Elijah had just moved on from facing down with the priests of Baal at mount Carmel, one of the banner moments in the life of this vitally important prophet, where he stands up against the hordes of Baal and calls down fire right in front of them, decimating them and having the presence of God being fully manifest before them. It's an amazing moment, and after that, unsurprisingly, Jezebel and her cohorts want him dead. which they do. So Elijah flees, and sits under the broom tree, and seeks to just sit there and die. He's all done. Everyone hates him, they want to kill him, and Elijah, having worked on overcoming the priests of Baal, having prayed for rain, is spent, he's done. This is a matter of contemplating what the cost of doing the right thing actually is.
Most people don't really look at the Old Testament that often, they don't really look too deeply into what the content of the Old Testament actually is, but what we end up seeing more often than not is that proximity to God isn't comfortable, and it isn't easy. Being close to God, getting cozy with him, leads to more problems than it does solutions. It's a scary, terrifying place to be essentially because he is so fundamentally good. The better someone is, the more frightening they are to get close to. They better they are, the more challenging, the more hurtful it will be to get up close to them and to work things out with them. God's words, his commands, his edicts and his decrees are good and right, just and pure, but being close to them, trying to observe them, that's exhausting, tiring, and hazardous. It's also unpopular. If you're like Elijah, if you take a stand against people who are wrong, who are doing things that ought not to be done, if you're doing all that stuff you are going to find resistance. In a sense, it's equivalent to swimming upstream, you know. That's exhausting, and it always seems easier for the fish to just go with the direction of the water, but that's probably not where they want to go.
Now, if you're going to do the right thing, the real right thing, it will be as tiring and taxing as swimming upstream, because you are, spiritually at least. You're not supposed to be infants, tossed about by every wave. You're supposed to know where you're going, and what you're doing, at least partially. You're supposed to know what direction you should be moving towards, and to move in that direction. Being tossed around by every wave only ensures that you're never going to really get where you want to go. But if you stick with the right path, the correct path, it's going to involve swimming upstream for a bit. And that is exhausting.
If you were to take the words that Paul wrote in our epistle reading and take them as divine edict, which they are, you'd be in trouble. What Paul delivers are all things that we would agree with, we would all agree that these are things that are worth doing and should be done, but putting them into practice is a horse of a different colour. If you were to want to get that stuff done, you would rapidly find it exhausting, too much to possibly consider doing on your own. It's too big, too hard, and too complicated. It's impossible to get it sorted out all in one shot. And if you're like Elijah, you're going to end up sitting under a metaphorical broom tree, knowing that even if you do what is right and good and just and pure, you're still going to be exhausted, broken down, and essentially waiting for death.
So when Elijah was sitting under the broom tree waiting to die, an angel came and fed him, a loaf of bread baked on coals and a jug of water. And it's not just the food that the angel gave, but also the words that the angel spoke to Elijah: 'Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.' Those words are true, not just for Elijah, that great lion of the faith, but also for you, too. The journey of faith is too great for you. It's too great for me, too. It's not as though any of us can just through force of will decide to keep those commands that Paul recommends, that he encourages, that he tells us are mandatory and required in order to attain perfection. If you look at that list for more than one second, you're going to find that it's essentially impossible for you to keep, to adhere to, and to get done. This is the journey that is too great for you - the journey between your ideals and your actions, between your intentions and your results, between your reach and your grasp. And this is why we come to church, and why we are fed by God there. We need to be fed by him in word and sacrament precisely because the journey is too great for us, because we are not going to get things worked out all that well. We aren't going to be moving on our own strength on this one.
The Old Testament reading from Kings has Elijah eating the food, and going on the strength of the food for 40 days. He is equipped with the food for the journey ahead. And you need to think of church that way too. The journey is too great for you. The journey of righteousness, of perfection, it's too great for you to get done on your own. You need to be refueled, or you'll just sit under the broom tree and wait to die. But if you return to the Lord your God, if you are fed through word and sacrament, if your sins are forgiven, if you are renewed and equipped by the one who has overcome the world, then you can start to make this journey. You can start to get things done.
So that's where we get to churchy type things. That's where we get to the purpose of church at all, really. You're not there to socialize alone, not just to sing songs and hear some talking, you're there to be fed. You're there to be equipped. You're there to be forgiven, to be healed, and to be reinvigorated because the journey is actually too great for you. Keeping pace with the morals and ethics of the Bible is too hard for you, which is why most people just give up and don't try. Heck, keeping up with your own ethics is often too hard, which is why people give up and don't try. There's a real big metaphorical broom tree out there that people sit under and wait to die. But God knows that the journey is too hard for you. It's too hard and too far, which is why he visits, redeems and sustains you, guides you with his hand and equips you for his service.
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