Rev. Jon Smoot

3/2/08

 

“The Still, Small Voice”

 

Elijah is a wanted man. He is running for his life after his spectacular defeat of the 850 prophets of the false gods Baal and Asherah on Mt Carmel related in Chapter 18. It’s a great read when you get home, if you don’t remember the story from Sunday School days. Just before our text, Elijah has the people seize the 850 pet prophets of Jezebel, which they did, and Elijah dispatched them. If that were not enough to raise the ire of the monarchy, Elijah further insulted the Royal House of Israel, blaming Ahab and Jezebel for the drought that was devastating the country, citing their disobedience to God and their idolatry.

 

Of course, Queen Jezebel wants him dead. Instead of repenting, which would’ve been a good idea, she swears Elijah will be a dead man within 24 hours. He flees south for the border, beyond her jurisdiction, into the wilderness of no-mans-land. Jezebel wants him, and Elijah no longer wants himself. In fact, he has a death-wish: He throws himself down under a tree in the wilderness, and prepares to die there. “I’m played-out God: I’ve got nothing left. Go ahead and take my life, I have obviously failed.”

 

Jezebel wants him, but God wants Elijah even more passionately than Jezebel. Our passage tells the story of the grace and gentleness of God, who sensitively and skillfully recommissions a burned-out, played-out, depressed servant of God, who wishes to die. God doesn’t shame him; tell him to get a grip, or to snap out of the depression. God instead tenderly draws him back from the abyss, provides the basics – a companion, bread and water and patiently encourages him to sit up and eat. God rekindles in Elijah a life-wish, in place of his death-wish. After Elijah revives, God twice allows Elijah to vent: to spew out and articulate his depression, his loneliness, his frustration, his rage. Then God gives Elijah a fresh vision of Elijah’s own self, which challenges Elijah’s false self-perception and pity party. Finally God challenges Elijah with a fresh, dangerous, task, of going back and overthrowing Ahab and Jezebel, but now with the promise of helpers and God’s protecting presence.

    

Why do I tell you this little story? I tell you this as an encouragement to all of us in our weary, daily living, and to point out to all of us in this story a pattern for true contentment in life, which is better than happiness. Dr. Thomas Chalmers, a 19^th century Scottish Presbyterian pastor, mathematician, and moral philosopher, says there are three Grand Essentials, three keys for contentment in life. The three essentials are: Something to do; Someone to love; and Something to hope for. In our story, God recommissions Elijah, giving him something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.

 

First: Something to do. Whenever God shows up to somebody in Scripture – whenever God shows up to you, it is never an end in itself – wherever we encounter the still, small voice: in community, in worship, in prayer, on the brink of the Grand Canyon, on a mountain, wherever – it is not so we can say “so that’s God – how nice.” God comes alongside of us to give us a fresh vision of who God is, and who we can be in relation to this God. God tells us of God’s desire to heal and transform the world, and encourages us to know our place in that transformation. 

We all of us, have something to do, probably too many thinks to do, but the reason so many of us feel fatigued or burned-out in what we’re doing is because burn-out is best defined as activity without insight. Whenever God speaks, we hear how much God so loves the world; that God gives, and gives, and gives – and this is the insight: God wants a world made whole, and our activity is to further that. So, God doesn’t let Elijah or us, off the hook, and tell us to take early retirement from God’s mission so that we can expire on a golf course. God re-fashions Elijah’s mission and our mission and then equips us for it. Elijah, and we, have something to do.

 

Second, Elijah has someone to love. Elijah was prepared to encounter God in typical Old Testament theophany and phenomena on Mount Horeb: The mountain-splitting wind, the rock-shattering earthquake, the all-consuming fire. Elijah was not prepared for what followed: the sound of sheer and gentle silence, a voice easily overlooked if pyrotechnics and bigger and better is all we’re looking for. God’s voice is not locked into any particular mode: God works quietly behind the scenes in historical events; God speaks through the voice of a friend; God speaks through music and literature; God speaks in times of desperation and hopelessness; God’s voice can even be present amid God’s silence, as in the birth of a child to an unwed mother amid scandalous circumstances or in the death of an innocent man on a cross. God speaks, in each and every circumstance, if we but listen.

