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1 Kings 19:4-8

Bread for the Journey

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1 Kings 19:4-8

Bread for the Journey

The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel

FROM GOD OUR FATHER
AND THE LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, AMEN.

Elie Wiesel, the great writer and Nobel Prize winner, writes of a time when the left side of his body was shattered in an auto accident. He required ten hours of reconstructive surgery and months of recovery. But his friends kept consoling him with the same thought: You’re lucky; it could have been worse. You could have lost your sight, your legs, your mind. It reminded him, Wiesel said, of an old story about a man reciting a litany of woes to his friend—he has lost his job, his house, his money, his fiancée—and his friend keeps saying, “It could have been worse, it could have been worse.” Finally the friend screams, “How could it be worse?” and his friend mutters, “It could have happened to me.”

Last week I was privileged to attend a Stephen Ministry Leaders’ Conference in Pittsburgh. We had many hours of training—some of you are Stephen Ministers know that it takes fifty hours of training to become a Stephen Minister. If you are not familiar with the program it is a system for Christian caregiving —a way to learn how best to carry one another’s burdens, to develop skills to listen and be with another person who is being tested and tried.

It was interesting to hear the stories of people around the room. Many were there because they were pastors who wanted to introduce this program of Christian caregiving —it was made clear that pastors can only do so much themselves and just as the apostles appointed the first deacons to care for widows and orphans, so a congregation can greatly extend its caring ministry by a program such as Stephen Ministry.

There were experienced Stephen Ministers who wanted to become leaders of the program. Some were medical professionals who understood well the wholistic dimension of healing. There were also people present because they had themselves been touched. One man was working with stroke victims in a hospital—he had himself been forced to retired from his job because he had a stroke. Many had lost loved ones. Grief and loss and personal experience with caregiving brought many people to the conference. We had some roll playing exercises—one was in just what not to say to someone who was suffering, not to give answers or solve problems but to listen, read Scripture, pray. The phrase often used in Stephen Ministry is a good one—”We are caregivers, God is the curegiver.” In other words, not to rush off to the person and say, “It could be worse.”

God is the curegiver. Stephen Ministry is distinctly Christian caregiving. We use the Scriptures, prayer, the community of God’s people to care. So many needs of people—loneliness, grief, loss of a loved one, illness all have a spiritual component. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychotherapist, once wrote, “Among all the patients in the second half of life—that is, say over 35—there has not been one whose problems in the last resort was not finding a religious outlook on life and none has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”

Dr. Ken Haugk, founder of Stephen Ministry, is a clinical psychologist. He recalls the time when he was asked by Jim, “Why are you a psychologist?” Haugk felt pleased that he was asked, “I am interested in people and desire to help others deal with life struggles and problems.” He was asked again and Haugk answered, “Being a psychologist gives me the opportunity to deal with situations and people not just from a distance or on a surface level, but to get involved with them in a real and personal way. For me, being a psychologist means not only doing something to or even for another person, but being involved with someone as a fellow human being.”

This still wasn’t enough for Jim and he asked him again and then Dr. Haugk realized that it was a spiritual question he was being asked and finally answered, “Jim. I think I see what you are asking now. I hope you know me well enough to know that I am not the kind of person who would try to bully you with my personal feelings about my faith. But in order to answer your question, I need to share with you some of my deeper convictions. The reason I am a psychologist lies in my faith in God and in what God has done for me in Jesus Christ. I believe that Jesus cares for me so much that he was willing to give his life for me. Remembering his love, I can’t help but reach out and share that love and care with others. So that is why I do what I do.” “OK,” Jim responded, “I just wanted to know.”

That is the reason for Stephen Ministry. We have been so loved by Jesus Christ that we want to respond in love to God’s people. St Paul writes to the Galatians, “Bear one another’s burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ.” I want to invite each one of you today to consider becoming a Stephen Minister. It entails extensive training and you will then be asked to make a two year commitment to being a caregiver and being part of a peer supervision group. You will be asked to make the commitment to complete confidentiality—one of the images Stephen Ministry uses is of a “safe house” where people can go and talk about their real issues and feelings without fear or embarrassment. You will not be asked to solve the problems of another person—again the image Stephen Ministry uses is of a “person in a pit”—you are not above the person yelling solutions at the poor fellow down there, nor do you jump in the pit to have just as much pain and suffering as the woman who is down, but you hold one hand to the tree which is Christ and reach the other hand out to the person. You give care. God gives the cure.

