19th Sunday of Year B, 11 August 2024
Get up and eat.
Considered on its own, this command to Elijah in the first reading of today is a rather surprising one. For God, that is. It is the first we hear from God after the man of God finally sits down after a long flight from Jezebel the Queen. Tired he definitely was, with the sort of fatigue that convinces one the only rest to cure this is the eternal kind. Eternal rest grant unto me, o Lord. Well, the prophet did not use those exact words. His was a more banal expression, one that fits his relationship with God. For he too, like Moses with whom he appeared to Jesus and the three bewildered apostles on the mountain of the Transfiguration just the other day in our liturgical calendar, could speak with the Lord as a man speaks to his friend.
Get up and eat. Which is not quite the response one expects from God after throwing in the towel of your life’s work, of your vocation. Up to this point and no further, he said to the Lord. The Lord said to him, waking him up as you would a housemate, a family member, shaking him from deep sleep, come, you must eat something.
Not touching his tongue with the coals for the burning of the incense and saying to him, lavabo, let your lips be cleaned, or something ritually attractive. Not instructing him not to say this with that mouth, because I have called you to build up and break down, or something as dramatic.
Just: Elijah, here is something to eat, come.
I can only imagine him getting up grumpily, finding that he did not pass on during the night, as was his heartfelt prayer. What ever happened to the experience that God listens to the just and answers their prayer? So, man of God that he was, he obeyed and ate.
Then it happened again, this time God adding the reason: for the road ahead of you is long. The Church jumped onto the bandwagon and paired this reading with the responsorial psalm urging us to taste and see that the Lord is good, and all the mentions of the word ‘bread’ in the gospel. Enough for a grand meal, bon appetite!
It is just that God acts so, well, ungodlike, if you allow me this indiscretion. God does it by telling the prophet something that my mother would say to me and I would wonder why I should eat now, I am not even hungry. God gave mothers foreknowledge, as He has, so she knows better. Only afterwards, I would admit, with the benefit of hindsight, “Mamma was right, I really needed that”. For God to do the same?
The prophets did that often. Showing how God is like a mother. Or a father. Scooping down to pick up the child, pressing him to his face, and playfully lifting him up in the air. Therefore, perhaps this is not a surprise to Elijah as it may be to me.
It certainly impresses me with the lesson that God relates to us in very human ways. So human that we miss him in it, because it is too human and God is, well, God. Does not the very Scriptures tell us that God is so unlike us, using words like ‘as far as the east is from the west’? ‘Do you think I am like you?’ ‘Before the Lord a thousand years are like a day’? Yet, here God is like a mother. Eat, child!
One of the first things I look for when I enter a church for the first time is the Madonna and Child. A thought came to mind when I recently happened upon a new Madonna. What does our Mother do when we seek her out in prayer? She shows us Jesus, a baby. That simple.