(Preached on Sunday, June 20, 2010)
When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” -1 Kings 19:13
Caves are great places to hide-out. Being underground, they are naturally air conditioned. They are also dark, so usually nobody bothers you in a cave. Many notorious people have made caves their homes. In Missouri the highlight of the Meramec Caverns tour is the tale that it was the hide-out for the infamous James’ gang, led by brothers Frank and Jesse.
I love caves. I have never done it, but spelunking, cave exploring, sounds fascinating and like something I would truly enjoy. I use to imagine myself living in a cave. I think part of what attracts me to the writings of the desert hermits in the early life of the Christian church was the fact that they lived in caves. While I have never had an actual cave home, I have had my own personal, private caves. When I was a young boy, sharing a bedroom with my two brothers, I used to go down in our basement and spend hours alone. That was my cave. When I became a teen-ager and had my own room, I used to spend hours in my bedroom with the door closed. That was my cave. And now, in our home, Dianne will tell you I have my “cave space” at one end of the house fairly separate from the rest of the living area. It is my home office and my retreat area. It is the space to which I can retreat, hide-out, read, think, listen to music, meditate and commune with God.
What about you? Where have your caves been? I believe we all have our caves. Those places we go to hide-out when the going gets frightening or too tough. They aren’t always physical places. Another cave I have is the ability to retreat inside myself. Just shut-up, shut-down, and shut-out. I can be very comfortable inside my own head and heart and there are even times when I feel the safest and most comfortable there. That is what is so wonderful about caves: we can feel very safe within them.
While they may be necessary at times, God does not want us to hide-out in our caves. Elijah had given up on being God’s prophet. He had tried dramatically to call the people of God back to faithful living in relationship with Yahweh their God. He had confronted the 400 priests of Baal, the rival God set up by the government, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel and won a dramatic contest on Mount Carmel. As a result the people had risen up and slaughtered all the Baal priests. Elijah discovered, though, that violence only begets violence and the response of Queen Jezebel was to put a contract out on his life. That was more than he could handle so he fled, as far away as he could go, to a cave to hide-out. But God came to Elijah in his cave and spoke to him, calling him to go back to Israel with God, for God still had work for Elijah to do.
We have seen the pictures for two months now. Many of us, I know, are sickened by the endless swaths of brown oil mixed with the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico; by the dying wetlands and marshes; by the miles of contaminated coastlands, with the tar balls washing up on the beaches; by the dead and dying birds and animals; by the helpless and hopeless Gulf Coast residents sadly witnessing their livelihoods and their lives slipping away. I have heard people talking about no longer reading the stories or viewing the pictures. We are withdrawing into our caves.
With the explosion and sinking of the BP oil rig six weeks ago, the immediate talk was about environmental threats and technical fixes, economic losses and political blaming, and debates about responsibility for the costs. But with the attempts to stop the spill basically failing (even the latest efforts which seem somewhat successful are still only sucking up a portion of the oil and thousands of barrels of oil continue to spew into the Gulf waters) we have slowly become aware this is not an easily fixed problem.
Slowly we are becoming aware that our language must change. This isn’t a little “spill.” It is an environmental catastrophe – the potential contamination of the whole gulf and hundreds of miles of coastline, and it threatens to expand to an ocean and more coastlines. It will bring the destruction of critical wetlands, endanger countless species, and end human ways of life dependent upon the sea. Theologically, we are witnessing a massive despoiling of God’s creation. We were meant to be stewards of the Gulf of Mexico, the wetlands that protect and spawn life, the islands and beaches, and all of God’s creatures who inhabit the marine world. But instead, we are watching the destruction of all that. No wonder we want to crawl back deeper into our caves.
