In today’s first reading, the prophet Elijah challenges idolators, namely those worshipping Baal, to a contest which will prove once and for all who the true God is.
The 450 prophets of Baal, along with all the Israelites have been summoned by King Ahab to Mount Carmel, as per the request of the prophet Elijah. Mount Carmel is found in northern Palestine near the Mediterranean coast.
Elijah indites his fellow countrymen on hopping from one god to another in their worship, exchanging the one and only true God, for one that has been conjured up by mere mortals. Elijah tells them to make up their minds and choose one or the other as they have placed themselves in an adulterous and idolatrous form of worship.
Earlier in the book, we are told that Elijah was on the run as he was the only one true prophet to stand up to the king and the prophets of Baal. Anyone who knew his whereabouts or aided in his escape would be executed. Now, there’s no more running. Elijah throws down the challenge.
Two separated altars will be set up, and on each a slaughtered bull will be placed. Elijah would position himself before one, and the prophets of Baal, before the other. Each will offer up the sacrifice, and the altar upon which God’s consuming fire descends will indicate the altar of the only true God and his true prophet.
The prophets of Baal, given their greater numbers attempt their offering first, but to no avail. They set up their bull on the altar and from morning to midday they called on Baal to send down fire while they hopped around in an ecstatic cultic dance which was part of the pagan ritual intended to arouse the deity to perform some desired action. But nothing happened. Elijah mocks them and is delighted. They resort to self-mutilation in hopes that “Baal” would listen, but “…there was no voice, no answer, and no response.” All their efforts and prayers and rituals were in vain.
It is now Elijah’s turn. He gathers the people around what used to be an altar surrounded by twelve stones representing Israel’s tribes. It had been destroyed, most likely by the prophets of Baal at some point prior to this event. Its reconstruction is telling of the people who are scattered but who will be reunited as one chosen people of the true God. What is about to happen does not concern merely the ten northern tribes, but rather all of Israel, the name God gave the twelve.
Elijah then proceeds to make a strange command. He digs a trench around the altar and fills it with grain, and he places wood upon the altar with the dismembered bull on top of it. Then he drenches everything with water, three times, in plain view of the prophets of Baal. He is trying to get them to see, and all the people as well, that only a true God would be able to consume this particular sacrifice.
Elijah then begins a prayer which is in heavy contrast to the frenetic way the prophets of Baal prayed and danced around. He tenderly calls upon the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, thus recalling the great covenants that had been made between God and his people. He calls on him like a child trusting in his Father asking him to show who is the one and only God. He appeals to the Israelites to remember all that the Lord has done for them since the beginning. And then we are told: “The fire of the Lord fell and consumed the holocaust and wood and licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this they fell on their faces. ‘The Lord is God,’ they cried, ‘the Lord is God.’”
How beautiful to the Israelites must the immediate fire which descended from heaven been? And it is reminiscent of the immediate miracles worked by our Lord in the gospels, where each one is proving over and over again to the people, and to us, that “the Lord is God… the Lord is God!”
The priests of Baal are executed by the people who slit their throats, which is the detail we are not given in today’s reading. One would hope that there are better ways of celebrating a victory. And this entire scene reminds us of the time when Saint Francis laid before the Sultan King in Israel, a challenge which also involved fire. They too were trying to settle the question as to which faith was the true faith, Islam or Catholicism, and Saint Francis asked that red hot coals be ignited along a pathway, and that he and the Sultan’s priests were to walk over those coals and whoever would walk out unscathed would be the obvious worshipper of the true God, where the other would renounce his religion. We need to remember, Francis’ certitude definitely was borne through his already experiencing the living God in so many mystical and miraculous ways which could be the subject of another sermon of course. The Sultan’s priests refused to participate in the challenge. Almost as if to reward his valour, the Sultan gave back all the sanctuaries in the Holy Land that they had ceased in the invasion, back to Francis and the friars so that they could adorn them and look after them as was fitting.
In our gospel today, we see that one true, and holy God, who had assumed a human nature and walked in our midst.. we hear his voice recorded for us in today’s gospel. Isn’t that a beautiful thought? They had no audio recorders back then, just ink and papyrus and they recorded his words for us. These are the words of the living God, who tells us he hasn’t come to abolish the prophets (like Elijah) or the commandments given through Moses, but to complete them.
Michelangelo's famous frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel took four years to complete (1508-1512). However, he never completed the entire project as planned. He had intended to paint the walls of the chapel with scenes from the New Testament, but this part of the project was never finished.
He began a masterpiece which no one in their right mind would want to remove, or destroy. In very much the like manner, Jesus builds on, rather than destroys, what he himself has given us through the prophets and the law of the Old Testament. In today’s gospel he declares quite clearly: “Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete them” Matthew 5:17. The masterpiece was unfinished. As the Supreme Legislator, he would declare a more complete and deeper understanding of the commandments where now, loving God would extend to loving your neighbour as yourself, and by neighbour, Jesus intended even your enemies. This was a new development in how to understand the commandment by God to love him, because now, “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar. For if a person does not love his brother, whom he has seen, then he cannot love God, whom he has not seen” 1 John 4:20. Jesus specifies who a “brother” is in his sermon on the mount when he says, “You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. ' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” Matthew 5:43-45.
Jesus always brought it back to focusing on the true God as a tender Father, which goes back to the tenderness with which Elijah prayed. We need to always remember how much he loves us. In the end we will see that the greatest masterpiece he has always been working on, is this masterpiece right here… you! You are his treasure. You are his “work in progress” and he continues to chisel away, until we realise how fully we have been, and will always be loved by the one and only true God.
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