justice. I speak on liberation theology. I speak on housing and homelessness policy. I speak on behalf of the rights of the poor. I feel a little bit out of touch with the topic of contemplation.

Well, maybe this is an invitation to get “back in touch.” Or maybe it’s an invitation to be really honest with you all that I don’t feel like I’m good at this part of the work right now, and maybe some of you feel that way too.

I want my work to be grounded in contemplation, but that’s not always the way it goes.

I want to start my days with 30 minutes of silence, or scripture reading, or meditation… I just want to sit still for a little bit, sip some coffee and be… but my phone sits beside my bed, and it’s telling me that I have 20 new emails to get to… and the first one on the list is my daily news brief and it’s telling me that the housing crisis is only getting worse in Denver… and the local election season is ramping up and the mayoral candidates are putting out their housing plans and budgets and I need to read through those so that I know what to champion and what to critique as I seek to stand with the poor.

So I get distracted, and I get pulled into the work before I get to do some grounding.

It’s not even 8am yet, and I’m already reacting. Good thing I don’t have a twitter.

Like many of you, I believe that another world, a better world is possible. That we don’t have to go on living these same old ways. That a society that has been systematically structured towards oppression could be restructured, and that we could be agents for that change.

I love to do that work. I love that I get to do that work. It fuels me. But often I get caught up in the tyranny of the urgent. Thinking change has to come right now. Right away. Forgetting that the only change that comes quickly is usually pretty cheap, that if we really want to change the scope of history, we’re going to need a much longer lever, and a much longer view.

I have a friend who gets this. He’s a movement builder like me, but instead of trying to run downhill all of the time, he’s trying out what he calls, “Life at 3mph.” Walking everywhere he goes. Calling us to slow down. Calling us to breathe. To taste the air, to feel the earth beneath our feet. He works in Denver as an organizer, but he spends 10 days a month in a tiny home in the mountains, so that as he says, “He can enter the city without resentment.”

Which I take to mean, so that love can guide his work,

so that love can be the lever for deep change. Lasting change.

You’ve got to get into the wilderness of your own soul to live this way, I think.

Elijah in the Wild

We first meet Elijah, the prophet, in 1 Kings 17:1, but just a few verses before that, in 1 Kings 16:29, we are introduced to the context that will form Elijah’s character. In 1 Kings 16:29, we learn that Ahab becomes King of Israel.

Immediately we learn a bit about the shape and direction of Ahab’s kingdom, in 1 Kings 16:31, we read, “Ahab not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, but he also married Jezebel, daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidonians, and went and served Ba’al, and worshipped him.”

Why did Ahab take a foreign queen to be his wife? Many scholars suggest that this marriage was arranged for the purpose of gaining access to important trade routes throughout the region which would increase Israel’s (and thereby Ahab’s) access to wealth, power, and prosperity. In a day when women were regarded as possessions and bargaining chips, Ahab made a deal with a foreign king. He took the king’s daughter as his wife and expanded his power and influence throughout the region.

Elijah, apparently not one for small talk when meeting someone for the first time, especially someone in power, is given the opportunity to speak with King Ahab in chapter 17. This is an incredible opportunity for someone trying to bring about change… the kind of meeting he might have worked years to get.. This is an important conversation. In verse one, our introduction to Elijah, he says, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except by my word.”

These words of greeting, aren’t exactly welcomed by King Ahab, and Elijah makes an important move, a life sustaining move, right here in chapter 17 as soon as we meet him, Elijah leaves the company of the King and heads out into the wilderness, east of the Jordan where he is sustained beside a spring by Ravens that bring him bread and meat each morning and evening. When the spring eventually runs dry due to the drought, Elijah ventures deeper into the wilderness where he finds a widow and her son who have one jar of meal and one jar of oil, which God promises to replenish until rain returns to the land.

In the third year of the drought, after two full years of waiting patiently and slowly in the wild relying fully on God’s sustenance, God tells Elijah, “Go present yourself to Ahab; I will send rain on the earth.”

When King Ahab sees Elijah, Ahab asks, “Is it you? You troubler of Israel.”

Elijah responds by telling the King to have all of his people, and his prophets assemble at Mt. Carmel. Whether on account of the vulnerability caused by the drought, orby  pure anger, the King complies, and Elijah gets his moment of glory.

Straight out of the wilderness, Elijah steps to center stage and arranges a showdown between the 450 prophets of Ba’al, and himself, the one remaining prophet of YHWH.

