When Silence
Tells the Story
A
Sermon Given to Milledge Avenue Baptist Church
1 Kings
17-19; Jeremiah 17:5-8
By Stephanie
Little Coyne
It is interesting to me that Pastor Nathan would pass along 1
Kings 19 to me for the lesson today. Any woman teaching from a text that begins
with Jezebel has to be a little curious… To use his own words against him, a
quote from his sermon last week: “Jezebel’s name has become a derogatory label
for women considered to be too self-assured, too seductive, too promiscuous,
too ruthless, too manipulative, or too controlling.”
Let me assure you that as I continue to roll along into my
middle ages, I am not “too” anything. With my roles as hospital chaplain,
mother to both human and canine children, wife, daughter, daughter-in-law,
sister-in-law, and long-lost friend, the only adjective that might describe me
that begins with “too” is “too tired.”
I genuinely believe that Nathan did not set me up for this
passage, and truly, I am greatly pleased to have been involved with this part
of scripture the past couple of weeks. I love preaching from the Old Testament.
Maybe it excites the (long-ago) literature major in me. I do love metaphors and
imagery. I also love a good story filled with rich character development.
I love a good storyteller! I have always loved reading, but
in adulthood, I have figured out that I love audiobooks. Maybe it is the time
spent commuting to and from work. Maybe it’s the full-of-sound house that
necessitates the use of headphones in order to absorb meaningful words from
rich texts… I do appreciate an enlivened narrator who is able to make a story
come alive!
Nathan has led you into Elijah’s life in his Old Testament
series. Let me join you as we return to the fractured kingdom of Israel
together this morning. I will begin with verses you have heard before in order
to set up our texts for today.
Based on 1 Kings 17-19:
It is the time of kings and queens and prophets, of power and
foretelling. War and destruction are always a threat and generations of people have
lived through extremes—prosperity, exile, and enslavement. While musicians may
entertain self-centered royalty, no sweet melodies are heard from the people
terrorized in their own promised land. Perhaps their cries form into a raw hum
as they mourn.
People groups live divided by tribes or gods or race. Even
the land itself marks these divisions through rivers, mountains, and valleys.
In this setting of intense turmoil we add to it severe
famine. Drought itself is a key player in this story. Water, for the third
year, is scarce. Dynamic green has given way to wasted brown. Any clump of dirt
you might pick up crumbles in your hand and falls down to the ground.
And there is dust everywhere. It rises up as you walk
barefooted or in sandals, invading the spaces between your toes and clinging to
the sweat on your body. Any wind that blows by picks up the dust and
distributes it all around in such a way that you can never forget that all is
parched.
The land is withered.
And who do the people of Samaria have to guide them through
this famine? A kind king, like one from a Disney fairytale? A trusting king who
sits on his throne and lets his people run the kingdom peacefully?
Not at all. They have Ahab. And is he evil, ruthless, the
king who “did evil
in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him.” (1 Kings 16: 30)
Ahab, in every sense of the phrase is a very, very bad dude.
And he is now the earthly ruler of Israel in Samaria, holding
the beliefs of his wife, Jezebel, and her god “Ba-al, the god of fertility and
the god of rain,” above the God of Israel.
But—it is not a time of rain or fertile ground. Drought is a
bold, in-your-face, will-not-be-ignored character who has been written into the
story by God’s command.
Elijah appears in the story as an immediate contrasting
figure to Ahab. The first words he speaks in this story are prophecy from
Yahweh to Ahab: “As
the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither
dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” (1 Kings 17:1)
And the Lord who speaks to Ahab through Elijah also directs
Elijah away from Ahab to food and water and safety: “Go, hide, drink from the waters east
of the Jordan and be fed by ravens.
And when that dries up, go. Go and
live with a widow and her household. Whereas Ahab is housed with bold Jezebel,
surrounded by riches, you, Elijah and the widow, along with her son, and her
household will be fed aplenty by unimaginably small amounts of food and water.”