 

In the quiet, Elijah wraps his face in his cloak at the gentle silence that is electric and pregnant with God’s presence. In this life-altering moment Elijah was overcome with awe and with God’s overriding love, mystery, mastery and majesty. What a wonderful way for God to convey to Elijah that Yahweh alone is sovereign, and there is none other. Jezebel is nothing. All his fears are put into the proper place. There’s only one sovereign, only one gracious force in which to be of awe, and it’s not Jezebel, it is not the destructive voices in your head; it is not the downturn in the economy; it is not your own fearful imagination; it is not your children; it is not your partner; it is not your boss; it is not your guilt over the past or your fear for the future - there is only one true sovereign in your life; only one who deserves the first and best of your love and who surrounds us with a gracious love that is more than sufficient for our daily, faithful living.

Elijah - and we - have someone to love.

 

Finally, Elijah has something to hope for: Almost teasingly, almost as an after-thought, God says in verse 18: “By the way, you’re wrong, Elijah, about being all alone. You’ve way miscounted – I cannot tell you the number of people in Israel that stand faithful. Besides, you will have Elisha as a companion, and the two of you are more than a match for anybody or anything – so go get ‘em. You have a companion, and you have me.”

 

God passionately wanted Elijah. God passionately wants you and me. God has in mind for us something to do, someone to love and something to hope for – and those are the grand essentials for a simple, joyful life. You do not have to run out to the self-help section at Borders and buy 18 books on happiness.

 

You have something to do: God has strategically placed you, wherever you are, in whatever situation in which you find yourself, and given you gifts and abilities to offer God’s healing and hope. When we realize this, our activity has insight – and power. As Frederick Buechner says, this is the intersection of our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger.

 

Leslye and George Johnson are seriously considering teaching at Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan. So many of you volunteer hundreds of hours at hospitals, at church, in shelters, food banks, Habitat - the list goes on and on – that’s activity with insight, as well as doing your day job as an offering to God. We will soon have in print your stories of faith at work shared in adult ed and other places. Let these stories encourage you in your reflection on what you’ve been called to do.   

You have someone to love: First and foremost, God. God, who loves you with an unconditional and undying love. And then, there is the love for the others that surround us in our homes, our workplaces, our friendships, and in our church. There are the homeless and the hungry to be loved; the lonely and the aged, the struggling and the grieving, to be loved.     

You have something to hope for: In the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, Red says to Andy: “Hope is a good thing, maybe the greatest thing – Hope is what keeps us alive.”

And it does. Mary was listening to a radio program the other day. A woman was telling her story about hope. She had gone to the doctor’s office to hear about her tests. The doctor said, “You have a rare and incurable cancer, and you have two months to live. I’m sorry” And then he abruptly left the room. Devastated, she lay sleepless on the couch for three days, with the television droning in the background to keep her company. She heard a commercial for a Cancer Center. She went to the Center, and after the tests, the doctor said: “Well, I don’t see an expiration date stamped on your forehead. Let’s see what we can do.” That was two years ago, and the woman’s cancer is in remission. Not all stories turn out that way, of course, but hope is one of the most powerful forces in human life.  

 

God assures us that God knows the plans for us, plans for our welfare and growth, to give us a future and a hope. Besides, like Elijah, we are not alone. We have been placed in a faith community – equipped with companions for the journey. We pursue different occupations and tasks, yet share one calling, one destiny – to be a transformed people in Christ, transforming God’s world, one day at a time, one person at a time, one small step at a time into a world made whole.  

 

Let us gather at the table of grace, and be refreshed and refueled for our common journey by the love of our God. Thanks be to God.