What are we looking for?
Text: 1 Kings 19:9-18
Burnout. At some point in our lives, every one of us is going to experience it.
It can be either short or long-term… it could just mean that we need an extended vacation, or it could mean that we need to look at a complete change in careers. It’s that point at which we feel we are truly spinning our wheels, desperate for a break… In more serious cases, there is a genuine anxiety over even returning to work, and even genuine clinical depression. Whatever its severity, burnout comes when no matter what amount of work that we do, no matter how many hours we put into it, we either aren’t getting enough done, or more importantly we get no satisfaction out of it… we’re burnt out.
I suppose now would be a good time to say that I am NOT talking about myself.
Yes, we are headed into summer… and it is a good time to relax. My own vacation time doesn’t come until August, and there’s a few things we’re going to be doing before then! However, burnout is something that happens a lot in today’s workplace, we talk about it all the time… it happens when through either frustration or being weary from the day to day grind becomes greater than the energy that we have. Burnout is nothing new… and that’s where we find the prophet Elijah.
Elijah is sitting on a mountaintop by himself. The cold wind whips around him… he sits down on the hard rocks, looking north… It’s the land he calls… well… called home. At least up here he could see the soldiers coming, and in the midst of the rocks he could last for years. Well, as long as he can ensure a good food supply anyway.
In the whispers of the air he hears a voice…
“What are you doing here Elijah?”
He replies: “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”
A tone of resignation… When God asks what he is doing here, Elijah’s reply betrays his frustration.
“Well… I did everything you asked. I’ve even took it on with a keen enthusiasm!
Your people have turned their back on you, and I’ve done everything I can to show them they’ve gone off the rails. They’ve pulled down your altars, and have let this… this… Jezebel have her way. Ahab’s a spineless wimp, and so I’ve been the only one to stand up to them… to stand up for you.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question,” the voice replies again, “What are you doing here?”
Elijah sighed and looked at his feet. “I did all this, I did all that you asked… I’ve shown them the wonders of your power, and it hasn’t made a lick of difference. Nobody seems to care anymore, and now they’re out to kill me!”
Elijah had succeeded it seems in every way… he tried his absolute best, he even delivered the goods. Yet he felt that even his best wasn’t good enough. Things were still the same, it didn’t seem to make a difference. Burnout…
It’s not just people who feel burnout… congregations can and often do. The original passion and fire that a congregation may have had seems to have waned from those past glory days, and don’t really have a sense for where we’re going. Our mission becomes less focused on what God is calling us to be, and more on preserving the institution… but really, when we look at it, that’s when we are in danger of congregational burnout.
I have to admit, I’m already looking ahead to the fall… not because I am that together with planning, but more out of excitement of what God is up to and leading us next. At the same time the summer can be a good time to take stock, to “retreat” as Elijah did… because we may find God whispering to us in the places that we don’t expect…
“Let me show you something,” the voice says to Elijah.
What follows is the spectacular lightshow… the natural spectacle of mountain-shattering wind, earthquakes, searing fire… the kind of thing you would expect from Mount St. Helens. It’s also the kind of thing that we have come to expect from God, big and spectacular… but here’s the rub. In the midst of the boom and crash, God isn’t in those things. God is not in the wind… God is not in the earthquakes… God is not amidst the fire… God is not where we expect.
After all of the smoke, flame, and shattered rocks there is nothing… just silence…
In the silence of that moment, Elijah begins to realize something…
It isn’t in the spectacular displays that we find God… but somewhere far more personal far more deep. The changes and difference that Elijah was hoping for is something that will take more than simply a spectacular lightshow to get people to change. After all, real, genuine change happens from within…
In the end, Elijah realizes that God isn’t in those big flashy shows… God isn’t in those places that we might expect… God’s vision is far longer reaching than any of us expect.
