Running for your Life: Anxiety, Depression & the Gentle Whisper of God ~ 1 Kings 19:1-18

 

19 Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. ² So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.” ³ Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, ⁴ while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” ⁵ Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.

He was one of the most famous prophets in all the Scriptures. He appears in both testaments and was even scooped up by God in a fiery chariot without ever having to die. Yet here we find him running for his life. Filled with tremendous fear and despair, he cries out for death, “I have had enough, Lord . . . Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors” (1 Kings 19:4). And he wasn't the only one . . .

Moses was also someone who had grown so fearful and anxious that he wanted to die (Num. 11:15) not to forget the distress of Naomi, Job, Jonah or even Jesus. It almost seems that facing the evil and brokenness of our world one would have to be crazy NOT to be depressed. Elijah’s reasons for depression are significant: sadness at Israel’s apostasy (18:18), desecration of sacred places and martyrdom of the Lord’s prophets (18:13). And yet he is also described as “zealous” (the Hebrew means “enthusiastically and exclusively devoted”). Of course, others have struggled as well:

He was different from other kids: extraordinarily sensitive and subject to recurrent manic periods of joy and depression.  Someone wrote: “This oscillation of mood plagued him throughout his life. He testified that it began in his youth and that the depressions had been acute in the six months prior to his entry into the monastery. One cannot dismiss these states as occasioned merely by adolescence, since he was then twenty-one and similar experiences continued throughout his adult years.” This was written by Roland Bainton one of the foremost biographers of Martin Luther, who founded what would become the Protestant Reformation and Lutheranism to which our own denomination is indebted. His anxiety and terror, formed the psychic background for his eventual epiphany regarding the all sufficient graces of God.

She sits here among you. At its worse, she says, depression and anxiety left her frozen – completely paralyzed as if in moving, even getting out of bed, she might shatter into a million pieces. She couldn’t eat, brush her teeth or some days even take a shower. The “valley of darkness” felt real and it seemed to her that all her friends stood outside that valley, looking down, and that she was alone.

Challenging Sin and shame. Did you notice so far that there is no mention of sin anywhere in this passage – except maybe on the lips of Elijah that he is no better than his ancestors. Nor is either guilt or shame heaped upon him. Are depression or anxiety in themselves, sinful or due to a lack of faith? Many in the church might say so, but Biblical narratives of the faithful tell a different story. In the Scriptures, we do not find evidence for cosmetic faith, attractive but superficial, squeamish in the presence of human anxieties. Instead, we find faith amid the raw and rough nature of authentic human experience. While the Scriptures do not present us with a diagnostic case manual of mental disorders, and I am no therapist, these narratives offer glimpses of individuals’ lives at moments of real trauma and change. We see their vulnerability and their strength, their doubt and their triumphant faith.  We also see their mood, their thinking, and behavior. Their stories provide us with an indication of the role of human emotion in religious life, even negative and debilitating ones.

We would do well to notice that God has no condemnation for Elijah, a man whose emotional distress was included for all to see.  One is hard pressed to find support here for any claim that psychological distress in itself is an expression of sin, or an experience inappropriate for the believer’s life.  Apparently positive thinking is not a prerequisite for God’s presence, mercy or prophetic hutzpah.

And friends, Elijah gives voice to his fear and hopelessness. “Stiff upper lip religion” is not necessary for God’s work; the miracle of God at Calvary was not hindered by Jesus’ anguish. It was, after all, a power greater than positive thinking that reanimated his lifeless body and rolled away the stone.  In this, we encounter extraordinary mystery: how God forges heroism in the hearth of human frailty. This is a place where you can fall apart. A place you can shamelessly run to when “running for your life.”

And yet I know it’s hard. None of what I’m saying aims to make depression or anxiety good. It’s an often terrifying and lonely journey which is why Elijah leaves his servant because when you’re depressed even being around others can be painful. When you’re depressed, in one sense, you feel utterly alone.

All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” ⁶ He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. ⁷ The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” ⁸ So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.

God does not chastise Elijah for his lack of faith, or prod him to improve his attitude.  There is no coaxing Elijah for increased prayer, nor any goading for repentance from sin. Instead, God approaches the prophet gently, acknowledging, and attending to, his weary body.  An angel of the Lord meets him, offering physical contact (a gentle touch) as well as providing bread and water, and acknowledging his pain, saying, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you” (1 Kings 19:7). It is first through the provision of his basic physical needs that God attends to Elijah’s broken heart.

Promoting Help and Courage: For those of you who are not struggling with depression: Be an angel – offer hugs and food, maybe even a listening ear. However, I know too many people who forego these angelic duties and say things like, “Just trust God more.” “Snap out of it!” “Read your Bible.” It’s important to remember when dealing with fragile people that an angel doesn’t need to talk much and that an angel who isn’t helpful or who torments somebody is called a demon. Don’t be that.

