A sound of sheer silence, August 9 2020, Trinity 9

Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher and mathematician, in the 1650s jotted down one of the most counterintuitive aphorisms of all time: “All the misery of mankind comes from not knowing how to sit still in a room.” (Pensées, 139)

Was he serious? Surely having to stay quietly in one place is more like psychological torture? Isn’t this sort of advice completely opposed to the human spirit – the idea that there is, potentially, a whole planet to explore. And yet, during lockdown, we’ve been forced to retreat into our homes. I wonder how you have found this experience. And whether you have found yourself restless.

The reading from the Hebrew Testament this morning has this wonderful description of Elijah experiencing God. The passage begins with him deeply depressed, alone, and isolated. He goes to a sacred place, a mountain. And how does he experience God – he doesn’t experience God in the rock-breaking force of the wind, nor in the earthquake or fire. What Elijah experiences is the sound of sheer silence.

Have you ever heard the silence? Sheer silence?

We live in a world full of noise, particularly in London. But the sound of silence isn’t just the absence of noise. It’s more profound than that. It might be found at the end of an extraordinary performance of music, there’s a moment before the applause, a thick dense silence; it might be found in the lull of a very intense and emotional conversation. It’s the sort of silence that you might get in churches and holy places.

So, what difference does it make? I often get asked this. What difference does going to church make. Does meditation make any tangible difference to my life? It’s a fair question. And I believe that it makes a profound difference. It’s not like the instant hit you get from eating a chocolate bar or cup of coffee.

The change is subtle, almost imperceptible, but we are changed when we pray, when we meditate. The one thing that silent contemplation does is change us. It softens our hearts, fills us with God’s love.

Let’s look at what happens to Elijah. The Roman Catholic priest and theologian, James Alison, sees this story as the ‘un-deceiving of Elijah’ (2001:29). He puts it like this.

Prior to our reading this morning, Elijah is on Mount Carmel, doing battle for God. He sees himself as a champion fighter, zealous for God’s name. He sets up a battle between two rival deities in order to prove that his god is superior. It’s the rather primitive tribal form of religion which we sadly still often see. My god is bigger than your god, and it’s had a devastating effect on humanity.

In the course of this rivalry, Elijah has no qualms about humiliating and murdering his opponents. On Carmel, he is self-confident, mocking, and secure in his righteousness. And yet, after this bloody victory, he sinks into depression and doubt. He cries out to God: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life’ (18.4).

What follows is a time of exhaustion and heart-break. And yet during this time, his theological and personal understanding changes and matures. By the time he gets to Horeb, he emerges with a very different perspective on what it means to be zealous on God’s behalf.

If the Carmel episode is all about a religiosity of rivalry and domination, of scapegoating and destroying in the name of God, then Horeb signifies the undoing of such theology and activity.

On Carmel, Elijah saw himself as in rivalry with the prophets of Baal, competing at the same level. By the end of his time on Horeb, his heart slowly cracks open, he experiences God in the sound of sheer silence, or as one translation puts it, ‘a still small voice’. As the story of Elijah evolves beyond our reading today, this voice operates at an entirely different level, and it has begun to reach him on mount Carmel.

As Elijah begins to listen to this still small voice, he becomes more self-effacing. He learns to serving the God who has no interest in sacred rivalry, magic and manipulation, the God who doesn’t need to be zealously promoted or defended.

And what of us, and our contemporary scene? Religiously justified violence remains horribly active in our world. Sometimes the violence is overt, for example, ISIS, Boko Haram, and various brands of fundamentalism.

Sometimes it’s more covert – it can involve self-righteous posturing, a tendency to judge and render irrelevant those who disagree with us.

In truth, wherever religion legitimates judgementalism and violence, the false sacred is at work, operating at the level of our fears and projections. This sort of faith liberates no one, and transforms nothing.

In this story, we glimpse the possibility of another way. And it involves creating space in our lives where we are attentive to God’s still small voice. For me, this has meant daily meditation. You may discover it in other ways. In today’s Gospel reading, we find Jesus going on his own up a mountain to pray.

We likewise need to find our own desert place, which we can enter by something as simple as switching off our phone for 15 minutes. Doing so, we may begin to discern the contours of our inner landscape. After the initial relief of being away from the relentless noise and pressure, we may begin to be aware of features that disturb us. But if we stay put, if we are able to resist the urge to “get me out of here”, we may begin to detect a deeper reality: an awareness, deep within, of a merciful, mysterious loving presence.

Such encounters will change us. It may be a gradual liberation from our own violent and self-righteous tendencies, as we learn to hear God’s still small voice.

As we continue to face restrictions on our mobility during this pandemic, may I encourage you and myself to learn to hear, to live as a listener – with a humble and contrite heart. That we may discover how true zeal for God is enacted.  

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. 

References

Alison, J (2001) ‘Theology amidst the stones and dust’, Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay, Crossroad Publishing, New York, NY.