What s with Days of Elijah? (Part One of Two)

Transcription

1 What s with Days of Elijah? (Part One of Two) When we offered people the chance to choose a song that we sing as part of our worship, I was not surprised that unanimously, people wanted to hear about Days of Elijah. It is a song full of Biblical name dropping, allusions, references and quotations of Scripture. It is worship music s American Pie. The song also has a very dramatic chorus. It is also pretty catchy and has some fun actions. So here we go... The song was written by Robin Mark, a songwriter and worship leader from Belfast Ireland and it has been called - one of the biggest songs in Christian music. The story of the song is that in 1995, Robin Mark was leading worship at a church with two services. He arrived one Sunday morning and heard the Pastor preach a sermon on the valley of dry bones in the Old Testament book Ezekiel. In between services, Mark runs downstairs to the church kitchen, takes a pad of paper, and writes this song. They played it at the second service that morning. He thought it would be only for his church on that one day. Now, although, he wrote it all in one day, Mark certainly acknowledges that the process started much earlier. He thinks it began at the end of 1994 when he was watching Review of the Year on TV. Featured on this show were two events that deeply affected Mark. One was the first ceasefires being declared in Northern Ireland and the second was the genocide in Rawanda. I am sure that a lot of us are familiar on some level with this event. Over the course of 100 days beginning with the Assassination of then President Juvénal Habyarimana, the Hutu majority sought out and with encouragement from the government, killed an estimated 1 million members of the Tutsi ethnic minority. As the story progressed one of the biggest tragedies seemed to be the unwillingness of the international community to intervene and stop the atrocities. By the time that Robin Mark was watching the news, images like this had begun to appear... Mark recalls that sights like this caused him to ask in prayer if God were truly in control and whether his faith should be cause for hope despite horrific things in the news? This struggle continued in his mind over the following months until he actually wrote the song. Days of Elijah, Mark says is... generally and principally a song of 'hope'.

2 Robin Mark has mentioned that he never intended that this song would be used beyond that first singing on a Sunday morning, but is pleased that it has proven to be meaningful to so many. He has written several explanations of the song - and for anyone interested, we have copies of his explanation. Mark goes through the various allusions found in the song line by line and so we thought we d do the same. We want to take a look at the characters who make up this song. Each verse drops the name of two important characters in the Biblical story (all from the Old Testament). Verse one mentions Elijah and Moses while verse two mentions Ezekiel and David. Now there is so much to say about each of these characters, so today we will be just looking at the title character - Elijah, which will leave us the rest of the characters and the chorus for next week. So let s begin at the beginning... These are the days of Elijah, declaring the Word of the Lord. We meet Elijah in the book of 1 Kings in the Old Testament during the reign of King Ahab. Ahab is known as a bad king, in fact the Old Testament refers to him as follows, more evil than all the kings before him. He is the husband of Jezebel - who is known as a fearful and murderous woman. In particular this couple is known for instigating worship of the god Ba al. Elijah appears suddenly on the scene during the reign of Ahab. Elijah s very name means my God is Yahweh which certainly puts him at odds with this Ahab and Jezebel. Elijah s first mention is actually him letting Ahab know that God will cause a drought, one so severe that not even dew will fall on the land unless he himself says so. Now this is a significant threat because Ba al is the god of rain, thunder, lightning and even dew. So, from the beginning, Elijah is about opposition. He is referred to as a prophet of Yahweh. The role of the prophet in the Old Testament was to speak for God in society, to challenge the people when they had strayed from the way that they should be. Prophets also sometimes brought messages of hope to the people during hard times - but Elijah s ministry was one of confrontation and challenge. Probably his most well-known story takes place in 1 Kings chapter 18 - this is the story that Robin Mark mentions when he. At the time being a prophet is a scary thing in the Kingdom of Israel. Jezebel, the queen, orders that prophets of Yahweh be killed, so those who have not been hunted down are hiding in caves while the prophets of Ba al are running the religious scene

3 in Israel. Elijah comes to Ahab and asks him to gather the people of Israel and all the prophets of Ba al and bring them to Mount Carmel, a mountain near the North end of the Kingdom of Israel. All the people assemble at this mountain and into this crowd comes Elijah. He is referred at this time as the troubler of Israel because of the drought so his arrival would certainly cause a stir. Elijah asks the people this: How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Ba al, then follow him. The people are silent, so Elijah lays out a challenge. He alone will stand for Yahweh, and the 450 prophets of Ba al will represent their god. Elijah asks that two bulls be brought and that the prophets of Ba al be given the opportunity to chose one of them to sacrifice. They will cut their bull up into pieces and lay it out on wood but not light it on fire. Then, Elijah will take the other bull and do the same. But, instead of lighting these sacrifices on fire, both groups will pray: Then you call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord; the god who answers by fire is indeed God. Everyone agrees. Here s how the story continues... So they took the bull that was given them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, crying, O Baal, answer us! But there was no voice, and no answer. They limped about the altar that they had made. At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened. Now, if I could stop for just a moment...the phrase he has wandered away is a literal translation of the Hebrew phrase, but it should be noted that the phrase was likely a euphemism for going to the bathroom. So here we have Elijah, telling the prophets of Ba al that perhaps their god is not answering because he is going to the bathroom. They continue... Then they cried aloud and, as was their custom, they cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed out over them. As midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice, no answer, and no response.

4 So, here are the prophets of Ba al, tired, bloodied and disappointed with a bull sitting on the altar, utterly not on fire. At this point, Elijah calls all the people to come close to him. At the site they have gathered there was once an altar to Yahweh that has since been destroyed while the people turned to worshipping Ba al. So Elijah takes 12 stones, one to represent each of the tribes of Israel. He digs a trench around the altar and the author notes that it is deep enough to hold two sheahs of seed. Show slide with conversion Elijah then cuts up the bull and arranges the wood. Then Elijah does something surprising, he orders that 4 jugs be filled with water and then poured out over top the bull. He has this repeated 3 times until the water has filled up the trench. Then Elijah prays... O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back. Now, I don t know what Elijah is doing at this point. Many images of this story picture Elijah standing tall with his arms raised. I picture Elijah, very quiet, sitting down and simply talking. Who knows, but the result is this... Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt-offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God. The bridge of the song, that part where we repeat There s no God like Jehovah is a reference to this part of the story, as the people of Israel declare that Yahweh is indeed in control. And then, to make this a nice and challenging story to deal with, Elijah orders that the prophets of Ba al be rounded up, taken down to the creek where Elijah slaughters them. Now for those who prefer a more visual story telling... Elijah s story continues to be dramatic throughout the Old Testament. There are more miracles and confrontations. His story culminates with him being taken into heaven in a flaming Chariot and his student Elisha being handed his cloak as a sign to continue his work. In traditional Judaism, Elijah is promised to reappear to reveal the coming of the Messiah. During a Jewish circumcision and Sedar meal, empty seats are put at the table for Elijah s pending and promised return. He is very much a figure of central importance.

5 So that s Elijah. So, what does it mean to sing - these are the days of Elijah? So what do we mean when we sing, on a morning like this, that These are the Days of Elijah. How does this story and it s title character relate to us? Does it? Could it, if we think about it, allow our imaginations to engage the story? Robin Mark wrote this song convinced that God was still in control of history, of contemporary events despite all he saw. God being in control can be a tough concept - I know it is for me. If God is in control in the way I picture control - then God allows things that are awful to happen, or does nothing to stop them. But what if this were a song about God still being present and not being silent. In Elijah s day, it would look like Yahweh had left the building. But through Elijah s words and actions, the people realsied that Yahweh was there among them and that Yahweh was not silent, they just had to learn to listen. I wonder if something that we can take from this song is that these are days in which God still speaks through people like Elijah. That there are people whose words and actions deliver a message from God. The first verse ends with the line - still we are a voice in the dessert crying prepare ye the way for the Lord which is a reference to both a passage in the prophetic book of Isaiah and a reference to the New Testament character John the Baptist. John the Baptist may be a more familiar character than Elijah, but they are very connected. In the New Testament, when Jesus first appears as an adult, it is John the Baptist who picks him out of the crowd and is able to see that this is God in human flesh. Later in the New Testament, Jesus actually says of John the Baptist that he is Elijah. I wonder if one way to look at this song, is a reminder that God has not left the building and a celebration that there are even today voices like Elijah and John the Baptist who point towards God. Maybe they are voices in a church, maybe not. Maybe they are voices like Bono of U2, Mark and Craig Keilburger of Free the Children, Bishop Desmond Tutu? Voices who speak with great passion and insistence. Voices that challenge the status quo and point us to something greater. Voices perhaps that speak the things that God would say to us. I thought we could end by taking a few moments to get into small groups of people sitting nearby and try to name Elijah voices in our world today. Voices that inspire us to see God, to seek justice, to love others. Next week we will continue with Days of Elijah - look at the other references as well as the chorus. But this is where we will leave things today. With the thought that God is ever present and never silent. That these are days in which voices speak with passion and creativity and if we listen carefully and imaginatively, we might hear God speaking within them.