It’s very unlikely you and a few hundred of your friends have ever chanted futilely to Baal to accept your sacrifice. It’s quite likely you’re chuckling to yourself, confident that the scenario portrayed in today’s first reading has no relationship to your life. And yet, read another way, I would argue there’s a greater connection here to many – perhaps most – people than you may realize.
But first, please take a moment to read and fully appreciate today’s reading from the First Book of Kings. It’s a vivid story of the followers of Baal trying in vain to have their prayers answered. Notice how human Elijah is; as their continued efforts prove unsuccessful, he taunts them: “Call louder, for he is a god and may be meditating, or may have retired, or may be on a journey. Perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.”
That’s pretty darn funny! I could easily envision Elijah delivering his taunts with a Monty Python-style sneer. The story is exciting, with vivid descriptions and details. It begins with a challenge: “How long will you straddle the issue? If the LORD is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him.” It ends with everyone falling prostrate and saying, “The LORD is God! The LORD is God!” This is Hollywood material here!
This exciting, somewhat amusing tale may not feel too connected to what we have going on in today’s world. But let’s break it down:
- Elijah basically says, “Hey! You need to decide what’s most important: God, or this other thing that isn’t God.”
- A whole bunch of people – hundreds of times more than Elijah, the lone voice for the Lord – say, “This other thing is clearly better than God.”
- Those people try to prove that this other thing can satisfy their needs.
- They fail.
- Elijah then shows them concretely that God is, indeed, better than this other thing.
Rephrased that way, I hope it becomes obvious that “this other thing” could be any number of other distractions from daily life. All of these “other things” have followers – devotees, if you will – who will try to convince you as forcefully and vehemently as the prophets of Baal that their path is the correct one:
- If you can just work hard enough to get that one promotion, you will have everything you need.
- If you collect all the Beanie Babies, you will be happy.
- If you give your emotional life over to this football team, they will satisfy you.
- If the world isn’t satisfying to you, drugs or excessive alcohol can wipe away all your problems.
- If you root hard enough for your political faction, you will find fulfillment.
- If you give yourself over to carnal pleasures, your life will be complete.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
Of course, all of those examples are lies, and we should look on them with the same scoffing mindset that we look at the followers of Baal, dancing futilely to appease their powerless god. When the worshippers of Baal stopped, they realized their prayers were useless: [N]o one answered, and no one was listening. But God is listening to us, and he does answer.
And no pursuit can take primacy over God. No matter how many devotees there are to senseless sex, no matter how many people swear that drinking to excess makes them happy, no matter how much people say work harder or buy more stuff, it will all prove as ultimately useless as cutting yourself and gyrating around an altar. Like Baal, all those other things have no power. Not like God.
No, we must turn our lives over to God. Even if we find ourselves seemingly alone – like Elijah’s sole voice amid countless enemies of the faith – we must ensure that we always put God above other things that would have us “worship” them.
Perhaps, then, all this can be summed up by today’s Alleluia proclamation from Psalm 25: Teach me your paths, my God, and guide me in your truth.
There are countless paths that want you to follow them, but only God’s paths will guide you to truth and ultimate fulfillment.
Today’s readings: 1 Kgs 18:20-39; Ps 16:1B-2AB, 4, 5AB and 8, 11; Mt 5:17-19
