Pentecost 9/Lectionary 19
August 10, 2014
I Kings 19:9-18
Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Earlier this
summer I posted a question on our Facebook page asking where and how you were experiencing
God this summer. Not many people responded. I don’t know if that was because
you didn’t see it, or because that sounded like a boring question to engage in,
or because you didn’t want to discuss your faith in such a public forum, or
because you didn’t have time in that moment to think about that… Whatever the
reason for the lack of response, the question has come up for me again this
week, because especially in the story about Elijah in 1 Kings, we see God being
revealed in an unexpected way, a way many of us may have missed. And it makes
me wonder: am I missing seeing God?
Elijah is a
pretty important biblical character, but his story is not as well known by the
average person in the pews. He was a prophet, just like Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, and many others, but we may forget about him because he doesn’t have a
book of the Bible named after him. But he is often mentioned as a giant of the
faith. Both Jesus and John the Baptist are compared with Elijah, and he appears
at the Transfiguration of Jesus, next to Moses, with whom he is often mentioned.
Along with being a prophet, he was also a miracle-worker, and a great defender
of the worship of Yahwah, the one true God, over Ba-al, the false god of the
Canaanites.
And that
last fact is what gets him into the trouble we see in today’s reading. Elijah
has recently prophesied a devastating drought that will come upon the land, a
drought which is punishment to Ahab, the King of Israel, for his bad and
hurtful decisions, his choice of an idol-worshiping wife, and his own idol
worship of Ba-al. Just before today’s story, Elijah has also killed several
prophets of Ba-al, and Queen Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, is not happy about it.
In fact, she has vowed to have Elijah killed this very day! Elijah understandably
takes off running for the desert, in fear for his life. But his zest for life
quickly fades once he finds himself scared, alone, and depressed out in the
wilderness. In anguish, he says that he might as well die. He has failed in his
mission, he is no better than anyone who has come before him, so why bother
continuing? But just when he has abandoned all hope, God sends some angels to
provide him with food and water, saying he will need strength for the journey
ahead of him. With this sustenance, Elijah gains the strength to make it up to
a cave in Mount Horeb, where he falls asleep.
That is
where today’s story starts. God asks Elijah, “What are you doing here?” and
Elijah pours out his tale of woe: “I’ve been working so hard for you! But
still, the people of Israel have abandoned your covenant, destroyed the places
of worship, and murdered your prophets. I’m the only one left, and now they are
trying to kill me, too.” Words of hopelessness, discouragement, and
desperation. It doesn’t sound like he’s blaming God for this – like, “Why,
after all I’ve done for you, have you left me in this situation?” – but more
like self-doubt: I’ve done all I can, but I have failed. I give up.
When I cry
out to God like this, I always want some big sign from God to say to me, “Take heart, Johanna! It is I. Be not afraid.” Some dramatic gesture of
assurance. But God doesn’t offer that here, and that’s what I find so
compelling about this story. God’s assurance doesn’t come to Elijah in the form
of a dramatic gesture, at least not at first. A windstorm comes through,
splitting mountains and breaking rocks. Sounds like God, right? But no, God was
not in the wind. So then an earthquake comes. Well, God moved the earth into
existence, so surely this is how God would be revealed to Elijah, yes? No, not
this time either. And then, a fire. Ah yes, a fire, just like Moses and the
burning bush, just like the pillar of fire that led the Israelites through the
wilderness. God loves to appear in fire. But no, God was not in the fire. God
was not in any of those places one would expect God to be.
No, where
God appears is, rather, in “the sound of sheer silence.” Or the version you
perhaps know better: a still, small voice. That still, small voice gently
beckons Elijah out of the cave. That still,
All this,
not from a wind, or an earthquake, or a fire, nor any other grand theophany
that we would expect from a God so great as ours, and which, in fact, God has
used to be revealed before. Rather, a still small voice, the sound of sheer
silence.
I’ve been
thinking about this a lot in relation to the sermon I preached two weeks ago, about
how simply breathing can be a prayer, about how the Holy Spirit intercedes in
prayer for us with sighs too deep for words, and so if the Spirit prays using
sighs, why shouldn’t we pray this way as well. At the end of that sermon,
instead of praying aloud, I invited you to simply breathe with me – a practice
I have continued to incorporate in my personal prayer life. When we did that,
of course, the room was nearly silent. And in that silence, I don’t know about
you, but I truly did feel the presence of God and the power of prayer.
It is counter to how we think God
should appear, isn’t it? We pray and expect an answer in some form, but all we
hear is silence. We think that is no answer at all, and yet, silence is what
Elijah heard, and he knew that God was present in that. It’s not unlike when a
loved one is hurting and we find no words are enough to heal their broken heart,
so all we can do is sit silently with them, and find that silent presence is the
best medicine in that moment. It would be nice if words could fix everything,
wouldn’t it, but more and more I find that silence is often the most important
thing we can “say.”
God knows that. And so in Elijah’s
moment of hopeless anguish, God appears to him in the sound of sheer silence,
rather than the noise of wind, earthquake and fire. And Elijah hears God, loud
Sometimes, I would really like to be
able to predict God’s actions, to know how and where to see God, how God is
speaking to me, how God is making Godself manifest to me and to the world. But
God has a way of appearing in unexpected ways: in painful experiences that bring
us to deeper understanding; in tragic events that lead us somewhere we couldn’t
have gotten otherwise; in tears cried on the shoulder of a friend, in bread and
wine on a table and water in a font…. And perhaps the strangest most unexpected
way of all: in a man hanging on a cross, bearing the weight of the world so
that we might have salvation from fear of death. If God can be made manifest in
this unexpected way, and make such grace available to us through this horrific
event, then what other ways might we find God speaking to us? What storms, what
moments of desperation, what still small voices, is God using to tell us of
God’s unrelenting and ever-abiding love?
I’m going to post my question on
Facebook again this week: “where have you experienced God this summer?” Think
about it, and if you can, offer an answer. If you don’t have Facebook, just
give me a call or write me a note to tell me about it, or tell a friend about
it. Whatever you do, notice it. Notice how God is speaking to you, beckoning
you, and offering you the grace and assurance you need.
Let us pray… God of wind, earthquake, fire, and silence: you speak to us in many and
various ways, some of which we expect and some we can scarcely comprehend. Give
us the patience to listen for your voice, in whatever form it may come. [leave
some silence] In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment