The prophet Elijah must flee for his life after he proves that Israel’s God is God in his contest with Queen Jezabel’s prophets, who worship the Canaanite god Baal. Fed by an angel, Elijah flees south to the mountain of God, where 400 years earlier Moses and the people made the covenant and where Elijah now finds shelter in a cave.
Defending God and troubling the king have worn the prophet out. At Horeb Elijah crawls into a cave, its darkness and the despair also within him. Where is God?
Sunday’s reading begins with God calling Elijah out of the cave to stand on the mountain. God is not present in the old ways—not in the storm and fire that awed Moses and the people, not in wind, fire, and quaking earth like the Canaanite god, who rides the storm clouds.
Elijah hears God in a new way—in the sheer silence that follows the storm. God speaks deep within the interior silence of his consciousness.
In the sound of silence the voice of the God of hosts sends Elijah back to the very same fearful and violent place from which he has come. God charges him to anoint kings for Israel and rival neighbor Aram and to anoint a prophet to succeed him. In despairing of the old images of God, Elijah encounters God’s voice within, calling him to renew his mission in the political crosswinds of his time.
God speaks to Elijah.
At Horeb, the mount of God, Elijah came to a cave and spent the night there. Then the Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Now there was a 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.
When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance to the cave.
1 Kings 19.9, 11-13
- Where do you experience the sound of sheer silence? What call do you hear in the sound?
- What have solitude and silence taught you?