Silence = Life

Preached at

Midway Hills Christian Church

June 20, 2004

1 Kings 19:1-4; 8-15a

 

 

Tomorrow is the first day of summer.  For those of us who live in Texas, we know that a date on the calendar doesn’t do much for us when temperatures have long been in the 90’s before the summer solstice. Which, by the way is the longest day of the year.

 

I’ve lived in Texas for over ten years now and I still haven’t learned how to beat the heat.  I’ve tried taking cool showers, exercising in the early morning instead of the afternoon, and carrying bottles of water with me every where I go.  Now, I am studying the life of desert turtles.  Did you know the Tortoise of the Mojave Desert can go a whole year without a drink of water and can endure desolate, dry, and distressing landscapes.

 

How does she do it?  Well first of all she gets lots of sleep.  She goes to bed in November and awakens refreshed and ready to go in late March.  She is also able to find nourishment in the most unlikely places, gleaning mineral resources from the sand of the desert.  The tortoise will also eat the spring flowers of the desert and store all the liquid from the plants in her body.  All the liquid.  Nothing is evacuated.  The tortoise’s bladder will grow to 30 percent of her body weight, holding the liquid so that it is reabsorbed and recycled into her system.

 

All of that contributes to the most important survival tactic the tortoise has in the desert:  homeostasis—a level of inner balance that allows her to thrive in a hostile environment.

 

In our Old Testament lesson for today, Elijah is a lot like the desert tortoise.  Many of us probably have a favorite Old Testament prophet and I am willing to bet that a lot of you identify with Elijah.  A fiery prophet, zealous for God’s causes.  Always bumping up against the establishment and in conflict with the status quo. Friend of widows and the poor.

 

Elijah’s zeal led him to a head-on confrontation with 450 prophets of the arch-enemy of Yahweh, the Canaanite storm god, Baal.  He challenged them to a “prophet show-down” and in the end, Elijah and Yahweh won.  Not only were the Baal prophets humbled by the experience, they were put to death by order of Elijah.

 

And that is where our story picks up for today.  Ahab the king of Israel and his wife Jezebel, were ardent worshippers of Baal.  So when they found out what Elijah had done, they put a contract on his life and scripture tells us that Elijah was scared.  So scared that he fled for his life into the desert wilderness.  Discouraged, tired and afraid Elijah cries out to God, “Enough!  Just go ahead and put me out of my misery.”

 

This story from 1 Kings tells us that being a prophetic voice in the world is hard work.  Even in the face of great victories for the sake of justice we find ourselves tired, discouraged, afraid, and maybe even at the point of death.  When we read on a little further what we realize is:  even prophets need time to rest and renew in order to cultivate an inner balance that will sustain them in the work of justice for the long haul.

 

Like the tortoise, the first thing Elijah does when he gets to the wilderness is to sleep.  He says to God that he wants to die, but instead he takes a nap.  Upon waking from his sleep Elijah is nourished in some unlikely ways with a feast set before him in the wilderness.  And in the strength of that food and drink he traveled for forty days and nights to Mt. Horeb, the place where the story of Israel first began with the burning bush of Moses and the giving of the law.

 

Now Horeb has a history of God activity or theophanies as they are called.  It is the place where God shows up throughout Israel’s history, and when God shows up it’s quite a show.  You may remember that when Moses prepared the people to meet God on Horeb at the giving of the commandments he had the base of the mountain cordoned off so that the people could not get too close.  Because Moses knew from experience that when God did show there was usually fire, and wind and earthquakes and smoke.

 

So who can blame Elijah when he gets to Horeb and expects to find God in a pyrotechnic display?  When he gets to the mountain he spends the night in a cave and God asks, “Why are you here Elijah?”  Elijah tells God how discouraged he is, and God invites him out of the cave for a different spiritual experience. God is going to pass by.  So Elijah waits.  There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks but God was not in the wind.  After the wind, an earthquake; but God was not in the earthquake.  After the earthquake, fire; but God was not in the fire.  And after the fire…the sound of sheer silence.  Elijah found God in the silence.

