All Saints Sunday November 2, 2025
1 Kings 19:1-18 John B. Valentine
“A CHANGE OF PERSPECTIVE”
It might sound a little bit weird to say so ... but I know a little something about this morning’s scripture lesson ... and I suspect that at least a few of you do too!
Trust me!
+ + + + +
My story goes like this ......
It was in Phoenix ... back in the Fall of 1989.
I was serving as the Associate Pastor of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Paradise Valley ...
And the Senior Pastor ... my boss ... a couple three months earlier ... had resigned his position to take a call at a really big church back in the Midwest.
And the denominational office and the church council had brought in an interim Senior Pastor ... on a part-time basis ... to be the organizational figurehead during those days of transition.
But the truth of the matter was that left most of the work ... and most of the stress ... to me.
After all ... I was young ... and I was hopeful ... and I was naive ...
And I just assumed I could handle it all. That I could stand in the breech.
• Keep all the worship services going just as they were before?
Can do ... I’ve got this.
• Keep all the learning opportunities going?
Got that too!
• Youth work and kids’ Sunday School?
Absolutely!
• Fellowship activities and the like?
No problem!
My pride and my naivete ... and my love for the folks in that congregation ... and my belief that my work was God’s work ... all conspired to get the better of me ...
And I tried to take on everything .... everything .... that needed to be done to minimize my one-time boss’s departure ...
Which meant trying to take on everything that had been in his job portfolio in addition to the stuff for which I was responsible.
You know where this is going????
Anyhow ... I just kept taking more and more and more responsibilities on my plate... and grinding and grinding and grinding ... until finally ... one day ... ... I couldn’t.
The stress of it all ... and the stress of my own self-imposed expectations ... it all got the better of me ... and ... emotionally ... spiritually ... physically ... I was cooked!
I just finally ... one day ... ran out of gas ... and ran out of hope ... and almost literally ran out of the office! I just couldn’t take it anymore.
+ + + + +
In my funk ... amid my stress and the emotional exhaustion of it all ... with the words “I just can’t take it any more” ringing in my ears ... I decided I needed to go for a walk ...
And so I went for a walk ... a hike actually ...
I headed over to the Camelback Mountain trailhead ... which I could see out my office window ...
And huffed and puffed my way up to the top of Camelback ... if just to blow off steam.
But when I got to the top of that hill ... and sat down on the rocks to take a bit of a breather .... the strangest thing happened.
I was suddenly overwhelmed.
• I found myself looking DOWN on a reality that ... for the past couple of months ... I’d found myself looking OUT at.
• And the houses and the cars and the people and the church campus that seemed so daunting a reality just an hour or two before ... all of a sudden ... they looked small and insignificant.
• And I just started to laugh ... and I laughed until I think I cried ... and it felt as though the weight of the world was literally just lifted off my shoulders.
It was as though ... at least in that moment ... I had a glimpse of a ‘God’s eye’ perspective on my reality rather than a ‘John’s eye’ perspective on things ...
And ... for the first time in a long time ... I found myself at peace.
+ + + + +
No ... I’m not saying that my situation was anywhere as close to as dire as that which we heard as Elijah’s story in the context of this morning’s scripture lesson ...
But do you hear a bit of the resonance in that text?
I mean ... Elijah too is stressed ..... TOTALLY stressed out!
In the previous chapter of 1st Kings ... Elijah had gotten himself involved in this nasty brouhaha with King Ahab and Queen Jezebel ... over which god or gods were going to be the gods of their nation.
• With Elijah advocating for the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob ....
• And Ahab and Jezebel arguing for the local fertility gods of this, that and the other community.
And they’d had a bit of a showdown ... and Elijah’s side had won ... and Elijah had had a whole bunch of Jezebel and Ahab’s allies done in.
But now the king and the queen were just ticked!
And they were out for blood ... specifically Elijah’s blood ... and Elijah was fleeing for his life.
Which brings us to this quirky line within the text:
“But he himself ... that is, Elijah ... went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree.
“And he asked that he might die, ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’"
Elijah is shot ... he’s emotionally-exhausted .... ‘stick-a-fork-in-me, I’m-done’ even. There’s just nothing left in the tank.
And he heads off to the middle of nowhere ... and sets himself down under a sorry excuse for a tree ... and says “I quit’.
+ + + + +
Be honest ... folks.
