Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
The Sound of Silence
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, February 8, 2015.
Text: 1 Kings 19:9-12
The headlines in Elijah’s day would sound painfully familiar to us these days. In fact the news recorded in the books of First and Second Kings—a record spanning 400 years and the reigns of forty kings and one queen—chronicles coups, assassinations, civil wars, scheming to consolidate power, a division into north and south, and idolatry, lots and lots of idolatry. The writer of 1-2 Kings describes all but two kings (Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18:3 and Josiah in 2 Kings 22) as doing “evil in the sight of the Lord.”[i] Even with all the glory of Solomon (the architect of empire for better or worse), when taken together, the history portrayed in these books is pretty bleak and always undergirded by the ominous foreboding of the exile that is to come.
The particular context for our text today is a holy war between the rulers of Israel, Ahab, Jezebel, and their Phoenician Ba’al worship and the prophets of Israel who were faithful to the God of Israel. It is in the midst of this conflict that Elijah emerges as a prophet of God. Just prior to today’s reading, we find the story of one of the greatest showdowns in all of scripture: Elijah, standing alone, challenges the 450 prophets of Ba’al to put their god into the ring with the God of Israel. Both parties will place a sacrifice upon their altar and call upon their god to accept the offering. Elijah says, “The god who answers by fire is indeed God.” The crowds love the spectacle—and to make it even more dramatic, Elijah makes a point of pouring water on the wood and on the offering of his altar. Elijah triumphs in grand fashion that day on Mount Carmel; while the prayers of Ba’al’s prophets yield nothing, at Elijah’s word, “the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench.” (1 Kgs. 18:38) And the gathered crowds proclaim that the God of Israel has won the title: “The Lord is indeed God.” (1 Kgs. 18:39)
And then, in the name of the God of Israel, Elijah orders the people to seize all the 450 prophets of Ba’al and kill them. // This is the way things go, again and again. The headlines are always the same. And sometimes I wish I could give myself permission to follow Thomas Jefferson’s lead and simply cut out of the Bible the parts that I don’t like. I know that Elijah is a faithful prophet of the God whom we worship and is revered within our Judeo-Christian tradition. So there must be some rational explanation for the portrayal of our God and the prophets of God as agents of mass murder. I can point to the larger prophetic tradition that speaks to Yahweh’s vision of justice, kindness, and care for all peoples. I could argue that Elijah in this instance was courageously facing down the corrupt and murderous political powers of his day on behalf of the powerless and vulnerable—and that, in context, violence is simply the way the game is played. I can argue that these stories simply represent one historical perspective within our tradition in what is a continuing evolution of our understanding of the nature of God. And, as a follower of Jesus, I turn to the sermon on the mount and Jesus’ own non-violent practices and self-giving love as the lens through which I try to read every other text in the Bible. But I must admit that as I studied the context of today’s scripture passage, seeped as it is with sectarian violence on all sides, I couldn’t help but call to mind the headlines today. The headlines of a man burned alive by a brutal religious faction, of sectarian violence in Syria, Nigeria, Israel, Palestine, and many other places around the world, and of a truly stunning outcry from some sectors at President Obama’s naming of America’s own history of religiously sanctioned violence through slavery and Jim Crow. The more things change, the more they stay the same… As I sat with this awareness, it occurred to me that, like it or not, our Judeo-Christian tradition forces us to reckon with the seemingly boundless human capacity for violence, pride, and cruelty. Like it or not, the story of 1 and 2 Kings is part of our story, including the part where God gets used as both the reason and rationalization for all kinds of destructive human behavior.
With my head and heart swimming in this maelstrom of questions, outrage, grief, and weariness, I found myself trying to get close to Elijah, to listen for what he might have to say or reveal in the midst of his ordeal. Because when we meet him today he is fleeing for his life, knowing his actions and commitments have made him Public Enemy #1. He is in the midst of a cycle of violent retaliation and sees no way out but death. In his fear and despair, he feels absolutely alone (“I alone am left”) and is obsessed with the threatening words of Jezebel. And yet in the midst of all that, he is led onto a familiar path—it is the path through the wilderness that Moses and the Israelites had traveled years before. But interestingly, Elijah is going in reverse. We are told in chapter 19 verse 8 that he traveled 40 days and nights in the wilderness until he arrived at Horeb the mount of God. In other words, Elijah is led back to the beginning, to the very mountain where Moses had encountered God in the fire of a burning bush (Exodus 3:1f). It was at that mountain, also called Mount Sinai, that God had given the law to Moses amid fire, smoke, and thunder (Exodus 19:16f).
And, as if on cue, a great wind, an earthquake, and a fire appear one following the other. But, unlike the burning bush or the event on Mt. Carmel where God “answers by fire,” this time God’s presence isn’t to be found in the fire or the earthquake or the wind. Following this great tempest on the mountain of God in the wilderness there follows a qol dĕmāmâh daqah, translated
the sound of a soft breath, a gentle and quiet whisper, a soft whisper of a voice, a sound of a gentle blowing, a still, small voice, a sound of sheer silence.
