Elijah and the Provision of the Wilderness
March 1, 2023 | Lukas Bacho SM ‘25
image description: desolate wilderness
Though the season of Lent brings the drama of wandering the wilderness to the fore of our spiritual lives, the liminal state the desert represents never seems too far off. As I write this, I sit isolated in my dorm room with COVID-19, having taken my health for granted just days ago. Though my lack of symptoms and the low number of cases on campus are signs of how far we’ve come in three years, the to-go boxes piled up by my door and the KN-95 mask on my desk are grim reminders of what we all lived through if we were lucky. Yes, isolation has been a nuisance. But I’d be lying if I said this social fasting hasn’t provided welcome time to decelerate, catch up on work, and take stock of my life—this minor wilderness recalling other wildernesses, from the pandemic and even earlier, right in time for Lent.
In 1 Kings, Elijah goes into the wilderness after Jezebel threatens his life for slaying the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 19). Like Jacob and Moses before him, Elijah is a reluctant and self-pitying prophet, asking God to take away the very life he fled to save—his own (19:4). Yet not for the first time, Elijah is miraculously fed, this time not by ravens (17:6) but by an angel who prepares him for a sojourn of forty days and forty nights (19:5–8). Sound familiar? Elijah’s forty-day trek both recalls that of Moses—not least because Horeb, or Sinai, is its destination (cf. Ex. 24:12–18)—and anticipates that of Jesus, whose desert dust-up with the devil is the inspiration for our current season (cf. Mt. 4:1–11). Of course, the fact that Elijah’s wandering places him in the company of such towering figures would not have been a comfort to him. Sitting under a solitary broom tree, Elijah is lonely as Jesus—the human incarnation of God—could not have been. In this way, Elijah is more like us, ignorant of or indifferent to the reality that his struggles are not new.
Indeed, the Bible makes a powerful case that struggle—especially the liminal, circuitous kind experienced in the wilderness—is the key unifying force of humankind. English usage has us referring almost always to “the wilderness,” not “a wilderness” or “that wilderness.” We have imbued the word with a sense of universality, as if each patch of wilderness is inseparable from a larger whole. Handily enough, the definite article is also found in the Hebrew. There is a sense in which Elijah’s wilderness is as psychological as it is geographical, and thus shared with those of us living eons later. My current confinement reproduces a mental state we can all recall from previous quarantines.
Now, I do not mean to suggest that my time in the “wilderness” of Covid isolation is comparable to any of the forty-day sojourns found in the Bible. (For starters, mine is four days, and I remain well-fed.) On the other hand, we are called to read ourselves into scripture by scripture itself. And if it is easier to read ourselves into Elijah than Jesus in this case, the story at hand may not just rouse our empathy, but also awaken us to how God might nourish us in trying times, even beyond what we feel we need or deserve. Once Elijah is done eating, the angel reappears and encourages him to eat some more (1 Kings 19:6–7). By contrast, Jesus denied himself food even while tempted by the devil (Mt. 4:4). But isn’t it ambitious of us to look to Jesus’s self-discipline as our sole example during Lent? As we consider how to weather the wilderness, it is useful to include Elijah, who despite his poor spirit was fed by God.
The story of Elijah literalizes the spiritual food that any journey through the wilderness primes us to receive. Last night, I wrote my first diary entry in a month; this morning, I treated myself to a yoga routine. With deprivations come luxuries—in my case, time. The wilderness deprives one of food and water but provides one the silence to listen for God. In a similar way, Lent asks us to give up our vices, but also to gather the strength to embark on new journeys, whether it be community service or a richer prayer practice. Our understanding of the wilderness should include provision as well as deprivation. There is no point in fasting if we are deaf to the angel inviting us to eat.
This piece is a part of a series for Lent 2023. Read more at https://www.yalelogos.com/lent2023