The people assemble two altars, and adorn them with two calves. The rules of the showdown are simple. Call on your god to light the altar on fire. The god who responds with fire will be the God of Israel.

The prophets of Ba’al begin to cry out, to dance, to cut themselves before their god. But nothing happens. Meanwhile, Elijah mocks them, drenches his altar in water, and quietly begins to pray, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel,” at once, the altar is consumed, and before long the God of Israel brings rain back to the land.

Well in all of the excitement following this victory, Elijah did something a little bit crazy. He had all of the prophets of Ba’al rounded up, all 450 of them, and he had them killed. This angered Jezebel, naturally, who heard of it, and so Elijah decided to take another “retreat” into the wilderness.

After three years in the wild, and only a few days back in civilization, Elijah returns to the desert once more. The text says that Elijah went one day’s distance into the wilderness on this second journey, before he sat down, tired, afraid, alone and said, “I cannot go on. Take away my life.”

In Elijah’s moment of self doubt, fear, impatience, he is greeted with a tangible grace. An angel reaches out to him, grabs him by the shoulder and says, “Get up and eat.” Before him, Elijah finds a cake, baked on hot stones and a jar of water.

After one day of walking into the wild, Elijah feasts and then walks forty more days.

Deeper into the wild,

deeper into self,

deeper into God.

After forty days and forty nights of life at 3mph… of slowing down… of going deeper… of stripping away from the tyranny of the urgent… Elijah has made it to the mountain of God, where he goes deeper still, to spend the night in a cave inside this very mountain.

This imagery is not meant to be skipped over. Elijah is on a second wilderness journey in a land far beyond anything he knows, far beyond anything he can imagine, and in the dark of the night, he enters into the deeper darkness of the cave, where even the moon and the stars will not shine their light.

Elijah has entered into a new realm.

A new place in his soul.

An interior landscape that he did not know existed.

These are the kinds of places that few of us ever find.

Few of us ever leave Israel for a first journey. What with all of our busy-ness, and tasks to complete, with all of our projects, and life building, there is so little time for walking into the desert.

Even fewer leave Israel for a second journey and go forty days beyond the world we know into the deep darkness of the cave at night, where we discover a land within our souls that we did not know was there.

Only two teachers can compel us to do so. These two teachers bear the names love and suffering.

Elijah loves God and deeply loves Israel. This love causes Elijah to want so much more for Israel than Israel seems to want for itself. Have you ever loved something like this?

Elijah knows suffering. Both Ahab and Jezebel want Elijah murdered. Twice he has left his love in order to preserve his life.  He lets go of his love to leave, ripping his heart away. Have you ever known suffering like this?

Twice, Elijah has gone into the wild to stay alive. But compelled by love and suffering, both journeys into the wilderness have taken him further than he ever imagined going.

It’s actually fairly amazing that Elijah comes to play such a prominent role in the biblical narrative. If you really think about it, only tiny portions of his character’s life are even spent around other people. He has two powerful interactions with King Ahab during his life, but these take up only tiny bits of the chronological time of his life. The majority of his time, the majority of his life, is spent wandering, walking through the wilderness, searching for something deeper still within himself, within God. Searching for the source of love, unraveling from the center of the universe.

We might say, most of his time is actually spent in contemplation.

This is why we know, Elijah, I think. Not because of his great speech making, or courageous leadership. Not because he was a world changer, or society shaper, but because he was one of the few who went farther… deeper… who made the journey required within contemplation to discover the truth that love is unraveling from the center of the universe.

So Elijah is standing in the deep darkness, that is the depths of a cave at night, and he hears a voice, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah explains what is really at stake, “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.”

It’s not just Elijah’s life that is on the line in this moment, but Israel’s, Elijah’s love. This is what is really at stake. Elijah is the last remaining prophet of the tradition. The people that God brought out of Egypt and delivered into the land of Israel are on the verge of losing their story. They are on the precipice, and God invites Elijah to a precipice as well, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Wondering if Israel will make it through this moment, wondering if God can do a new thing, Elijah stands on the mountain where Moses stood before him, and is greeted by a wind, an earthquake, and a fire, which I take to mean chaos, crisis, and conflict. The morning news alerts. The apparent urgency of what is going on right now.

God is not there.

There is nothing new in this chaos, crisis, and conflict,

nothing compelling, nothing deep, nothing eternal.

