Scripture: I Kings 19:11-16
11 He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ 14He answered, ‘I have 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.’ 15Then the Lord said to him, ‘Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. 16Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place.
Sermon: “Noticing God in the Still Small Voice”
Singer Songwriter Paul Simon had a big hit in 1964 that began like this:
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
Interviewed on National Public radio years later, Paul Simon told the radio audience that the song was about “youthful alienation…[the feeling that] nobody’s listening to me, nobody’s listening to anyone.” Simon mused that part of the reason why the song was so popular is that this feeling of being alone and not being heard had “some level of truth to it and it resonated with millions of people.” (that, and because it had a “simple and singable melody.” (songfacts.com)
I dare say that Paul Simon’s song—“The Sound of Silence”--had it been written 3000 years earlier, would have resonated with the prophet Elijah in today’s Scripture reading, which was set in Israel back in the 9th Century, BC. Just before our reading picks up, Elijah’s life has taken a turn for the worse, and that is an understatement. Let me give you the background.
Here’s what had happened. Elijah, being a prophet, was the mouthpiece of God, so God had sent him to confront the king and queen of Israel—Ahab and Jezabel—who were, to put it mildly—behaving badly. Ahab and Jezebel had led the people of Israel away from worshipping God; they had persecuted and killed the prophets of God (I Kings 17-18); had torn down the altars of God and set up, in their place, shrines to the fertility God Baal; and, to put it in modern terms, they had engaged in human trafficking, forcing young women into prostitution at the shrines they had set up. So, Elijah confronts them—and rather than seeing the error of their ways and repenting—Ahab and Jezebel threaten to kill Elijah, forcing him to run for his life.
Right before our reading picks up, Elijah has just traveled a hundred miles from the northern Kingdom of Israel down to Beer Sheba, a city on the edge of the Negev desert. He leaves his servant there in the city and travels a day’s journey out into the wilderness, alone and on foot. In a story that is touching and tender, Elijah collapses in the desert, expecting to die, but he is met the next two mornings by an angel of the Lord, who gently wakes him up, gives him food and water--and gives him the strength to keep going. So, he does. And, finally, after 40 days and 40 nights, Elijah completes a 200 mile trek through the wilderness and arrives at his destination, Mt. Sinai, “the mountain of God,” the site where, 500 years earlier, God had given Moses the Ten Commandments. Arriving exhausted, Elijah basically collapses again, this time in a cave on the mountainside, where once again met he is met by an angel of God, who listens to his lament.
Our reading picks up in verse 11, where the angel, responding to Elijah’s litany of complaints, tells Elijah to come out because the Lord is about to pass by. But Elijah doesn’t move. And you know what happens next,
· First, there is a gale-force wind, but the Lord is NOT in the wind.
· After the wind, there is an earthquake, but the Lord is NOT in the earthquake.
· After the earthquake, there is a fire—but the Lord is NOT in the fire either.
· Finally, after the fire, there is the “sound of silence”—(which makes me wonder if Paul Simon was thinking of this text when he wrote his famous song!)
Be that as it may, commentators tell us that the Hebrew Word used in this verse is “notoriously difficult to translate.” (Peace, p. 52) Almost every version of the Bible states it a little bit differently.
o The New Revised Standard Version—the one Alan read-- calls it “a sound of sheer silence,”
o the New International Version refers to it as “a gentle whisper,”
o the New Jerusalem Version, “the sound of a gentle breeze,”
o the New English Bible, “a low murmuring sound,”
o and perhaps most familiar to us, the King James Version translates it as “a still, small voice.”
Richard Peace, in his book Noticing God tells us, “Quite simply no one really knows what this particular [Hebrew] word actually means, though the sense of it is some sort of interior communication.”
What we do know, is that when this sound comes to Elijah, it comes after a series of spectacular displays of nature—all of them ways in which we might expect God to appear—because God has appeared in all of these ways before-- in fact, 2 out of three of them (fire and earthquake) are ways God appeared in the past on this very mountain. But God does NOT do what we—or even Elijah—might have expected in this setting. In contrast, God forgoes the spectacular and speaks in a gentle whisper. And when Elijah hears it, he recognizes it as God, and he wraps his face in his cloak—and walks to the entrance of the cave. (In case you wonder why he wraps up his face, it’s because tradition dictates that no one sees the face of God and lives, so, Elijah evidently didn’t want to take any chances.) The gentle voice of God then says a very surprising thing. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” God asks.
On first read, this question from God feels a bit harsh. Wouldn’t a loving God lead with something more compassionate? Maybe something like: “Elijah, I am so sorry that Ahab and Jezebel have threatened you like this… You do not need to fear, I will protect you.” But that’s not what God says. The still small voice asks Elijah a question. What are you doing here? In a Bible study I led once on this passage, someone said it reminded him of a question that Jesus had asked one of his followers who was suffering from an ailment: Do you want to be healed?
