If there’s one comment I hear more frequently than any other from faithful people in this congregation, it might be this: I really don’t know the Bible.  There’s so much about the Bible I don’t know.  I want to say in response, “Of course there is.  There’s so much to know.  It’s a never-ending process.  That’s why we stay engaged in Bible study.  That’s why we continue to seek to discover our stories in the stories of the Bible.  It’s such a rich book, so filled with wisdom and revelation and insight and grace.” 

All this to say that as I begin my sermon this morning, I want to offer an introduction that may sound a little like something from a course called Bible 101, but I want to set this morning’s reading from First Kings in context.  What we will be focusing on this morning is a story about the prophet Elijah.  In these summer weeks our lectionary schedule is calling us to stories about the prophet Elijah.

Elijah is a very familiar name from the Old Testament even if we might not be able to remember off the cuff a lot of details about him or his life.  Unlike some of the other prophets – Isaiah, for instance – there’s no book named Elijah with a collection of his writings.  Elijah shows up, however, as a major character in the book of First Kings.  Elijah is known less for what he said than for what he did.  He was a prophet of mighty acts.  And we know how important he is by the fact that in the story of Jesus’ transfiguration – the time when Jesus turned dazzling white before his closest disciples on the top of the mountain and was revealed to be the Messiah of God – two great figures of the past stood with him.  The one was Moses, the other Elijah.  Elijah’s story is foundationally important to the story of the people of Israel.

So how does Elijah come into the picture?  We need to go back a bit to set the scene.  We need to start perhaps even with kings David and Solomon to discover why Elijah and some of the other great prophets became so important.  Under David and Solomon all twelve tribes of Israel had been organized into one united kingdom.  After Solomon’s death, however, the people of the ten northern tribes rebelled against some of the succeeding kings of the Davidic line and set up their own kingdom, which they called Israel.  Only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to the kings who followed in David’s line and who continued to reign in the southern kingdom called Judah.  The northern kingdom of Israel, with its capital in Samaria, and the southern kingdom of Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, coexisted sometimes as friends but more often as enemies.  There’s nothing like a family dispute to show the ugliness of human being battling human being.

People of the northern kingdom of Israel intermarried with neighbors and with people who conquered them over time.  In large numbers they began to stray from the ways of their ancestors.  They began to be called Samaritans, despised by the purer line of David’s ancestors in the southern kingdom of Judah.  Thus, the story of the “good” Samaritan.  In the eyes of the people of Judah how unlikely that a Samaritan from the north might have the compassion to stop and help a man suffering alongside the road.  How could there be anything like a “good” Samaritan?

So we can understand how the culture of the northern kingdom grew ripe for prophets who dared to confront the kings on grounds of faithlessness.  Approximately eight hundred years before the birth of Christ the prophet Elijah appeared on the scene to do battle with King Ahab.  Ahab had tried to cement a political alliance with his neighbors by marrying Jezebel of Sidon and by promoting the worship of their god, Baal, alongside Yahweh, the God of Israel’s heritage.  Competition between the followers of Baal and Yahweh ensued, and Elijah eventually put on an overwhelmingly impressive demonstration of Yahweh’s superiority over Baal, culminating in the slaughter of all of the prophets of Baal.  (The Bible stories can be quite gory at times.) 

And that’s where our story for this morning begins, as we hear it in First Kings, chapter 19, beginning with verse one:

[1 Kings 19:1-15]

So here is the great prophet Elijah, holed up in a cave, afraid for his life at the hands of Jezebel, yet expressing a death wish to God.  Life is too much for him.  He sounds so modern, doesn’t he?  In the midst of the last century the philosophical ideas of existentialism were all the rage.  You know, that we find ourselves adrift in an indifferent, even hostile, universe, yet shouldered with the added burden of having to summon the strength to continue on nevertheless.  Elijah sounds so much like that: I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.

But this ancient story from the Bible seeks to give us a different voice.  Huddled in his cave, convinced of his unique status as the last remaining person of faith, Elijah’s primary temptation is to think that he has to go it alone, that it is all up to him.  But this story gives us another perspective.  From ancient times the Bible illuminates our present time.  It calls Elijah out of his cave to behold the presence of God passing by.  It reassures Elijah that as hopeless as life might seem to him at the present time, God still has a future planned for him.  A life after the cave.  A life after despair and desperation.  Yes, Elijah is called to summon the strength to go on.  But he will not be alone.  God will be with him.  Why else would God have sent angels to feed him along the way, in his times of anxiety and stress?

Kathy and I were with a long-time friend recently who just retired from a forty-year career as a public school junior high teacher.  The last years had carried more than their share of stress and tension.  By the time of her retirement she just wanted to submit her letter and walk quietly away.  But the word got out anyway, and those students and colleagues who had appreciated her came forward with lovely words and little gifts of appreciation.  The one she remembered especially was the box of homemade chocolate chip cookies she received from one of the junior high girls she had taught.  The retiring teacher was struck by the appropriateness of the gift of cookies.  How better for an adolescent girl to express her affection for her teacher than with a gift of homemade cookies?

I suddenly remembered in our friend’s telling of her story how in my early days here I watched from my church study window one day as a little girl and her mother came with a box of homemade chocolate chip cookies.  That little girl loved sitting next to me during “time with children” every Sunday morning, and to show her affection asked that her mother help her bake me some chocolate chip cookies.  I suppose I remember that scene to this day because I must have had moments of anxiety in those early days among you that were assuaged in part by the affirmation of a little girl’s affection.  That little girl graduated from college last month.  Lots has happened since those cookies long ago.  God has been faithful to her and to me. 

God sends us those angels along the way to reassure us and, yes, to strengthen us for what we will face beyond our caves of anxiety and fear.  I suspect that when Elijah first approached King Ahab with words of truth from God calling Ahab’s faithfulness into question he might not have thought his life would end up being threatened by Queen Jezebel.  We never know where life’s journey takes us when we attempt to remain faithful to our higher calling.  But what we do know is that in following our calling we will be fed by angels of God and sustained for the journey beyond.

So in our Bible story this morning God calls Elijah out of his cave that he might know that God is still around and will be with him on the way.  And we do remember this part, don’t we?  How Elijah thought he might see God in the mighty wind that was “splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces.”  But God was not in the great wind.  Then an earthquake happened, and Elijah thought he might see God then.  But God was not in the earthquake.  And after that a fire, but God was not in the fire either. 

But then – sheer silence – and there was God.  The classic translation calls it a “still small voice.”  Another calls it a “gentle whisper.”  What is the sound of silence?  It is the sense of awe, beyond our hearing.  It is the presence of peace, beyond our understanding.  It is God in the midst of us.

In Moses’ time the symbols of God’s presence would have been such things as earthquake, wind, and fire.  Baal was the storm god, demonstrated in the lightning and thunder overhead.  But in contrast to the thundering presence of the storm god Baal, Elijah’s God is now present in a “sound of silence,” as in the sound of calm after a storm.  God is with us through the storm, but is even more evident in the peace that follows tumult. 

We sang it last week in a beloved hymn.  Recall the last stanza with me: Breathe through the heats of our desire/Thy coolness and Thy balm;/Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;/Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,/O still, small voice of calm.

From ancient times the Bible speaks to us this morning with God’s healing balm.  It calls us out of the caves where we hide in fear and desperation.  It calls us out of our caves where even a death wish might seem to offer a word of solace.  It calls us out of our caves to face the struggles and the challenges which life inevitably puts before us.  It calls us out of our caves to engage life fully and courageously, knowing that God who has fed us on the way will not now abandon us or let us go.  God promises that after the cave life new and transformative awaits us.  Amen.