And God said,
“Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord,
but 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.
1 Kings 19:11-12
The story of the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings is one in which I find enormous consolation and inspiration; so when I saw this icon of Elijah I was immediately drawn to it. It was part of an exhibition of icons from the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt Sinai that were on display at the Getty Center in Los Angeles in 2007. The icon shown here depicts a story earlier in the Elijah narrative than the text quoted above. But it illustrates a truth about Elijah’s experience with God that runs through the entirety of his story. Elijah the great miracle worker, preacher, political activist and warrior was also a great listener. And he seemed to pay attention best when the Divine voice was expressed without words.
At the mouth of the cave on Mt. Horeb he experienced the power of God in an overwhelming silence. In his self-imposed exile at the Wadi Cherith (1 Kings 17) after announcing God’s judgement of King Ahab, he received the hand of God’s mercy through the daily visits of the ravens who brought him bread and meat. The icon depicts the prophet’s surprise at these unexpected messengers from God. This strong man is here depicted in his vulnerability as he is dumb-struck by the surprise of God’s grace delivered to him in the beak of a bird.
In his book on preaching, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Comedy, Tragedy and Fairy Tale, Frederick Buechner makes the claim that “Before it is a word, the Gospel that is truth is silence.” In other words, the wisdom delivered in the words of an inspired sermon usually only comes to the preacher after a good stretch of silence. Listening, watching, quietly paying attention, these are the precursors to preaching. You don’t know until you know, and this kind of deep knowing often comes only in the wake of deep listening.
I suppose this is why so much of what Jesus says has to do with the invitation to pay attention. He says things like: what are you looking for, follow me, come and see, watch and pray. Come walk along this way with me; open your eyes to what I have to show you, and you’ll begin to understand that I am the Way along which you were created to walk. Or to put the same idea in the words of St Francis: “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”
During Lent we’ll be exploring Jesus’ various invitations to awareness that he issues to his disciples. He does not force himself on his disciples. He does not begin with a list of precepts and rules that they must sign before they can become his followers. He invites them on a journey and asks only that they keep their eyes and ears open so that they can see and hear all that he has to show them; so that they can behold the good news, the truth that will set them free. They don’t always get it. They aren’t always awake. Yet these failures and lapses do not deter his persistence.
Neither will our failures and lapses diminish Jesus’ unending invitation to wake up to the gifts of God’s grace and Lent is a good time to let him issue that invitation to us once again. Like his disciples we may not be able to stay awake with him in Gethsemane as he asks us to watch and pray. The task of reconciling the facts of his story with our expectations of what should be may continue to elude us. But he won’t stop asking us to come and see. He won’t stop pointing to what he’d like us to know. He won’t hand us over to our stunted imaginations but will keep shining light on what we need to see. And one day we will “know fully, even as we have been fully known.”
David Rohrer
02/12/2021