As much as we may resist it at times, God does not always tell us what we expect or what we want to hear. God does not swoop in like a superhero and remove us from painful situations. Rather, God engages us in ways we NEED to be engaged-- so that we can grow in faith and compassion. And, sometimes that involves speaking to us with the gentle whisper of a question to catch our attention, to get us to search our own hearts, to discover a new direction in which we are called to go, a new thing we are called to do.
Which reminds me of something a friend of mine once told me. She told me that when her kids were little and were really acting up, she wouldn’t yell at them, because she quickly learned that yelling would just escalate the situation. Instead, she would stand there, and as calmly as she could, she would speak in a low, gentle, but firm voice, almost a whisper. “Do you really want to do that? Put the cat down, and go to your room. Now.” And then my friend would give her children time to think about their behavior, and she would talk with them after everyone had cooled down. Those of you who have children probably have done and said something similar with your kids as well.
I wonder if that is what God is doing with Elijah. Speaking to him in an unexpected way to catch his attention. Getting him to think about what he is doing. What he really wants. Why he is here. Elijah has already told God that he is done with being a prophet, and God accepts that, but then God works with Elijah to discover the direction his future will take from here. And, in case it’s not clear because you haven’t looked at a map of Ancient Israel lately, when the voice of God directs Elijah to “return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus,” God is NOT telling him to go back into harm’s way. (Ahab and Jezebel are in Jezreel, which is a hundred miles away from Damascus.) God then directs Elijah to go anoint two other kings, one of whom will replace Ahab, which means the death threat against Elijah will disappear. Furthermore, God directs Elijah to anoint Elisha as his successor, so Elijah will soon be able to rest from the stress of his work.
So, what does all of this tell us about God—or how we might notice the “still, small voice” of God in our lives?” Richard Peace suggests that God still addresses people in this manner, through an interior voice—not something we hear with our ears, but in the form of “thoughts that are our thoughts though tangibly not from us.” (Peace quoting Dallas Willard, p. 52.) “The challenge,” Peace says, is “to learn to recognize [the inner voice of God] over against other inner voices.” (p. 52) An example: in chapter 3 of his book, Peace talks about a time when he was under stress at work, when someone was pressuring him in a way that felt unfair, so he took some time to go and pray about it on a retreat. And while he was praying, he felt an interior voice say, “Stand up for yourself.” It was not a message that Peace expected; it came in the form of a thought, but not a thought he had generated from his own mind. The voice, as he described it, was “gentle. It was unobtrusive. It was not insistent but it felt ‘true.” Professor Peace said that in the weeks that followed, he did what he felt God was directing him to do. He stood up for himself, and the issue resolved itself. And eventually he “got a letter from the other party, apologizing for the pressure he had put” him under. (p. 58)
My friends, I don’t have to tell you that our world is not always a joy-filled place. Sometimes there is stress at home or at work, like Richard Peace described. Sometimes there is more than stress—there is horrific violence--like Elijah experienced with Ahab and Jezebel, like people in Parkland experienced 3 years ago, like people in other parts of the world—such as Syria or Afghanistan--experience on a daily basis. Such situations are heart-breaking and can leave us feeling helpless or paralyzed—or, like Elijah, cause us to wail in angry lament and try to flee from the pain.
Our Scripture reading for today suggests another, more helpful, thing we can do. Like Elijah, we can bring our laments to God. And, like Elijah, we can listen for the still, small voice of God. The voice that asks us unexpected questions. The voice that is gentle and loving and unobtrusive. The voice that surprises us with new insight and then leads us in directions we might never have thought to go.
Thinking again of Paul Simon’s song, The Sound of Silence, when he says,
“hear my words, that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
May we hear those words as God speaking to us, may we embrace God’s whispers, learn from them, and may we follow where they lead us.
Would you join me in prayer?
Creator God,
still Center of the world you have made,
we come to you this Sunday morning, poised to begin
the Season of Lent, the season of turning and returning.
O God, we do not always know how to hear your voice, how to seek you with our whole hearts,
but we do know that you are our source-- and our destiny.
In the midst of life,
we return to you, we turn toward you,
opening our ears, our eyes, our hearts.
We thank you that you receive even the broken heart,
the troubled conscience, the conflicted spirit.
Seeking you in secret,
may we turn around to honor you among humanity;
we pray through Jesus Christ, our path homeward to you, Amen.*
Rev. Dr. Marlayna Schmidt
Franklin Federated Church
Franklin, MA
[An earlier version of this sermon was first written and preached by Marlayna in February of 2018]
* closing prayer was adapted from Touch Holiness.