Our Sunday Message

Where Deep Calls to Deep: 1 Kings 19:9-13
Rev. Dr. Kenneth A. Corr
August 20, 2006
Eleventh Sunday of Kingdomtide

  “And the word of the LORD came to him saying, ‘What are you doing here Elijah?’” Once in a while, that is the question that resonates in each of our lives. Most of the time, we are too busy to stop and ask. There are too many deadlines, too many demands, too many expectations to ask. Life is simply too full. But life has a way of making us face ourselves and ask the really important questions like, “What am I doing here?”
  In many ways, Elijah was a very postmodern man. He was a man of action; he expected results; he demanded a lot from himself and from God. When he failed, he crashed. What is more postmodern than that? And when he crashed, the question came, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
  In our busy, hectic, noisy, postmodern lives, we don’t tend to ask the really hard questions, the poignant questions, the existential questions, until the crash comes, then we ask.
  Tom was a stock broker with several million dollars worth of accounts. He often laughed at the people who had time to talk philosophy. His life was about making money for other people. But when Tom’s wife left with the three children, he was devastated. He told his pastor that he had done everything in his power to give his family everything. The one thing that he had never given them was himself.
  One day, he broke down in tears and asked, “What am I doing here?”
  Life has a way of raising the question. It is a practical question about what we are doing with our lives. It is a spiritual question about the direction of our lives. It is an existential question that demands that we take stock now. For Elijah, it came as a result of failure and a loss of confidence.
  Elijah was not used to failure. Elijah was the prophet who prayed and it did not rain for three years. Elijah was the prophet who promised that the measure of meal and little oil would not run out and it did not run out. Elijah was the prophet who raised the widow’s son from the dead. Elijah was the prophet who challenged the prophets of Baal and called fire down from heaven. Elijah was the prophet who prayed and the cloud smaller than a man’s hand produced a thunderstorm that flooded the land. He knew action. He knew miracles. He knew answered prayer. But he discovered disappointment, discouragement, depression, and despair. And in his despair, the question came, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
Don’t hear the question as a rebuke. It’s not like a parent who catches the children where they are not supposed to be. It’s a question that comes in the depth of our souls that asks us to examine what we need and where we are going.
  Connie had not been in church for years. She was a registered nurse and took great pride in caring for others. But she seldom cared for herself. Even though she knew better, she ignored the lump in her breast until it was too large to ignore. But she did not at first go to her doctor. She already knew the diagnosis. Instead, she went to the chapel in the hospital. She found a quiet place and sat for a while. It was there in the light of the stained glass windows that she asked herself, “What am I doing here?”
  When it comes, when life confronts us with the question, where do we go for an answer? Books and tapes can help. Sermons, seminars, and lectures are good. Spiritual directors and life coaches are valuable. God can use all of these. But Elijah learned that the answer can be found within us. God’s Holy Spirit is our inner guide who knows our unique truth. But we must learn to be still and listen.
I was on retreat last week with the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence group from the Memphis Theological Seminary. We were at a retreat center on Greer’s Ferry Lake in Arkansas. On Tuesday morning, we were invited to walk the grounds of the retreat center, find a quiet spot, and make some decisions for the coming year.
  I found a beautiful spot near the amphitheater overlooking the lake. It was quiet and just as I began to pray, someone somewhere nearby started a leaf blower.
  It is hard to find silence in our noisy world. TVs, Ipods, cell phones, radios, and Muzac, keep us in a pretty constant state of noise.
  It is not just the external noise that makes silence difficult. It is also the inner noise. When we try to be silent, we find that there are many different voices within us. There is the time manager’s voice. This is the voice that creates to-do lists. There is the critic’s voice. This is the voice that reminds you of all the things that you have done wrong. There is the neglected child’s voice. This is the voice that feels regret over all that you never got from your parents and now can’t get from your family and friends. There is the drill sergeant’s voice. It says, “Pull yourself together and stop the whining.” It is little wonder that some people prefer noise over the silence. And we often confuse those inner voices with the voice of God, especially the inner critic and the drill sergeant.
  For Elijah, all the usual ways of listening, or imagining, or experiencing God were now empty for him. There was wind, but God was not in the wind. There was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. There was fire, but God was not in the fire.
  And then there was something different, something completely unexpected. It was something that we can’t quite translate, an experience beyond explanation, an occurrence that can’t be put into words. The NRSV calls it “sheer silence.” The NASV calls it “the sound of a gentle blowing.” The KJV calls it “a still small voice.” What was it that refuses to be reduced to our human explanations and definitions?
  It was a silence so profound, so dense, so utterly sound-less that it echoed in Elijah’s soul. In the emptiness, there was fullness. In the void, there was presence. In the sound of the deep silence, Elijah heard the voice of God and got reconnected.
  Sometimes what we most need is to sit in the deep silence so that we can hear a voice that is not our own.
  There is a place where we can hear the voice of God that is beyond words;
  There is a place where the divine silence resonates with our inner truth;
  There is a place where the language of our souls vibrates with God’s self;
  There is a place where presence is felt in absence and fullness in emptiness;
  There is a place where the noise of the world is drowned out by the sound of God’s silence;
  There is a place where deep calls to deep.
  When you find that place, then you have found
   the still point,
   the sacred center
   the soul’s surest home.
  Connie went to the chapel in the hospital. She found a quiet place and sat for a while. It was there, in the light of the stained glass windows, that she asked herself, “What am I doing here?”
  She wept until there were no more tears. The afternoon sun cast shadows across the pews in the chapel. She sat for a long while, too exhausted to leave. She had imagined every possible future scenario and she grieved.
  But then, in the silence of that sacred place, she felt a presence and she heard a voice that was not a voice, a sound that was sound-less. For the first time in a long time, Connie felt connected to God.
It was many years after surgery and chemotherapy before Connie was able to talk about what she had experienced. She tried to explain it, but words were inadequate. The best that she could do was to say, “I listened to the silence and heard, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’”