The widow’s son becomes severely sick, a reminder that these
are fragile times. God’s deliverance is present, but the infinity button has
not been activated! The illness draws out the son’s last breath, Elijah cries
out to the Lord who returns life to the boy.
Ahab and Jezebel have little concern for the lives of prophets
or priests, let alone the son of a poor widow. They do not, nor do their
prophets have the power to restore life to a living being; they have no power bring
water to dusty land.
God speaks again to Elijah, the discerning intermediary:
“I will send rain.
I will send rain, Elijah. I will send rain if you present
yourself to Ahab.”
Elijah makes his way.
Meanwhile, Ahab is scrambling. Just as Jezebel is killing
prophets, the drought is killing the land. Animals are dying and food is
becoming scarce. Ahab sends Obadiah in one direction and then he goes in the
other.
On the way to find water, Obadiah encounters Elijah, bows
down, and with some protest, agrees to tell Ahab that Elijah wants to see him.
Obadiah has the right to fear for his life if he becomes the go-between of
Elijah to Ahab. Up until this moment, Obadiah has kept his faithfulness to
Yahweh a secret from Ahab and Jezebel, guiding endangered prophets of the Lord
to a cave and providing them with bread and water. If Ahab has any inkling that
Obadiah might not be quite the devoted servant to the King as he believes him
to be, then Obadiah’s fate will be the same of the prophets of the Lord. The
precedent is set already.
Obadiah remains faithful and Elijah and Ahab meet. As you
have heard before, the story goes up in volume and in action. At Elijah’s
direction, Ahab gathers the 450 prophets of Baal, the 450 prophets of Asherah,
and the Israelites to Mount Carmel. Elijah challenges the prophets to a game of
“My-God-is-better-than-your-God”. Two bulls are gathered, along with firewood
enough to make quite the show when lit, and then Elijah declares how the game
will be won. Whichever God sends fire does in fact, control the fire…the fire
and the rain.
It begins.
Ba-al’s prophets cry out for hours—"Send your fire! Answer
us!”
But no answer comes. They cry on until sunset, “but there was
no voice, no answer, and no response.” (1 Kings 18: 29)
The prophets “limp” out of this fight just as they “limped”
onto the scene and then begin to lash themselves bloody in a scene described as
“a violent,
prophetic frenzy.” [i]
It is then Elijah’s turn. He begins by adding the elements of
earth and water to the broken tree and broken animal and calls out to the God
of old, the God of Israel, of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, “O Lord, answer me so that this people
may know that you have turned their hearts back.” (1 Kings 18: 37) God
answers with that “all-consuming” fire, so much so that the earth’s dust,
rocks, tree, animal, and poured water are obliterated, gone, done with,
destroyed.
But it is not yet quiet or finished. Ba-al’s prophets are
rounded up and are too drained of life. Death is all around.
Ahab survives and is told by Elijah to follow the sound of
rushing rain so that he can eat and drink. Elijah goes to the top of Mount
Carmel, bows down and waits for the promised rain.
Elijah’s servant becomes his informer and after a total of
eight times, reports to Elijah that the smallest of clouds is coming up out of
the sea.
Does this little cloud hold hope? Could it soon begin to
develop a color of compressed water and a weightiness of relief? Would the
cloud signal to the wind to stir as further sign of rain?
Elijah needs no further indication and he sends his servant
to Ahab to tell him what the wind has not yet announced, “a storm is coming—go! Take your
chariot and return to your home.”
Sure enough, the heavens begin to do their own crying out.
Bigger clouds join the sky, the light of the sun is shielded from the ground,
thunder begins to clap, lighting begins to clatter, and the air announces to
the land: rain is coming.
It begins to pour.
The God who created the marvelous, nourishing, powerful water
has lived up to the promise made to Elijah—rain has returned to the land. The
possibility of living and of new life is all around.
God then races Elijah ahead of the fleeing Ahab and we find
ourselves at the entrance to Jezreel and the beginning of Chapter 19.
What a story!