 

I believe this experience taught Elijah and teaches us that in order for the prophetic work for justice to be sustained, we must take time not only for rest and nourishment—we also need to take time to tend to the inner workings of our soul.  Like the desert tortoise, we need internal balance to sustain us for the work of justice in a hostile environment.  How do we achieve that inner balance?  By spending time in silence.  God is found in the silence of our own hearts and beings.  In silence we touch who we are and whose we are.  We are reminded of why we do the work of justice.

 

Cultivating silence individually and communally is a prophetic act.  Think about it.  In a culture that is so driven by the clock and sound bites and hurry, to slow down and keep silence is a countercultural act.  People gathering to keep silence for the purpose of hearing and finding God create a space for God to show up, for God to act in the world.

 

Poet Gunilla Norris says it this way 

Within each of us there is a silence—a silence as vast as the universe.  We are afraid of it…and we long for it.  Silence is our deepest nature, our home, our common ground, our peace.  Silence reveals.  Silence heals.  Silence is where God dwells.  We yearn to be there.  We yearn to share it.  And yet in our present culture, silence is something like an endangered species….Sharing silence with others is a political act.  Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses, to our selves.  It locates us.  Without that return we can go so far way from our true natures that we end up quite literally, beside ourselves.  We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.  We endanger the delicate balance which sustains our lives, our communities, and our planet.

 

Just like Elijah, it is hard for us prophetic types to slow down and expect to encounter God in the silence.  We are used to encountering God in our work with the poor and the homeless, in our care for the environment, in speaking out against discrimination.  The invitation from the text this morning is for us also to encounter God in rest, renewal, and sheer silence. Jesus knew this.  In the midst of healing the masses he would often ‘steal away’ to a solitary place for prayer and renewal and the disciples would have to go looking for him.

 

In the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, we have embraced the adage “Silence equals death.”  You see, there is a silence that leads to life…and a silence that leads to death.  When we are silent in the face of injustice because of fear of ridicule or reprimand, or for fear that somehow more will be required of us—that is a silence that leads to death.  And black lesbian poet Audre Lorde has reminded us that kind of silence will not protect us.  She asks, “What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? [T]he transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation.”

 

It is that kind of silence that kept African Americans in Texas enslaved for two years after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.  This past Saturday was Juneteenth, the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States.  On June 19^th, 1865 Union soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas with the news that the war had ended and that the slaves were now free.

 

No one knows exactly why or how that news of freedom got silenced for two years.  Some say the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. Others claim that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation.

 

For many years after the news of freedom was no longer silent, there were Juneteenth celebrations all over Texas, with many former slaves and descendants making an annual pilgrimage back to Galveston.  But then the silence that leads to death crept back in again.  History text books and class room lectures began leaving out that part of the history. Employers were reluctant to grant time off to workers to celebrate the date. Unless June 19^th fell on a weekend, participation in Juneteenth celebrations were virtually impossible.

 

In recent history we have seen a resurgence of Juneteenth celebrations as a result of the Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s.  And on January 1, 1980, Juneteenth became an official state holiday.

 

The book of Ecclesiastes tells us that silence has its seasons.  There is a time to keep silence and a time to speak.  Elijah learned that lesson on Mt Horeb.  Notice in the story that after he encountered God in the silence, he didn’t set up house in the cave.  The silence called him out.  God in the silence said, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.  When you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram.”

 

Elijah’s silence was transformed into language and action.  It gave him the strength to go back out into the world and finish the job.  This time it would not be a contest with an army of enemy prophets, but the overthrow of an entire corrupt regime.

 

Nothing much has changed about the world since Elijah’s day.  As followers of the God of Israel and Jesus the Christ, we are called to speak out and act up for just causes.  The good news for today is that we can be honest with God when we are tired and discouraged.  We can give ourselves permission to rest and renew and claim the promise that God will come to us even in sheer silence.  Amen.