A sermon on 1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a and Luke 8:26-30
Preached Sunday, June 22, 2025 at Saratoga Springs UMC
Video available here.

Would you pray with me?

God, you have brought us to this place and you have promised to be with us. Stay with us, please. Make your loving presence known to us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

What do we do with the bad in the world?

What do we do with the evil we see?

There’s a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin called “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” The setup is that Omelas is a paradise: Le Guin spends page after page describing the spring festival in Omelas, how beautiful the everything is, how just the laws are, how happy they all are, without kings or soldiers or oppression of any kind.

With one exception. Just one. One child.

They keep the kid locked in a basement somewhere, with no lights, no fresh air, just some water, some food, and a bucket. The only time this child sees another human is when a citizen of Omelas comes of age. Then, they’re taken to see the child, to mock and beat the child.

They’re told why it must be like this. “The terms are strict and absolute,” Le Guin writes. “There may not even be a kind word spoken to the child” or it all goes away. If anyone does anything to save or protect the child, “in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither.”

That’s the bargain. It’s the happiness of all of Omelas at the expense of one child. And the majority of people in Omelas take it. They might go home and rage or sob, but after some time, most people accept that this is the way things must be. Eventually, it becomes normal. Typical. Forgettable.

But some people can’t forget. The child down there, alone, in the dark, it eats at them. “These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city.” We don’t know what waits for them outside of the city, outside of the only home they have ever known. “But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.”

What do we do with the bad in the world?

What do we do with the evil we see?

The first time I read “The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas,” I was convicted. I knew in my gut that I would have to walk away. It is the only moral option to me.

Or at least it was.

In our passage this morning from 1 Kings, we enter into the story in the middle of things. Elijah the Tishbite is already deep in his conflict with Ahab son of Omri, king of Israel, and his wife, Jezebel. See, Jezebel brought her gods with her when she came to the northern kingdom of Israel and then had prophets of the Lord murdered. So then Elijah murders prophets of Ba’al in response. This is the backdrop to Elijah’s story today, when he flees to Beersheba in the southern kingdom of Judah.

Now, I don’t love Elijah. He is zealous for the Lord in a way that I struggle with, and, again, he slaughtered hundreds of people. But I find this story instructive.

What do you do with the bad in the world?

Well, if you’re Elijah, you call those in authority to account, and when they don’t listen to you and they don’t change their ways, you show them just how wrong they are. And then you run away. And you realize what you’ve done. And you ask to die.

And that I get.

I completely understand Elijah in Beersheba, reckoning with what he’s done. You know what he says? He says, “O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors."

“Oh God,” he says, realizing what’s happened. “I’ve become just. like. them.”

Not all of us get to have that moment of realization.

And then God has to send down an angel to remind him to drink some water and eat some food, because if you are going to try to do good in this world and to be reflective about it, you’ve gotta keep your strength up.

Then the angel has to do it again, because sometimes we need more than we think we do.

And then, fed and watered, he goes to Mt. Horeb.

And again, I am so glad that this happens. I don’t know if any of you have had this experience, but I have. I’ve had it time and time again. I realize that the wounds of the past, the wounds my ancestors passed down and the wounds I’ve earned all on my own, I realize that those wounds aren’t quite as healed as I thought they were. I realize that for all the work I have done, all the anti-racism I’ve learned and practiced, all the liberation I thought I was embodying, all the nonviolent tactics and skills I’ve employed, none of that has stopped me from doing something awful. I am just. like. them.

And when I get like that, I don’t just need food and water. I need care. I need a renewal of spirit. I need God to remind me of who I am and who God is.

Now Elijah, God bless him, knows who he is. He has “been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”

Gotta hand it to him. He’s clear and committed. He knows who he is. This is his normal.

But he needs to know who God is. He needs to know where he’s grounded. He needs to know the lovingkindness of the LORD. So God promises to come by and Elijah waits.

Because there’s a mountain-splitting wind that comes by, full of power and fury, but God’s not in the wind. That’s not who God is.

And then there’s an earthquake to shake the foundations of all things, but God’s not in the earthquake. That’s not who God is.

And then there’s a fire, all-consuming, purifying, leaving nothing in its wake, but God’s not in the fire, because that’s not who God is.

And in the sheer silence that follows, Elijah wraps his face in his mantle and goes out and then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

And Elijah says who he is.

And the Lord sends him back.

See, our God is not the God of abandonment. Our God is not the God of wonton destruction. Our God is the God of restoration. Our God is the God of never-ending, always-present, never-failing love. Our God is making all things new, yes, but God is also making all things right, and good, and loving.

No matter how much we want to walk away from Omelas, God will, eventually, send us back.

Here’s what I mean:

Jesus, who is well into his ministry by this point in the story, arrives in region of the Gerasenes and he encounters Legion.

I could retell this meeting, tell you about how the presence of swine means that it’s a Gentile area, how the Roman Legion was a powerful, oppressive fighting force, thousands of men strong, but I think I want you to hear it from theologian and mystic Howard Thurman, from his book Disciplines of the Spirit. He describes Legion this way:

“There were times when he became so violent that, as a measure of collective defense, he was seized and chained to rocks. Even then he could not be restrained when the turbulence within him leaped into muscle, bone, and sinew. The chains burst with the pressure and he would go shrieking through the waste places like a wounded animal. This was the creature who faced [Jesus] the Master. He cried out to be let alone. And with gentleness, tenderness, and vast compassion, soft words issued from the mouth of Jesus: “What is your name? Who are you?” And the whole dam broke, and he cried, “My name is Legion!” He might have said: “This is the pit of my agony. There are so many of me, and they riot in my street. If only I could know who I am —which one is me—then I would be whole again.”

See, oppression, any kind of oppression, does not come alone. It invites in other oppressions, one by one by one, until we are tormented by a Legion, with no idea of what to deal with first. And if an initial oppression is not dealt with, if the problem isn’t identified and scrutinized and solved, then it will become normal. It will become normal and it will rot us away, until the only place our spirits, our society is fit for is the graveyard, amongst the tombs. Oppression will make us forget who we are. Oppression will tear us into pieces until we, like Legion, could say, “there are so many of me and they run riot in my street.”

And Jesus knows this.

Remember, our God is a God of restoration, and you cannot be fully restored until the oppression has ceased. It is nearly impossible to be filled with love, the kind of love we and the world need, when all that is within you is the chaos of oppression.

So Jesus runs the Legion out. He runs them off a cliff. And after he does this, he stays, until the man, no longer Legion, sits amongst them, clothed, fully restored to himself.

And then Jesus sends him back.

What do we do with the bad in the world?

What do we do with the evil we see?

First, we must see it, and know it for what it is. And then, we must confront it. We cannot ignore it. We cannot walk away from it. We cannot let it become our new normal. We must act. If we have to take apart Omelas piece by piece in order to save that child, we will, because one child, even one child, is worth moving heaven and earth to save.

And maybe this act will shake us to our cores. Maybe this act will make us forget ourselves. Maybe living in a world with so much hurt and harm, so much bad and evil, has splintered us, and we have forgotten who and whose we are. Eat some food. Drink some water. Return to God. Let Jesus restore all that is agonized within you. Let the love of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer fill you to the brim.

And then, go back to work.

Return.

Be that love for others.

Amen.