As hear-ers of this story, our ears might have perked up at
familiar phrases—Elijah is sent to Ahab, an evil King. Elijah sends Obadiah. Haven’t
we heard that before? Moses, go to the hard-hearted Pharoah. Jonah, go see
the wicked people of Nineveh. David, go fight the giant Goliath. Nathan, go
tell David that he is more than a stone’s throw from being a righteous king.
Whether they protest God’s direction or seem to go along with
it, those who hear the voice of the Lord calling out for them to “GO,” have
some cause to be hesitant.
Not only do we hear repetitiveness in God’s call to Elijah,
there are other familiar themes in the chapters of this story: Famine, fire,
drought, and destruction. Bread and water. Poor widows and dying sons. Jars and
jugs that neither empty nor fail.
We’ve heard of caves before. Caves provide hiding spots and
refuge. Caves are burial grounds. Caves are often places of mystery and
darkness.
We’ve heard of people meeting powerful figures as they travel
on their journeys, some who have been blinded by a great light, some figures
who are cloaked in disguise, some strangers in need of help, some strangers who
are not recognized for their divinity.
And yes, we’ve noticed the poles of extremes in scripture. Darkness
and light. Floods and dry land. Famine and manna from heaven. Mustard seeds and
mountains.
As we enter chapter 19, what repeated imagery might we hear
next?
Elijah experiences another kind of extreme. Elijah goes from
being fed, from being a restorer of life, from being a bold prophet, a director
of God’s fire, and an executioner of God’s plan—from being a pursuer of a king
in his chariot—to being pursued.
He is afraid. He is alone. He is without powerful speech. It
is as though God has removed a cloak of protection from him, as though Moses’
staff might have been taken away.
He finds rest underneath a solitary broom tree. Can you see
it? Look around you. Desert, wilderness, land that has only recently found
relief with water. A solitary broom tree sits, just as alone and as set apart
as Elijah.
Is there a distinction to be made about this tree as did both
the Psalmist and Jeremiah? Is this tree a shrub in the desert or one planted by
water, sending out its roots by the stream, sending out its roots by the
stream, not fearing the heat, its leaves shining in the light?
It is shelter enough to provide space for Elijah to speak his
worst fear: “let me die, Lord. I am scared. I fear that I am a failure in your
sight. I am afraid, but I fear death less than I fear life, Oh Lord.”
He falls asleep with little possibility for beautiful dreams
of restorative rest.
But he is awakened. “Eat. Drink, Elijah.” He does so and then
returns to the firm ground.
Again, “Elijah. Wake up. Eat this stone-cooked cake and drink
this water and be filled with strength enough for your journey.
He travels for forty days and nights (yes, we’ve heard that before too!), and
comes to Horeb, the mount of God. (1 Kings 19: 8) This place is Mount Sinai,
the very place where Yahweh meets Moses in a highlighted moment of the Exodus.
Elijah, assuredly in a significant location, finds himself on
Mount Sinai in a cave. God speaks to Elijah that seems to be in the parental
tone of “I already know the answer to this question but let me ask if of you to
see if you know the answer.”
“Why
are you here, Elijah? Tell me the story of your silence.”
Well, God, I have been working for you, speaking for you—faithfully!
I have upheld your covenant and pointed out to the limping Ba-al followers that
they have not been doing so! Lord, I have been bold in my language and actions
to Ahab and Jezebel. I have seen a lot of bloodshed, Lord. I have seen so much
violence. I have taken part in so much death. And I am scared. I am scared for
my life.
Yes, Elijah. Go. Go out to the mountain and look for me.
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;
And after the earthquake a fire, but
the Lord was not in the fire;
And after the fire, a sound of sheer
silence. (1 Kings 19)
In the sound of utter silence, Elijah recognizes his Lord’s
presence and once again, but in a totally new way, hears a familiar voice. The
voice calls to him, “Elijah.
Elijah. Why are you here?”
And then, “Go. You have rested. You have been fed. Go and
return and see who I have anointed to help you on this journey.”
It is a quiet moment of thin, sacred space. Elijah, on the
run from a beast of evil, now gently rests with a still, small, mindful voice
of peace.
