I aspire to the sort of fearlessness that could respond right back to Ahab that the king, not the prophet, was the “troubler of Israel” (1 Kings 18:17–18). Much of what I admired about Elijah is not actually the point of the story. That’s because I, like many of us, often misunderstand both the definition of courage and the meaning of Elijah. The Elijah narrative is certainly about courage, but not in the way that I always assumed. And, in the Gospels, many aspects of Jesus’ calling evoke scenes from the life of Elijah-from the raising of a widow’s son from death to miraculous provision of food to a visible ascent into heaven. At the same time, in his inaugural explanation of his ministry, Jesus pointed to Elijah and his successor Elisha as demonstrating that the good news of God’s kingdom was always meant to overwhelm national and ethnic boundaries (Luke 4:25–27). And Jesus identified this baptizer-his own cousin-with the prophecies of the return of Elijah. John the Baptist carried out the motif of the wild man of the woods with a word of impending judgment. When the story resumes in the New Testament, Elijah is everywhere, in hints and allusions and images. As God told the prophet Malachi, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes” (Mal. Indeed, the very last words of the Old Testament are about Elijah. But Elijah’s absence is felt all over the rest of the Bible, even as his mantle and his spirit move on through the line of prophets. As a matter of fact, he is a kind of mayfly in the sunset of the Scriptures one moment we see him, and the next he is gone in a literal blaze of glory. That’s somewhat surprising because, at least in terms of space devoted to him, Elijah is not a major biblical figure. Try to avoid Elijah in moving through the Bible, and one will find, much as King Ahab and Queen Jezebel did, that he has the annoying habit of showing up persistently, often when he is least expected. That is strong that is “prophetic.” And so, in moments when courage is lacking, I just want to do an end run around that hair-suited seer. He confidently pours water on his own sacrifice, he cries out to the skies, and then, with a bolt of incandescence, the fire falls. He verbally spars with his opponents-sarcastically mocking their impotent god. In that moment, Elijah is everything I want to be. If you asked me as a child in Sunday school to draw a picture of Elijah, I would have drawn the scene on Mount Carmel, where he calls down fire from heaven. When we think of Elijah, we think of steely determination, the willingness to defy gods and kings, in scorn of the consequences. The comparison only highlights one’s inadequacies, whether real or perceived. I wanted to avoid him the same way a laid-off person wants to avoid her “Employee of the Month” neighbor or the way an obese person wants to avoid his marathon-running brother-in-law. As I thought about it, I became convinced I was avoiding that middle section of 1 and 2 Kings because I knew who was there: a prophet called Elijah. I had been reading through 1 and 2 Samuel, then on into 1 Kings through the life of Solomon, when suddenly I veered over to the Psalms. Whiteness is a hell of a drug.At the moments in life when I’m feeling especially scared, I’ve noticed that Elijah is the last person I want to see.ĭuring one dark period, without any conscious decision, I remember altering my daily Bible reading of the Old Testament ever so slightly. It’s just…very frustrating that these people, who are mostly not well off at all, are just completely unreachable politically and really always have been. I have nothing really profound to add here. The removal of the flag by NASCAR is a very existential crisis for them. That this stupid flag and the racism inherent in it is all these people seem to have to live for is hard to reckon with. But this discussion of the Confederate flag in a town in Alabama is telling, just in the fact that these people are so sad and so pathetic. Like most of you, I have a pretty limited patience for Cleetus Safaris by the media. The shooting deaths of nine people at a black church in Charleston, S.C., have reignited calls for the Confederate flag flying on the grounds of the Statehouse in Columbia to come down. For years, South Carolina lawmakers refused to revisit the Confederate flag on Statehouse grounds, saying the law that took it off the dome was a bipartisan compromise, and renewing the debate would unnecessarily expose divisive wounds. Protesters hold a sign during a rally to take down the Confederate flag at the South Carolina Statehouse, Tuesday, June 23, 2015, in Columbia, S.C.
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