A SUBSCRIBER SAYS: “Dear Richard. Many Many thanks for the weekly Sermons received this year. Believe me they not only have inspired me, but have given me a great deal of scope with my own weekly Sermons. Being a full time priest, time gets so consumed with all things pertaining to the running and Pastoral care of a Parish I often run out of ideas for good Sermon delivery, so thank you for inspirational writing and offering the alternatives as well.”

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And God will provide the strength you need. God will provide food for your journey. Today’s lesson reminds of us that God will provide. Elijah had just taken on the priests of Baal at Mt Carmel and proved that the God of Israel had power and the idols did not. This angered the wicked Queen Jezebel and so the prophet fled. He went as far away from the northern kingdom as he could—to Beersheba, the last settlement of the southern kingdom, Judah. And then he went even further, “a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree.” Elijah had faith enough to take on the priests of Baal but his faith seems to have fled and he asks that he might die, “It is enough now, O LORD, take away my life for I am no better than my ancestors.” Even the greatest disciple of the Lord can be anxious and doubtful and tired. Men and women of great faith can grow weary in their well-doing; here Elijah had come to the end of his energy and strength. We need to be honest about our feelings.

When we care for others as a Stephen Minister or in another capacity, we will hear feelings of anger and discouragement, doubt, even religious questioning. We won’t have all the answers and that is not the point. We are not called to provide answers but just to be there with the other person. God did not command Elijah to buck up. God did not scold him for lagging in zeal. God’s Word to him was not, “It could be worse.” No, what did God do? He let Elijah fall asleep and then sent an angel with a caked baked on hot stones and a jar of water. God provided food and drink to Elijah. The angel was the caregiver—and in the Bible, an angel is a messenger, in both Hebrew and Greek that is what this is—a messenger from God. Then the angel woke him a second time and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” The text concludes, “He got up and ate and drank and then went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to the Horeb, the mount of God. God provided what Elijah needed to continue his life and his work. He was given enough food to make his life’s journey.

God uses means to come to us. As Lutheran Christians we affirm that God uses the means of Word and sacrament to build and strengthen faith. That is why when Stephen Ministers go to a care-receiver, they use words from the Scriptures, prayer, sometimes bring the Lord’s Supper because these are ways that we have been given to bring God’s word of comfort to another. We do not need to provide the words, but God provides words that have comforted and consoled through centuries. We bring the story of God’s love in Jesus Christ and our own story to share, that we too love Jesus because Jesus first loved us. We want to be Christs to our neighbor. But Luther says that in addition to Word and Sacrament, God uses the conversation and consolation of Christian brothers and sisters to come to us. You may be God’s angel—the one who God will use to bring cake baked on hot stones and cold water to the weary and discouraged brother or sister. It is probably the last image we would ever have for ourselves—an angel of God.

Many scholars think the word “angel” in our text is a later interpretation of what might just have been the word “someone” in the original. The theology of angels did not really appear in Israel until after the Exile and the prophet Elijah lived three hundred years before that. It does not matter. The “someone” who came to Elijah was God’s messenger and so the word fits—God appointed someone to bring food and water for Elijah’s journey. God prompted caregiving so that God could do the curegiving. The angel was present with the discouraged prophet, gave him food and drink and God gave strength that he could go to the mountain of the Lord and continue his ministry.

God will provide all we need to make our life’s journey. God provides His Word and the sacraments and especially other people who come in to our lives to ministry to us, to give us food and drink when we need it, to encourage us in our faith, to be with us when we feel tired and discouraged. And God may be calling you to do that to a brother or sister, to be a Christian caregiver. You may be that angel to another. Amen.

Copyright 2006, James D. Kegel. Used by permission.