Could it be that the Lord has given us yet another instance
of contrasting circumstances? Does God have an inside voice and an outside
voice? God is not only in the fire, wind, and water, God is also in the loud
and in the quiet. Not only does God balance the imbalanced world, God balances
Godself, not to show off for an egotistical king, but to meet a scared prophet
on the edge of a mountain…on the edge of a mountain.
Not only do I love a good story, I love the picture of two
beings sitting—portrait-style—together. All is blurred around them and the
focus is the relationship between the two because of the faithfulness of the
two to each other. Put another way, is not any space sacred and safe when all
involved have both time to hear and to be heard?
What stands out to you in this story? What do you hear? What
causes you to pause, to want to read more, to want to meditate or think about
the way it made you feel? I truly believe that at the heart of these Bible
stories is in the power of the words themselves to bring about it us feelings
that connect us to the divine in a completely unique way.
Perhaps you hear God’s voice with a little more impatience—“Where
are you, Elijah?” I fully admit that my applied tones to the words and voices
in this story are from my own reading of how it all comes together. I also come
to the text with the voice of the poet Wendell Berry in my ear:
When despair for the world grows in
me
and I wake in the night at the least
sound
in fear of what my life and my
children’s lives may be,
I go lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and
the great heron feeds.
I come to Elijah’s story, energized by his faithfulness,
amused by his snarkiness, and identifying with his fear that he has not lived
up God’s expectations. Elijah is malnourished and dispirited. I deeply feel
that hunger and hopeless. Have I heard God’s voice correctly? Could it be that
God has withdrawn from me because I have withdrawn too far from the path set
out before me? I have worried that my words have fallen flat, have been less
than genuine, have been selfish, have been too many.
While I have never challenged an evil king and queen who
could have ended my life, I have heard some painful statements and I have
prayed for protection for my family. And surely, I have gotten to the place of
grief and despair more than once in my life. I have lost confidence in my
calling and in my ability to walk the journey of my calling.
And then I remember bread and water and hope—the divine
trinity of all good restoration stories—and I feel the revitalization that
begins to make its way through Elijah. I remember and recognize the family
members, friends, colleagues, and even strangers, who have looked me in the
eyes, perhaps cooked me a home-made meal, and undoubtedly heard me recite my
worries and fears. I’ve heard a few say, “get up and keep going.”
Throughout my time with this verses, I have kept feeling and
hearing the push to “tell the story.” Tell the story of trauma experienced and
of life continuing to hold on.
In his groundbreaking book, The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel A. Van der Kolk, convincingly teaches that trauma we experience
in life is held in our bodies in brutally evident ways (The biblical evidence
of this is found in Exodus 32: 31-32, “Jacob is struck on the hip.”) as well as
in the hidden, less obvious places of our minds—in the recesses of our souls,
covered up with the Weighted Blanket coping skill.
Van de Kolk recalls a group therapy session in which he,
along with a group of women who had experienced deep trauma, all sat together
in silence and as he watched, he too “felt a familiar sense of helplessness,
and surrounded by collapsed people, I felt myself mentally collapse as well.
Then one of the women started to hum, while gently swaying back and forth.
Slowly a rhythm emerged: bit by bit other women joined in. Soon the whole group
was singing, moving, and getting up to dance. It was an astounding transformation:
people were coming back to life, faces becoming attuned, vitality returning to
bodies.”
The doctor adds: “Just like you can thirst for water, you can
thirst for touch.”
While I do not believe that I can assign modern psychological
diagnoses to Elijah or the ancient kingdom of Israel, nor do I assign the word
“traumatic” to their circumstances, I can see the despondency on their faces
and hear their slow hums that echo with grief and accord. I feel their thirst,
I feel their desire to see God, to hear God’s guiding voice.
But it is loud. Raised voices are as fired artillery and the
barrage is soul-invasive.
I feel their desire to escape into wilderness and hear from
the birds and the wildflowers. To finish Mr. Berry’s poem:
I come
to the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with
forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of
still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind
stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and
am free.
