This being the first Sunday of the month we will be celebrating the Sacrament of Communion.
The Scripture reading this week is 1 Kings 19:1-18
The Sermon title is Hush Children! What’s that Sound?
Early Thoughts: Sometimes what you really need is silence. Sometimes you need to force yourself to pause and leave space for God to enter.
From his perspective at least, Elijah is fighting a losing battle. King Ahab and his Queen Jezebel are leading the people into apostasy, turning to the old local religion rather than remaining faithful to the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Just before this week's reading Elijah has had a "miracle-off" with a few hundred prophets of Baal and after winning the challenge proceeded to kill them all. Unsurprisingly, this does not win the favour of the Queen who promises to kill Elijah in return. So Elijah flees into the wilderness, heading south out of Ahab's Kingdom of Israel through the Kingdom of Judah.
SIDEBAR: Many important things happen "in the wilderness" in the Scripture story. It is a common location.
Despite his low feeling (he really suggests it is time for him to die) Elijah is led to the holy mountain. God provides food for the journey of 40 days and 40 nights before Elijah arrives at Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai. (which brings out echos of the Exodus story)
SIDEBAR #2: Many important things happen on mountains in the Scripture story, it is another favoured location (particularly in the Gospel of Matthew).
Here Elijah has a theophany, a time where God's presence is revealed. What is interesting, given the references already made to the Exodus story, is where God is found. In Exodus God is revealed in a pillar of fire, in the crashing of thunder, in signs and wonders. In the "miracle-off" God was revealed in fire falling from heaven God being revealed in an earthquake makes sense. But Elijah does not find God in any of these things. Instead God is found in what the KJV translates as the "still small voice", the NRSV translates as the "sound of sheer silence", and a newer translation (the Common English Bible -- CEB) puts as "After the fire, there was a sound. Thin. Quiet." (translation notes from here). It is at that point that Elijah makes himself ready for the word of God.
I think Elijah needed to be reminded to pause. The story up to this point is full of action and volume. Elijah is both panicked and depressed. The sound (or lack thereof) seems to start breaking his panic and his depression. Not immediately because the next words out of his mouth will be to once again recount the horrible situation in which he finds himself. But it begins. Some would find that if God was not found in the fire or the earthquake or the mighty wind then the still silence is an odd place to look. Some would start to assume the God is absent (and there is a long tradition of people with deep spirituality having long periods where God seems absent).
But for whatever reason that is where, in this instance, Elijah finds God. ANd that brings a question for me...
Are we ready to look for God in places and ways we do not expect? Is there a part of us that wants the strong wind or the earthquake or the fiery pillar, that wants the signs and wonders and so we miss the still small voice?
We lie in a world where silence is often seen as the enemy. There is almost always a soundtrack to our lives. Get a group of people together to sit in silence and it is not long before it feels uncomfortable. But we can teach ourselves to be comfortable with silence, we can learn to pause and leave the space where something else can happen. Elijah did it (and then was given a bunch of work to do). Can we?
--Gord
And I just can't resist...
OR this one (which prompted the sermon title)
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