There is bravery and courage even at this point of the story. In vss. 6 and 8 Elijah responds to the help of the angel – he got up and ate and drank twice. When you’re feeling well, it’s tempting to take small, routine activities for granted, not realizing the tremendous foundation of health upon which they are built. When depressed, an event as insignificant as putting food in one’s mouth or brushing one’s teeth can be an act of faith. The psychologist Marcia Webb makes a profound point: Brushing your teeth requires that a person get out of bed; getting out of bed requires that one face the day; and facing the day requires committing once again to another attempt at working out a life that is confusing, frightening, and sorrowful. Brushing one’s teeth can be taking hold once more of the hand of God and trying yet again to embrace one’s life, when every impulse is to stay in bed or under a broom tree. 

⁹ There he went into a cave and spent the night. And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” ¹⁰ He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” ¹¹ The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. ¹² After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Later, when Elijah is stronger (1 Kings 19:8), God begins to address the psychological and spiritual sources of his despair. Again, we discover a real gentleness; God comes to Elijah and asks a question, “What are you doing here?” It’s not a yes or no question but an open-ended question, an honest question and God doesn’t interrupt, roll his eyes and say, “I know this already Elijah. I’m God.” No, it would appear that even God is willing to engage in therapy or as they called it in the 19^th century, “the talking cure.” And God invites, welcomes, the broken Elijah and asks him to “stand on the mountain” but Elijah still can’t do it. He hides in a cave.

Surprised by Condescension and Grace: And then the fireworks start. But, the Bible tells us, the Lord was not in them. Why? Simple answer: I don’t know and commentaries will cover everything under the sun. So what follows is my own interpretation for you to consider. It may not be right but it doesn’t introduce anything heretical so here goes. I think God’s fireworks of wind, earthquake and fire are what Elijah expects of God given his own emotional turmoil. Depressed people are prone to falsely imagine God in their own image. He expects an angry and scary God. And God exposes those assumptions – a sort of show-and-tell “You think that I’m like this.” But God isn’t in any of it and, true to form, none of these dramatic displays can coax Elijah out of his cave. That’s what God wants – to lure us out of our holes, to whisper lovingly to us that the God in our heads is rarely the real and true God. The real and true God will always condescend to entice us out of our caves. That God is always a surprise.

It reminds me of the famous author, Anne Lamott’s conversion. Utterly depressed, mired in alcoholism and self-loathing, she begins to have the odd experience that Jesus is present with her, hunkering in a corner of her houseboat like a cat. She initially responds with disgust: “I was appalled. I thought about life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, I would rather die.” . . . But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in."And soon, after stumbling into a church service a bit drunk, she encountered the living God as the music washed over her. She writes: “I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, ‘I quit.’ I took a long deep breath and said out loud, ‘All right. You can come in.’ So this was my beautiful conversion.”

I could tell you more. We could talk about how the next couple of verses show God engaging Elijah in his own recovery. How God continues to use a depressed Elijah to anoint others. How God reserves faithful people to ensure that we are never truly alone. But we don’t have time for that today. Rather, I want to coax some of you out of your caves. I want some of you to hear the gentle whisper of God on this difficulty journey that you find yourself. I want to convince some of you this morning to stop running for your life, to eat and drink a little something, to feel a warm touch, to hear a gentle whisper. It takes courage but unlike Elijah you don’t have to cover your face.

"Wait! What?" ~ John 21:20-25

²⁰ Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) ²¹ When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”²² Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” ²³ Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?”²⁴ This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.²⁵ Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. ~ John 21:20-25

In a memorable graduation speech, the scholar James Ryan articulated five basic questions that he believed helped to foster a fulfilling life. The first of these questions, he said, was the one most prominent among teenagers: “Wait? What?” He admitted that his kids typically posed this question when he was asking them to do a chore. They hear “blah blah blah . . . clean your room” and then quickly respond, “Wait! What?” But “Wait! What?,” he said, is not a bad a question. It’s an important way of asking for clarification and a question that one should ask before drawing conclusions or making a decision. It’s the question that my wife offered when I told her the passage I was going to preach on today. And it’s the question that Peter should have asked. It’s the question that John assumed. And the question that the church should demand. 

1.    The ill-fated question – “Lord, what about him?”

Peter had just received some bad news. At the end of Jesus’ restoration speech which allowed Peter to profess his love for Jesus after having betrayed him, Jesus told him how his life would end.
¹⁸ Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” ¹⁹ Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!” ~ John 21:18-19

Maybe you haven’t heard Jesus talk to you in this way. But you have heard others. It’s the voice that says, “The tests have come back. You have cancer.” “We’re downsizing and going to have to let you go?” “We’ve done everything we know how to do. We can’t revive him.” “It’s too late. I just don’t love you anymore.” Anyone who has lived long enough to hear any of these words – understands the death that one feels at the mere mention of death. And in the midst of that pain, Jesus continues to command, “Follow me.” And Peter’s response is understandable – He doesn’t ask for clarity, “Wait! What?,” but, vs. 20 tells us, he “turned” away from Jesus – the very Jesus who died and rose again and just said follow me” and looks at someone else, another believer, another lover of Jesus, and asks, “what about him?”  
 

