Not only did he hasten the moral decline of his kingdom, but through his infamous marriage to Jezebel, he became a Ba’al worshiper (Dun dun DUN!). Needless to say, this is an especially bad look for a monarch whose entire reign is predicated on his people’s worship of YHWH. For this reason, we see Elijah coming out of nowhere in his first-ever scriptural appearance to call out the king on his idolatry. The proclamation he makes in verse 1 is a direct challenge to Ba’al’s supposed authority – a false god can’t save you from drought, no matter how long and hard you pray.
This brief interaction between Elijah and Ahab is about more than just two opposing perspectives; it is, at its core, a contest to decide which god is greater. But of course, the gods don’t ever actually initiate such “contests”. Since there’s only one true God, this sort of rivalry only winds up happening when humanity pits theoretical powers from our own imagination against the real God. This is, needless to say, idolatry.
And as it turns out, when gods are made to compete – even when one is real and the other is not – it’s ALWAYS humanity that loses. Think about it: the God of Israel can’t lose because of their omnipotence. Ba’al can’t lose because he doesn’t even exist. So the only ones to suffer when Elijah calls down a drought on the land are his fellow human beings. WE’RE the ones caught in the crossfire of the conflict that WE’VE created. WE’RE the ones to suffer the consequences. It's our own insistence on lifting false gods above the God of love and mercy that causes pain and conflict in our world. And the worst part is that it’s usually not even the ones committing the idolatry that suffer the most.
This is why idolatry is such a terrible sin. We can’t harm God with our misguided worship, but we can – and do – hurt each other when we prioritize the demands of false gods over the demands of the real one. Although we may think we’re deferring to a transcendent principle or power, the reality is that we’re just giving our own desires authority that they don’t deserve. We can’t lay responsibility for the consequences of our idolatry – the contest of gods that WE initiate – at the feet of some external divine force, real OR imaginary. The blame lies squarely, and exclusively, on our shoulders.
Now, this could be a sermon all by itself – five minutes in, and I’ve already made the bulk of my argument. But the problem is that most of us don’t find Ba’al worship to be all that compelling these days. The contest of gods initiated by Ahab isn’t very relatable to modern Christians. If I left the sermon here, there’s a chance that someone might mistakenly believe that idolatry isn’t a temptation that we face anymore – a chance I’m not comfortable taking. Fortunately, there’s more to this biblical story than just the first verse. It turns out that today’s reading actually contains *two* stories about idolatry.
Hear me out. The widow in the second half of the reading was facing a contest of gods, just like Ahab. But while she was also from Phoenicia (like Jezebel), this struggle wasn’t between Ba’al and YHWH. The drought had already proven the god of her people to be a false one; Ba’al had already let her down. In this case, the idol that was up against the God of Israel was a much older one, one that’s existed from the beginning of time, one that, in fact, we’ve all encountered before and may have even found ourselves tempted to worship: the idol of self-preservation.
For whatever reason, the widow had no problem sharing her water, but when Elijah asks her for a piece of bread, she resists. She knew that she didn’t even have enough for herself and her son, let alone for this foreigner. What little flour and oil she did have was rightfully hers, and she’d rather stave off her own family’s starvation for just a little bit longer than give it up to a beggar. Yet somehow, when Elijah boldly (or rudely, depending on your perspective) instructs her to feed him first, promising that the Lord would provide for her, she makes the choice that Ahab couldn’t: she chooses to place her trust in the God of Israel, even with her very life on the line.
Now, one could argue that this was the very reason she was willing to gamble with her last bit of food – because she expected to die anyway. She had nothing to lose. But if this were the case, why hold back at all? Why not just give everything she has to Elijah without question, in order to avoid prolonging her suffering? No, this wasn’t about giving up. This was about survival. This was about holding on, whether it makes sense to or not. This was about deciding which god to place her faith in: the god of self-preservation or the God of the Israelites.
Now THIS is a relatable contest of gods – far more so than Ahab’s. Every day, we face the same choice as the widow: do we put our faith in our God or in ourselves? Whose ability to protect us do we trust more? Do we really believe that our material wealth – such as it is – is more powerful than the Lord? As people of faith (especially relatively affluent ones) these are questions that we should be asking ourselves regularly.
Unfortunately, all too often, we get the answer wrong. We pit these gods against one another, and we back the wrong one. We choose to worship what little earthly power we can get in the interest of taking care of ourselves first. We hoard our resources out of fear, and we reject the idea that we have a responsibility to care for anyone else in any way. No matter how we might justify it – citing practicality, safety, even patriotism – this is unequivocally not a faithful position to take. It’s idolatry. Sure, we may still read our Bible, say our prayers, and go to church on Sunday, but these things are just the veneer of Christianity, not the real thing. Our choices betray the fact that our actual trust lies with something that is not God. And our fellow human beings are the ones who lose.
On the other hand, when we refuse to worship our false gods, humanity ultimately *wins* – because that’s who our God is. Most of us here are on the lucky side of the equation: unlike the widow, WE don’t necessarily have to go without before knowing that there’s enough for everyone – we’ve *already* been given *more* than we need. We can’t make the mistake of believing that this is our own doing. We can’t leave even the smallest of openings for another contest of gods. The trick is to recognize these blessings for what they are – gifts from God – and to use them as Jesus taught us to use them: in care of and service to others (even our enemies).
This isn’t necessarily an easy or intuitive thing to do – even the widow resisted at first, and Ahab couldn’t do it at all – but it’s a crucial part of our faith. The best way to resist this sort of idolatry starts with a shift in our mindset, from one of scarcity and merit to one of abundance and generosity. We first have to be able to imagine a world in which there IS enough to go around if we just share what we have. If a starving widow could somehow imagine such a world, how much more ought we whose bellies are full be able to?
As it always does, faithfulness comes down to a choice. Do we want to be like Ahab, hedging our bets, pitting the God we know to be real against a god of our own making? Do we put our faith in an idol that’s actually nothing more than our own naked desires dressed up in divine clothing? Do we REALLY want to follow the example of the worst king of all time? Or do we have it in us to be like the widow – to take a risk in faith on behalf of a stranger? Are we trapped by our worship of self-preservation, or do we believe that God will provide abundantly for all creation – as long as we’re willing to share? The voice telling us there’s not enough to go around is the voice of a false god. Don’t listen to it. Listen instead to the Elijahs that challenge your idolatry, especially the idolatry you don’t even realize you’re committing. If we can’t do that, we ALL lose.
Each of us chooses the wrong god to worship sometimes – it’s part of being human. But we always have the opportunity to change course and return to the only God deserving of our worshiping. Let’s do it now. Together, let’s reject the idols that promise safety, security, and salvation at the cost of our fellow human beings. In a contest of gods, let us ALWAYS choose the one who is real, the one who is good, the one who is just – the God who calls us to be all of those things, too. Amen.
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