No See 'Um'
1 Kings 19:1-15
June 20, 2010
Elijah is considered the greatest and most dynamic of Old Testament prophets. When John the Baptist appeared preaching the baptism of repentance in the wilderness he was dressed in a fashion that made everyone think first of Elijah. Even Jesus was surmised to be another Elijah and it was to Elijah that some thought Jesus was crying out to on the cross. And to this day at the Passover Seder meal, a setting at the table is always left open for Elijah to take. Taken up into heaven aboard a chariot of fire, Elijah never died.
Yet as veterans of Sunday Schools know, Elijah was not always the gentle holy man. In fact, he provided the other model of the aggressive, ferocious holy man who warred openly with the king and queen of Israel, withholding rain from the land, raising to life the son of the widow of Zarephath, promising that Jezebel’s fate would be a terribly dogged and bloody one, and finally slaying the numerous prophets of Ba‘al. Elijah would be in deep trouble in Canada, for this was not a gesture of multi-culturalism. There was only One God, any other claims of divinity were dangerously false, so off with their heads.
I have hinted at a gentler Elijah, but he hasn’t arrived yet. We are never really able to separate the painful, tragic, unfortunate and unsuccessful aspects of our lives from the joyous, serene and successful parts. The most spiritual person in the world can never escape his/her physical body, and holiest of prophets is decidedly unholy some of the time. Thank God that is the case, because we have to know that being human is no obstacle to being holy.
Elijah is all too human right now. After he has destroyed quite literally the human infrastructure of the false religion, the Queen is not pleased. She sends her men to Elijah’s men with the unambiguous message that she will see to it Elijah meets the same brutal and bloody fate as the prophets of Ba‘al. Elijah knows that this is not mere rhetoric. She has the will and the means to carry out her threat that very day, so Elijah finds himself once again on the run, this time deep into the wilderness. What is most surprising, daunting, comforting and frightening all at once is that Elijah is really depressed, just wanting to lay down and go to sleep and never wake up. He pleads with God, “It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life.” It is nice to know that such a great holy person feels the same angst and doubt most of us have experienced more than once. But it is also terrifying to know that being as holy a prophet as Elijah has been is no protection from such depression and doubt. We prefer our superheroes without flaws or weaknesses. Our most cherished desire is that someone has to be perfect.
At this moment of deep despairing slumber, Elijah is touched by an angel and told to get up and eat. Almost manna and the water out of a rock and the angel won’t stand for any self-pity. You have to eat because there’s a long journey still ahead of you. There is something more important to do than wallow in your misery.
So, Elijah arose, ate and drank, and that sustained him all the way on a mystical journey of forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God. Maybe this isn’t quite clear: Elijah traveled from north Israel, Samaria, all the way down into the Sinai Peninsula. Horeb is the alternative name in the Old Testament for Mount Sinai, where the Ten Commandments had been delivered. Once again it took that significant Biblical number of 40 days and nights, the flood dried out, before he arrived for he knew not what. Finding a cave to hunker down in, God suddenly asks the impertinent question, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Wasn’t God listening to what was going on, we wonder? Elijah had to answer anyway, “I have been a zealot for the Lord God, but nobody else has. In fact, Israel has abandoned God, gone worshiping idols, murdered God’s prophets, and I alone am left, and now they are after me.” Is that reason enough? Elijah probably whispered under his breath. God did not answer him directly, but had another direction. “Go out of this cave and stand on the mountain, because I’m coming through.”
This doesn’t sound like much of an answer to a problem, or is it? When a friend or family member has a crisis or dilemma and needs to decide what to do in the face of an impossible situation, what seems to help most of the time? You go to visit them, not with profound solutions, but with the assurance of your presence that he or she is still worthwhile and competent. Let’s be clear: God did not visit too many people back then either. It was the right gift at the right time, but it was not a normal visit. Yet this is the point, it was not a normal kind of human visit.
And behold, the Lord passed by. The simplest statement of reality - God was here. Lots of people make a big fuss about God being here for them, and lots of people deny that God, any God, was ever here. Elijah stood on this mountain, known for its violent storms, and a strong wind, perhaps not unlike our famous 1912 cyclone, splitting the rocks and don’t you have to watch out. Since Spirit and wind are the same word, God as wind is back in vogue.
But the Lord was not in the wind.
After the wind, there was an earthquake. We know more about earthquakes than they did then, but if you’ve been in one, there’s no greater feeling of being out of control and totally in the hands of another force. After a severe earthquake, such as in Haiti, you hear a lot of people talking about God, both positively and negatively.
But the Lord was not in the earthquake.
And after the earthquake there was a fire. What really destroyed San Francisco in the 1906 earthquake was not the quake itself, but the fire that erupted as a consequence.
But the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire, a still small voice. “The sound of sheer silence” Eugene Peterson attempts the enigmatic phrase, meant to be finally indecipherable. If we were able to definitively define what this still small voice is, you know there would be human beings trying to replicate it. If you can speak like God, then maybe you can be God, and that we know through history is danger and tragedy.
Elijah is not performing quantitative and qualitative analysis on this sound of silence. He comes out to the entrance of the cave with his face wrapped in his cloak, for he dare not see the presence he unmistakably feels. Same question, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Same answer from Elijah, but this time God had something specific to say. Go back to where you’ve come from, and get involved in the fray again, no hiding. Anoint a couple of kings and choose your successor, Elisha. There are 7000 of the faithful left in Israel. An encounter with God is not a social visit, not an intellectual exercise that you can write down and put aside, but a call that grasps you, invigorates, dispenses with the depression, and sends you out against your will into the messy hurt of this world.
The narrator of this eerie passage understands that God is not natural, not to be identified with physical forces, and then only finally described by a elusive unhearable sound. A ‘No See ‘Um’ gnat that bites. The identity of God has been reduced today to a word game that has rendered God irrelevant. Even in the church, there are many who call for a new non-theistic God, although I have heard no one give an explanation of what that means that makes any sense. We want to make God into the wind, fire, and earthquake, a crystal or a prayer stone, even a church building, something we can understand, something we can use.
We cannot use God, we cannot even describe what God is. Our all too human tendency is to proceed as if we have God pinned down, a tiger by the tail, but God doesn’t have a tail and is not a tiger. Using the title of an earlier book by J. B. Philips, our God is too small, and that makes our options too few, our minds and spirits too confined and limited. When we allow for the God who is too big, too vast, infinity undefined, there is no limit to what God will have you doing.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan