On the 20th story of a high-rise being constructed in Minneapolis, the
lunch whistle blows. Three steelworkers sit down on one of the
beams and pull out their lunchboxes. The first guy Manny, a
Mexican-American, opens his lunchbox and complains, “Oh, for crying out
loud! Beans and rice again? I’m sick and tired of beans and
rice. If I open this lunchbox tomorrow and there’s beans and rice
in this thing, I’m gonna throw myself off this building.”
The second guy Hershel, who’s Jewish, opens his lunchbox and says, “Manuel, you think you’ve got a problem with your lunch, look at this: bagels and lox, bagels and lox, that’s all I ever find in this lunchbox is bagels and lox. If I open this lunchbox tomorrow and there’s bagels and lox in this thing, I’m gonna throw myself off this building along with you.
Ole’, who’s the third guy, opens his lunchbox and says, “Not peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches again! Every day the same thing: peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches. If I have that one more time tomorrow I’ll throw myself off with you guys.”
So the next day, the whistle blows and Manny, Hershel and Ole’ sit down on the steel beam. Manny opens his lunchbox. A look of desperation comes on his face and he says, “Beans and rice again! I can’t take it,” and hurls himself off the beam on the 20th floor.
Hershel opens his lunchbox and yells, “Bagels and lox, bagels and lox! I can’t go on living like this!” and steps off the beam and falls to his death.
Ole’ opens his lunchbox and says, “Peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches, peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches. What’s the use in living?” And with that, throws himself off the building.
The next day at the funeral home, the three widows get together for some mutual consolation. The first widow says, “Oh my Manny, oh my Manny! If I only knew he didn't like beans and rice, I would never have made it for his lunch."
The second wife says, “Oh my Hershel, oh my Hershel: that schmuck never once told me he hated bagels and lox. If he’d a just said something, I woulda packed him anything he wanted.”
Finally, Ole’s wife Lena says, “I don’t understand why Ole’ did this: he always packed his OWN lunch.”
In the journey we call life, sometimes we run off
and forget our lunchbox entirely. That’s what happens in this
morning’s text with Elijah the prophet.
Now, before we talk about Elijah’s lunchbox, we need to set the table and say something about the historical context. When Israel became a nation thousands of years ago, it was comprised of the descendents of Jacob’s 12 sons, who were called tribes. They were a unified nation from their beginning. They hit their zenith under King David. It slipped under David’s son King Solomon, and after Solomon’s death, everything fell apart. Civil war erupted. The result was that the ten tribes who had lived in the northern part of the country formed their own nation which was continued to be called Israel; the two tribes who had lived in the southern part of the country formed its own nation that it called Judah.
Now, if you take a look at the history of these two nations, you can see that the southern kingdom, Judah, which descended from King David, didn’t completely forget everything David taught them. A little over 40% of the kings of Judah were good guys, godly men who sought after God and walked in his ways.
But in the northern kingdom, on the other hand, every king, 100%, was ethically-challenged and holiness-impaired. Every king was evil and corrupt and led the nation into the worst form of idolatry. But the highest low point (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?), came under the reign of King Ahab. Ahab made the rest of these guys look like Mother Teresa in comparison. He built temples all over the country where the vilest sort of things were done in the name of religion. An earlier king had sacrificed his own son to the pagan god Moloch, but the scriptures say that Ahab had even this guy beat.
To top things off, Ahab took for his queen an Edomite witch—and I’m not using the term metaphorically here—named Jezebel, who, just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, took Israel into the depths of wickedness and depravity.
So it is in this context, this point in history that the prophet Elijah shows up. I can think of few people in world history who are as brave as Elijah. He goes all through the land preaching and condemning what’s going on. He tells people they need to return to God. Elijah’s voice is the only voice in the land opposing what’s going on.
Things come to a head when Elijah challenges the priests who lead the worship of a fertility god named Baal to a contest of sorts. They all go out into a field and build several altars. Elijah then challenges the pagan priests to call on Baal to send down fire from heaven and burn up their sacrifices. So they commence a’ calling on Baal to do his thing, but he doesn’t. They keep imploring him, they beg, they plead, they cut themselves. Finally, to no avail, they give up.
Elijah then pours water over the altars that he’s built. He soaks the wood so much that trenches form at the base of the altars. Then Elijah calls upon God, who immediately sends down fire and completely burns up the altars. Elijah finishes the contest by taking a sword and puts the priests of Baal to death.
Now, this would be what I would call the peak of a clergyman’s career. This is the Big Steeple for Elijah. He singlehandedly takes on the collective forces of evil and prevails. If there had been television back then, Elijah would have been on Larry King that very night.
But Elijah doesn’t have any time at all to bask in the limelight or to even celebrate. Word comes to Elijah that Jezebel wants his scalp. “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of the priests of Baal by this time tomorrow.” And Elijah immediately hightails it out of the country.
This is something I’ve noticed in the scriptures and in life in general. A lot of times, it is immediately following the great battles of life, whenever we’ve either won or been severely defeated, that we’re most vulnerable. The paradox is that defeat is often the best thing that can happen to a person. After you’ve had a little time to get your wits, to analyze what just happened and treat yourself to a crying jag, you pick yourself up; you dust yourself off; you regroup and you change course and you get a second wind. And somehow, somewhere down the road you rise victorious.
The paradox of victory, on the other hand, is that sometimes it’s not the exhilarating be-all and end-all. Because after you’ve had time to dance a little jig and throw yourself a big party, you experience an emotional drop, like you were throwing yourself off a steel beam 20 stories up. You end up exhausted. And even though you’ve overcome huge obstacles, used every weapon at your disposal and exhausted every fiber of your being, you sink like a lead anchor.
This is what happens to Elijah. One little phrase, “I’m gonna kill you, Elijah,” from a powerful woman named Jezebel is all it takes to this guy to fall into a deep, deep, deep, deep depression.
So Elijah flees Israel and goes south into Judah, but he doesn’t remember to even bring his lunchbox, much less pack his lunchbox. He runs for almost 24 hours straight. And then, when his legs, lungs, heart and spirit can take it no longer, he sits under a juniper tree and does something that is all too common for people in the throes of depression: he asks God to throw him off the planet. He wishes that he were dead.
It’s amazing the people who have suffered with depression. Some people think it’s just the little guy; it’s not. Giants have struggled with it. The two men I probably admire more than any found themselves mired in emotional darkness. At the beginning of World War 2, Winston Churchill saw his country being bombed and blasted by relentless Nazi airplanes. He knew that just a few miles across the English Channel the Germans could come streaming in and overrun England just like he had done Poland, Holland and France. The weight of an entire kingdom was on him. And even though he was one of the bravest and greatest leaders the world has ever known, he struggled with depression and, I’ve no doubt at all that he probably wished he were dead at times.
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln saw his country being torn apart; he looked at the casualty reports every day, and it’s said that the losses of Confederate soldiers disturbed him every bit as much as those of the Union. He had the weight of the world upon him and the presence of depression was so great that he despaired of life itself. And the thing about Lincoln was that he wasn’t your garden-variety pagan: he was a godly, godly man.
And here’s Elijah. To put it in modern terms, here is a godly, godly Christian. And what does he do? He asks God to kill him. Then, exhausted beyond comprehension, Elijah falls asleep.
But God doesn’t comply. He knows what’s wrong with Elijah: he hasn’t had lunch. His glucose levels are dangerously low. He hasn’t brought along bread for the journey. So God sends an angel with lunch and a thermos of coffee. After Elijah has slept for a while, the angel taps him on the shoulder, shows him the lunchbox, and he implores Elijah to eat. It doesn’t take much convincing. He eats and then promptly falls back to sleep.
After a while, the angel wakes Elijah up again and says, “Arise, eat, because the journey is too great for you.” And with that, Elijah eats lunch again. He gets up, and in the strength of that food, journeys 40 days and 40 nights to the hill of God.
Elijah learned something very special through all this. In the first place, he learned that even those closest to God are prone to depression and melancholia. Even those closest to God go through periods of darkness. And it’s okay, because even in the darkness, God is there with you.
Elijah learned not to be too cocky in victory nor to be too despondent in defeat, that, just like the Book of Ecclesiastes tells us, “Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all (9:11)”
Elijah also learned that no matter how lonely a person feels, you are never alone. Elijah, in the midst of one of his depressions, complains to God that he, Elijah, is the only person standing up for God in that entire nation. But God tells him that He’s got 7,000 people who haven’t bowed their knee to Baal.”
“Arise, eat, because the journey is too great for
you.” In the journey we call life, it’s important that you always bring
along your lunchbox. Sometimes you pack it yourself, but
sometimes you are completely dependent upon someone else to pack it for
you. And if that’s the case, it’s always best to let your
requests be made known to God, who always gives us food for the
journey.