Nothing born of love.

“Then comes a sheer silence,” the text says, Elijah covers his face, peers out of the cave, and hears a voice, “What are you doing here Elijah?” Elijah reminds the voice why he is there, and what is at stake, “I am the last prophet left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

Then the voice breaks forth from silence, once more this time:

bringing good news to the poor and the captive,

bringing sight to the blind, healing to the lame,

“Return home, Elijah, and anoint Jehu as King over Israel, and Elisha as prophet in your place.”

Not only is another world possible, but another world is coming. This is the message from the silence. Something new will be done in Israel. Ahab will not destroy God’s people. This present darkness will not overcome Israel. A new king will rise up, from another line. There will be a new prophet. The story will carry on. The world will be remade. A new thing is possible.

This is the kind of news that we so long to read when we stare at our phones all day and night scouring over emails and news articles… the kind of news that we so long to hear standing outside of hospital rooms after a loved one goes down for surgery… the kind of news we long to hear when we’re burnt out in our jobs and ready for someone to step in and help us make some change… the kind of news we long to hear when we’re so down on the state of the world and democracy wondering if there is any hope left for our world...  but the mediums of chaos, crisis, conflict, urgency never seem to bring forth this kind of creative, life giving, good news.

This is the good news that bubbles up from the depths of our soul when we have made the long, deep, slow, 3mph journey into contemplation. When we become fully one with our self, and one with God these words of love and goodness begin to flow.

Or maybe they were flowing already, but now we begin to notice?

This good news was totally unexpected for Elijah. Using an English phrase we might say, “It came out of left field.” It’s totally unpredictable, unimaginable, unforeseen.

Using the wisdom of the biblical tradition we might say, “It came out of the wilderness.” It came out of contemplation. It came out of prayer. It came, unraveling from the center of the universe.

Chaos, crisis and conflict will not produce a lasting peace in our interior landscapes, much less our exterior landscape. Only love can do that, the kind of love that we find when we travel deeper into wilderness, deeper into self, deeper into God.

This is the kind of love that may not always be discovered, even on a first journey. It’s the kind of love that requires journeying again, and again, and again, until we find ourselves 40 days beyond the world we know in the utter darkness of a cave at night.

This kind of love is born in this place beyond words and it grows over time until it becomes the deep lever within us that transforms our very souls.

Contemplation and the Long Game

On the mountain of God, Elijah receives the good news that the story of Israel will carry on, that the world will be remade. But if we read on, we learn that Elijah will actually not remain to see this vision come to fruition.

Elijah will anoint Elisha, as his replacement, but the Kingdom of Ahab will continue on beyond the days of Elijah, and then when we think it might finally end, it continues as Ahab’s son is made King of Israel. Jehu does not finally become king until Elisha anoints him in 2 Kings 9, many years after Elijah received this vision.

Deep, lasting change comes slowly. Whether that is the change in our own interior landscapes, or the changes in our exterior landscape. Deep lasting change comes slowly, whether that is the change in our own souls, or the change we long to see in the world. Paul may be converted in a moment by a blinding light, but he is not made St. Paul in an instant. That happens over the course of a lifetime where he comes to know great love and suffering from new communities around the world, and finally from the depths of a cold, dark prison cell.

Deep, lasting change comes when we slow down, not when we speed up.

When we escape the tyranny of the urgent, and uncover the source of love at the center of the universe.

Maybe this is why contemplation is an important word for First Austin, because in the midst of a society so bent on rapid change and the tyranny of the urgent, our world needs a sanctuary in the heart of the city that is willing to go into the wilderness for years before re-emerging to speak the words of love.

It’s not just our world that needs that, our souls need that.

Our soul’s need the tangible grace of being rooted

in the strange river of love that flows from the center of the universe.

Slow down, my friends.

Take deep, slow breaths,

Sip your morning coffee with delight,

Taste and enjoy.

Get out of your cars,

And onto the sidewalks.

Escape the chaos, crisis, and conflict of the urgent.

Go deeper,

Go farther,

Go slower,

Go inside yourself to the very depths of your soul.

And keep going there,

Day after day,

Journey after journey,

To find that love is unraveling,

Love is spiraling outward from the place where your soul meets God’s soul,

Love is flowing like a river from the mountain of God.

And that love is wanting to do a new thing.

Eventually.

*artwork: Elijah at Horeb, Painting by Sieger Koder, paulineuk.org/koder