Whistle blowers are not usually rewarded. It was a large hospital, and a young nurse was completing her first full day of responsibility in the operating room. As the surgeon prepared to finish the operation, she counted the instruments and sponges. "You've only removed 11 sponges, doctor," she said. "We used 12." "I removed them all," the doctor declared. "We'll close the incision now." "No," the nurse objected. "We used 12 sponges." "I'll take full responsibility," the surgeon said grimly. "Suture!" "You can't do that!" blazed the nurse. "Think of the patient." The surgeon looked at her steadily, then smiled, lifted his shoe and showed her the 12th sponge. "You'll do," he said.

Queen Jezebel was a scary lady, and she didn't reward whistle blowers. Today, no one names their daughter Jezebel. The dictionary defines a "Jezebel" as "a woman who is regarded as evil or scheming;" "a wicked woman." You call someone a Jezebel and there's little doubt what you mean.

But dealing with a Jezebel is one thing; dealing with the original Jezebel was something else. The original Jezebel lived about 100 years after King David, and was terrifying in both her power and her personality. And it's this Jezebel which the prophet Elijah has to deal with in our first lesson. That lesson, as you heard, starts off,

"Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword."

Well, that takes a little unpacking! Ahab was king of Israel and had married Jezebel. The real Jezebel. The original Jezebel. This was seriously bad news for Israel not merely because she was a foreigner but because she was an ardent worshiper of the false god Baal. And Jezebel made it her own personal project to get all Israel doing the same. The upshot of that, of course, was that Baal worshipers not only got their noses under the tent but were threatening to take over the whole tent.

Enter Elijah, a no-nonsense Old Testament prophet of the old school. Jezebel, with Ahab's blessing, had set up a whole group of prophets of Baal - four hundred fifty of them plus another 400 prophets for another god. Elijah was not amused. Baal was a weather god of thunderstorms and rain. Many believed that their crops depended upon Baal's good pleasure, since Baal, they thought, sent the rain. This is the point where God sent Elijah to Ahab with an in-your-face message, to blow the whistle right on Baal's home court - that home court being the weather. Elijah first appears at the beginning of 1 Kings 17, where we read:

Now Elijah the Tishbite ... said to Ahab, "As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word."

And that's what happened. Three years of drought in the land of Baal the rain maker. You'd think that would have settled it, but no. So in the next chapter, 1 Kings 18, the stakes are dramatically raised. Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to a contest on Mt Carmel. They lose that challenge in a most embarrassing way, and at the end Elijah adds injury to insult by having them all put to death.

This is the situation behind today's first lesson. Turn in your Bibles with me to 1 Kings 19. That's found on page 351 in the church Bibles. 1 Kings 19. There, beginning in verse 1, we heard:

Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 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." Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.

Because Elijah has just learned that, in the words of Ernest Becker, "if you are wrong about power, you don't get a chance to be right about anything else." Elijah, who up to this point has been a tower of strength, suddenly crumbles. He cuts and runs. He flees for his life. And that's what lies behind my double-edged sermon title, "Faith in flight." We'll get to the other edge shortly. In verses 4 and 5, we read:

He came to a broom tree, 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." Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.

Elijah was strong, one of the strongest prophets in the Bible, but even he had his breaking point. Now he has run; and not just run but run out on God. Faith in flight; what kind of faith is that? And what is God going to do? What does God do when we run out on him? In verses 5 and 6 we read:

All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat." He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.

Elijah has run out on God, and God, instead of yanking him back on a short leash, sends an angel to provide food and water for him as he runs away. Elijah eats and drinks and then lies down again. In verse 7, we read

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."

The angel of the LORD is not just any angel. In the Bible, the angel of the LORD represents God himself, speaks for God, sometimes speaks as God. So, after letting Elijah rest, the angel of the LORD wakes him up with an unexpected message. Not, "Elijah, go back," but rather, "Eat some more, for now you have a journey ahead. A journey planned by God." Instead of giving Elijah a tongue-lashing for running away, God does two things. He gives him some R&R - the nourishment and rest he needs in this moment of crisis - and then he draws him aside for an In Service, to get him built up and back on track. That's the kind of God we have, my friends. He certainly had things he wanted Elijah to do; but he worked with Elijah where he was in order to get him back together again and send him back into the fray. And so he will do for you and for me.

God does not drop the hammer on you the moment you slip. That isn't the way God works. I don't know precisely what God intends for your life, but know of a certainty that God has things he would have you undertake. You are probably not a prophet like Elijah, but God still wants to work through you. I don't know the details, and perhaps neither do you at this point. But know this: there will be times of falling short, and God will be there to give you the R&R and the In Services you need along the way. This is most certainly true.

So where does Elijah go on this journey? Where does he head now for his In Service? In verses 8 and 9, we read:

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. There he went into a cave and spent the night.

Horeb, the mountain of God. Do you know where Mt Horeb is? To answer that, you need to know Mt Horeb's other name. Mt Sinai. Mt Horeb is Mt Sinai. Faith in flight. When faith flees, it goes back to its source. Elijah is fleeing back to where it all began; where God first met Moses in the burning bush and where he later gave Israel the Ten Commandments. Faith in flight. Elijah has good instincts. In the crunch, Elijah flees back to the source, back to the foundation, back to where it all began with God.

