Elijah
was the most talked about, decorated, powerful Hebrew prophet known in his day. He hailed from the Northern Kingdom of Israel
and was a chief advisor to King Ahab, both in court and on the
battlefield. In addition, it was said
that Elijah was a miracle worker.
Highlighted
in his resume was the time he had ended a most serious drought by causing the
skies to darken and heavy rains to fall.
He also once created an endless food supply for a destitute widow and
her starving son in Zarephath.
That
particular miracle was reminiscent of Strega Nona and her magic pasta pot
because, in this case, bread dough kept forming daily and effortlessly in a
small bowl on the windowsill of the widow’s kitchen. And if those miracles were not enough, it was
also said that Yahweh/God had worked through Elijah to resurrect the dead.
So
what was this most talked about, decorated, and powerful prophet of God doing
quivering with fear in a cave on the summit of Mt. Sinai when we meet him in
this story we just read? Well, in short,
Queen Jezebel, wife of Ahab the King of Israel, had scared the dickens out of
her husband’s primary consultant and confidant.
You
see, back in those days, not everyone paid homage to Yahweh, the God of Israel
– even those living in Israel and Judah.
Many continued to worship Baal and looked first to this god when food
was in short supply and life was just plain difficult.
Jezebel
was one of those people who held Baal in such high esteem and perhaps even
fanned the flames of discord between these two deities. Whatever her desires might have been, it all
came to a head one day when Ahab and Elijah decided to settle the disagreement
once and for all. And so a divine
competition was organized: Elijah against 450 prophets of Baal.
Two
altars were hastily built at dawn’s early light, sacrificial fires set but not
lit, and bulls for sacrifice retained.
The prophets from Baal went first, imploring their deity to light the
sacrificial altar fire. The author of 1
Kings tells us that all 450 of them prayed louder and louder until mid-day. Then they resorted to ranting and raving and
even some ritualistic cutting of themselves well into the afternoon.
However,
nothing happened. Their fire remained
unlit, and it probably did not help much that Elijah teased and goaded them: “Call a little louder—he is a god, after
all.
Maybe he’s off meditating somewhere or other, or maybe he’s
gotten involved in a project, or maybe he’s on vacation. You don’t suppose he’s
overslept, do you, and needs to be waked up?”
Wallowing in
their own humiliation, the 450 prophets of Baal finally gave up – much to the
chagrin of Queen Jezebel. Elijah then
prayed to his God/Yahweh, and, in no time flat, Elijah’s fire burned, the bull
roasted, and the sacrifice was made.
Woo! Wee! Elijah
was feeling his oats at that point. And
so, to celebrate God/Yahweh’s victory, Elijah ordered all 450 fake prophets of
Baal to be killed – and they were. No
wonder Queen Jezebel was furious with Elijah, who naively supposed that she and
her husband would become immediate converts to the one true God.
Instead,
Jezebel declared angrily to Elijah. “The gods will
get you for this and I’ll get even with you! By this time tomorrow you’ll be as
dead as any one of those prophets.”
Elijah, for his part, was smart enough to know that when a woman like
Jezebel gets her back up, you best take her threat seriously.
And
so our prophet fled for his life, traveling by foot through the desert to
Beersheba in Judah. He stopped there
when fatigue and fear and hunger had overwhelmed him and simply asked God to
end it all – and then promptly fell asleep under a straggly desert broom
tree.
Elijah
dreamt, and, in his dream, God came in the form of an angel and touched him. The angel told him to get up and eat and keep
going. When Elijah awakened, he found a
loaf of bread and a jug of water. With
food and drink to sustain him now, he hiked forty additional days and nights
until he reached the holy mountain Sinai (or Horeb) where he crawled into a
cave and again fell asleep – and there we find him this morning…..
….Awakened
by God with a question that developed into a brief conversation. Here is how Episcopal priest Stuart
Higginbotham imagined it:
God:
"What are you doing here, Elijah? Why are you holed up in this
cave?"
Elijah:
"Well, I'm pretty upset right now."
God:
"Well, whatever for?"
