WEBVTT

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and

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of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Father Lawrence apparently

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unsatisfied with my performance this morning,

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has demanded more of me, asking that I speak

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to Elijah. So if you'll sit for a moment, I won't

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keep you all that long, but I will say something.

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This is one of the wildest and most frightening

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figures in all the sacred scriptures. You might

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have noted, if you were listening to the readings,

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that he personally dispatches the 400 plus. priests

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of Baal. I suppose the other ones as well. Jezebel's

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whole stable of missionaries. But that's not

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quite what I want to talk about. Let me begin

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with his name. Elijah's name, like every Hebrew

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name, and most every name in the ancient world,

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means something. El Iyar. Yah is my God. Yah,

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the first syllable of the tetragrammaton, the

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name that God gives to Moses at the foot of Mount

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Sinai, the burning bush, that no one knows, whose

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pronunciation no one knows. We know it's Y -H

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-W -H. and the first syllable seems to have been

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yah so wherever you see yah in the scriptures

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like you'll know that word is theophorus and

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elijah's name is his program he's come to bring

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israel back to worship of the god of sinai and

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the covenant Because Israel was faced with a

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grave temptation. A wandering people, shepherds

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doubtless, had settled into the agricultural

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life of the ancient Near East. And the agricultural

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life then, as now, was predicated on the existence

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of water. If you know your geography, you know

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that the Holy Land isn't exactly abundant in

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that commodity. It's like here. And just like

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here, the weather comes from the west. And just

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like here, it doesn't come until sometime late

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October and is done by April, usually. And just

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like here, the Holy Land in summer is brown,

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and in January is green, if it rains. Now, whether

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or not it rains in those days, even more than

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now, I mean, we've had a terrible drought here,

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right? But no one has starved to death. We've

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got trains, we've got semis, we've got refrigerated.

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containers. So food comes to us from all over

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the world, even if there may be drought here.

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Well, it wasn't that way in Elijah's time. You

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made your own food, normally. Most people lived

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in the land, and they were hardscrabble farmers.

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And if they didn't get the rain, they died. So

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whether or not those clouds formed at the end

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of October was a matter of life and death. And

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in consequence, the peoples round about had developed,

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I guess we would call it a religion, but it was

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also a kind of technology. Since controlling

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the weather was the item on the agenda of personal

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survival. And the religion involved the mating,

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as it were, of earth and sky. That mating being

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understood as fulfilled in the rain. Sky was

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Baal and earth was Ashtaroth, or Astarte, or

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Ishtar. She has different names. And encouraging

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the sacred marriage of earth and heaven, meaning

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the rain, was a matter of life and death, and

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people understood that you could help it along

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by engaging in similar activity on earth. Humans

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coupling helped the gods couple. And as it were,

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Joe Israelite, living next door to that, well,

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he had his God, yes, and his God had his feast

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days, but then there was the matter of how do

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you eat? And the neighbor's survival techniques

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looked pretty good, and of course it involved

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some fun as well. So they took it up. And a queen

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had just come to the northern kingdom. who was

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something, one of the more interesting people

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in this Old Testament. She doesn't get a very

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good rep, of course. She's a girl from the Lebanese

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coast, daughter of a queen, a king, rather. A

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good dynastic marriage for the Northern Kingdom.

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But she's also, unlike most queens, right into

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the early 20th century, who might have been of

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a different faith, but married their husband.

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for dynastic purposes, like Alexander married

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Nicholas in Russia. She was Lutheran, at least

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when she came to Russia. He was, of course, Orthodox.

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Well, she stays where she is. And moreover, she's

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a missionary. And is prosecuting the religion

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of Earth and Sky. So... a little bit more profoundly,

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perhaps. Thank you. I don't know if this stuff

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is going to work. A. B. When God's already acknowledged

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the reign of God. All the way to the showdown

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with God. But third, you might recall that how

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he is following his victory. She issues a death

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warning. She takes out a contract with a girl.

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And he beats it. That's how it got there. And

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that's how it went on for a second. And that's

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how it went on for a second. And that's how it

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went on for a second. it earth, air, fire, or

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water. He is none of the four elements. God is

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not a cosmos. He is not a created universe. But

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the universe is created, precisely created. There

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is a creator who And so far as we can tell whether

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the right name means anything, it seems to me

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something that it could mean, something like

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he will be, or he will cause to be. But there

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is no name, there is no handle. Not in the sense

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that we learn from the story of Elijah. I could

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bring in that this is about the fire from heaven,

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because that has all kinds of interesting echoes,

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but that's another thing. And, of course, the

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issue of bloodshed, and there's quite a bit of

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that in the whole Elijah legacy, but I won't

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go into that one. But I will stress that these

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things, the story of Elijah's... There is only

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one. In one translation of that sequence of the

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fire, the wind, the earthquake... the champions

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and we have two hours Thank you