Grace to you and peace from God
our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text is this morning’s Old
Testament lesson[1],
especially these words, “But [Elijah] went a day’s journey into the wilderness
and came and sat down under a broom tree. And He asked that he might die,
saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life for I am no better than
my fathers.”
Hmm. Pretty dark stuff, isn’t it?
Not the kind of text one would expect in a Sunday sermon. But it is there, in
the story of Elijah, and it shows us just what kind of a place he was in,
mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. It leaves us, as God’s people,
wondering, “How did this prophet of God get to that kind of low spot? What
happened that he found himself sitting under a tree, praying that the Lord
takes his life?”
I would invite you to take your
Bible this afternoon and read 1 Kings, chapters 17 thru 19, and read the story
of Elijah – it’ll take you 20, maybe 30 minutes. King Ahab and his wife, Queen
Jezebel, were wicked rulers of Israel – so wicked that their names are still used
today to describe someone filled with evil intent. The Lord called Elijah to preach a specific
message: there will be a massive, lengthy drought in the land because of their
leading Israel into unfaithfulness. The purpose of the prophesy of the drought
was this: if the drought happened as Elijah prophesied, that served as proof
that the rest of his words from God were also true. Three years into the
drought, food and water were scarce. When Elijah stayed at a widow’s home, as
commanded by God, the Lord provided just enough flour and oil that she, her
son, and Elijah had daily bread. But it was when the widow’s son died, and Elijah
laid over the corpse, prayed, and the child was raised to life, the woman’s
response was one that would be a theme in his prophetic ministry: “Now I know
that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is
truth.” The miracles proved Elijah’s divinely given authority to the woman.
But it was the duel at Mt.
Caramel that proved for all of Israel that Elijah was a prophet of God and, more
importantly, demonstrated that Yahweh, the God of Israel, was the only true
God. In what can only be described as a prayer duel, Elijah and the prophets of
Baal offered sacrifices and prayers to their respective God/god and whichever
would answer would be declared the true God. Despite the false prophet’s best
efforts to stir up Baal, their prayers were answered with only silence. But when
Elijah called on the name of the Lord, fire fell from the heavens, consuming
the wood, sacrifice, even the stone and water that had been poured over it. As
the people fell on their faces, Elijah ordered the false prophets be captured
and killed. Rain began to fall on the parched land, a baptismal blessing of new
life of repentance for the nation.
From any human measurement, this
was an overwhelming moment of glory as a prophet of God! His prophetic work was
validated; there was rain, water was flowing, and Lord was demonstrated to be
the only true God. By any measure, by any mark, by any stretch of the
imagination, Elijah should have been floating on a prophetic cloud nine. But then
Elijah received word that the wicked and evil Jezebel had ordered that he be
hunted down and killed, slaughtered as he had done to her prophets. And Elijah
ran. He ran a full day’s journey into the wilderness until he collapsed, tired,
hungry, afraid, and then he prayed that the Lord would take his life. He wanted
to die.
I do not take that as a euphemism
or over-exaggeration to make the story more interesting. I take it as it is
written: Elijah had gone from success at Caramel to fleeing for his life. He
was exhausted, hungry, and so overcome with what faced him, should he be caught
by this wicked, evil woman who would take great pleasure in seeing him die a
terrible and painful death, that he wished he would die instead.
Those words resonated with me as I
began studying for this morning’s sermon because of the young woman in Cuero
two weeks ago, but I also found out that a brother LCMS pastor took his life last
weekend. Truth be told, I didn’t know him, personally, only as a friendly face
and Godly voice on a Facebook page for LCMS pastors. There is part of us that
wants to know the morbid details - that’s why we gawk at accident scenes – and
this is no different. The fact is I don’t know any details, and even if I did
know, it doesn’t really matter because it would be too easy for us to sit here,
thousands of miles away in our own homes, lives, and worlds and not begin to
understand what he was dealing with. “What would make him do that,” we would
say as we shook our heads, “Didn’t he know what he had to live for, that people
loved him, that help was there for him?”
I would suspect that, yes, he did
know all those things. He knew his wife and kids loved him dearly and needed
him as a husband and father; that his parish was expecting him to return from
vacation, rested and prepared to continue serving. Maybe there were family
problems, or a crisis in the parish, or an issue in the community, or a
combination of them, weighing so heavily on his heart and mind, making the
darkness so powerful that no light of hope, joy or peace could penetrate.