With this new affirmation, God re-commissions Elijah, and he returns to his work as a prophet. This time, Elijah knows full-well that he will not see the end result of his own work… but he realizes that he is part of setting something up for the future… something that will last beyond his own lifetime. He will find a successor, he will anoint a competing king who will hold Ahab and Jezebel to account. He will pave the way for a line of prophets who will continue to hold Israel to account, and who will speak of the hope of God in times of great darkness.
Elijah was burned out because he felt that he wasn’t making a difference… that no matter what he did, or how big a show he was able to put on, that nobody seemed to care. Through this experience, Elijah learned the lesson that maybe all of us need to… we may not see the end result of our work, or the difference that we make in life… but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t abandon it. Instead, it is about trusting that God will see it through.
So now, the question for us, is “what are we doing here?”
In our congregational health survey that we did earlier this year, as in previous years, “Passionate Spirituality” continues to be the area of concern. It’s not surprising. After all, as we tend to be dismissive of ourselves, we’re Presbyterian… we don’t get passionate about anything… or so the joke goes. I’ve spoken of my own level of comfort, or rather, discomfort after some bad experiences as a pre-teen with a Pentecostal-style churches. It was bad enough that if that had been my only experience of church, I would not be standing in this pulpit today. So when I first heard “Passionate Spirituality” I really had to come to grips with what that meant…
But I’ve also had three years to really personally think and reflect on what that means. Being “Passionate” about our Spirituality is not about how outwardly expressive we are… Our congregational development officer John-Peter Smit keeps reminding us that this doesn’t mean we’re supposed to turn into Pentecostals… It has to do with how much personal ownership we take for our Spiritual journey and our relationship with God. How we experience the transforming power of Christ, who reminds us that all of us matter. How the Holy Spirit breathes new life into us when we are feeling burnt out an exhausted like Elijah.
On one level, Passionate Spirituality is about how well we answer the very same question that God asks Elijah in this morning’s story from 1st Kings.
“What are you doing here?”
One of the things that we have learned about the survey that perhaps we have not given ourselves enough credit for… As a congregation, we are very much task-oriented. We are good at getting our hands onto a project… onto an event… and pushing ahead with it, organizing it, and having it come off in spectacular fashion. The Clarkson Festivals, the Burns Suppers, the Anniversary celebrations, Buck a Book Bonanza, organizing the photo-directory…. There’s even the project of the windows, or our latest renovations… We are good at tasks… and we need to celebrate that as a genuine strength. At the last Session meeting, John-Peter Smit challenged us to use our task-oriented nature to help leverage and develop our Spirituality… we may find that there really is a passion there. When I was in seminary, one of the larger assignments I had to do was loosely called a “Spirituality Project.” –Perhaps it’s time for us to take on some Spirituality projects on our own.
And then I realized that we already have one on the go. This summer, we are having another “Camp in Your Own Backyard.” But instead of it being run by people from the Presbyterian Church’s Cairn Camping, it’s something we are doing… and I need to give Kudos to Megan McLean for taking the lead with it… but this is an example of a Spirituality project. The theme this year is the story of Joseph in Egypt… and as a congregation, we are providing this as a service to the community while at the same time getting absorbed and exploring one of the great stories from Genesis. This is just one way that we can take advantage of our task-oriented nature to help remove some of those barriers that are getting in the way of us growing to our full potential.
There are other Spirituality Projects out there… and God is calling us to make use of the gifts and strengths that we have, and discover what our purpose as a congregation really is. When I was at the Emmaus Project back in May, I was reminded that the Institution, the Church, should never be the goal… but the mission of transforming lives and changing the world for the better. Because whether we believe it or not, God is already up to something here… as I said earlier, I am looking forward to the fall because I want to see where God is leading us as a congregation.
As Elijah learns… God is up to something with some very long-term views. It was true then, it’s true now… that God is calling us to something even more profound and wonderful... we’re just not sure what it is yet. This story reminds us that God is constantly with us... but not in the spectacular great displays... but is with us, quietly reassuring and renewing us... and is most definitely there calling us into the future, rather than to dwell on past glories. Learning a lesson from Elijah, that our energy, our passion for doing God’s work comes out of trusting that God is indeed here in our midst.