In the midst of the maelstrom, at the heart of despair and fear, the prophet Elijah is led to a place that precedes all the signs and wonders, all the mighty acts of the ancestors, a place of sheer silence. It is the place of encounter with God in its most simple and stripped-down form. And that place can be more terrifying than wind, earthquake, and fire. Because in silence, real silence, we cannot escape ourselves, our questions, our confusion, our griefs, our brokenness, our ego, our own capacity for brutality, the realities of the world around us, and our collusion with injustice. In silence, we are naked before God, vulnerable and exposed, with all our masks and tribal loyalties and rationalizations shown for what they are. There is a reason that so many folks express discomfort with long periods of silence. // In my own experience, when I enter into silence I realize just how much noise I carry around with me without any outside help. It’s like there are winds and earthquakes and fire in my head that have to pass by and be quelled before I can truly come to that place of silent breath. Amid the random songs, images, and to-do lists that run along the top, a little deeper I start to hear all those familiar messages of fear and insecurity, the things people have said or done that hurt, the memories of things I have done or left undone for which I feel regret, my itching ego, my worry about people and situations…and then there’s the grief…and peppered into all of that “Oh look! Something shiny!” Distractions abound.
As difficult as it is and as terrifying as it can be, why should we bother trying to follow the ancients to this place of silent encounter? Why not just keep the T.V. on all the time while we check FaceBook and talk on the phone? I’ve been re-reading Howard Thurman’s seminal text, Jesus and the Disinherited, a book first published in 1949 that helped inspire and give shape to the civil rights movement. In the book, Thurman points out that Jesus’ “message focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of the people. He recognized fully that out of the heart are the issues of life and that no external force, however great and overwhelming, can at long last destroy a people if it does not first win the victory of the spirit against them. ‘To revile because one has been reviled—this is the real evil because it is the evil of the soul itself.’ Jesus saw this with almighty clarity. Again and again he came back to the inner life of the individual. With increasing insight and startling accuracy he placed his finger on the ‘inward center’ as the crucial arena where the issues would determine the destiny of his people.”[ii] Thurman’s deep wisdom is to highlight the spiritual work that guards against permitting anyone other than God to determine the quality of our inner life. He writes, “if the individual puts at the disposal of the Spirit the needful dedication and discipline, he can live effectively in the chaos of the present the high destiny of a [child] of God.”[iii] In other words, the strength and nature of the Spirit within is made manifest in the ability to live a life that reflects the character of God’s Kin-dom of peace, mercy, and justice for all people—and that even in the midst of injustice and violence.
This, it seems to me, is a strong case for tending to the work of our inner life, work that cannot be achieved without traveling to that place of simple, stripped-down, silent encounter with God. My friend and colleague, Father Tom Ryan, leads folks into Centering Prayer with the invitation to “bring yourself to be before the One Who Is in full, loving availability.” This is another way of saying that we need to “put ourselves at the disposal of the Spirit” to let the Spirit work on our hearts. And through this discipline of prayer, Thurman says, we will be given guidance and strength to “live effectively in the chaos of the present the high destiny of a child of God.”
Following his encounter with the still, small voice, Elijah emerges from the cave—not magically changed; actually he seems strikingly unchanged. But even still, God gives Elijah direction for his life—a life and mission that was not over, in spite of what Jezebel said; Elijah was also reminded that he was not the only one left to stand against oppression—Elisha the prophet and seven thousand Israelites will stand with him. (1 Kgs. 19:16, 18) Elijah is still caught in the narrative of sectarian violence and vengeance, a narrative that other prophetic voices throughout the ages challenge and one that Jesus rejected utterly. But in his time and in his place, Elijah emerged from the silence empowered to live in the chaos as a child and prophet of God.
Today, there may be some among us who are feeling like Elijah, in despair, alone, seeing no way out, feeling like no one else is fighting the good fight. Some here today may, like Elijah, be struggling to let go of hurtful, threatening words. Some in our number today may be overcome with fear or may find yourself shrinking from the tasks that are before you. Some may feel forgotten, unseen, unknown. Some may be ready to give up on the whole religious or spiritual enterprise in the midst of the chaos and violence that religion continues to inspire.
But what we are given today is a path and a reason to walk it. If you’re willing, follow the path with Elijah through the wilderness back to the beginning. There the One Who Is waits to meet you—not in acts of great power or flashy proofs—but in the sound of sheer silence. And as you enter into that space, you will be remembered, you will be seen, you will be deeply known. You will be reminded of what is real: that you never stand alone and that the human capacity for good is stronger than our penchant for harm. And you will be given what you need—humility, a reality check, encouragement, forgiveness, direction, and, above all, love. Because when you bring yourself to be before the One Who Is, you are held and enfolded in the infinite love and mercy of God. It is that love that allows you to resist giving in to the tempting narrative of revenge and violence and, instead, to live with dignity, compassion, and kindness. Friends, carve out some silence in your life—hang in there with the noise within until it passes by, and make yourself available to receive whatever you need to live in the chaos of the present the high destiny of a child of God. That is your destiny and mine. Thanks be to God.
[i] Daniel Clendenin, “Elijah: The Troubler of Israel,” found on 2/6/15 at http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20080804JJ.shtml.
[ii][ii] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, Beacon Press: Boston, 1976 (Abingdon, 1949), p. 11.
[iii] Ibid., p. 99.
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