What Are You Doing Here?

This second segment from 1st Kings 19 moves from the prophetic torch of fire by Elijah to the power of healing touch of Elisha and invites us to find a different way through our anger

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Transcript

Sermons from 

Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

June 22, 2025

“What Are You Doing Here?”

1st Kings 19: 11-16 – The Message

Then he was told, “Go, stand on the mountain at attention before God. God will pass by.”

A hurricane wind ripped through the mountains and shattered the rocks before God, but God wasn’t to be found in the wind; after the wind an earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake; and after the earthquake fire, but God wasn’t in the fire; and after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper.

13-14 When Elijah heard the quiet voice, he muffled his face with his great cloak, went to the mouth of the cave, and stood there. A quiet voice asked, “So Elijah, now tell me, what are you doing here?” Elijah said it again, “I’ve been working my heart out for God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies, because the people of Israel have abandoned your covenant, destroyed your places of worship, and murdered your prophets. I’m the only one left, and now they’re trying to kill me.”

15-18 God said, “Go back the way you came through the desert to Damascus. When you get there anoint Hazael; make him king over Aram. Then anoint Jehu son of Nimshi; make him king over Israel. Finally, anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. 

Our story began last week when King Ahab killed a man in order to steal his vineyard to plant a garden.  None of the prophets at the time would say anything the king didn’t want to hear.  Elijah, however, not only dared tell the king the truth, he pronounced judgment – a devastating drought – and then went into hiding for several years.  

The kingdom suffered terribly, but part of the issue is that Ahab, who cared nothing about religion except for the power it could get him… Ahab had not been faithful to God.  He allowed his wife Jezebel’s religion to take hold.  When Elijah returned, he proposed a contest with the prophets of the god Baal.  The winner would be the one who could burn a sacrifice without using fire.  

The prophets of Baal danced around the sacrifice until they could only limp, but they couldn’t even make the stones warm.  When it was Elijah’s turn, he drenched the sacrifice and wood with water and then called down fire from the sky so fierce, it consumed even the stones.  But, not content with the win, he ordered the murder of 450 prophets of Baal.  Jezebel was furious and ordered that Elijah be killed in response.

Elijah fled and ran and ran until he collapsed under a broom tree, so tired and discouraged, he begged to die.  In response, God sent an angel who served him with bread and water and encouragement.  “Stay hydrated,” the angel said, “and get some rest because you have a long journey before you.  You are not done.”

He walked for 40 days and 40 nights until he arrived at Mount Horeb.  He entered a cave and rested that night.  In the morning, he heard the voice of God asking, “What are you doing here?”  

Elijah was immediately defensive.  He took it the wrong way:  “I’ve been very zealous... The Israelites have rejected your covenant... I’m the only one left, and now they’re trying to kill me too!”  God let him rant and then said quietly, “No, Elijah, what are you doing here?”  That simple question was a significant transition point for both Elijah and the people.

In 1993, I was called to an inner-city church in Cleveland that had plummeted from 1,000 members to a few dozen.  Once the largest, it had been determined they had enough money and people to last five more years, three years before.  Then, on the day I was called, one third of the church left, refusing to be part of a church that was among the first to have an openly gay pastor – which the other two-thirds thought would help the church grow.  

There was a lot riding all this.  From both inside and outside the church, there were those who hoped we would fail in order to prove their point.  And there were those who pressured us to be successful – to prove their point.  It was a stressful time, full of ups and downs, but slowly – ever so slowly – we began to build.  

By 1999 I was more than ready for my first sabbatical.  After lots of thought about where I should go, I felt God call me to spend two months in a Benedictine monastery outside of Santa Fe.  I knew almost nothing about monasticism so it was a mystery to me why I would go there.  

Before driving onto the grounds, I drove a few miles farther up the road and saw a boulder overlooking the river.  I got out and sat on it and asked, “What am I doing here?”  Receiving no answer, I thought, “Well, let’s see.”  

Part of my schedule was meeting with a spiritual director a couple of times a week.  I was apprehensive at first because I thought he would assign me a bunch of work to do – like write in a journal for an hour a day.  Much to my relief, he simply told me to carry a little spiral notebook in my pocket and write down any words or thoughts that occurred to me while hiking or reading or sleeping.  My kind of work!  A few weeks later, I was walking along the Pecos River as I did every day when I heard the question I still ask today:  “Who am I becoming?”  

It was my Elijah question, a question I’ve never stopped asking, one that continues to evolve as we all do; the same kind of question at the heart of the spiritual life:  “What are you doing here?”

Again, Elijah was immediately defensive.  He took it the wrong way:  “I’ve been very zealous... I’m the only one left…”  God let him rant and then said quietly, “No, Elijah, what are you doing here?”  

