To Know the Sound of God
I Kings 19.9-15a
Sunday, August 9, 2020
Rev. Elizabeth Mangham Lott
St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church

On a day when North Carolina woke up to an earthquake, in a week when Beirut suffered a terrifying explosion, in a month that marks 15 years since the most devastating hurricane to ever hit the Gulf Coast with winds and waves that broke the levees, we might hear this scripture text in far too literal a way. I want to acknowledge the parallels but ask that we not draw lines into our modern day experiences. Instead, let’s prepare ourselves now for a storytelling and story-listening mode to get at the heart of the text before us; a story of calling, of Divine voice, and of sending out again.

Hear now our second reading: I Kings 19.9-15a

At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 10 He 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." 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; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13 When 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?" 14 He 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." 15 Then the Lord said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus

It’s likely been a while since any of us dug into I or II Kings, so let’s refresh ourselves on the characters laid out in this short text.

Elijah is a prophet of Israel who cries out to a people who have forgotten their God. He is bold and powerful, he is connected to God’s creative and directive energy. He is a complicated prophet in the way he moves in God’s name: he raises a young man from the dead, but he also slaughters the prophets of the neighbors’ god. And when he draws enough attention to himself for this slaughter, Queen Jezebel promises Elijah will meet the same fate.

Jezebel is the one who introduced the god Baal to her husband, King Ahab. She is also the one who exterminated the prophets of Israel, save for the 100 Obadiah hid away. Jezebel made sure her husband got his desired vegetable garden next door by arranging for the false arrest and rapid execution of the next door neighbor. And now Jezebel, upon hearing of the slaughter of the prophets of Baal, has sworn to kill Elijah “by this time tomorrow.”

Elijah is running on fumes. No longer feeling particularly bold, no longer steady in his power, no longer sure of his calling, he runs and hides in the wilderness beneath a broom tree. Richard Nelson calls Elijah “a burned out prophet.” Nelson suggests the question we readers are to ask is “will he continue to hold his prophetic office or will he give it up and die as he wishes? This tension will be resolved when it becomes clear that God refuses to let him go.”

I have spent much of the past two years falling into and then recovering from burnout. It’s a very present-day reality to describe burnout and burnout culture. From the World Health Organization to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, experts are making statements, writing papers, and calling attention to burnout as  reality and not hyperbole.

Burnout Coach Cait Donovan describes it like this, “You want to stop feeling tired. And angry. And angry about being tired. You've worked so hard and then looked up one day and realized you were in a life you didn't like - a successful one, but not an enjoyable one. Most of the people I work with feel like they've lost a part of themselves that they aren't sure if they can get back.”

Now, playing the anachronism game with ancient scripture is cheap, at best, and dangerously irresponsible, at worst. So I don’t want to get lost in Richard Nelson’s offhanded comment that “Elijah was a burned out prophet” by throwing of 21st century pop-psychology on top of the text. 

And yet. I do want to lay out a parallel road to say…I get it. No, I haven’t gone off and slaughtered the prophets of of neighboring gods. True. But I am intimately familiar with what deep exhaustion feels like, the kind that seeps into your bones and wraps its fingers around your spirit. Exhaustion that starts to smother your essence and crush the best parts of your spirit. The kind of exhaustion that can make you wish all of that Divine Calling stuff would just pass on to someone else because this whole working for God thing feels like a perpetual health hazard. 

Elijah lays down to rest. Beneath the broom tree, God sees him and sends an angel. The angel cares for him in that hiding place, feeds him in that resting place, nudges him to take what he needs to have strength for the journey. Elijah eats and drinks, then makes his way to a cave where he sleeps again. Elijah is exhausted in a way that one good night’s sleep isn’t going to turn things around. He needs angel-tending. He needs a sheltered place where he can come back to himself. He’s so spent that he wants to relinquish his call as a prophet and sleep in that cave forever; separating his body from his identity. He wants God to find someone else to do the hard work of calling the people to remember what they’ve forgotten.

But God sees him there in that cave just like God seems him beneath the tree. And God calls out, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah tells his story, and God calls him to come out, “for the Lord is about to pass by.” First a great wind splits mountains and breaks rocks. Elijah does not come out. Then an earthquake shakes the ground. Elijah remains hidden. A fire breaks out all around. Elijah stays tucked cozily in the cave. But then there is the sound of sheer silence. It hovers like breath and fills all of the space between the broken rocks and the scorched shrubs. It is a rolling, moving, active silence, the kind of silence that can create something out of nothing, and Elijah knows that God is near. Because Elijah knows the sound of God.

This time Elijah comes out, and God asks again, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And Elijah tells his story again—I was faithful, God, but they were so unfaithful. I told them about you, God, and now they all want to kill me. I’m done. I’m over it. It costs too much to work for you. I’m lonely. I’m fried. I’m exhausted. 

I don’t want to do this anymore.

And that hovering, space-filling, active silence fills all the broken places in Elijah and then tells him, “Go.”

Now Richard Nelson warns us not to read I Kings 19 “as a statement about the nature of revelation,” and maintains, “the story is really about Elijah’s attempt to relinquish his prophetic office and God’s insistence that he continue.”That is to say, Nelson doesn’t want us to read this whole text and then walk away from it saying God is in the silence, and that’s the lesson Elijah learned. Better read and interpreted, “the intention is rather to describe the recall and recommissioning of a prophet.”

Elijah already knew the sound of God. Because as soon as Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. After he rested, after he was fed and nourished, after he was cared for and tended to, then he was in a position to be able to hear God’s voice again. He still wanted to hide. He still wanted to keep sleeping. But he listened and responded. He stood up and went out.

Here’s the thing: God has called Elijah to inhabit a certain kind of space in the world. God has shaped Elijah to be one who advocates, cries out, reminds, calls people back. Elijah is a person sent into the wilderness of the world to tell the story of God again and again and again. God needs Elijah to be Elijah out there for the sake of all people. God provides for Elijah for a time of rest and nurture and hiddenness, and then Elijah is able to hear God once again. And as soon as Elijah can hear, God calls him back out again. God blesses Elijah again. God tells Elijah of his call to “Go” again, God commissions Elijah and puts his feet back on the path of return.

Terence Fretheim notes, “the text is concerned to reveal something about the basic character of God. God is active in human affairs; God listens, speaks, and acts, and not only in ‘obvious’ ways; God honors commitments made to chosen leaders and people. More specifically, God does not leave Elijah to wallow in his despondency. This God refuses to allow the prophet to stew in his feelings of dejection; God comes to him through a messenger, gets him going, but then sharply confronts him with questions. This God, having encountered Elijah’s initial response of self-pity, refuses to be content with that interpretation of the situation and finds a way to confront him more directly with the divine presence. And then, allowing him to state his self-pity in the very presence of God, recommissions him to his vocation, assures him that God is still at work through him, and promises him successors. God promises that God will not leave without ongoing witnesses.”

Much is happening in our world that brings me close to the despondency Elijah feels. It is as though the earth is shifting beneath our feet. There we know we cannot remain hidden either in the comfort of the caves of our lives or of the church.

When I think of Elijah in that cave—hiding, sitting alone, contemplating death—I wonder if he hoped he could vanish into obscurity. Perhaps he wondered if he stayed small enough and still enough, would God forget his name? I really do think Elijah is hiding in the cave hoping God will pass by, get bored, forget, and go look for someone else. Surely someone else will take on the cause of God. Surely someone else will stand in the line of fire. Surely someone else will remind people of who God is and how God loves and what God’s great dreams for the world are. Surely someone else can do this job instead of him.

This story is our story. We feel God pulling us forward, but then we want the comfort of the cave again. And on some level I think we—all of us—hope that someone else will speak for God and remind people of who God is and how God loves and what God’s great dreams for the world are.

There are times when we need to rest beneath the broom tree. In those times, God will care for us and give us the sustenance we need for the journey until we can hear the sound of God again. In the resting times, we focus on healing, growth, sleep, strength, and restoration. But when the sound of sheer silence surrounds us, we know God is near. We feel the warmth of God’s breath and the expansiveness of that silence as God fills the cracked corners and scorched earth around us. God is near. God is calling us back to fully inhabit our prophetic identity as advocates, activists, and people of faith who live out the stuff of their prayers with the passions of their daily lives. 

Ooh, friends, I don’t fully know what that means in an ongoing pandemic with a presidential election a mere 85 days away. I don’t know what an academic year of online school and distance church will look like. I don’t pretend for a moment to have all of the answers. But I am ready to step out. I am ready to step out of the cave. I hear the sound of that all-consuming silence, and I know that sound is still drawing me and drawing you and drawing us into whatever is next in our journey as a people who tell the truth about God’s love in the world. Come out with me, friends, and let’s listen for God’s call together.

Amen.