Perhaps there was a medical condition and he was afraid of being a burden on those
whom he loved. Or, maybe he was one of us unfortunate souls whose glass is
always half-empty, and no matter how much is poured into it, and no matter how
often we read Psalm 23’s promise of a cup that overflows, it just doesn’t seem
to make a difference. Perhaps he had even sought help before. I don’t know.
What I do know is that this was a man, a baptized child of God, a fellow
Christian, a husband and father, a
fellow pastor, a man whose vocation was centered in Christ, the forgiveness of
sins, the strengthening of faith, the encouragement of others who are broken,
hurting, and half-empty, who baptized, absolved, blessed, distributed the Body
and Blood of His Lord, and who believed in Jesus as the Savior of the World and
who proclaimed the same.
But something happened the other
day. This was a faithful man of God who strived to be Christ to the least, the
poorest, the humblest, the overlooked in the community and in the parish, so
they, too, would know that they had incredible and eternal value in the eyes of
God, so much so that He gave up His Son for them. But, for some reason, that
day, he could not see himself as that one, the broken one, the hurting one, for
whom Jesus died and gave hope. Whatever it was, it was just too much, so much
that child of God went out and, instead of praying like Elijah, “It’s enough, O
Lord, take my life,” he did it himself.
I still remember one of my preaching
professors said, “You don’t even talk about suicide in a sermon because it
could put the idea in someone’s head.” Satan doesn’t wait for our permission,
our decision, our words to put a wicked idea in someone’s head. If we can’t
speak of suicide in the church, if we can’t address it from the position of
faithfulness, if we can’t call it what it is, then he wins. So, against his admonition,
yet with some fear and a wee bit of trembling, I do so today.
Suicide is a sin. Period. The
taking of a human life, outside one’s specific vocational duty in the
protection of others, is a sin condemned by God. This is true whether it is the
life of someone else or taking one’s own life. Don’t let anyone fool you by
such polite-sounding words like “mercy-death” or “euthanasia,” it’s suicide. It
comes from the Latin: to kill one’s own self. At the risk of great
over-simplification, psychologists and doctors tell us that, usually, people
choose suicide because they simply want the pain to stop – whether it is
physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, or a combination of them all. Make
no mistake, pain that is caused by shame, guilt, and the words of others can
hurt even worse than physical pain. The limerick is wrong: sticks and stones
certainly break bones, but words cut even more deeply. Often, suicide victims
have tried many things to stop the pain – medication, therapy, prayer,
blessing, and other treatments – but the pain remains. With seemingly no other
answer, a person chooses to take their life.
A generation or two generation
ago, the church treated suicide as the worst of all sins because, the logic
said, one could not repent: the last cognizant act was a sin and there was no
opportunity to change the mind or heart or to live a life of repentance. Sadly,
again this was 50, 60 years ago, the church would even bury a baptized
Christian who died by suicide outside of the church cemetery – a final,
temporal insult to the child of God and his or her family, branding him or her
as unfaithful.
How often have you caught your
own self, having done something, that when asked, “Why did you do that?”, your
answer, truthfully, is “I don’t know…just because.” You weren’t denying Jesus;
you weren’t rejecting His love or mercy. In a terrible moment of weakness, the
Old Adam makes a sinful decision that, yes, is contrary to the will and word of
God and, yes, in the case of suicide, it cannot yield a life of repentance. But
the church has also come to understand that in moments of weakness and despair,
the old adam and the old eve does things in the darkness that otherwise he or
she would not do.
Thank God - and I use that phrase
literally - that the church now understands that suicide is often done in
weakness and in desperation, not necessarily an abandonment of God, a denial of
His love, compassion, strength and mercy, or a rejection of Christ as Savior. As
to it being a last, sinful act from which one cannot repent, remember: this
side of heaven, you are always a sinner, but as God’s baptized child, you are
always forgiven, not because you repent but because Christ died for you and you
trust His death as complete for you. Repentance is part of that life, a result
of God’s forgiveness for the sake of Christ. Repentance is not the cause for
His forgiveness.
But, just because suicide isn’t
necessarily eternally damning – it is still a sin, remember - that doesn’t
excuse it as a temporal answer for a Christian, any more than grand theft is an
answer for being overdrawn or spreading lies about someone is acceptable
because you disagree with their ideology.
I want to draw your attention to
a powerful detail in this morning’s reading. The past few weeks, we’ve spoken
of how God answers prayer. Notice how He answers Elijah’s prayer here. Elijah
prays that the Lord takes his life. God answers by sending an angel. Angel,
remember, means “messenger,” and this angel’s simple message was wake up, get
up, eat and drink the bread and water the Lord has provided you. This was real
food, not some kind of metaphorical “spiritual food.” A real angel provides
real food for the real man to continue in his real journey towards Mt. Horeb.
