Sermon June 22 2025   I Kings 19 Angels Minister to Elijah        Rev. Betsy Hogan

Do you remember Fred the Baker? You might not even realize he had a name. 

I did not realize he had a name until I looked him up to find out exactly how old a Canadian would have to be in order to remember him… 

Turns out, probably at least 37. But better yet, 47. But probably, realistically speaking, 57. And even then, if I’m any example, we still wouldn’t necessarily remember that he had a name.

What we’d remember was that he had a job. And it was a hard job. It was a job that meant he had to get up every day before dawn, trudging toward work in a half-asleep daze, day after day after day…. Because it was time to make the donuts.

For sixteen years, it was time to make the donuts. So Fred the Baker – he had a name – trudged through the wee hours of the morning to his job at Dunkin Donuts. He became a 1980s icon, thanks to those Dunkin Donut ads. Though not a little ironically.

Because of course the point, in the ads, was that once Fred HAD in fact made the donuts and the customers turned up, he was so happy to see them. So happy that he could help start their day with a delicious delicious donut.

But his catch-phrase, of course, became sort of the shorthand expression for “my job might be trying to kill me”. Which, for those of us who remember the ads and have kept it alive, it kind of still is. 

Whenever day after day after day starts feeling like a relentless cycle of the daily grind: same old, same old, school lunches or commutes or meetings or whatever it happens to be. And all we can think every morning as we face it all again is “time to make the donuts” and hope we don’t hit the wall.

There’s good reason Fred the Baker’s catch-phrase became iconic. I suspect that people have been waking up and thinking their century’s version of “time to make the donuts” – at least now and then – since people began.

Take three thousand years ago, for example, during the reign of King Ahab in the ancient northern kingdom of Israel. When Elijah the Prophet might have been forgiven some mornings of groaning “time to make the donuts” – because he was NOT enjoying the daily grind of his life. Quite the contrary.

He was exhausted. At the point that we meet him in the passage from the book of Kings that Paul read for us earlier, he’s actually beyond exhausted. He’s completely wrung out. 

Which to be fair, if we were going to give him some advice about how he could be managing the relentlessness of his workload, we might start by suggesting that he could cut down a bit on – you know – killing all the prophets of Ba’al with a sword –

But the context in which he finds himself, Elijah the Prophet -- it’s at least necessary for us to acknowledge it. If not necessarily to appreciate it, wishing as we might do that it wasn’t quite so violent.

Because it’s not a great context for the peaceably-minded – the ancient northern kingdom of Israel. And Elijah the Prophet, what he’s been called by God to do for God’s people – now that they’ve basically established themselves in their land, after wandering in the wilderness with Moses –

What he’s been called by God to do in the midst of all of it… is to keep them mindful that they’re God’s people. To keep them mindful that as a people they’re in covenant with God. “I will be your God and you will be my people” is how God put it to them, way back with Abraham and Sarah.

“I will be your God and you will be my people” is how God put it to them, freeing them from slavery and guiding them with the Ten Commandments, with the teaching of Moses, into becoming how God wants them to be.

“I will be your God and you will be my people.” It’s a relationship, a covenant bond. Their God will be God, not any of those other gods with the statues and the sacrifices. They’ll live according to God’s way and giving God delight – doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly with God. And in return God will never abandon them.  

That’s the promise God makes them. And they promise in return to be God’s people. To give God delight. Justice and kindness.

And they do try. They try really hard to give God delight and often they do. But just as often, they completely lose track of how they’re meant to give God delight – with the justice and the kindness – and instead what they give God is a raging headache. And sometimes, just rage. And always, always, just terrible hurt and sadness.

Because God can’t stop loving them anyway. All through the stories of the Older Testament, God’s people Israel keep losing track of the justice and the kindness, and God’s furious and God rages at them – but God can’t let them go. God can’t stop loving God’s people. Can’t just abandon them. Weeps over them like a mother weeps over her child who infuriates her and rejects her and she can’t stop loving them.

So what God does instead, when God’s people behave badly, is God sends them prophets. To call them to account. To remind them of their covenant. To remind them of God’s Way, of the justice and the kindness. To save them from their own selves, and draw them back to the right path.