Amen.
Burnout. At some point in our lives, every one of us is going to experience it.
It can be either short or long-term… it could just mean that we need an extended vacation, or it could mean that we need to look at a complete change in careers. It’s that point at which we feel we are truly spinning our wheels, desperate for a break… In more serious cases, there is a genuine anxiety over even returning to work, and even genuine clinical depression. Whatever its severity, burnout comes when no matter what amount of work that we do, no matter how many hours we put into it, we either aren’t getting enough done, or more importantly we get no satisfaction out of it… we’re burnt out.
I suppose now would be a good time to say that I am NOT talking about myself.
Yes, we are headed into summer… and it is a good time to relax. My own vacation time doesn’t come until August, and there’s a few things we’re going to be doing before then! However, burnout is something that happens a lot in today’s workplace, we talk about it all the time… it happens when through either frustration or being weary from the day to day grind becomes greater than the energy that we have. Burnout is nothing new… and that’s where we find the prophet Elijah.
Elijah is sitting on a mountaintop by himself. The cold wind whips around him… he sits down on the hard rocks, looking north… It’s the land he calls… well… called home. At least up here he could see the soldiers coming, and in the midst of the rocks he could last for years. Well, as long as he can ensure a good food supply anyway.
In the whispers of the air he hears a voice…
“What are you doing here Elijah?”
He replies: “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”
A tone of resignation… When God asks what he is doing here, Elijah’s reply betrays his frustration.
“Well… I did everything you asked. I’ve even took it on with a keen enthusiasm!
Your people have turned their back on you, and I’ve done everything I can to show them they’ve gone off the rails. They’ve pulled down your altars, and have let this… this… Jezebel have her way. Ahab’s a spineless wimp, and so I’ve been the only one to stand up to them… to stand up for you.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question,” the voice replies again, “What are you doing here?”
Elijah sighed and looked at his feet. “I did all this, I did all that you asked… I’ve shown them the wonders of your power, and it hasn’t made a lick of difference. Nobody seems to care anymore, and now they’re out to kill me!”
Elijah had succeeded it seems in every way… he tried his absolute best, he even delivered the goods. Yet he felt that even his best wasn’t good enough. Things were still the same, it didn’t seem to make a difference. Burnout…
It’s not just people who feel burnout… congregations can and often do. The original passion and fire that a congregation may have had seems to have waned from those past glory days, and don’t really have a sense for where we’re going. Our mission becomes less focused on what God is calling us to be, and more on preserving the institution… but really, when we look at it, that’s when we are in danger of congregational burnout.
I have to admit, I’m already looking ahead to the fall… not because I am that together with planning, but more out of excitement of what God is up to and leading us next. At the same time the summer can be a good time to take stock, to “retreat” as Elijah did… because we may find God whispering to us in the places that we don’t expect…
“Let me show you something,” the voice says to Elijah.
What follows is the spectacular lightshow… the natural spectacle of mountain-shattering wind, earthquakes, searing fire… the kind of thing you would expect from Mount St. Helens. It’s also the kind of thing that we have come to expect from God, big and spectacular… but here’s the rub. In the midst of the boom and crash, God isn’t in those things. God is not in the wind… God is not in the earthquakes… God is not amidst the fire… God is not where we expect.
After all of the smoke, flame, and shattered rocks there is nothing… just silence…
In the silence of that moment, Elijah begins to realize something…
It isn’t in the spectacular displays that we find God… but somewhere far more personal far more deep. The changes and difference that Elijah was hoping for is something that will take more than simply a spectacular lightshow to get people to change. After all, real, genuine change happens from within…
In the end, Elijah realizes that God isn’t in those big flashy shows… God isn’t in those places that we might expect… God’s vision is far longer reaching than any of us expect.
With this new affirmation, God re-commissions Elijah, and he returns to his work as a prophet. This time, Elijah knows full-well that he will not see the end result of his own work… but he realizes that he is part of setting something up for the future… something that will last beyond his own lifetime. He will find a successor, he will anoint a competing king who will hold Ahab and Jezebel to account. He will pave the way for a line of prophets who will continue to hold Israel to account, and who will speak of the hope of God in times of great darkness.
