The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
August 13, 2023
I Kings 19:1-18

The video of this service is available on the Trinity Episcopal Church YouTube channel. The audio of this sermon is available on our sermon podcast.

There’s a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Austin, not far from the UT campus, called “The Posse East.” Calling it a hole-in-the-wall is a bit of a stretch. Dive is more appropriate. It’s a ramshackle building that only by the grace of God remains standing. The grease on the walls is decades thick. The food is passable. For you Aggies, it’s like the Dixie Chicken in College Station, but smaller, dingier, shabbier. 

And yet, we love it. It was a favorite spot for us nerds in the Longhorn Band. We ate there before every football game. Maggie and I would eat there when we were dating. No joke, I even filled out my application for seminary at the Posse East. So every time Maggie and I go back to Austin, we have to go to the Posse, with its sticky floors and neon beer signs. There are more convenient places to eat, there are better places to eat. But we have to go. We go back because the place itself has meaning.

I really am going somewhere with this. Let’s go back to the Old Testament reading. It’s one of the stories from the Old Testament that you just have to know. So it’s about nine hundred years before Jesus. There’s a man named Elijah who has been called as a preacher, what they called a prophet. He’s going around ancient Israel telling people to follow the laws of God. He’s doing that, because the people aren’t following God. Elijah says that the Israelites have forsaken God’s covenant, thrown down God’s altars, and killed God’s prophets with the sword. Elijah alone is left and the evil ruler Jezebel wants to kill Elijah (I Kings 19:1-18). So Elijah runs away.

There’s where we pick up today. Elijah has run away from Jezebel and is hiding at Mount Horeb. Also known as Mount Sinai. This mountain is more than a mountain, it has meaning. Moses met God at the burning bush here on Mount Horeb. When the people were leaving slavery in Egypt, they went to Mount Horeb. Mount Horeb is where Moses received the ten commandments. Mount Horeb, in a way, is where the ancient Israelites became a people. Like, how Maggie and I became a couple at the Posse East. When Elijah runs away to Mount Horeb, it’s not some random mountain. It’s intentional – this is where the people of God go when they are looking for meaning, connection, community. This is where they go to remember their past and to rekindle their hope for the future. Mount Horeb. 

Our college days are long over, but like I said, we still go to the Posse East. Not for ourselves now, but for our daughter so that she would know our history. We sit at the tables and tell her that’s where mom and dad would sit for hours and talk. That table is where dad decided to go to seminary. This is the same hamburger, and probably the same grease, that I ate in college. Mount Horeb functions the same way, it’s the furniture around which these stories of God and God’s people are told. Sure, on the surface, t’s just a big pile of rocks. But because of all that took place there, Mount Horeb means something. And that’s why, in a time of crisis, Elijah goes to Mount Horeb.

Places have meaning. Just look around at this place. On its surface, it’s just a big old building. But this place means something because of our memories of what has happened here, of how we encountered the living God here. In times of crisis and in times of joy, we keep coming back here, because we were formed here. Places like this are a fixed point in our lives. Even as everything else around us is changing, as we run away from the figurative Jezebels in our lives, we come back here.

And all this is leading to a point.

As you know, the number of Americans who claim a religious faith continues to decline. Nationally, there are fewer and fewer people going to church, church of any kind. I’ll admit it, this makes me sad.

This does not make me sad for the sake of the church. I’m not concerned about the church’s survival. I’m not sad for the institution.

No, what makes me sad about fewer people going to church, is that fewer people know that there is a place like this, that there are places all across the world like this, for them. A place to belong. A place to meet and sing and pray and cry and laugh. A place to be formed. A real place, too. Not an idea, but an actual place with bricks and mortar and stained glass windows and leaky pipes and termites and all the rest of it. A real place.

It makes me sad that people today don’t feel they have a place where they can go to belong. We see the fruits of this. We are a society riddled with loneliness and despair and isolation. So when there are crises, when the people in our society have things go wrong in their lives, they have nowhere to turn. When Jezebel turns up, they don’t know the way to Mount Horeb. They look to ease their pain through the bottle, the pill, the hate group, or simply by ending it all.

It makes me sad that people do not look at the church as a place where they could belong. It makes me sad that people walk by a place like this, they stop and take pictures. But they don’t know that in here you can be known by other people who will love them. Humans need places. Social biologists even say that humans need a nest. A place of community and meaning, a place to go when things are good and bad. A Mount Horeb.

At our best, that is what the church has to offer to this isolated and isolating world. And that is what gives me hope. There is a place to belong. You don’t have to buy anything, you don’t have to have a membership card, or pay an initiation fee, or be this, that, or the other. And, in a beautiful way, no one owns this place. It’s owned by all of us. And it takes all of us to make it go. That is belonging. Belonging is not just showing up. Belonging is showing up and being part of it. 

So, when you look at around at the world, and you see the mess that it is, and you wonder what you could do to make things better – you can start here. This is our Mount Horeb. There are millions and millions of people in our society who, like Elijah, are running from something out to get them. They are running from addiction, they are running from abusive families, they are running from people who won’t love them because of who they are or who they love. The Jezebels of depression and despair are out for the people of our world. You and I can dig in here, so that when things go south, there is a place to run to. A place to be known. 

As I was finishing up college, I went to the Posse East one night and the guy behind the counter knew exactly what I was going to order. You’ve had this experience, of being known. That should be our goal, as a church. I mean, if the guy with a grimy hat and t-shirt behind the counter at the Posse East can do it, so can we. And it’s not just so people would feel good, but it could be a way to save actual lives. It’s a way to resist the Jezebels of hopelessness that are destroying us.

And finally, a place to meet this God. And at least for Elijah, the Lord God did not show up in the great wind that was splitting mountains, the Lord God did not show up in an earthquake, the Lord God did not show up in a fire. No, the Lord God showed up in the sound of sheer silence. We shouldn’t expect any more than that. The Lord God shows up in a place of quiet dignity, like this. A place to belong.