As he stood there, all of a sudden, the earth began to shake.  As he stands in a cave, the walls around him begin to crumble, rocks falling, dust rising.  He runs for the entrance and outside the wind is roaring like a hurricane.  He can barely stand against the pressure.  Then fires begin to explode all around him, the kind of intense fire Elijah had called down, it had even consumed the rocks.  And then…quiet.  Sheer silence.  Only a whisper like a breeze on the back of his neck asking:  “What are you doing here.”  

Elijah’s prophetic life had been marked by spectacle, judgment, and confrontation—violent uprisings against idolatry and corruption.  Here, when it was finally the silent, things shifted and it was time for Elijah to pass the proverbial torch, but no longer a torch to burn things to the ground.  Elijah passed his mantle to a guy he met pulling a plow through the fields, a prophet as different from Elijah as he could be – a man named Elisha.  And the torch becomes a touch—the power of God known through healing.

I’ll confess: I couldn’t name much about Elisha off the top of my head. And I suspect I’m not alone. But the more I studied him this week, the more I was amazed—because Elisha just might be the kind of prophet we need right now.

I had forgotten that his story begins with him healing poisoned water so a community has fresh water to drink and continues from there.

 Then he helps a widow save her sons from debt slavery by a miracle that multiplies oil to fill empty jars.

 He listens to the cries of a desperate mother and raises her child from death with his own breath and prayer.
 
 

In a foretelling of Jesus, he took loaves of bread sufficient to feed 20 people and fed 100, with leftovers to spare. 

And next week, you’ll hear a story about Elisha welcoming the commander of an enemy army. Not to defeat him. But to invite him into healing waters. Why would you do that? Why would you heal a foreign enemy instead of strike back?

That’s the kind of moral imagination that shows up in Elisha, but not just in Scripture.  For example, Ruby Sales.  In 1965, she was a 17-year-old teenager working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Alabama, helping register Black voters. It was dangerous work. Ruby knew that. Everyone in the movement knew that.

One afternoon, she was walking to a store with a group that included an Episcopal seminarian named Jonathan Daniels.  He was in Alabama because he had answered Dr. King’s call for people of faith and conscience to come and stand with the people of Selma. As they approached the store, a deputy sheriff confronted them with a shotgun.  In a split second, Jonathan stepped in front of her. A shot was fired and he was killed instantly.

Ruby survived—but the trauma of that moment stayed with her for years.  She decided to go to seminary and later founded the SpiritHouse Project, an organization that combines social justice and spiritual healing. She has said that the most important question we can ask is not “What’s wrong with you?” or “Why did you do that?”—but “Where does it hurt?”  It is how she combines justice and healing.  

What are you doing here?  As we scroll through news headlines one after another, it would be easy to become that which angers us.  There is a time for Elijah’s fire of truth, to name injustice instead of standing in complicit silence while people suffer.  To call out what is outrageous, but with the spirit of Elisha.  To speak with clarity a moral imagination that refuses to mirror the cruelty it confronts.  

To speak with clarity

• A voice unclouded by vengeance that does not flinch from naming evil—but does not become it.
• To be angry – how could we not be – but not add to the anger.
• To speak not with more volume, but with deeper rootedness. 

To speak with clarity… a moral imagination

• That doesn’t just critique what is, but dreams what could be.
• That sees a commander of the enemy nation not as a threat,
   but as a child of God—capable of healing, worthy of compassion.
• That dares to believe that poisoned waters, either by lead and chemicals or lies and deceit, can be made sweet again. 
• That believes a widow’s last jar of oil should not end her story.
• To imagine an economy where no one gets rich off someone else’s poverty. 
• To believe trans kids don’t need fixing or hiding, but blessing and protection.
• To dare dream of lawmakers led by compassion, not cruelty, who see beyond party lines and ask, Who’s hurting?  What can we do?

To speak with clarity a moral imagination… that refuses to mirror the cruelty it confronts

• That continues to ask, “Who am I becoming?”  Because if we become what we oppose, we’ve already lost the gospel.  

Elisha didn’t inherit Elijah’s rage—he inherited his call, but he transformed it from calling down fire to building up life.

The cruelty we confront is real—but so is our sacred courage to respond without replicating it – right?  Are you with me?  To confront evil not with more evil, but with a relentless mercy that disrupts the cycle.

Might I suggest:  You are here because you believe in the fire of truth but not the fire of destruction.

Because you know that mercy is not weak.
 Hope is not naïve.
 And love—fierce, resilient, radical love—
 is still the most powerful thing we can offer this weary world.  The only thing that can heal us.

You also know that we are far from done.  We’re not even close to resolving the mess we’re in and so we’re here to stay hydrated.  Jesus offers us Living Water.  And to get some rest, because as the angel said, the journey is long.  But the call?  The call is crystal clear.

And so I ask again, what are you doing here today?