How many of you can relate to Elijah at that there moment ... or perhaps relate to me and mine?
Have you ever gotten to the point wherein alls you can say is “I’m done” ... “No more” ... “I just cant take it!”
Or perhaps should I rather ask ... “When was the last time that you found yourself in a situation like that?” .....
• At home ... with your kids ... or your parent ... or your spouse?
• At work ... with co-workers who won’t listen or a boss who won’t relent?
• At school?
• With your extended family?
• With so-called friends who don’t really have your back?
Or maybe it’s bigger than that .....
• Maybe it’s with a society that won’t accept you for who you are ... based on your ethnicity or your gender or your primary life-relationships ...
• Maybe it’s with a community ... even a church community ... that can’t tolerate your spirit of tolerance ... or maybe your perceived intolerance ... or whatever.
Point being .... there are lots ... LOTS .... of reasons why ... at some time or another ... we may find ourselves saying that we just can’t take it anymore.
+ + + + +
But what is God’s remedy to Elijah’s emotional exhaustion ... and maybe by extension mine and yours?
Isn’t it ... first and foremost ... to facilitate a change in Elijah’s perspective???
I mean ... here we’ve got Elijah saying “Woe is me! I’ve been trying to do the right thing and it’s gotten me nothing but trouble! Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me!”
And God says “Get up!”... “Get up and go to the top of that there mountain and see things from my perspective for just a bit ... rather than seeing them from your own.”
Because ... from God’s perspective ...
Elijah DOES have some allies that ... from his current vantage point he just can’t see ... and ...
Elijah DOES have some resources available to him that ... to this point he hadn’t been attuned to ... and ...
Elijah DOES have access to some wisdom and insight that isn’t available to just anyone because he’s got God in his corner.
It’s as if God is saying to the prophet ... “If you could see thing the way that I see them ... you’d know that things aren’t nearly so dire as you might think.”
And that changed perspective can make all the difference in the world ... can it not?
+ + + + +
You know ... this “having one’s perspective changed” sounds great ... but it isn’t always easy.
Anybody remember Brittney Griner ... that American women’s basketball star who was sentenced to nine years of prison in Russia back in like 2022?
Hers was a tough story to watch unfold ...
• In part because it reminded us that just because people are athletically gifted doesn’t make them perfect people ... and
• In part because it surfaced a whole lot of that latent hatred that exists in some of the dark corners of our society for successful women ... and for successful black women ... and for those who are in same-sex marriages ...
• In part because it made us admit just how duplicitous and self-serving and transactional Mister Putin’s Russia really is.
Anyhow ... one of the things that really infuriated some folks across our nation about the whole Brittney Griner situation was that ... prior to her Russian imprisonment ... she’d sometimes “taken a knee” rather than standing ... when the national anthem was being played before a basketball game.
She’d said at the time ... that It was her way to acknowledge the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd at the hands of local police ....
And that she viewed kneeling as a way for her to demonstrate her civil rights and bring attention to some of the systemic inequities faced by people of color.
But her ten-month-detainment in a Russian prison changed her perspective on things ...
And ... upon her return ... she was quick to note that the national anthem "hits different" for her after being locked away in a cage ... and that now she stands for the anthem and the flag.
And ... while she most definitely still supports the right of other athletes to protest ... and that she believes kneeling is an act of patriotism rather than unpatriotism ...
She stood with great pride ... and a tear running down her cheek ... when the National Anthem was played at the gold medal ceremony honoring the US Women’s Basketball team last summer.
+ + + + +
Let’s be honest ... folks:
• I don’t hope and pray that you’ll have any “Elijah moments” in your near-future .... wherein you’ve got a governmental death sentence hanging over your head ... and
• I don’t hope and pray that you’ll have any “Brittany Griner moments” .... wherein you become a pawn in somebody else’s political machinations either ...
• Heck ... I don’t even hope and pray that you find yourself needing to flee the office and hike up some mountain either!
But I do hope and pray that ... when you do get stressed out ... when you feel overwhelmed ... when you’re at the end of your rope ...
That you’ll remember Elijah’s story ...
That you’ll ask God to see things from God’s perspective ...
• To reset your own perspective ...
• To see things through God’s eyes rather than your own ...
• And to take heart ... knowing that ... in the Lord our God you have a ally who just won’t let you down!