And Elijah is one of those prophets. One of the first. Whom God calls to be a prophet to God’s people Israel. Primarily, as it happens, because God is having serious, significant, existential concern… with Israel’s leader. With their king.

Who has completely lost the plot in pretty much every possible way. And every day it just seems to be getting worse and worse.

The problem is their king, almost three thousand years ago. Ahab, their king. Who in marrying his queen, Jezebel, has fallen so completely under her sway and influence that he’s abandoned God completely in favour of Jezebel’s god Ba’al. 

In fact, so completely has Ahab abandoned God that it’s actually hard to know who’s worse – is it Jezebel for her influence or is it Ahab for how fully and shamelessly he follows her lead? Ahab, it transpires, is more than ready to lay all the blame on Jezebel… but frankly, he’s the King. He’s responsible for what happens in his kingdom.

And what’s happened in his kingdom is that on behalf of his people, he’s turned his back on God. He’s turned his back on God’s way, on the justice and the kindness. He’s now worshipping Ba’al. He’s now enforcing Ba’al as the people’s god. His priests are priests of Ba’al, his prophets are prophets of Ba’al, his people – God’s people Israel – have become the people of Ba’al.

And God’s had enough. God calls into Israel the prophet Elijah, to gather God’s people back into God’s arms. To call them to account. To remind them of their covenant. To remind them of God’s Way. To save them from their own selves, and draw them back to the right path.

And when we meet Elijah in today’s reading, he’s exhausted. He’s beyond exhausted. It’s been day after day after day of “time to make the donuts” – trying to haul God’s people back to being God’s people. Which yes, Elijah apparently understands this task as necessarily including a fair amount of violence – to the point of frankly appalling -- but the battling is really just the straw that breaks the camel’s back, because Elijah was already exhausted. And now he’s hit the wall.

He’s got nothing left. He flees out into the wilderness and falls down under a broom tree, and he’s done. 

He’s done and he’s done and he’s done. “I think my job is trying to kill me,” is pretty much what he says to God, “so I’d rather YOU’D just do it.” He’s just got nothing left.

And then there’s one of the most beautiful moments in the whole of Bible. When Elijah is so tired that he’s too tired even to cry about how tired he is.

Because does God roll God’s eyes, shame him for failing his responsibility, berate him for not being enough? Does God wave away his burnout, dismiss his exhaustion, lecture him on the benefits of learning to just push through it? 

Oh, God very much does not. Not even a little. Elijah hits the wall and God only does this.

God says to him, here. You need some sleep. And Elijah sleeps.
And when he wakes up, God says to him, here. You need some food. And Elijah eats.
And God says to him, good. But you need more sleep. And Elijah sleeps again.
And when he wakes up, God says to him, here. Here’s more food. And Elijah eats.

It’s just a beautiful thing. Certainly it’s a beautiful thing for Elijah, who does get restored to himself, enough to say “I need a bit of a break and I’m going to take it” and go off to Mount Horeb for a makeshift silent retreat –

But it’s a beautiful thing generally. It speaks to such a depth of understanding and compassion for our humanness, it models such a well of insight into how far we sometimes let ourselves go. It simply pours out permission to say enough –

It reveals, with a poignance that’s just breath-taking, how much difference it can make to just have a nap and a snack. And then maybe another.

We are not meant to drive ourselves into the ground. We were not made to drive ourselves into the ground. And we were not made to be driven into the ground. 

We were made with actual discernable limits. Sometimes we need a nap and a snack. Sometimes those around us need a nap and a snack. Because sometimes life is a lot.

Sometimes we wake up and the Americans have bombed Iran. And like Elijah we don’t know who’s completely lost the plot more – King Ahab himself or the Jezebel doubling-down behind him, urging him on and exploiting all his worst instincts. 

And still, somehow, it’s time to make the donuts. 

This is when we have to pay attention. Not just to the noise that’s so loud it can’t be avoided and all we can do is pray and pray and pray – but to the quiet, to the enough, in those around us and in our own selves – 

To the gentleness speaking into it. You need some sleep, you need some food. Let me carry things for you while you rest. Amen.