QUICK POINT about Discipleship Physics – You can’t follow what you don’t look at OR (more positively) You always follow what you look at. The swift rebuke of Jesus clues us into the fact that this was more than simply a clarification on Peter’s part, an ask for more information, or a desire to determine John’s well-being, and more akin to “Why me? Why do I have to do this? Why can’t he bear this burden? Why should I be subjected to this?” And Jesus responds, “What is that to you? That’s my business. You don’t get to outsource your own following. You don’t get to know everything about anyone. Follow me.”
Jesus wants discipleship and I turn and want comparisons. 
 Jesus wants followers and I turn and want contestants – a sort of – “In the arena of spiritual life, biblically, I think I could take him.” 
Jesus says “sin” and I turn, point and say, “What about her?” 
Jesus says “love” and I turn, and say, “Surely not him.” 
Jesus, Peter learned, doesn’t promise that the good don’t suffer but that a follower of the good always will – that lovers always do. 
 Toward the end of his life, Peter will write, “For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.” ~ 1 Peter 2:19-21. “Wait! What?”

2.    Wait! What? How do we get Jesus right.

But our passages does more than introduce us to the dilemma of suffering and discipleship. It also introduces us to the problem of hearing Jesus correctly, in the first place. 

John goes on to tell us in vss. 23-24 that a “rumor” spread among believers that Jesus said that John would not die. The point here is that this is more than some juicy piece of gossip but a misunderstanding of Jesus’ own words, which John wishes to correct. This is about truth and the church getting its teaching right. And this problem will be the church’s problem until Jesus comes again. So the church must continually be a community that hearkens back to the Gospels and asks, “Wait! What?” “Wait! What did Jesus say?” “Wait! What should we do?” “Wait! Where is it written?” And this question is not some solo quest of independent Christians but always a collective question. What’s fascinating, in other words, is that John does not rely upon his relationship to Jesus alone, even as an eye-witness, to assert his own authority and interpretation but in vs. 24 acknowledges that “we know” this is true. “We know,” becomes part of truth-recognition because the community knows John and has thought critically with him about Jesus. 



The Gospel of John, along with Matthew, Mark and Luke, were the church’s effort to corporately get Jesus right. There are many Gospels that didn’t make it – around 45 or so other than the standard 4 of our Bibles. They were the work of authors who sought to provide a compelling vision for who Jesus was but they were quite different and some contained vastly different images of Jesus that couldn’t be reconciled, couldn’t all be true. Nevertheless, all of these gospels were judged by  churches who sifted through them to discover which Gospels presented the most coherent and authentic understanding of the Jesus story – that eye-witnesses has told. The process, in other words, was public not private and also contentious. The point is that the truths we know about Jesus – the coherent biographical sketch that our Gospels provide didn’t happen over night and wasn’t simply the product of the “winners” but subjected to rigorous public discussion within the community from eye-witnesses and other faithful followers. So we can trust our Gospels because our forebearers asked “Wait! What?” in their own churches.

But we also need to keep asking “Wait! What?” in order to be sure that we in the modern church have heard Jesus correctly. And here is where the “Wait!” becomes important. “Wait” offers us the reminder of our potential, even with a trustworthy Bible, to misread Jesus – to get Jesus wrong. The “wait” reminds us that the answers that we come up with can’t be determined by our emotional intensity, the number of our degrees, the title we assume like the “beloved disciple” or the anger that we might appropriately feel at another’s interpretation. To be a community of truth means that we must take the time to practice patience and ask good questions of the text even when we believe that we are already right. 

The best example of the need for the “wait” happened in my first job as a youth pastor back in 1990 at First Baptist Church, Humble, TX. One week the senior pastor received a scathing letter from a listener to the previous sermon which had been broadcasted on the radio. The person admitted that he had been a faithful listener for years but would not be listening anymore because of what had been said in Sunday’s sermon. The previous Sunday the pastor had apologized for suffering from laryngitis and told the congregation that he “would have to leave the sound of his voice to the Man Upstairs.” The writer went on to say that such a flippant way of speaking about God was embarrassing and only showed that the pastor was not a good Christian because he spoke about God with such irreverence. Well, the pastor was heart-broken by the insinuation but particularly because the critic had failed to comprehend one very important point. The “Man Upstairs” was the guy running the sound system for the church and not an address to God at all. 

What would have happened if the writer had asked a question rather than offered a criticism? What might have occurred if he had simply asked, “Wait? What?” So the “Wait!” is a gentle reminder that maybe we might be wrong, might have missed something, might have misread or misheard. And so I invite you to wait and hear again.