Pentecost 2 Year C

1 Kings 19: 1-15; Galatians 3: 23-29; Luke 8: 26-39


There was a sound of sheer silence.

The reading we heard from the first book of Kings includes that really well-known, and well-loved section where Elijah is desperate to get things right with God. It’s a reading that we think we know well. A reading that has been used by hymn writers and poets as inspiration. But it may not say quite what we imagine. We latch onto the moment when God appears in the silence – but there is quite a lot to explore before then.

Elijah’s not exactly clothed himself with glory up until now and we start our story with him fleeing, trying to escape the carnage he has caused. The journey seems to have been a time for reflection because we find him stopping under the broom tree and turning to God to admit that he has got things badly wrong. Here is a man taking responsibility for his actions, a man who might at one stage have thought he was better than the people around him and is now forced to admit that he is not. He has behaved as badly as his ancestors, presumably as badly as those he had labelled as enemies.

And in that moment and place, God interacted with him. Elijah was a broken man, a man who had lost the will to live. And then, and only then, an angel appeared and provided food and drink and encouragement to keep going. The angel met him in his brokenness, in the place where he had let go of hope or ambition and was able to take ownership of the way that he had behaved. It was in that place that he was given the resources to carry on. And he did so. He journeyed on and had yet another interaction with God. He confessed, again, to his misdemeanours. He sounds like a man who believes that he has nothing left to lose. A man who exposes his vulnerability and his inability to really work out who he was and why he had behaved so abominably. And again God responds to him. And, perhaps because by now he has nothing left to lose, he follows the instruction he is given.

He goes to the entrance of the cave, looking for the promised sign that God is passing over that place. And now we get to the verses that we all know – God isn’t in the wind or the fire – God is in the silence. And, like his ancestors before him, Elijah covers his face. This encounter is even more significant than the previous ones when Elijah heard the voice of God, this is an encounter with the presence of God. In this moment God is awesome, beyond our understanding. The climax of the story isn’t about hearing God, that’s already happened a couple of times, it’s about experiencing God.

I love the language of this translation – the sound of sheer silence. Other translations talk of a gentle whisper; a still small voice; a light breeze. They all convey something important, but, for me, the sound of sheer silence is hugely evocative and says something that is theologically important, something about what it means to encounter God. The whisper, the still small voice, the gentle breeze, all seem to me to be about something that comes to us. The word or voice of God as external to who we are. I experience the idea of sheer silence as bigger than that, as something that might envelop us; something that we might rest or pause within. Something that really draws us into the transcendent. Something that reminds us that God is bigger and further beyond comprehension that we will ever be able to imagine.

Let’s just jump for a moment to our Gospel reading. We heard about the man who was possessed by demons, demons who were then ordered to leave the man and inhabit the swine. And that reading tells us something important about what and how we think about evil. We talk, and read, about people being possessed, taken over, not in control of their own selves. We are not surprised to be invited to think about the negativity residing within a person, that part of them, and us, that has the capacity to do wrong; that part of them and us that we are quick to internalise.

It would be all too easy to take these two readings and to put God out there, reachable but external, and evil in here – not always accessible but most definitely carried within us. And so, in very simplistic terms, we invite God in and we attempt to find ways to drive evil out. And if we’re not careful, and thoughtful, we imagine ourselves to be passive victims of the fight for good and evil happening around us, imagine ourselves to be caught in the midst of a kind of push-pull of forces beyond our control.

I want to go back to Elijah sitting under the broom tree. He was reflecting, he was praying, he was almost certainly feeling that he was very alone. But, crucially, he was in touch with his own vulnerability. He was in touch with his own ability to do wrong. He took ownership of what had happened. He had the courage to look at himself and to admit that he wasn’t very keen on what he saw. He opened his heart to the nature of his true self, and that allowed God to be present to him in a more holistic way than he had previously experienced or imagined.

This very flawed human being found the God within himself, was exposed to his internal good alongside the evil he already recognised. He saw his own potential to make choices that were positive or negative – not just for those on whom he impacted, but on himself. One of the lessons for Elijah was that when he hurt others, he hurt himself. There is no victimless crime, and one of the victims is often the perpetrator.

As it was for Elijah, so it inevitably is for us. We are bearers of our own propensity for both good and evil. We are tempted to do the wrong we know we should not do. We look around us for guidance from the God we long to know, when actually we need to look within ourselves, to find the God who already resides with each one of us. To recognise the one who is sheer silence, absolute transcendent gift.

Elijah had a life changing encounter with God when he was at his most vulnerable. When he let go of any of his human motivations and allowed himself to be enveloped in that sheer silence that he knew, deep within himself, knew to be God. And then transformation happened. Then his new life began. Then he was freed from the shackles, freed from the internal demons, freed to be his God given self. Freed to dare to take ownership of his vulnerability and to work with it rather than against it.