Halting HALT through Holy Food

+The angel says to Elijah:
“Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” (1 Kings 19:5)
Everyone needs nourishment--strength for this journey we call life. A journey full of ups and downs, highs and lows. Sometimes we just muddle through, while other times we soar and still other times, so haggard by trouble and hopelessness we, just like Elijah in today’s reading from Kings, want to lie down and give up.
Elijah had been on a roll! He had defeated formidable pagan foes and had stood up to crazy old King Ahab’s wife Jezebel after she introduced the pagan ideals to the people in the first place. He had been doing excellent work, but as is the case with anyone who works long and hard at their job, perspective can be lost and suddenly a challenge that, before the stress of all the long hours took its toll, would have seemed difficult but doable feels overwhelming and impossible. Elijah was worn out, cranky and at a loss.
AA has a saying : HALT, H-A-L-T is a slogan that means:  never get too Hungry, too Angry, too Lonely or too Tired.  The wisdom behind this slogan is that when we get too hungry too angry too lonely or too tired we lose perspective, get run down and become vulnerable. Elijah’s HALT was working overtime… he was too hungry, too angry, too lonely and too tired. And so he plopped down under that broom tree and gave up.
What happens next is a brilliant foreshadowing of our Gospel readings for this month, and a reminder about the importance of spiritual sustenance, about how important it is for us to provide our bodies, our minds and our souls with nourishment.
Exhausted, Elijah falls asleep under the tree, half expecting…hoping...praying… that he would die. That’s how out of sorts he was, Elijah couldn’t see any way out of his distress, so he prayed that God would let him die. But instead of letting him die, God encouraged Elijah to live.
Awakened by the rush of busy angels, or perhaps by the smell of baked goods Elijah is presented with a freshly baked cake and a refreshing jar of water. No doubt Elijah thought he was dreaming, for he just lays back down again until the angel returns, saying, “get up, eat and get going. There is work to do and we need you to be strong for your journey.” So he did. He ate and was strengthened to do the work he was given to do.
He ate and he was strengthened. That’s just what Jesus is telling us to do in the Bread of Life discourse which is our Gospel message for the month of August. Jesus is food indeed, a food that, when we receive it, when we partake of it, will never leave us hungry, will never leave us thirsty. Holy Food for Holy People.
Now this bread of life stuff can go any number of ways—we, as followers of Jesus, as Christians, can be viewed as cannibals (wait til you hear next week’s Gospel, the cannibalism imagery is really difficult to ignore then) or, on the other end, all of this can be viewed as simply a metaphor…nothing more than a fairytale of imagery used by Jesus to make the point that he was the real deal. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between: we aren’t cannibals, nor are we gullible saps falling for this itinerant preacher from Nazareth’s catchy marketing plan.
What we are---what we are called to be—are followers of this man named Jesus, believers in this Messiah the Christ, people who try our very best to live out the ideals handed down to us by teachers, by prophets and by the Son of God.
We are called to do the work of Elijah, to do the work of all the prophets, to do the work Jesus has given us to do.
And to do this work well, we need to nourishment. Nourishment of both body and soul.
The act of receiving communion nourishes us for this work. But our nourishment comes from more than this holy meal. It comes from fellowship, it comes from service, it comes from being a community of people offering refreshment, offering hope, offering a way of life that defeats hunger, anger, loneliness and tiredness. A community that knocks the socks off of HALT.
The holy meal we gather to receive feeds us but without the community that surrounds this meal, there is no nourishment in the sacrament, there is no strength to be gathered from the prayers. This is why I am forbidden from celebrating the Eucharist alone. It means nothing if done in a vacuum, it means nothing if we try and do it alone.
Elijah had run off to be alone, and while by himself, while alone he lost his way. While alone, he lost his will. He needed to, as we heard last week, “get up and walk.” To walk until he got to the other side…to walk until he reached the source of all nourishment: God.  And he did…for forty days he walked until reaching Mt Horeb where God, in that wonderful scene from scripture, nourishes his soul in the absolute quiet that followed the strong wind, the earthquake and the fire. From there, his soul nourished by God, Elijah headed to Damascus where he established a new community of faith to be led by his protégé Elisha. Physically nourished by the angelic meal of fresh baked cakes and cool water, Elijah made his way to the site of his spiritual nourishment and from there he was able to be the prophet he was meant to be. He prophesied to others, making disciples, and creating community.
This is the formula Jesus wants us to follow. We get nourishment from him and from others here in this community, strengthening us to go out into the world, doing the work we’ve been given to do. So get up, eat and be strengthened, we have work to do. Amen.