It was quiet. And then, God spoke creatively. God spoke life
from silence.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book, When God is
Silent:
How shall I break the silence? What
word is more eloquent than the silence itself? In the moments before a word is
spoken, anything is possible. The empty air is a formless void waiting to be
addressed.
Anything is possible until God
exhales, inspiring the void first with wind and then with the Word, which is
both utterance and act, which makes something out of nothing by saying that it
is so. All by itself it is no more than a pile of dust…but God sifts divinity
into that dust. When God is through with it, this dust will bear the divine
likeness.[ii]
This dry dust is divine. God takes the dust and turns it and
molds it into beautifully formed pottery.
It was February 20, 2013. The day had come for the scheduled
C-section of a certain birth mother. She was with her father who up until
delivery time, had remained in the hospital room, a source of loving support
for her. I asked if she wanted me too to step outside and she quickly replied,
“stay, please.”
It had been a long few months for us. Jesse and I had made
the decision to adopt a child and the emotional stress was intense. I suppose
that every decision to bring a child into one’s home should be filled with some
stress, however the child is to arrive at a home! With adoption though, there
are many more people involved than two loving parents and medical personnel.
Lawyers, social workers, counselors, judges—not to mention other family
members—are all members of your support team but they are also involved in the
process.
I lived with constant questions. Some were lighthearted,
although practical: Are we really bringing another child into this small,
married housing apartment? Most were more intense: Are we prepared for this
financially, emotionally, mentally? What will it be like to have an adopted
child and a biological child? There was also the question all adopting parents
feel: What if it doesn’t happen? What if we have prepared so long for this—financially,
emotionally, mentally—and it doesn’t happen? Can we handle that grief? How will
we protect our sweet 2-year-old Annie? She has asked for none of this!
There I was, alone with Logan’s birth mother in the delivery
room and for such a place, it was calm and quiet. There were only a couple of
nurses, the doctor made her very quick entrance, delivered the healthy baby boy
who cried a very normal first cry, and the nurses wrapped him up and showed him
off to both of us.
At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought that I might
be seeing what I wanted to see and tried to compose myself. But in a few
minutes, as I was invited for his initial care and evaluation by the staff I
heard the nurses whisper to each other, “he has red hair!”
He had red hair. And in those moments, all the hospital noise
faded, Logan snuggled into his swaddling blanket, and every other sound and
sight blurred in the background. All the stress and fear fell off of my
shoulders as I leaned into the silence of God’s voice. Silence brought peace.
Silence brought God’s face into view and I knew in my heart of hearts that God
was with me and with Logan, with Jesse and with Annie. God was with this
loving, young birth mother. God was with her nervous father. God was with the tenderhearted,
respectful nurses. Though his red hair turned fairer and fairer to blond, and
now, as it is a very, in the fullest, 11-year-old-boy-sense of the term, “dirty
blond,” I will never forget that in silence, God emptied the chasm full of
fear, and filled it with most blessed assurance.
When has silence knocked you down? When has silence helped
you tell your story? When has despair brought you to the tree that held Jesus—the
tree that was broken, the body that was broken—a marker of death and ending,
only to replanted for life, flourishing life, everlasting?
Let us pray.
Wild Geese, By Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Whether they be geese or ravens, rushing rivers or small wells, may you too be fed in the wilderness. And whether you hear God’s peace in the grand concert hall or quiet sanctuary, in the song of the sparrow or in the hum of the earth, fall down, let the sounds reverberate until they are no more, and rest under the shade of the tree and be made whole again. Shalom and amen.
Yes, God is in the fiery furnace, the parting sea, the swarms
of pestilence and plague. And God is in the loud beginnings of creation, the
voice of the one, crying in the wilderness, and the voice of the rocks, splitting
in grief.
And God is also in the tiny speckly of sand in the desert,
the droplet of water in a mighty river, and the free-flowing butterfly who
flies in and around the vast valley.
God is with the elated and the disheartened, the whole and
the parts.
[i] (Iain W.
Provan, 2001, p. 524)
