What Are You Doing Here?

Elijah was in big trouble.  Again. This time, though, Queen Jezebel had threatened to kill him within the day, and she meant business.  Elijah was understandably afraid and fled out of her reach.

Finally he ended up at Mt. Horeb, otherwise known as Sinai, the mountain of God.  He hid out there, far from Jezebel’s reach, in a cave.  Relieved, I suspect. 

And there the voice of God speaks with an important question.  “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 

Elijah proceeds to tell God what has happened.  “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 our prophets with the sword.  I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”

The voice instructs Elijah to stand at the front of the cave for God is about to pass by.  There was a great wind, a wind strong enough to split mountains and break rocks. God was not in the wind.  There was an earthquake.  God was not in the earthquake.  There was a fire. God was not in the fire. 

And then “a sound of sheer silence.”  From the silence, God spoke again.  “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Again, Elijah pleads his case.  And then came God’s final word.  “Go, return.”  There was work to be done, work to be completed, God’s work, in freeing Israel from the evil that had overtaken it. 

This week’s Old Testament lesson (1 Kg. 19:1-15a) is notable in my mind for the haunting question, “What are you doing here?”  Every time Elijah tells God what has happened, what catastrophe has befallen him, and why it is necessary that he be in hiding, God asks, “What are you doing here?”  It is a profound question, which even in the utter silence Elijah cannot escape—“What are you doing here?”

It might as well have been interspersed throughout Elijah’s plea to God of all that had driven him into hiding. “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts.”  So what are you doing here?

“The Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed our prophets with the sword.”  So what are you doing here?

“I alone am left.”  So what are you doing here?

“They are seeking my life, to take it away.”  So what are you doing here?

I guess in the end one can either hide or get back in the fray.  The first question is between those two, where is God?  The one that follows is where are we?

Peace,
+Stacy