Another way we metaphorically retreat into our caves is to play the blame game. And there is plenty of it to spread around. There is all sorts of anger spewing against BP, the Federal Government, oil companies in general, CEO’s, and with whoever it seems politically savvy to lambast. Yes, BP should have had better protections in place. Yet, there is a fallacy here which says that we can prevent any tragedy if we just get the technology right. Yes, the Feds should have demanded those safeguards, and not turned blind eyes in exchange for all sorts of financial favors spread around the Minerals Management Service. Yes, I can sit around and say that George W. was an oil man so it is his fault or that Obama is just as bad because he wants to open up offshore drilling on the Atlantic coast. But if I sit around and chatter about all these details I do little to curb the actual problem, because they allow me to stay in my cave and not face a big part of the problem.
The relevant question is not whether you own a copy of Atlas Shrugged; it’s whether you own an automobile. Or fly in airplanes, buy things made of plastic and/or transported from far away, eat factory-farmed food or burn paraffin candles. While business and government must be held accountable for their reckless behavior, we’re all complicit in our culture’s addiction to oil. And this is not just a function of my love for my car which needs gasoline to make it go. (Now I am not a big motor head, although I do enjoy NASCAR races. But I don’t get excited about horsepower or fuel injectors or chrome and body lines. But, I do love my freedom and privacy. I am not big on carpooling because it requires me to be social and share my space and time and my car is another one of my “caves.”) But back on point, our oil addiction also includes the 17 million barrels of oil used to make all the plastic water bottles we use each year and the 11 million barrels of oil required to make the single-use plastic bags we plow through in a year.
This truth is painful to hear but necessary if we are going to see our way out of the messes we have made and the lies we have lived – if we are going to do the work of repentance, which literally means to turn around and go in a different direction. G.K. Chesterton once said when asked what was most wrong with the world, “I am.” That sort of honesty is what this moment invites us to embrace. Because what the future really calls for is not just a re-wiring of the energy grid but a re-wiring of ourselves – our demands, requirements, and insatiable desires. There is not one answer to this calamity; there are many: corporate responsibility, for a change; serious government regulation, for a change; public accountability, for a change; and real civic mobilization to protect the endangered waters, coasts, species, and people’s livelihoods. But at a deeper level, we literally need a conversion of our habits of the heart, our energy sources, and our lifestyle choices. And somebody will need to lead the way. Who will dare to say that an economy of endless growth must be confronted and converted to an economy of sustainability, to what the Bible calls stewardship – the care of the earth, all its resources, people, their relationships and lives, society and culture and religion. What about the community of faith?
God came to Elijah on the mountain, in his cave, and asked him: “Elijah, what are you doing here?” God then called him to come out of his cave for God was passing by. In other words, God called Elijah to rejoin God as God was going back to continue God’s work in Israel. At the heart of the Christian tradition lies the belief that transformation can occur. We are a resurrection people, who have been through Good Friday, seen the horrors evil can perpetrate on human beings and creation, and witnessed God’s response which was to bring new life out of that evil destruction. Our faith also understands that transformation requires sacrifice. Deep and abiding change is hard. When we experience conversion, we not only turn toward something new but away from something old.
Sacrifice starts in the humblest of all places – with listening. It is in taking the time and creating the space to listen for the leading of the Spirit of God that the stage is set for sacrifice. And to whom or what are we to listen? We are to listen for God’s word as it comes to us through the images and the experience of this oil spill. And what might we hear? We might remember what John of Damascus centuries ago learned: “The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God.” Which means nothing is neutral, nothing lacks sacredness. Wherever we go we stand on holy ground. Are we aware that we drill in holy water? We might hear and remember that Genesis tells two creation stories. One describes our creation in the image and likeness of God and the other our creation from the dust of the ground. This reminds us we are intimately connected to both God and the earth. We are of both and we serve as a link between both. We might hear the oil spill then as a witness that we have rejected our earthliness, forgotten who we are, and broken the sacred connection between ourselves and our world. Which might truly lead us into a deeper awareness of our need for conversion; our need for confessing our role in this tragedy; our need for making deep and lasting changes in ourselves, in our choices, and in the way we live our lives.
Transformation is not easy, quick, or cheap. But it will likely never begin if we stay in our caves. We can begin by listening and praying, which can lead us to action and sacrifice and slowly to change and transformation. Clearly, we cannot hide-out in our caves, for the sake of the earth, and for the sake of our future.