For the last three weeks at Spirit Village, Cyprian's children and family service, we've been exploring the journey of Elijah in Israel and his faith and trust in God, found in the lectionary readings from I Kings. Each week we lay out a display we created of the land he travels, and remember together the stories of the weeks passed before adding a new lesson. The first week we talked about Elijah testing the Israelites who were worshiping Baal at Mt. Carmel. Then, the following week we met the widow and her son during a drought. God told Elijah to ask the widow for water and bread to eat, but when he did, the widow said she had so little barley and oil she feared for her and her son's life. Elijah told her not to fear, but to go make bread for her and her son, and to bring him some as well, and God would provide for her until the drought was over. Last Sunday, we shared a really sad and dark story of King Ahab and Jezebel, who killed Naboth because King Ahab wanted Naboth's vineyard. We ended the story with Elijah meeting King Ahab in the vineyard, speaking up for Naboth and the injustice done to him.

As we were concluding the story on Sunday, I became a little overwhelmed with how dark and sad these stories are, how hard they are to preach on, and especially teach to young children. Yet, there exists this undeniable tension between trying to share these stories found in Christian scriptures and work really hard to find aspects of hope in them, or avoid them.

Earlier this week I came across this excerpt by Jean Vanier, founder of l'Arche, a residential community for people with disabilities, on the importance of communities to see the reality that exists outside their door: 

"The danger for any community and for every person is to live in illusions. We all do that as we shut ourselves off from others. A community that is closed off from others, lives in the illusions that it alone has truth; or maybe it is fearful of any kind of change or challenge or of being seen as it is, in all its poverty. In every community, there is a fear of challenge; and the danger is covering the tensions and the things that are not going well, or at least refusing to look at them and to confront them." [Growth and Community, 134]

We live in a society that remains extremely ignorant of all the poverty, struggle, and violence existing directly in front of us, or that chooses to ignore it or believe there is nothing that can be done about it. As I read this excerpt from Vanier, the journey of Elijah took on new life, a contemporary life that reminds me of the community outside the doors of the church. Gun violence, thefts and assaults, rape, racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, homeless, etc, all these exists outside the doors of our church and the neighborhoods we are apart of.

As I continue to chew on Elijah's journey, I hear a call for the church to stop living in illusions but rather jump into the community with faith, and to teach our children to do the same. This requires us to teach ourselves and our children to open our eyes and name the injustice and poverty that exists. The widow told Elijah she didn't have enough barley and oil to feed her family and him, but Elijah reminded her that when we give all we have to others in faith, we in turn receive. At Cyprian's we might not always feel like we have anything to give, but we continually witness new fruits that come from all the relationships that have developed with people and groups in the community. Last weeks story of Elijah confronting King Ahab, reminded me sometimes the only hope we can find is acting out of faith and standing up for the injustices happening around us, and standing up for those who voices are going unheard and who are being underserved. Having faith and standing up to injustice is scary, it forces us to take a risk and sometimes when we take risks we fail, but when we do it together, as a community, fruits will eventually come.