We speak of “daily bread.” In his
Small Catechism, Martin Luther says daily bread is everything we need
for the support and needs of the body. He goes on to list things like food,
clothes, shelter, and family. The full list is a parallel to what he describes
as First Article gifts, the material blessings that God gives us out of His
love as our Heavenly Father. God provides daily bread to us all – again, not
just Mrs. Baird’s finest, but everything we need - and that includes to those
struggling with depression, melancholy, and deep sadness. Daily bread, First
Article gifts include doctors, mental health professionals, therapists,
medication, family and friends, pastors and teachers, all gifts and blessings from
God. A very old idea in Christianity was to say that if you have enough faith,
you shouldn’t need a therapist or mental health medication. That was wrong
thinking then, and it is wrong today. That’s as ridiculous as saying if you
have enough faith, you shouldn’t need glasses, hearing aids, Tylenol, high
blood pressure medication or chemotherapy.
God’s gift of mental healthcare is just as good and valid as his gift of
physical and spiritual care. So, if this is you, getting up from beneath your
broom tree, getting up and availing yourself to the daily bread of a
psychologist or psychiatrist, a primary care doctor, a pastor, a therapist, or
even a friend or family member while saying, “Please – I need help,” that is
availing yourself to the daily bread that God provides.
I know those four words are not
easy to say – especially to us of German and Czech ancestry. It’s even harder
for men who, stereotypically, pretend everything is fine when it’s not. I said
them to my wife, to my doctor, to my therapist and my pastor in February of
2016 as tears ran down my cheeks and my heart broke in my chest. Those four
people, my wife, my doctor, my therapist, and my pastor were gifts of God that
He used to help get me well and pull me from the darkness into the light of
Christ. That little pill I take every morning? It’s a daily-bread gift of God.
Those phone calls and visits I still make, those are daily-bread gifts of God
to help keep me centered. And the words I receive, the blessings, and the
absolution, those are daily-bread gifts of God that continue to feed me in my
daily journey as a child of God, a husband, father, pastor, and neighbor.
For some, that journey is
relatively short and a straight line. For others, it is a long difficult path.
Occasionally, it will be a lifelong journey that is filled with potholes and
switchbacks and successes and setbacks. Whatever your journey, whatever that
path might look like, if you need help, the Lord provides daily bread for you.
If you need help, call me – my number is on the front of the bulletin. I don’t
care if its just the “blahs” or serious, heavy-duty depression. I count it an
honor to sit with you, pray with you, or go with you to get other, professional
help. And, to the rest of you, if you get that phone call from a family member
or friend, reaching out to you for help, be bold, be prayer-filled, and be an
angel, a messenger, with daily bread from God for that person.
As Christians, our journey is
grounded in the journey of another One. Elijah’s 40-day journey to Horeb is a
foreshadowing of Jesus’ own 40-day journey into the wilderness where He was
tempted by the devil[2]. Your Savior knows
full-well the difficulty in this world and life. He knows what it is to be
hungry, to wonder where the next meal might come from and when it will arrive,
“Turn these stones to bread…”. He knows what it is to have His identity as the
Son of God challenged, “If you really are…”. He knows what it is to be tempted
by physical harm as an answer to stopping the hurt, “Go ahead – jump!” Our Lord
answered each temptation perfectly by returning to the Scriptures, to the Word
of the Lord as the sure and certain means to end satan’s lies. He was placed
onto the Tree of the cross, dying for you, and then rising for you. He did this
for you, so that when faced with Satan’s lies, you have a Victor who has
already conquered satan for you, who lived the perfect life in your place, who
suffered the agony of the cross for you. His suffering sanctifies your
suffering. His hunger makes your hunger holy. His identity as the Son of God
makes holy your identity in Him. His enduring the pain of the cross sanctifies
the pain you feel in your body, mind and soul.
I realize this was heavy stuff,
and I also realize that for most of you, you’ll never crawl under a broom tree,
or a mesquite tree, or a weesatch bush and pray “It’s enough, Lord, take my
life.” You might find yourself there with a bad case of the “blahs.” That’s
most of you. But, there may be someone listening, here or on-line, or who will
read this later, who is there in the darkness.
If you ever find yourself under
the broom tree, whether just with a case of the “blahs” or in the depths of
deep, dark depression, remember this: Get up. There is daily bread under the
broom tree for you. More than that, there is Bread for you on the Tree. It is
Christ, and He is risen. He is risen, indeed. Alleluia.
No comments:
Post a Comment