Elijah:
"Well, I've been working so hard as a prophet, you see? And, as for
the other Israelites, they aren't trying at all. They have forsaken your
covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the
sword. I alone am left, and now they are seeking my life to take it away
too!"
And what
does God tell him? "Oh, I am so sorry; yes, I know that you have
been such a wonderful prophet?" No. God says to him, "Go
out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass
by."
Elijah doesn't get some sympathetic
statement from God; instead, he gets a call to get out of the cave and see for
himself what God is all about and what God might say to him. And that's when
Earth Wind and Fire show up – not the band but the elemental forces.”
Elijah, of course, is expecting that
whatever God has to show him or say to him will be found in the furious roar of
the wind as it split the hills and shattered the rocks around him, or the
earthquake that followed, or the pyrotechnics of the fire – and so he cowered
in the darkest recesses of the cave. He must have been
surprised at the emptiness that followed those dramatic illustrations of the
sheer force of nature.
However, our prophet must have been
even more surprised at the silence that followed. It was the kind of silence that was so deep
and heavy it was all-encompassing. It
was almost like a sound itself: The sound of silence as Simon and Garfunkel
once termed it. It was the kind of
silence that drew Elijah to the mouth of the cave, his face covered with his
mantle – perhaps knowing deep inside that he would now confront his God.
You know, too often we stopped reading
this passage right here – with Elijah at the mouth of the cave. Too often, we presume, because of some of the
Biblical translations that we read, that God spoke to Elijah in that stillness,
in some small whisper of a voice.
However, God did not speak to Elijah in
those hush, hush quiet moments. If you
were to read the original Hebrew, you would find that God spoke to the runaway
prophet after the silence. And then God
asked the same question to Elijah that he had asked Elijah hours earlier as he
sat despondently in the cave. “Elijah,
what are you doing here?” And then God went on to direct the runaway prophet to
buck up and go back, back into his world, for there was still work for him to
do.
God did not speak in the silence, but
it took the time in silence for Elijah to be able to listen enough to hear what
God was telling him. That is the essence
of our Lenten worship series, you know – right there. How can we possibly hear what God might be
trying to tell us – as individuals or as a church family – in the cacophony of
our busy lives?
In this digital age, we are bombarded
by sound and imagery day in and day out.
If we are not following the President’s constant tweets, we are watching
cable news’ replay after replay of another school shooting. Or we are checking out the latest adventures
of Facebook friends on our newsfeed or following a thread of comments on who
knows what inane or controversial topic.
Neither we nor our children seem able
to live without cell phones. Our TVs,
radios, computers, and tablets beckon us unceasingly. Siri tells us how to get to wherever we need
to go, and Alexa reminds us to feed the dog and go to the grocery store.
There is no silence in our lives,
unless we intentionally make it so. And
how can we possibly hear what God is saying to us without the silence needed to
simply listen?
I believe that the
silence Elijah needed to hear God speak can come to us today in a variety of
forms – from actual silence to the gentle rhythm of Simon and Garfunkel to the
haunting sound of an oboe.
No matter who you are and no matter how
busy your life might be, you need a cave equivalent. You need to experience the sound of silence just
like Elijah did. You need a place to
listen to God.
Maybe, for you, it will be here in
church in the times of silence that we will intentionally create during worship
these next few weeks. And perhaps you can take some of those ideas and try them
at home because you need to find silence in your daily life and not just on
Sunday.
Maybe it will be a park bench, a
labyrinth, or an intentional walk in the dark.
Maybe it will be a comfortable chair in front of the woodstove, the
buzzing of bees as you work your hives, or a hike in the woods with the dogs. However,
if you are like me, at least at first, you will need to be intentional and even
plan-full about creating those times of silence.
We all need to discover that place
where we can listen to the sound of silence.
And so I challenge you this Lenten season to find your cave equivalent,
your place of silence where you can hear God speaking to you, where you can
hear God telling you, like God told Elijah:
“Go back. Go back into the world. There is still work for you to do in this
crazy, cynical, broken world we live in.”
We all need the sound of silence, and I pray that you will find your
place to hear it.
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