Elijah was burned out because he felt that he wasn’t making a difference… that no matter what he did, or how big a show he was able to put on, that nobody seemed to care. Through this experience, Elijah learned the lesson that maybe all of us need to… we may not see the end result of our work, or the difference that we make in life… but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t abandon it. Instead, it is about trusting that God will see it through.
So now, the question for us, is “what are we doing here?”
In our congregational health survey that we did earlier this year, as in previous years, “Passionate Spirituality” continues to be the area of concern. It’s not surprising. After all, as we tend to be dismissive of ourselves, we’re Presbyterian… we don’t get passionate about anything… or so the joke goes. I’ve spoken of my own level of comfort, or rather, discomfort after some bad experiences as a pre-teen with a Pentecostal-style churches. It was bad enough that if that had been my only experience of church, I would not be standing in this pulpit today. So when I first heard “Passionate Spirituality” I really had to come to grips with what that meant…
But I’ve also had three years to really personally think and reflect on what that means. Being “Passionate” about our Spirituality is not about how outwardly expressive we are… Our congregational development officer John-Peter Smit keeps reminding us that this doesn’t mean we’re supposed to turn into Pentecostals… It has to do with how much personal ownership we take for our Spiritual journey and our relationship with God. How we experience the transforming power of Christ, who reminds us that all of us matter. How the Holy Spirit breathes new life into us when we are feeling burnt out an exhausted like Elijah.
On one level, Passionate Spirituality is about how well we answer the very same question that God asks Elijah in this morning’s story from 1st Kings.
“What are you doing here?”
One of the things that we have learned about the survey that perhaps we have not given ourselves enough credit for… As a congregation, we are very much task-oriented. We are good at getting our hands onto a project… onto an event… and pushing ahead with it, organizing it, and having it come off in spectacular fashion. The Clarkson Festivals, the Burns Suppers, the Anniversary celebrations, Buck a Book Bonanza, organizing the photo-directory…. There’s even the project of the windows, or our latest renovations… We are good at tasks… and we need to celebrate that as a genuine strength. At the last Session meeting, John-Peter Smit challenged us to use our task-oriented nature to help leverage and develop our Spirituality… we may find that there really is a passion there. When I was in seminary, one of the larger assignments I had to do was loosely called a “Spirituality Project.” –Perhaps it’s time for us to take on some Spirituality projects on our own.
And then I realized that we already have one on the go. This summer, we are having another “Camp in Your Own Backyard.” But instead of it being run by people from the Presbyterian Church’s Cairn Camping, it’s something we are doing… and I need to give Kudos to Megan McLean for taking the lead with it… but this is an example of a Spirituality project. The theme this year is the story of Joseph in Egypt… and as a congregation, we are providing this as a service to the community while at the same time getting absorbed and exploring one of the great stories from Genesis. This is just one way that we can take advantage of our task-oriented nature to help remove some of those barriers that are getting in the way of us growing to our full potential.
There are other Spirituality Projects out there… and God is calling us to make use of the gifts and strengths that we have, and discover what our purpose as a congregation really is. When I was at the Emmaus Project back in May, I was reminded that the Institution, the Church, should never be the goal… but the mission of transforming lives and changing the world for the better. Because whether we believe it or not, God is already up to something here… as I said earlier, I am looking forward to the fall because I want to see where God is leading us as a congregation.
As Elijah learns… God is up to something with some very long-term views. It was true then, it’s true now… that God is calling us to something even more profound and wonderful... we’re just not sure what it is yet. This story reminds us that God is constantly with us... but not in the spectacular great displays... but is with us, quietly reassuring and renewing us... and is most definitely there calling us into the future, rather than to dwell on past glories. Learning a lesson from Elijah, that our energy, our passion for doing God’s work comes out of trusting that God is indeed here in our midst.
Amen.
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