Sermon: Elijah the Prophet

 

The first choral music I ever sang as a boy was Mendelssohn’s Elijah. I have loved that oratorio ever since. The schoolmaster in charge of the performance had a way of getting us involved with the story and singing the fiery choruses with gusto. ‘He shall perish, he shall perish’ we sang, not quite rising to the malevolence of Jezebel and her mandarins. He rapped his baton on the desk and rolled his eyes in mock despair at our effete efforts. ‘For heaven’s sake’, he said, you’re not singing “Rock a bye baby”. You’re shouting “Let the guilty prophet perish”. So think of the person next to you when you sing it.’

Mendelssohn’s libretto draws on the passage from the Old Testament Apocrypha we read earlier. Ben Sirach, writing early in the 2nd century BC, is reciting the mighty deeds of Israel’s heroes. It’s a long passage introduced with the well-known words, ‘Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us’. Among the roll-call of the great – kings, prophets, poets, musicians, the wise – is Elijah. And what is singled out for praise are his marvellous deeds: inflicting drought, calling down fire from heaven, destroying potentates, raising the dead, and finally, magnificently, being taken up to heaven in a whirlwind and fiery chariot.

But what Ben Sirach misses out is also significant. For he does not mention the story of Elijah and the raven that fed him, or the widow of Zarephath, or Obadiah and the prophets secreted away from the wrath of King Ahab, or the defining episode of Elijah’s self-doubt, or the still small voice at Horeb. This author has edited out the intimate, inward, hidden aspects of his life, suppressed anything on a small scale; his interest is only in what is dazzling and public and very spectacular. It is hagiography of a kind that reminds us of the medieval lives of the saints: talking up the powerful and miraculous in order to secure their place in the collective memory and in the devotion of succeeding generations.

In our own age, it is the other way around. We are suspicious of grandstanding and pedestals, we love it when someone in public life is toppled, we are intensely curious, not to say prurient, about every detail of the private lives of the prominent, the successful, the powerful and the rich. Royalty, politicians, sports and show business personalities, even – or especially – the clergy are fair game. On this Accession Day, we can speculate whether our Queen ever imagined 53 years ago that the vocation to which she pledged herself would turn out to be such a poisoned chalice through the relentless media scrutiny of the royal family’s personal lives.

I have often pondered this from within, reflected on the fact that as a priest, what I am and what I do is of interest to people. It seems strange to me that it should be so, for the life of a jobbing parson is pretty ordinary really. But a parson is, literally, a person, that is to say, someone – not because of what he is in himself, but because of what he represents, which is the church in its public, visible manifestation and all that it symbolises of justice, holiness, integrity, truth and love. So for the inner and outer worlds of a priest to be out of kilter, for public ministry not to be reflected by private truth would be to become hypocrites, an actor. The public sees straight through anyone who is not all that they seem. In a psalm ascribed, pointedly, to a king, the psalmist speaks about nurturing ‘truth in the inner parts’. Without this, all is lost.

It is what John Bunyan meant in his great poem about humility in Pilgrim’s Progress: ‘He that is down need fear no fall, he that is low no pride’. He does not mean that we should turn away from leadership if that is our calling, eschew roles in public life that enhance and serve society. But he knows that without humility, greatness becomes grandiosity, and leadership becomes tyranny. We are right to seek reassurance that if a priest is preaching about the good life, then he says his prayers and does not sleep with the churchwarden’s wife; that if a politician condemns sharp practice, then he himself is beyond reproach in his personal finances; that if a member of the royal family is in a hugely wealthy and privileged position, then he or she is scrupulously responsible in their stewardship of it. The much-used word transparency is close to the literal meaning of sincerity, which is that something is ‘pure’ or ‘clear’ when held up to the light. Theologically speaking, this is what ‘judgment’ means, that we and our actions are held up to the light of divine truth and scrutinised. If it is alarming to fall prey to the media, it is a truly fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Tomorrow, in this cathedral, we shall be celebrating the life of one Durham’s most remarkable men, Captain Dick Annand. We who regularly attend matins knew him and respected him, for he exemplified these virtues of humility, transparency, integrity and trust that we need to see in those who influence people’s lives and hold others’ destinies in their hands. He was one of the nation’s most distinguished war heroes, awarded the VC for his courage under fire in Belgium in 1940. Yet for all that, he hated too much to be made of his heroism. He wanted to be remembered I think as Bunyan’s Valiant for Truth carrying his battle scars until he passed over on the other side.

I am not saying that when we have had an Elijah in our midst, we should not recount his mighty deeds. Let the praises of the famous be told, and let the great be held in honour. But Ben Sirach needed to be wary of triumphalism, apply as a corrective the fullness of his own source in the Old Testament Books of the Kings. For there, in an older layer of tradition, we are invited to contemplate the acts of the prophet not by themselves, but as part of a tapestry of glimpses of who this man was before God, what happened when he went into his inner chamber and shut the door. It is there, says Jesus, that we learn to pray, and fast, and give alms, where our heavenly Father sees and rewards.

On Wednesday it will be Lent, time to take stock of who and what we are before God, shrive our spirits of what is illusory or false. Irenaeus said that ‘the glory of God is a human being fully alive’. This means sincerity, being ‘clear’ when lifted up to the light, having purity of heart, pursuing holiness without which no-one can see the Lord. To make this our deepest longing is to begin the long climb up to Easter; or rather, to know the truth of Easter here and now.

Ecclesiasticus 48.1-10