2025-03-14
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
Pastor Vicki McGaw
March 10, 2025
As we begin the season of Lent today, we are entering into a worship series that might prove to be a of a struggle for some of us because, in these sermons rather than learning about God, our focus will be on experiencing God. And since the Garden of Eden, human beings have always been nervous about our relationship with the Divine. Of course, it is important to note that any barrier that exists is all coming from us, not God.
As Elijah shows us in our text today, a relationship with God can be a scary thing! But in order to fully understand the story, we need to back up a bit because we jumped into the middle of this tale with Elijah in a cave. To comprehend the context of what is going on, we need to understand how and why he got there.
To this point, Elijah has been a successful prophet of God, able to call lightening down from heaven and raise people from the dead. In the chapter that precedes our reading this morning, Elijah has battled the followers of Baal, a lesser god who was worshiped by many in the ancient world. Elijah showed them the power of God and then, having demonstrated great strength, he slayed them all.
But Elijah’s problem arose because the people he killed were those under the reign of Queen Jezebel who, infuriated at Elijah, ordered his death. The powerful prophet suddenly filled with fear and ran for his life, fleeing into the wilderness. Elijah found himself at Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai, the very place where Moses received the ten commandments, made a covenant with God and asked to see God’s face. Exhausted and discouraged, Elijah fell into a cave and, before falling asleep, told God that he was done, and ready to die.
I’m guessing we all know what a devastating feeling discouragement can be. One pundit has suggested that “listlessness, despair and resignation are crippling people across the nation in a wave of chronic cynicism.” These days, I speak with several people a week who share with me that their anxiety is barely controlled or that they find themselves continually yelling at whatever device is the source of their news. Personally, I find the headlines these days so troubling that I have put myself on a news diet, only allowing myself to check in often enough so that I am not completely unaware. Discouragement and cynicism are indeed devastating feelings . . . ones I try hard to avoid!
But here is the good news, friends: as discouraged as we may be these days, just as God wasn’t done with Elijah even when the prophet was giving up, God is also not done with us!
As Elijah lay sleeping in the cave, God came to him and told him to stand at the entrance where God would pass by. Waiting there, Elijah expected to find God in the drama of a strong wind, a roaring fire or a rumbling earthquake. But it seems that God prefers subtlety over drama, for God did not appear like a neon sign in the big, bold, flashy supernatural events, but rather in the sheer silence that comes like gently falling snow, a sound we cannot directly hear, but which changes the acoustics of our surroundings.
Discerning God’s presence and what God is saying is one of trickiest parts of faith. How are we able to discern what messages are actually coming from God and what are just the things that we want to hear? UCC pastor and activist Yvette Flunder says that we can know the voice of God based on a deep sense of assurance. She suggests that what we need to ask ourselves is whether what we are hearing is consistent with our understanding of the Spirit of God in us. For me, I sense God’s presence and voice when an amazing sense of calm comes over me and I suddenly find a sense of peace when everything around me had been roiling.
One of the hardest things for me to hear as a pastor is when people ask, “Why did God let this tragedy happen to me?” A form of this question was often posed to me following my daughter’s death. Even some of my pastor friends asked how I could not be angry with God. And so at Megan’s memorial service I shared that if I thought God made capricious decisions about who suffered horrible events and who didn’t, then I not only wouldn’t be standing here as a pastor, I wouldn’t have anything to do with that God.
The story of Elijah suggests to me that, maybe instead of being the cause of big events like fires and earthquakes and unexplainable deaths, God is instead weeping with us when lives are taken cruelly and violently. God silently comes alongside us, holds us close and gives us the strength to move forward in the face of devastating circumstances. This is God I believe in!
This week, I invite you try something to see if any of this holds water and makes any sense to you. First, like Elijah, find your cave. Go to a place where you can step out of life’s chaos, get still and quiet. Be aware that deep silence is evoked not simply when God is present to you, but when you are present to God. Then, find question that really matters to you. Make it personal and specific. Then get ready to hear God’s answer – in whatever way it comes . . . not necessarily in some big gesture, but in whatever unconventional way God chooses. And recognize that sometimes silence is not so very silent and emptiness is not as empty as it seems. Silence itself is sometimes the answer.
Until your answer comes, keep asking same question everyday. This need not take hours of prayer . . . just enough time to be open, to feel in the center of your being that you are truly willing to receive God’s response. Then go about your day . . . and let God do the work rather than trying to find answer yourself.
But like Elijah, be watchful. Pay attention to the music that you hear, the conversations you have, and the inner voices running through head. And be ready for the thing that is always the hardest part for me: don’t expect God to act on your timetable. God’s response may take days or weeks to come . . . but it will come! And when it does, I would be honored and grateful if you might share your experience with me.
Friends, if we only look for God in the big, miraculous actions, we will miss the ways that God is present in the quiet, ordinary, unseen and gentle sounds of our lives. Maybe this was why so many people missed the birth of a tiny baby in a smelly stable to a poor peasant girl and a simple carpenter. We might miss the ways that God works through ordinary people in the nitty-gritty areas of our lives, speaking silently through people who not long ago were ready to give up. Because there are more miracles wrought where our humanity meets God’s grace than we could ever ask or imagine. Maybe in the quiet of your cave this week you will notice one. Maybe if you just get really quiet . . . Amen.