God of the Silence - 1 Kings 19:1-16

Things never went very well for Elijah. It seemed the people never listened to God. When they did not, Elijah was always asked, by God, to go back to them, and give them the opportunity to change and turn back to God, or suffer the consequences of their unfaithfulness. The pesky thing about always being right is, no one ever listens. Time and time again the people chose to do their own thing and not heed the warning from God, Elijah brought to them. Then, when God's protective hand was removed from them, and terrible things happened, it was always Elijah's fault. God said, “Repent, change your ways,” the people refused and there was a famine and a drought for three years. It was Elijah's fault, so he was forced to hide in the wilderness being taken care of by birds.

Even when it seemed he had won, he lost. One of the huge problems at this time in Israel's history was that the King had married a woman who worshiped Ba'al. She had imported idols and priests and prophets of Ba'al from her homeland. Because of her influence many people had turned away from God to worship Ba'al. Others, in an attempt to keep all parties happy, were worshiping both, which was not at all better in God's eyes. (See the first commandment)

All the prophets of Ba'al had set up a giant reality contest, “Whose God is real, anyway?”  They would get as many people as possible to come to this grand event.  The premise was: all the prophets of Ba'al (450 of them) would build an alter to Ba'al, on one side, and Elijah would build and alter to the Lord God, on the other. They would each place an offering on their alter. Then right there in front of everyone, they would each call out to their god to reign down fire. The god who managed to set the offering upon their alter on fire, was the one true god.

The prophets of Ba'al made a royal ruckus, singing and yellin' and prayin' at their top of their lungs to make sure Ba'al hear them. Nothing. Maybe he was asleep and they needed to make some noise to wake him. When that did not work they began jumpin' and dancin' all around the alter to get Ba'al's attention. Nada. Perhaps, he was binge watching Netflix and was too distracted to notice them.

Finally they started cutting themselves and bleeding all over the place. Perhaps Ba'al was 1/10 shark and would smell the blood in the air and come running with great bombs of fire. Nope, nothing. Ba'al was in the shower, singing, “rubber ducky you’re the one” at the top of his lungs and could not, hear, notice or smell anything that was going on down on that mountain that day.

At this point Elijah, being a good sport about things, started taunting them mercilessly. “Nanni-nanni-boo-boo my God's gonna do what yours can't do.”

Then to show what a really a good guy he was about this whole affair, he dug a three foot wide trench all around his alter. Then he had jug, after jug, after jug of water poured all over his alter. So much water that it poured down over the offering, over the wood for the offering, over the sides of the alter, filling the entire trench that surrounded it. And then Elijah began to pray, and immediately fire came down from the heavens. Fire came licking down over the alter, consuming the offering, the wood, and all of the water, nothing was left, not even one drop of water.

Elijah had won; God is the one true God of the universe. God one, Ba'al ZERO. And the crowd goes wild. Elijah is hero of the day. God is God and Ba'al is not. But like I said, even when Elijah wins, he loses, because this whole thing angers Jezebel, the queen, something fierce and she put a hit out on Elijah. Before Elijah can really revel in his moment of victory, he is running for his life from a band of royally sanctioned hit-men. He leaves his servant in a safe place, because he does not want his servant to die too if they are found together. Out into the wilderness he goes, again. He knows that Jezebel's hired guns are too chicken to follow him, or too dumb to find there.

So here Elijah is, out in the wilderness, the henchmen of Jezebel after him.  He is on the run, but even a man on the run gets hot and tired. So he finds a solitary broom tree way out in the middle of nowhere, a day’s walk everywhere. He looks to his right there is no one, he looks to his left, no one. He is safe, there is no one can be seen in any direction. He sits down there in the shade of the tree and he feels absolutely, completely and utterly ALL ALONE.

When evening comes, he lies down and stares up at the sky; it is mostly void, and partly starry. He stares up into the nothingness and asks God if he might die. He thinks about his life and the lives of all the prophets who have come before him. Where are they now? They are nothing but dust and bones and he says to God, “Enough is enough; I am ready die, for I am no better than my ancestors.” And then he lay down and fell asleep, hoping God would grant his request.

He must have been pretty disappointed when God woke him and told him to eat and drink. So he ate and drank, but miraculous food and drink was not enough to impress him. After eating and drinking food that appeared out of nowhere, he laid down once again hoping to die. But again, God disappoints him, and wakes him up again, telling him to eat and drink and so he does.

This time, God does not allow him to go back to sleep but instead encourages him to keep moving. He travels all the way to mount Horeb, which is also known as Sinai, the very mountain on which Moses met God all those years ago. He climbs the mountain and finds a cave and settles down in the cave.

And God says, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

And Elijah says, “God I am always doing what you tell me to do. I am a good prophet. I tell the people what you tell me to tell them, I do what you tell me do, and nobody ever listens. Nothing I do ever makes a difference. Every time I do the right thing, it comes crashing back down at me. It like a reverse Midas touch, instead of it all turning to gold, everything I touch turns to ash. It is all ruined. I am all alone, and everyone wants to kill me, and I kind wish they would.”

How many of us have felt like this? Nothing we do seems to go right. Everything seems to be torn to pieces the moment we touch it. The world around us has crashed and burned and there are no pieces to pick up. We are going through a rough time. Our heart aches, within us. Our body is one giant nerve in pain. And we look around and there is no one. We are all alone. Nobody could possibly understand how we feel. Nobody is really there for us. Everyone we love is dead. Everyone who could help us, is gone, or nowhere to be seen. We look to the left, we look to the right and there is no one there. On one hand we are relieved. Sometimes it feels good to be alone in our pain, in our grief, in our sorrow, in our hurt. But then again we are all alone, absolutely, positively alone. There is no one here with us in our hurt, in our grief in our pain. And perhaps, on one of our really bad days (or on two or three) we have thought, death would be easier than continuing to deal with than this. That is exactly how Elijah felt that day.

And so God told him to hang out there on the mountain for a little while and left him alone. As he stood there, completely and absolutely abandoned, the wind picked up. It howled in the trees and made a hollow moaning sound in the mouth of the cave. It whipped up over the rock face and whistle against the stone. It was blowing so hard, Elijah had to cling to the rock to not be carried away by it. But even in all its grandeur and force, Elijah knew that God was not in the wind.

As soon as the wind died down, the earth began to quake, it became as mobile as the sea. The mountain, on which he stood, bobbed up and down like a toy boat in a child's bath. The rocks rolled like waves. But even with all its power, Elijah knew God was not in the quake.

As soon as the ground became sturdy again, fire rolled across the mountain. It blazed with a fierceness and with a fury the likes of which Elijah had never seen, but just as with the wind and the quake, even with all its glory, Elijah knew God was not in the fire.

When the blaze died down, Elijah looked across the mountain, across the valley, across all the world that could be seen from his vantage point. He looked around and saw in the barren world around him a stillness that could not be explained. And he heard nothing, absolutely nothing. The world was filled with the sound of sheer silence and in that stillness, in that silence Elijah knew, just as he knew he had ten fingers and ten toes, two eyes and one nose, God was there in the silence, closer than God had ever been before.

When we are struggling, when we are hurting, when life seems too much to handle, we want God to come to us in a thunder cloud, like a bolt of lightning. We want God to be all smoke and lights, to “razzle dazzle” us. We want the God with the booming voice. But when we are hurting the world is muffled. It is almost as if volume of everything around us is turned down. It is as if we are trapped in a jar, able to watch the world go by unable to sense it, to feel it, to hear it. Or perhaps the volume is turned way too high, we feel everything to eleven, feathers are sharp razors and even the dim glow of a firefly on a summer night is too bright. Either way, in these times, we could look in the wind, in the fire, or in the shaking of the earth but we will not find God there. It is not that God cannot be in the cloud, in the smoke or in the fire, in the thunder or in the rain. God has proved at other times that sometimes God can be found in those places. But, when we are hurting, that is not the time for loud booming voices, for burning bushes or pillars of fire, it is not the time to fill everything with smoke or to shake our world to get our attention. When we are soft and vulnerable, when we are hurting and raw, God comes to us in the silence that we feel all around us.

When we are hurting, when the world is all razor blades and blinding lights, or when we are so deep in our sorrow that the world is wrapped in a deep blanket of wool, so far away that it cannot be felt or heard, we know the silence that surrounds us. It is a thing we can touch, it can be felt, it is as sharp as any knife and as soft as a kitten. It is a thick blanket of snow on a frosty winter morn. It is a thing that is there. It is a thing that is known. This silence in which we live, it keeps us company. In these times when the silence around us becomes a living breathing thing which surrounds us, we find that it is God that is there in that ever deafening silence; surrounding us, filling our lives with the very presence of God. The presence of God, encasing us, so that nothing but God can be felt there; can be heard there. When we feel nothing, when we see nothing, when we hear nothing, God is there in the silence, embracing us, holding us. Even when we are hurting too much to feel God; even when we are blinded so badly by the circumstance that surround us that we cannot see God; even when we are sobbing too loudly to hear God, God is there in the silence, in the pain. Even when we wish we are dead, God comes to us and fills our lives so that we can see nothing else, feel nothing else, hear nothing else but the silence that is God in our lives in our hurt and our pain.

And then God picks us up and reminds us that we are not alone, God is there with us. And even when we think that there is no one left for us, God takes us to people. God reminds us that we do not live for ourselves we live for those who come after us.

Elijah declared to God that he was no better than his ancestors. He was no better than the prophets who had gone before him. And he was right; God showed him that he was right. His ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David had all struggled in their lifetimes, with hurt, with disappointment in God. The prophets who had gone before him Moses, Eli, and Samuel, he was also no better than they. They had done what God had called for them to do, and things did not always go well for them.  All of them struggled with how they felt God had left them, abandoned them, and also with their own failings but through it all they had sought God, even in when they failed they called out to God and found God was there. They hurt and struggled, just as Elijah is doing. And their lives are a testament to the ever present nature of God.

Elijah was no better or worse than his ancestors, not in the way he thought, being nothing but dust and bones, but in that they had lived and struggled and found God to be faithful. And God, like God had done with all those before him, assured him that that God was faithful in his life as well. And then encouraged him to be like his ancestors and move forward in such a way that would assure that he like his ancestors before him would live his life in such a way that there would be others who would follow after him. Elijah went and found Elisha and spent the rest of his life assuring that there would be a faithful prophet to come after him so that he could follow in the path of his ancestors, making sure that others would forever come after.

When we are hurting it is good to look back through history and know that others have hurt like we have hurt. It is assuring to see that others have struggled as we have struggled; that others have found God to be faithful and know that we too can find that God is faithful. There is peace and comfort we get from the long line of ancestors we can find along the path behind us. If we look we can always find someone who is “just like” us who struggled in similar ways we do, who hurt in similar ways that we do. We can find God faithful just as they did. But we can also see in them who we want to be, who we aspire to be, people who lead others in the path as well. God does not ask for us to go find whole boat loads of people. God just asks for us to go find one. God sent Elijah to find Elisha. Go find the one Elisha, the one who will carry on the legacy of faith that was begun through all those who came before us. The way we assure that there is a legacy of faith that comes after us, is if we continually have just one person we are working with, loving into the kingdom, training in the faith, living as an example before. Just one. You are Elijah, who is your Elisha?