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1 Kings 19:1-15a

Hearing the Silence

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1 Kings 19:1-15a

Hearing the Silence

It was very late at night
when the young Baptist minister answered the phone.
The voice on the other end
threatened him with death,
then hung up.

The young minister
walked into his kitchen,
and with trembling hands
put on a pot of coffee,
then sank into a chair
at the kitchen table.

Listen now to his own words.

“I was ready to give up.
With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me,
I tried to think of a way
to move out of the picture
without appearing a coward.
In this state of exhaustion,
when my courage had all but gone,
I decided to take my problem to God.
With my head in my hands,
I bowed over the kitchen table
and prayed aloud.

“The words I spoke to God that midnight
are still vivid in my memory.
‘I am here taking a stand
for what I believe is right.
But now I am afraid.
The people are looking to me for leadership,
and if I stand before them
without strength and courage,
they too will falter.
I am at the end of my powers.
I have nothing left.
I’ve come to the point
where I can’t face it alone.’

“At that moment,
I experienced the presence of the Divine
as I had never experienced God before.
It seemed as though I could hear
the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying:
‘Stand up for justice, stand up for truth;
and God will be at your side forever.’
Almost at once
my fear began to go.
My uncertainty disappeared.
I was ready to face anything.”

That young minister
was Martin Luther King Jr.
The year was 1956,
and the Montgomery bus boycott
had been going on for months,
much longer than anyone expected.
The power structure in Montgomery
saw the boycott
as an economic threat.

King, the man of the hour,
appeared as the confident new leader,
publicly confronting racism and injustice
in a spirit of nonviolence.
Yet privately he was a reluctant prophet,
willing to work for social change,
but uncomfortable with the spotlight
of national leadership.
And he was receiving death threats–
sometimes dozens each day.

What happened to King
at his kitchen table
was nothing transitory.
Subsequent events demonstrated
that it brought about a lasting transformation.

Three days later,
King’s home was bombed.
His family was nearly killed.
How did he react?
“Strangely enough,”
he later wrote,
“I accepted the word of the bombing calmly.
My religious experience a few nights before
had given me the strength to face it.”

News of the bombing
brought a crowd to the site.
Soon this crowd became a mob,
pressing up against the shattered house
and shouting for vengeance.

King mounted his broken porch
and raised his arms.
“We must meet hate with love,”
he called out.
“Remember, if I am stopped,
this movement will not stop
because God is with this movement.
Go home with this glorious faith
and this radiant assurance.”

The mob dissolved,
their mood reversed,
the message of gospel nonviolence
ringing in their hearts.

Now a different story,
a much older one.

The once bold Hebrew prophet
is frightened out of his wits.
The queen has promised
to have him killed.
So he flees, he runs far,
taking refuge in the wilderness.
He sits down beneath a solitary tree,
then prays that he will die
before he is captured by soldiers.
Utterly exhausted,
he falls asleep.

Something touches him
and a voice wakes him,
commanding him to eat.
Is it an angel?
Food and water are beside him,
and he eats and drinks,
then falls asleep again.

Once more the touch, the voice,
the command to eat and drink,
and now mention
of a journey he must take.
The prophet gets up, eats and drinks,
then travels a long distance
to a mountain holy to his people.
He finds the cave he is looking for
and spends the night there.
It is not a quiet night.

The voice of the Lord himself
addresses him in that dark cave,
asking him his business
there at that holy site.

The prophet’s answer is
self-centered and despairing.
He’s been faithful,
unlike everybody else.
He recites all the bad news
of recent times,
none of the good news.
He claims to be the only one
the Lord can count on.
This solitary prophet
is focused entirely on himself
and frightened out of his wits.

The Lord summons his prophet
to stand outside the cave.
The prophet does not move,
but still the Lord puts on
a show of power for him:
hurricane force wind,
earthquake,
flames of fire.
Then comes silence.
The Lord is not in the wind,
the earthquake, the fire.
Where the prophet encounters the Lord
is in the silence.
And so the prophet
finally steps out from the cave.

Again the Lord asks the prophet
what he is doing there.
And the prophet’s answer
is the same as before,
self-centered and despairing.

The Lord does not refute his prophet,
but tells him
what he is to do.
The Lord points him
to a larger picture, a more promising reality
than the prophet had imagined.

The prophet learns
that a future awaits him,
and that it is bigger than himself.

This prophet is Elijah.
He is a major figure in the Old Testament,
mentioned also in the New Testament.
The Book of Ecclesiasticus,
written centuries after his time,
sings of him:
“How glorious you were, Elijah,
in your wondrous deeds!
Whose glory is equal to yours?
. . . .
At the appointed time, it is written,
you are destined to calm the wrath of God
before it breaks out in fury,
to turn the hearts of parents to their children,
and to restore the tribes of Jacob.” 1

These stories of Martin Luther King
and Elijah are dramatic.
They deal with matters of life and death
and the fate of nations.

But every one of us
sometimes sits at the kitchen table
in the midnight hour,
afraid and at the end of our strength.

Every one of us
sometimes hides in a cave,
overcome by desperation,
thinking only of ourselves.

It’s then that the silence speaks.

The silence announces
that we have a future.
The silence points to a larger picture,
one that is not, but can be.
Many others have places in this picture;
it is not all about us.

Hearing the silence
is what prophets do.
The real ones, at least.
It is no easy job.
Not for Elijah, Martin Luther King,
or any prophet of our time
or in this room.

But when the silence speaks,
and we listen,
there comes as well the strength.

The strength
that came to Martin Luther King
when he knew
he was at the end of his powers.

The strength
that came to Elijah
while he hid in a cave
out of fear for his life.

That same strength is abundant.
It is available to us all.

Listen to the silence.
Accept the strength.
Walk into the future
where God waits for you.

1. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 48:4, 10.