My Facebook feed is full of Olympic memes–gorgeous pictures of young women, every feature and muscle etched with determination and drive. Whoever won the day before in her sport takes over in the meme count. It’s a welcome change from the political sorrows that have been filling up my Facebook life for what feels like years now.
Human striving, the push and shove of the human spirit to accomplish something, to get somewhere, to win–in an Olympic moment it lifts up the spirit and makes me, the non athlete, thrill with hope and enthusiasm.
Until I woke up this morning and listened to the whole swath of the bible that encompass practically the whole of Elijah’s life. I pushed play on the moment he was toying with the prophets of Baal, and finally opened my eyes all the way when he was throwing his cloak over Elisha. And I was once more faced with my own failure to win in the way that I think I would like to.
So there are all kinds of separate threads that can be taken and tied up into some kind of messy laurel wreath. The first is that any break in my ordinary routine–like moving house–completely disrupts the disciplines and routines that hold me mentally and spiritually together. I like to do things in a particular order every day–Bible, Write, Workout, Face the children. But when everything is jumbled and no one knows where anything is, it ends up being something more like Wake Up, Panic, Write, Panic. Notice the only thing that stays rigidly and inflexibly on the list. Not the thing that keeps me tethered to sense and spiritual health, nor the thing that keeps my bones from creaking. No, writing is the only thing that stays, and that’s because, well, I’ve got some kind of internal drive to write every day, to try to twist and shape and bend words around to suit myself. It makes me feel both alive and accomplished. #winning
So there is Elijah, bashing off the priests of Baal, and then, hearing that Jezebel has it in for him, he can’t deal, he runs away. He is tired and stressed and, one might say, disappointed. He put himself out there to do God’s will and it only makes his own situation and life more precarious. He goes and hides in a cave, not to meditate on the scripture, but to sulk. It makes him the Best Prophet Ever. When you don’t win, or don’t feel like you’ve won, or just can’t deal, the best thing is to retreat and mourn. Because, not winning is horrible.
And then there’s Naboth. Oh my word, never noticed the perfection of this Christological type. Although how could I have missed it!–the vineyard, the two witnesses, the false accusation of cursing God. And, like the person who most completely undermined human striving and accomplishment, Jesus, for Naboth everything ends in complete defeat, including death and the theft of his field.
The drive to succeed, to ascend the heights of achievement and skill, to come out at the top-these all, no matter the level to which any one of us is steeped in its sway–has to be tempered by the gospel or we end up, everyone at some point, in the cave with Elijah…not that the cave is so bad, given that God is there too.
The thing is, no matter our striving and our human success, we can’t win the ultimate laurel wreath of victory unless we first suffer the humiliating defeat of the cross. As I order my steps in the way that seems best to me, I am always going to end up clinging to the wrong thing. Disappointment is going to occasionally overtake me. If I don’t accept the brokenness of my sinful defeat, I won’t be able to share in the victory of Jesus to bring down and destroy that very sin. All human striving, however outwardly benign, is not any better than all those dumb prophets of Baal, trying to make The Universe obey them. The defeat seems like it’s on both sides–Baal loses, and so does Elijah, running for his life, except he doesn’t lose. He gets swept up in the fire that destroyed his sacrifice. He disappears in a blaze of glory. And so also Naboth–dead, hit with a rock, the preeminent loser–straight into the bosom of Abraham.
So, I’m trying to climb back on to the disciplines that ought to hold me together, knowing that I will fail either way, but that it doesn’t matter. Because Jesus’ perfect “failure” is my glory, my crown, my wreath that never fades away.
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