June 24, 2007 - Living in the Mess

Do you ever feel like you are living in the midst of a mess? It might be a physical mess at times like mine at home - your living space might be full of piles, bills buried beneath correspondence, school instructions, the church newsletter, recycling schedules, etc. You might have dust bunnies that have taken over your floors and piles of things that seem to grow and duplicate themselves while you sleep. It might be a bigger mess than just your dirty tub or dust bunnies; it might be a mess you have created in your life with bad decisions - taking on financial burdens that you can't handle (a big mortgage, the lease of a car that you just had to have, credit card debt); it might be a relationship that you have nurtured that is toxic and exhausting that leaves you feeling drained and depleted; it might be a habit you have that makes your life a royal mess - a behavior that seems benign but slowly is sucking the life out of you. Have you ever lived within a mess?

Or, maybe it is not a personal mess but a national mess. I would say that there are at least three major messes that we are involved in with right now in our country: first, the mess of health care. Does anyone NOT have a horror story of having to wait for medical care or have to juggle the burden of runaway medical costs? We have hospitals that are dysfunctional, patients that aren't getting cared for, and people who simply cannot afford health care. It is a mess because we have amazing healthcare available in our country for some and shoddy or no healthcare for others. And yet, when someone attempts to offer a solution, it is so politicized that we cannot even have a rational debate about the merits of their idea. Who is profiting from this mess? I don't think the average individual is.

The second mess we are in is the war in Iraq. Every day we hear of casualties to soldiers and civilians. Every day the price tag of this war goes up in terms of dollars and lives lost. Even those who originally supported the war, thinking that we could go in and stabilize this region, are angry and frustrated. No one seems to be happy with this war and yet now we can't figure out how or when to get out of it. Someone offers a solution and all we get is finger pointing and more political angling. Again, no rational debate and conversation about that merits of any solution. Who is profiting from this mess?

Finally, I would suggest that immigration reform is the third mess we are involved in. It is hard to ignore the growing crisis we have with our borders and with those who are living in our country undocumented. I was trying to have a conversation about the complexity of immigration reform to my 10 year old daughter recently - I highly recommend trying to explain in simple terms the big conflicts in our lives. It forces one to boil things down to their most basic aspects: we talked about border policing, we talked about the reality that Southern California is built on immigrant labor, we talked about the instability and poverty of Mexico, and we talked about the range of responses to people flowing into our country for a better life. We didn't solve immigration issues, but we talked about it. It is hard to even talk about this mess because again, it has become so politicized that people don't sit down and even have a rational dialogue about potential solutions. I don't profess to offer a solution to healthcare, our role in Iraq, or undocumented workers, but you and I can talk about these important issues of our day as much as we talk about the arrival of David Beckham to L.A., the current price of our homes or where we are going to eat for dinner. And we can demand that our legislators keep talking about these issues until they get resolved.

So, we have some big things on our plate right now in our lives - and I have only mentioned three! It is enough to make you want to run away to a cave and hide! If you read through different times in history, there are times of relative calm and peace, but a lot of history seems to be marked by war and greed and oppression. I just finished a book about 16th century England. It is called The Other Boleyn Girl, by Phillippa Gregory and it focuses on the life of Mary Boleyn who is the younger sister of Ann Boleyn who became the Queen of England before she met her bloody demise. The book is historical fiction, based on the facts of courtly life and English history during the reign of King Henry the VIII. I highly recommend this book, especially if you feel desperate and jaded by your life today. War, poverty, infidelity, power brokering, corruption, poisoning, patriarchal rigidity - you name it, it existed in 16th century England. It's enough to make you want to run away and hide!

Scroll back even further in history to the time in our biblical text today. The setting is the 9th century before Christ. The land of Israel which had been one dynasty under King David and his son Solomon, has now fractured into a divided kingdom - Israel in the north and Judah in the south. You can find this time chronicled in the biblical books of I and II Kings, Chronicles and eventually the prophets Amos, Hosea and Isaiah. The history is riveting and messy and I'll give you a few highlights to orient you. We are focused this morning on the history of the northern kingdom; it had the most economic resources, fertile land and was geographically three times larger than Judah in the south; it had a more stratified society due to its wealth, was less homogenous in it people and religious practices, and had less protected boundaries from its aggressive neighbors. In a space of 200 years it had 19 kings and great upheaval - don't forget this was a time in which kings could potentially reign for many, many years (Theological Introduction to the Old Testament by Birch, Brueggemann, Frethem, Peterson, 2005 Abingdon, pages 230-300).

In the story today, we hear of the northern King Ahab and his wife Queen Jezebel, a Phoenician princess who was married to Ahab to secure alliances with Phoenicia. She was a worshipper of the god Baal and not the Israelite God Yahweh and hated for her wickedness. Suffice it to say that she was ultimately pushed out a window and consumed by wild dogs to no one's dismay. She was a fabulous character in history. But today we see her as the adversary of the prophet Elijah. Queen Jezebel has threatened to kill Elijah, and Elijah, the prophet of God, has fled for his life. He even leaves his servant to travel alone and journeys all the way to the famed Mt. Horeb. He ends up in a cave. Elijah is done with the mess of his life. He wants a respite from all the chaos, the death threats, being a prophet of God which has only put him in direct opposition to the King and Queen.

In our narrative today we see God greeting Elijah in the cave with this question, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" Elijah goes into a long explanation, telling God how faithful he has been and how unfaithful the Israelite people have been, how chaotic and awful his life is, and now how his very own life is threatened. God responds with a direction for Elijah to go to outside of the cave and to stand on the mountain. While Elijah waits to experience God's presence, he hears a great wind, then an earthquake, and then a fire. But God was not in any of these big, dramatic occurrences. Finally, Elijah hears the sound of sheer silence. This gets his attention.

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time hearing the sound of sheer silence living in suburban Los Angeles. We have to be deliberate about seeking out that kind of encounter with God. But when Elijah heard it, he wrapped himself in his mantle and stood at the entrance of his cave and just soaked up the quiet, powerful presence of God.

And then comes the question again from God, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" (Big sigh from Elijah, the I-already-told-you sigh). "I have been faithful to you, God of hosts, but the people of Israel have been unfaithful, and now they seek to kill me if I return." God's response to Elijah is: Go, return to your life, return to your work. Do not run away from the mess.

It is understandable for us to want to run away at times - take a time-out, a respite, a reprieve from all the demands and responsibilities in our personal and professional lives. But the message of the story today is that God needs us. God needs us to roll up our sleeves and enter into the fray; to work and advocate for justice and compassion for all. The story also brilliantly acknowledges that we all get overwhelmed at times. We all get to the point of saturation and we need to go and crawl into our version of a cave and just relax. So the secondary message embedded in our text today is to find ways to care for ourselves and encounter the stillness of God. How you do that will depend on your personality, your needs and your interests. But it says right here in our Bible that we all need to walk away at times. We need to leave everything behind to restore our balance. Leave the cell phone, the Blackberry, the office, the kids, the job, the duties to recharge our batteries - and then go back to the messiness of life. We are like Elijah the prophet - needed by God to be involved in this world, and in need of healing and restoration. May we take these words to heart today. Amen.