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Readings: 1 Kings 19:1-16, 2 Peter 1:16-end

You’ll be pleased to know that after such accomplished choral music I won’t embarrass myself, nor offend you, by singing. ‘Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again.’ Do you know the song? ‘The sound of silence.’ 

Before we get to the sound of silence that we read about this evening in 1 Kings, I want to take you back to the darkness. Back to that moment when Elijah is sat under a tree, dejected, hunted, absolutely convinced that life is over and doing a great job of sulking about it. What had brought him to this place?

Well, the previous chapter in Kings talks about a contest that Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to. He asked for two bulls to be laid out and then he encouraged the prophets of the god Baal, some 450 of them, to build an altar and choose a bull to set upon it but not to light it and instead to call on the name of their god to do the deed and complete the offering. At noon, with nothing doing despite the prophets praying, Elijah rebuilt the derelict Lord’s altar dug a trench around it and asked for it, the bull and the kindling to be doused three times in water. He then prayed to the Lord and the fire of the Lord burnt everything, including the stones of the altar. Then Elijah called to the now fervent crowds to capture the prophets of Baal and have them all killed. Now when Jezebel, a follower of Baal and the latest in a growing cast of biblical female baddies hears this news, she vows to kill Elijah and he runs away. So here he is, sat, dejected, wondering how this could ever have happened. Who would have thought that people could react so badly and seek revenge when mass killings are committed? And if we think that such naïve indignation seems far-fetched, then I would encourage you to look at the rhetoric from much of the regions of conflict in our broken and still breaking world.

So, God sends an angel to bring Elijah sustenance to go on, and sends him on a journey to Mount Horeb and in a cave there he tells his story. And, to encourage and strengthen him further God invites him to go outside and encounter for himself the divine. And there is a wind, and an earthquake and a fire and God is not in any of them. And then…..a moment of sheer silence…and there is God.

I must admit that silence, in a spiritual sense is not always seen as a positive thing. I don’t know whether you have read the book called ‘Silence’ by Shusaku Endo, made in 2016 into a film featuring Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver. If you’re looking for a chirpy end to your weekend I might suggest it’s not viewing or reading for this evening. It’s a story about Portuguese priests, who travel to Japan during a time of Christian persecution in the country to bear witness to the Gospel and to find their colleague whom they have heard has abandoned his faith. They find themselves exposed to the torture and execution of their fellow Christians and throughout they sense the silence of God. A deafening, terrifying lack of contact that breeds frustration, doubt and fear. 

Silence is not always a good thing. There is a quote from a prayer used in a book of Christmas resources by the Wild Goose Worship Group from Iona that reads, ‘Will you come [God] into the quietness of this city? Not the friendly quietness as when lovers hold hands, but the fearful silence when the phone has not rung, the letter has not come, the friendly voice no longer speaks, the doctor’s face says it all? Will you come into that darkness, and do something different, not to distract, but to embrace your people?’(Cloth for the Cradle, Wild Goose Worship Group, 1997, ISBN 1 901557 01 4, Pg 92)

Silence can be a fearful thing. Silence can be a heart-breaking thing.

However, despite all the awe-inspiring things that Elijah is witness to up Mount Horeb searching for God, it is in the silence that he finds his Lord. And for many who have shared this faith journey before us, they too speak of finding God in the silence. You may have found him in the sheer silence, when the vista of life opens up and we find ourself, without distraction, in the presence of something, someone beyond us. I think such silence it’s something worth searching for. 

However, across Europe, according to the World Health Organisation roughly 65 percent of the population live with noise levels deemed hazardous to health. The fire engine siren in 1912 was 96 decibels at a distance of 11 feet, by 1974 it was 114 decibels and in 2019 up to 123 decibels to cut through the surrounding din. And that is of course only the tip of the iceberg when we consider the inner silence that we might seek or lack.

I don’t know about you, and I hope I’m alone but fear that I’m not, what’s the first thing that I do when you wake up at the start of the day? I reach for my phone and the input begins. I check messages, I look at the news, I see what lies ahead on the calendar. It’s all good, laudable stuff but before you know it the earbuds are in and the podcasts start and then it’s out into the world to walk along busy roads, until you get into work where through email, and Skype and for me the roar of Typhoons, or the rumble of the C17 or, in my current base, the drone of Grob Tutors interrupts the conversation in the crew rooms and meetings and even morning prayers and on it goes until the head hits the pillow and the lights go out. I wonder. I think there might have been days when there has not been a moment, internal or external.  The question within all that is, if silence is where God is, and we can’t find a moment of it in our lives, often because we actively seek to avoid, then could it be that we are missing God’s presence with us and for us? 

So, I leave us with a challenge. We need to find silence, even just a touch more of it. To have the silence that might provide for us, not boredom, nor a lack of something, but that which gives us life and passion and purpose like Elijah. As Lent approaches, it may well be that silence is the thing in that season that we actively seek in order to witness God and find the courage to move on. 

The Wild Goose Worship Group have another prayer about silence:

In the mystery of your presence, no words are needed.
In the depth of your silence, no sound is necessary.
In the face of your Word, no voice need respond. 

‘Be still,’ you say, ‘and know that I am God.’

So we will be still and listen…

To the beating of our hearts,
To the racing of our minds,
To the pondering of our souls,
Knowing that your Spirit,
Your Holy Spirit,
is beating, moving, provoking
within us and among us.
We will be still, and if we do not take off our shoes,
we will yet remember that this is Holy Ground 
because you have promised 
to be where your people meet 
in Jesus’ name. 

So we will wait;
patiently or impatiently
we will wait for Jesus.

Amen.
(A Wee Worship Book: Fifth Incarnation, Wild Goose Resource Group, 2015, ISBN 978 1 84952 322 6, Pg 77)