1 Kings 19:1-4, 8-15
My son is four. There are many things he doesn’t understand.
“Mama, just play with me a little hour!” He has no concept of time.
“Mama, when I was fifteen, I couldn’t buckle my own car seat.” He doesn’t understand age.
“Mama, when can we go to the jungle to see some real dinosaurs?” He doesn’t know that dinosaurs are extinct.
“Mama, when I grow up, I’m gonna be a triceratops!” I clearly have some work to do explaining the unlikelihood that puberty will cause him to change species. (Though I’m told it might feel that way.) Of course, he’s only four so I don’t explain to him that he can’t become a dinosaur. For now I just say, “Wow, that’s awesome! What color?” And “Why a triceratops?” I see no need to dash his dreams. He will figure it out soon enough.
He also is trying to figure out what’s real and what exists only on TV. Riding in the car on Tuesday of this week he said: “Mama, monsters aren’t real.” I said, “That’s right, honey. Monsters aren’t real.” “Except in the jungle. There are monsters in the jungle.” I asked, “Are you sure? I don’t think there are any monsters in the jungle.” He thought for a second. “I think maybe in the jungle. But not in our house.” “No, honey, there are no monsters in our house.”
I glance over my shoulder to see him staring thoughtfully out his car window. “And bad guys,” he says. “Bad guys aren’t real.” Suddenly I have no words. I have nothing but a desire for my son to believe that bad guys exist only in cartoons. I look at my daughter, in the passenger seat, who mouths, “He doesn’t know about Orlando.”
Of course he doesn’t know. I don’t think he needs to know. Not now. I don’t tell him about the atrocity that occurred in a night club called Pulse. Some day I will have to explain to him that people who were brown-skinned, like him, and who were gay or lesbian, like his moms, were killed because of hatred that had grown in one man’s heart. But that day is not today.
Still, in response to his proclamation that “Bad guys aren’t real,” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to tell him that bad guys don’t exist, but I don’t want him to live in fear, either. So I thought about the bad guys in his TV shows. His current favorite shows include Dinotrux—which features characters that are part dinosaur and part construction vehicle. (It was sheer marketing genius to combine two favorite things of preschool boys!) The bad guy is an evil Tyrannosaurus Trux named D-Structs. In another favorite show, Dinosaur Squad, the bad guy is Victor Veloci, who is intent on returning the world to the age of dinosaurs by turning humans into new mutant dinosaurs and accelerating global warming, all while hiding his secret identity as a 65-million-year-old velociraptor. I think of the Tyrannosaus Trux named D-Structs and the velociraptor/human mutant Victor Veloci, and so I say to my son, “You’re right. The bad guys in your stories aren’t real.” I don’t tell him that the real bad guys are worse, and not nearly as obvious.
It seems like that’s all we hear about—the bad guys, the violence, the mayhem. And the voices of hatred are everywhere. I don’t know if they have released the 911 recordings from Orlando yet, the ones where the shooter called to proclaim his allegiance to ISIS, but if they do, I hope never to hear it. I don’t want that man’s voice in my head. There are already so many hateful voices in there—voices of politicians blaming the wrong people and offering the wrong solutions; voices of preachers who rejoiced at the Orlando shooting, saying the only tragedy is that more gay people weren’t killed. I hear all the voices and I understand how some people choose to block out the news and turn a blind eye to the mayhem for the sake of their sanity. And I do agree that there are times for this—like when you’re in the middle of your own battles of whatever kind. But most of us, as Christians, don’t get the luxury of saying, “I don’t want to hear about that.” We have to hear it if we’re going to change it. What we do instead is listen for the other voices, too. We proclaim all the time that God is still speaking … so let’s listen for that still-speaking God.
Our Bible passage for today features the prophet Elijah, who had fled for his life. He had come out the victor after a showdown with the prophets of Baal, and after he defeated them, he killed them. Queen Jezebel, a worshiper of Baal, was furious and vowed to kill Elijah in response. Elijah ran fast and far, so far that he would have been outside of Jezebel’s reach; but still he was fearful. He was depressed and he prayed to die.
Of course we don’t know what was in his mind or heart. I’d like to think he had recognized the senselessness of violence. I’d like to think he realized the futility of “an eye for an eye.” I’d like to think he felt ashamed of what he had done. But we don’t know. We are only told that he cried out to God, and that he said he was no better than his ancestors.
In response the “word of the Lord” told him, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” “Mount Horeb, where Elijah found himself after his long journey through the desert, was the very mountain where Moses had encountered God in the fire of a burning bush (Exodus 3:1f). It was at that mountain, also called Mount Sinai, that God had given the law to Moses amid fire, smoke, and thunder (Exodus 19:16f). The very name Horeb or Sinai evoked images of a powerful and awesome God who strode boldly into history overthrowing kingdoms and working fantastic miracles before the people’s eyes. Elijah was on that very mountain of God where it all started. We would expect a new overwhelming revelation to Elijah that would convince him of God’s power.”[1]
But that’s not what we get. That’s not what Elijah got. Instead, the story says: “Now there was a great wind … but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” The phrase translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “a sound of sheer silence” is translated in other versions as a still, small voice, the sound of soft stillness, the sound of a gentle blowing, a gentle whisper, a murmuring, and “the voice of those who were praising softly.”[2]
Regardless of how you translate it, it is significant because Elijah was a big, showy prophet. He raised a child from the dead, or near death. He defeated the prophets of Baal in a showdown that seems custom-made for Hollywood. He brought down fire from heaven. Of course he would expect God to come to him in a big, showy way. The spectacle was his bread and butter. That’s how he related, how he moved in the world. So he needed silence—or close to it—to hear God speak.
In our loud, busy lives, perhaps the same is true for us. Many of us live with a constant soundtrack—we always have music playing, or the television on, or spend so much time on our computers that even if there’s no sound, it’s far from silent. We rush to fill every pause in conversation lest we experience that “awkward silence.” Even in worship, we don’t do silence much . . . or well. We’re not comfortable with it. And sometimes I wonder if we’re culturally trained to be that way, or if we’re uncomfortable in silence precisely because we know that in the silence, we just might encounter God . . . or at the very least, ourselves.
I think it was in 2004 that I decided to give up noise in my car for Lent. I was living in Asheville at the time, and I had a twenty minute commute to the church. Surely I could manage forty minutes in the car each day without music or audiobooks. Some days it was easy, but other days, I squirmed. I fidgeted. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. And some days I gave in. Looking back, it’s obvious why I couldn’t stand the silence.
When I was growing up, my family moved every four or five years. By the time I was 18, I had lived in five cities in three states. I went to two different colleges, in different states. I stayed put for a few years after college, but then I moved again to another state, then two years later moved to yet another. That move was to Asheville, North Carolina. I’d never had a hometown before, and I fell in love with Asheville. I loved the mountains. I loved the climate. I loved the diversity of people Asheville attracted. I experienced my call to ministry there. I found the United Church of Christ there. I went off to seminary and returned to pastor there. It was home, to someone who’d never known a place could be home. And the church had stood by me through a difficult ordination process.
And it was time for me to leave. I didn’t want to hear it. I did not want to receive that message from God. So I did my darnedest to fill my world with noise so I couldn’t hear. Finally God had to speak at night, in my dreams, when I couldn’t control the noise. As hard as I had tried to keep from hearing God’s voice, God had found the silence even I couldn’t keep at bay.
Of course, it’s not only silence in which God speaks. Often God speaks through other people, even when we think we’re the one doing the talking.
Yesterday, as you know, was Portland’s Pride festival, when members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community and their allies gather to celebrate diversity and community. In response to the horrific attack at a gay Latinex nightclub in Orlando last week, we had a new sign made: Our church is sorry for all the hateful things done in the name of God. The response to our sign was everything I had hoped for and more. People cheered even louder than usual when they saw us. People took pictures of our sign. People walked up to me in the middle of the parade to thank me. People from other churches were coming over to admire it. Then we stood it on the ground at our booth, and more people came and took pictures. And people thanked us and hugged us. I was proud that we were the voice of God.
And then suddenly Jackie came and took our sign. “There are some haters over there, and our sign is needed,” she said as she marched away, two others of our group going with her. And I got nervous. It’s not that I don’t trust my wife, but she is the activist; I’m the pastor. And I needed to know that she was remembering the difference. So I waited a few minutes and then couldn’t stand it any more so I went to see what was happening.
There was one protestor—a woman holding a cross that said “Turn from sin” and “Repent!” She had a loud speaker and she was quoting scriptures about abomination and judgment. And surrounding her, with their backs to her, was a group of young people in their teens and early twenties, blocking her from view, so that others wouldn’t see or hear. And there, nearby, stood Jackie, holding our sign up high for all to see. I learned that when she and the others from our church walked up with the sign, some of the young people were starting to engage with the protestor in negative ways; but when they saw the sign, they called to one another “Look! Look!” and they cheered and they thanked Jackie, and from then on, there was very little conflict.
I thought I was declaring the voice of God. I designed the sign, I ordered the sign, and I carried the sign throughout the parade. Oh, it was the church’s sign, and I made sure I carried it right next to our banner. But I was the minister. I was the one in the collar. I was the prophet. Except I wasn’t. Jackie was because she dared when I didn’t. And she didn’t have to say a word.
Earlier I said that the voices of hatred are everywhere, and it seems hard to imagine how the voice of God can be heard. But still God speaks—sometimes in a great, thundering, earthquake-worthy voice, but more often in the small voices. God speaks in a sign held silently, proudly, bravely aloft for all to see. God speaks in young people turning their back on hatred. God speaks in the image of my son, asleep under the table of our booth, lying on a rainbow flag, with nary a monster in sight.
God speaks. May we listen well.
[1] Bratcher, Dennis. http://www.crivoice.org/1kng19.html
[2] From various sources, especially Working Preacher, Nancy deClaisse-Walford.