Eat, Rest, Repeat

Well, nothing like a little gratuitous Old Testament bloodbath to start your day, is there?

Let’s see if I can recap 2 Kings 9:30-37 for you and give you a little context.

Ahab had been king of Israel.  He died and then his son Ahaziah took his place.  Ahaziah died and then his brother Joram became king.

Jehu, who we read about today, was the commander of Joram’s army, but had been secretly anointed as next king of Israel, provided he wipe out all of Ahab’s line.

Jehu kills Joram—arrow through the heart—and makes his way to Jezreel to confront Jezebel, Ahab’s wife and Joram’s mother.  That’s where we pick up with our reading from today.

Jezebel sees Jehu coming, puts on some make-up, does her hair and greets Jehu from high up in her window, calling him a murderer.

Jehu basically ignores her and asks who is with him.  At which point, two or three eunuchs decide, for whatever reason, maybe it was a Saturday and they were bored, to grab Jezebel and toss her out the window.

Jezebel falls to her death and hopefully is killed on impact, because what happens next can only be considered the very definition of “overkill.”

Jezebel is first trampled by horses and then her body is left to the dogs so that when someone finally arrives to clean up the mess, they only find her head, feet and hands (no fingers) left.

What we’re missing from today’s reading, of course, is the why.  What in the world had Jezebel done to deserve such a horrible death?

When I read this passage from 2 Kings, my first thought was: “Jezebel?  Jezebel?  Wasn’t she King David’s wife?”  And then I was like, “No, no, that was Bathsheba.  But who seduced Samson and cut off his hair?  Oh yeah, Delilah.”

I have a hard time keeping my “Bad Girls of the Bible” as author Liz Curtis Higgs refers to them, straight.  They all run together.

But here’s what surprised me.  I thought I knew who Jezebel was.  And I was wrong.

When I was a kid, my mom got a new haircut and we went to my grandparents’ house so she could show it off.

The first thing my grandmother said when she saw my mom was, “You look like a hussy.”

My grandmother was fond of these words—hussy, floozie.  And over the years, I eventually grouped Jezebel in with all those others.  That’s what a Jezebel was to me.

But Jezebel wasn’t thrown out of her window for putting on make-up and doing her hair.  She wasn’t trampled by horses and eaten by dogs for dressing provocatively.

Jezebel died this horrible death because she, herself, was responsible for so many horrible deaths.

Jezebel married Ahab, king of Israel, but they did not worship the same god.  Jezebel was a follower of Baal.  Ahab was pretty accommodating of Jezebel’s beliefs, building several temples to Baal for her, and also apparently looking the other way when Jezebel then, as stated in 1 Kings 18:13, “killed the prophets of the Lord.”

Ahab may have taken this “happy wife, happy life” thing to the extreme.

Later in 1 Kings 21, Ahab decides he wants Naboth’s vineyard.  Naboth isn’t interested in giving up his vineyard, so Jezebel arranges for Naboth to be falsely accused of blasphemy and stoned to death.

So, it would be wrong to think of Jezebel as simply a temptress or seductress, though she may have been these things.  It’s best to think of her simply as a murderer—hence her gruesome death.

It should come as no surprise that, as someone who made a habit of killing God’s prophets, Jezebel did eventually cross paths with the prophet Elijah. 

Elijah came to Jezebel’s attention after he scheduled a “Clash of the Titans,” or “Battle Royale” between himself and God, Yahweh, on the one side, and the prophets of Baal on the other.  He and the prophets of Baal each sacrificed a bull on an altar to their god and then waited for their god to send fires from the heavens to consume the bull.

Baal was silent.

But Yahweh answered and fire consumed Elijah’s sacrifice.  At which point, Elijah ordered the prophets of Baal seized and killed.

As you can imagine, Jezebel was not too happy about this and promised Elijah she would see him dead.

Elijah did the only sensible thing at that point.

He ran.

Sometimes it is difficult, as Erica pointed out in her sermon this past Sunday, to reconcile the Hellfire and Brimstone God of the Old Testament, the God of Vengeance, with the God of Forgiveness in the New Testament.

But when Elijah flees to the wilderness to escape Jezebel, we see a glimpse of a God who is very familiar to us, a tender and thoughtful God.

Elijah collapses under a tree.  He is exhausted, tired of running and in 1 Kings 13:4, he says, “O Lord, take away my life.”  And then he falls asleep.  God sends an angel to Elijah who touches him and says in verse 5, “Get up and eat.”  Elijah finds food—cakes—and water waiting for him.  So he eats and drinks and then lays back down.  Again the angel appears and says to Elijah, “Eat.”

Here we have God teaching Elijah radical self-care.  Eat, rest.  Eat, rest.  Take care of yourself. 

But it is the angel’s directive to Elijah to eat that should sound familiar.

For it is in Matthew 26:26 that Jesus breaks the bread, gives it to his disciples and says, “Take, eat; this is my body.”

One word—eat—bridges the gap between the Old and New Testaments.

This past Sunday, I realized as I stood in line for Communion that because Pastor Debbie is retiring, I am running out of Sundays to receive communion from her.

She would say it doesn’t matter—it shouldn’t matter who you receive communion from.

In fact, you may, in your life, have been to a church where you never left your seat for Communion.  A plate with chunks of bread was passed to you and after that, a plate with little cups of grape juice. 

But I was raised in the Catholic church.  Sister Julie was the first person to ever give me communion.  It was for practice, before our actual first-time receiving communion from a priest.  And I remember the times after that that Sister Julie gave me communion, always saying my name as she handed me the wafer, “Kendra, the body of Christ.”

I remember receiving communion from my mom’s aunt Eleanor, who always ended her Christmas Eve parties the same way, in the near darkness, in the silence, as she gave each of us the bread of life.

I remember visiting Asbury Seminary and attending a service there.  I remember the man who gave me communion, how he held the bread in front of me, how he said my name.

I remember so many times.  Why?

Because there is an intimacy in Communion.

It shouldn’t matter who gives you communion, but it doesn’t lessen the moment you share with everyone who lives in that moment with you.

When someone hands you the bread, they are reenacting, not just the Last Supper, but every time throughout the Bible that God has provided for His people, whether its manna for the Israelites wandering the desert, or the angel bringing cake to Elijah.

We can get hung up on the differences between the Old Testament God and the New Testament God, but really we should be looking at how the Old Testament God was different from all the other gods being worshipped at this time.

Vengeance-god, Bloody-death-god, Plague-causing-god—everyone knew a god like that.

The God of the Old Testament banishes Adam and Eve from the garden, destroys civilization in a cataclysmic flood, unleashes plague upon plague upon Egypt.  He is the God of Righteousness and Vengeance and Retribution.

But He is also the God who sits with you in the wilderness, who feeds you, who takes time to be with you, who appears in that still small voice—and this God is a unique and completely special God.

The truth is there is no Old Testament God and New Testament God.  There is only one God, the God who is love and His presence is felt throughout the Bible.

Amen.