That's something else to note. My friend, build your foundations early and build them well so you will know where to flee when and if the time comes. I remember the confirmation memory work I learned, somewhat grudgingly at the time, I must admit. The five major parts of Luther's Small Catechism. I learned the material and promptly forgot it, like many of us have done. Or so I thought. So I thought. Many years later, however, when I was a 30-year-old seminarian, Dr Jim Nestingen had us learn it all again. And not just the five major parts - the whole thing. Good for him; it was a great service to us. And what I found was that what I had memorized in my youth came back very quickly; the rest was like pulling rusty nails from oak. But note this! What I had learned oh so many years before had burrowed deep and was there all along, shaping my theology and supporting me in the crunch all those years. The foundations. Build them well, my friends; catechism, hymns, scripture. Foundations which will stand you well when life closes in on you.

So Elijah flees to Sinai, and then God, after giving him some R&R, gives his first gentle nudge in verse 9:

And the word of the LORD came to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

Elijah, what are you doing here, away from your post? And Elijah replies:

"I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken 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."

"I am the only one left," he says. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt like you were God's only ambassador in a foreign land? The only one really aware of what God could do in a place or a situation? Maybe in school; maybe that freshman year in college; maybe on your job. "Lord, you've brought me thus far; and now I feel that I'm the only one here who knows you." We live in a tough culture, and even pastors and congregations can sometimes feel, "Lord, we're the only ones left. And we feel so alone, so insufficient for the task, so unprepared." But of course it's true! We are insufficient for the task. It's always true. It's just that sometimes we actually recognize this - and recognize that it all depends upon God working through us.

In verses 11-12, God encourages Elijah in a most dramatic yet understated way. First, he tells Elijah to go out and stand on the mountain. This is Mt Sinai, remember? Perhaps Elijah remembered God's first appearance to Israel in Exodus 19, where we read that Sinai:

was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. And ... Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder.

And now again, in the days of Elijah, God unleashes the power of a storm on Mt Sinai. And then the surprise. God comes to Elijah not in the fire of the burning bush, not in the earthquake of the giving of the law, not even in the wind and storm associated with Baal. Rather, Elijah hears a "gentle whisper;" the RSV says a "still small voice." And what does God say? He simply asks again, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" And Elijah gives the same answer. In a sense, nothing has changed. But in another very profound sense, everything has changed. The first time, God replied, "Go out and stand on the mountain." Now, in verse 15, he finally says, "Go back."

"Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus."

And then the details. Elijah had fled Jezebel after confronting the prophets of Baal; now God sends him back not merely to confront false prophets but to anoint kings. He is sent back to anoint a new king of Syria and a new king of Israel. Jezebel will soon be toast. And soon we see faith in flight in a new sense. Not flight as in fleeing but flight as in liftoff, as in becoming airborne again. Elijah goes back, revived and restored, not because he finally pulled up his socks but because God pulled him up, lifted him up, set him back on his horse as it were, and said, "OK Elijah, once again, go out in my name. As I sent you before, so I send you again."

And I can't help but think of the double message of Jesus to the woman caught in adultery in John 8. Jesus saves her from her accusers, saves her from being stoned to death. And then, when all the others have left in shame, he turns to her and says, "Now go; and sin no more." Go. You are free; you are not condemned. But then the second part: "and sin no more." That second part is crucially important, my friend. In Christ, you are free; you are not condemned. You are free of the burden of your past so as now to live for the future God intends for you. And for Elijah, that was ever so slightly turned around. Not "Go, and sin no more," but rather "flee no more, and go." Flee no more, and go back to your post.

Elijah had fled, fled to Sinai, where he found not the thunder of God's law - as he might well have expected - but rather the patient voice of God's mercy: God's restoring forgiveness, encouragement and - yes - God's call then to return to his post. To return to where he should be. To return to God's purpose for him and for Israel. What about us? For us, the foundation, on which we stand and to which we again and again must return, is the cross. There we meet God in Christ, in Jesus the crucified, through whom our sins are forgiven and who then calls us not to "Go back to Damascus" but rather to "Come, follow me."

Listen for that voice, my friend. It's still to be heard today, that voice that comes to you and to me not only as Sinai's thunder - though at times we need that - but also as a patient "Why are you here?" And then, "Come, follow me." You may hear that voice in reading scripture, in the worship service and its hymns, perhaps even in this sermon. And you may hear it as you pray and suddenly sense God leading you away from the old and into something new. That's what happened in the life of the demon-possessed man in today's Gospel lesson, too. And he, too, got sent back as Jesus told him, "Return home and tell how much God has done for you."

For much of what God does in our world he has chosen to do through his people, through you and through me. That might trouble you at first - God use me? Maybe at first your faith will take flight as did Elijah's; perhaps our faith at first flees - in a group of friends, on a campus, in a meeting at work. But God works even with wavering uncertain people like you and like me, so that your faith can take flight in other ways - gaining liftoff, becoming airborne. God may not call you to be a whistle blower like Elijah; you'll probably seldom face a profound threat like the real Jezebel. But God will still often ask, "Why are you here?" And the risen Jesus still sends us and says, "Return home and tell how much God has done for you."

Amen