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Elijah's Tears

Elijah's Tears

18 November 2010

"His sip is never bigger than one tear-drop!"

In an eastern European shtetl (a small town with a predominantly Jewish population), lived a little boy who was fascinated by Elijah's annual "visit" to his family's Passover celebration. During the meal, he it was who was sent to open the door of their home for the Prophet. But what intrigued him most of all, was the fifth glass of wine upon their Pesach table...Elijah's cup.

"Why grandmother," he asked, "does Elijah not drink any of the wine from his glass? Does he really come to visit us at our table?"

"Oh, my darling boy," his grandmother replied, "the Prophet does visit us, and he really does drink from the cup. But his sip is never bigger than one tear-drop!"

I really appreciate this story, because it captures perfectly for me, the essence of "the spirit of Elijah"...and is so very different to, and at odds with what poses and parades as such today. All too often, contemporary "Elijahs" - both ministries and individuals claiming this role - are loud and proud; over-blown with too grand a sense of their own fitness and omniscience.

"Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him." (Ps 126.5-6)

The "spirit of Elijah" is not about ministry success by any and every means - no matter how divorced from sacred Scripture or parodying (feeble imitation) worldly ways, values and contrivances. The Prophet's unction is all and entirely about reaping according to weeping; revival according to repentance; fruitfulness according to cross-bearing.

"See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and plant." (Jer 1.10)

"Elisha stared at him with a fixed gaze until Hazael felt ashamed. Then the man of God began to weep. 'Why is my lord weeping?' asked Hazael. 'Because I know the harm you will do to the Israelites.' " (2 Ki 8.11-12)

Understanding this, the truth and reality of the "spirit of Elijah", is of ultimate importance in these Last Days, because:

"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes." (Mal 4.5)

"For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. He who has ears, let him hear." (Mt 11.13-15)

My own expectation is that immediately before the Lord Jesus returns to reign over all of the nations, the Church will be called out and upon to carry Elijah's mantle of "power", but will only be able to do this to the extent and by the measure that we have imbibed, and been suffused and mastered by the Prophet's "spirit"...his heart and essence. The core of this is authentic, cross-bearing broken-ness, which expresses itself in unfeigned, limpid, tearful humility.

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves." (Php 2.3)

Like their God and Saviour, the Crucified, both Elijah and John the Baptist were men "of sorrows, and familiar with suffering" (Isa 53.3); similarly "despised and rejected by men". Such a prophetic life and profile stands in marked, stark contradiction to what is generally applauded and rewarded today...glory and gold; fame and fortune. Unlike so many contemporary, self-appointed oracles, Elijah and John were not spiritual bully-boys, bragging and crowing and posturing over the size of their ministries and bank balances!

("Fame is like a river," said 16th C English parliamentarian and philosopher, Francis Bacon, "that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things heavy and solid.")

But Elijah is fashioned in the wastelands and margins of this world (and the Church). He is always being prepared in the knowledge that Carmel and Jordan's crowds will surely throng, and soon enough flock off, to be replaced by Jezebel and Herod, all "red in tooth and claw", baying and slavering for revenge and punishment.

This friends, is the real world of ministry...unlike the fantasy land of glittering conferences, glossy magazines, and slick TV "church"! None survive the reality (nor deserve to), unless the flesh is first "broken upon the wheel" of God's kindly dealings.

As the great 16th C Spanish Church reformer, Juan de Yepes Alvarez, so plainly himself lived and taught, "(Jesus) totally stripped and annihilated as though dissolved into nothingness...(did) purge all guilt and unite humanity to God...From this, truly spiritual souls may come to understand the mystery of Christ as the door and the way to union with God, and so realize that their union with God will be the more intimate, and the work they accomplish the greater, the more they annihilate themselves in their sensory as well as their spiritual parts for the sake of God...(Such a life) does not, therefore, consist in spiritual refreshment, delights, and feelings, but in the living death on the cross."

"So he (Elijah) did what the Lord had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land." (1 Ki 17.5-7)

"And the child (John) grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel." (Lk 1.80)

"I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." (Jn 21.18)