The Third Sunday after Trinity

The Third Sunday after Trinity – 28 June 2009

For many years, the dramatic and awe-inspiring story of Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal has captivated my feeble mind. I even attempted to paint a picture of this story in a college painting class, but I must confess it was an awful painting and as long been painted over. In many ways, this story is like a great painting. There is the dramatic contrast between the colorful character of Elijah and the frantic, but mundane prophets of Baal. There is a tense balance between Baal’s silence in response to his prophets’ ecstatic bellowing and God’s mighty bellowing of fire in response to Elijah’s silence (well, mostly silence). In addition, there are so many visible and hidden brushstrokes of meaning and truth, especially the truth of God’s existence, his power, and his sovereignty. Yet, I would like to focus on just one brushstroke of truth, Elijah’s challenge that the true god of Israel would reveal himself through fire, for in the depths and contours of this challenge we can see the face of Jesus Christ.

In some ways, Elijah’s challenge was unwanted by the people. Israel, during Elijah’s life, was relatively peaceful and prosperous and lived under the rule of the house of Omri. Omri and his son Ahab were brilliant and successful kings who expanded the borders of Israel by subduing their neighbors. However, the spiritual depravity of Omri and Ahab overshadowed their military and political successes. They reveled in the worship of the idolatrous god Baal. Ahab and his wife Jezebel established Baalism as the official religion in Israel and attempted to kill all the Lord’s prophets. At the height of Israel’s prosperous idolatry, Elijah the prophet challenged Ahab to meet him at Mount Carmel with the assembly of Israel and all the prophets of Baal to determine who the true and real God of Israel was. The challenge was simple; the god who answers with fire is Israel’s true god. In the challenge the enthusiasm and zealousness of the prophets of Baal was overshadowed by Baal's absence, while the simple prayer of Elijah was overshadowed by God’s fire that consumed not just the sacrifice, but also the wood, the stones and the water. God’s heavenly fire illuminated the minds of the Israelites and for one brief second they proclaimed in unison, “The LORD – he is God! The Lord – he is God!”

Elijah’s challenge struck at the heart of Baals alleged powers. He was the Canaanite god of thunder, lightening and the storm. If any Canaanite god could send fire from heaven, it would have been Baal. In this challenge, we find a precious truth about God; he meets his challengers on their turf. Theologians call this God’s accommodation and it means that God “speaks to us in a form that is suited to the capacity of the hearer.”[1] Since God accommodates his revelation, in his contests and challenges with false gods he will always use their weapons. For this reason, I believe we see can see, hidden in the depths of God’s accommodation during his confrontation with Baal, a foretaste of his greatest act of accommodation: the incarnation of his son, Jesus. Furthermore, we can catch a glimpse of Jesus' weapon of choice, death, which was the greatest weapon of our enemy, that great deceiver satan.

Of all the creatures that the LORD created, there was none so precious and beautiful as the man- Adam, and woman- Eve. Out of all the beings he created, God choose to bestow upon Adam and Eve his likeness and image and he made them his vice-regents over all his creation, as David sang, “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:4, 5) Yet, to whom much has been given, much is expected. Adam and Eve were expected to remain faithful to their creator, but they rebelled and on their account, all creation was subjected to sin, decay and death, as St. Paul said in Romans 5:12, “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin.” Thus to be a human is both an honor and a disgrace, as C.S Lewis said, “[To] come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve…is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth.”[2] Yet, in the fullness of time, God accommodated himself by sending his only son down from heaven, just as he sent his fire down from heaven in Elijah’s time, to become the incarnate man Jesus, in whom the fullness of God dwelt. Thus our greatest weakness, our humanity, became in God’s hands our greatest strength, Jesus’ humanity.

Furthermore, just as the God challenged the authority of Baal through Baal’s greatest weapon, fire, Jesus challenged our enemy through his greatest weapon, death. Death, the undoing of creation, was always our greatest threat, for as God says to Adam an Eve in Genesis 2:17, “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Through the sinful failure of Adam, physical death became the greatest weapon of our enemy. It is the looming end of humanity, our greatest limit that renders all our activity vain, for “dust [we] are and to dust [we] shall return.” (Genesis 3:19) However, through the death and subsequent resurrection of Jesus Christ, death was defeated as St. Paul proclaims, “Death has been swallowed up in victory, where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting?” (I Corinthians 15: 54, 55) Through faith in Jesus Christ, we have been united to Christ in his death and resurrection, therefore death no longer has any dominion over the Christian. We are reminded of this every Sunday in the Nicene Creed when we say, “I look for the resurrection of the dead: and the life of the world to come.” Through Jesus, death is no longer a weapon of the enemy it has become our weapon.

You see, when St. Paul concluded his powerful remarks on the historicity and necessity of Jesus’ resurrection in I Corinthians 15, he says, “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Death renders all human activity vain, but since Jesus Christ has taken away the sting of death our labors in the Lord are not in vain, they have eternal meaning. In a world ruled by death, nothing matters, but in a world ruled by the crucified and risen Christ, everything matters because through him everything will be remade. The futility and the vanity of life, which the author of Ecclesiastes laments, has been taken away by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Additionally, death has become, through Christ, one of our greatest weapons for spreading the gospel of Christ. First, because Christians are united to Jesus Christ and no longer fear death, our lives will be (at least should be) different, radically different. This Christ-centered difference is a brilliant splash of color illuminating the monotonous gray of life. Second, as the Church Father Tertullian remarked so many years ago, semen est sanguis Christianorum, “the blood of the martyrs is the seeds of the Church.”[3] The church was redeemed by the death of Christ and by the death of her martyrs, the church spreads. Death is no longer an enemy; it has become our weapon to advance the reign and rule of Jesus Christ.

God accommodated himself in Elijah’s day and revealed himself by sending fire down from heaven. This points forward to God’s greatest accommodation, the sending of his son down from heaven to become the incarnate man Jesus. Today he continues to accommodate himself through the simple words of scripture, through the waters of baptism and through the bread and wine of the Eucharist. These simple things in the hands of God become great sign revealing his love for us, especially his son’s love when he gave his live as a ransom for all. Therefore, since God has accommodated himself in order that we may know him and his love, let us boldly approach his throne with prayer and keep a holy and joyful feast before the Lord.

[1] A.N.S. Lane, New Dictionary of Theology, “Accommodation”

[2] C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian, (Chapter 15 – Aslan makes a door in the air) pg 218. God’s greatest creation, man and woman, became the weakest creature and fell prey to the deceptions of our great deceiver, thus God’s greatest warrior to keep the devil at bay, humanity, became the greatest traitors in history.