When I was growing up, we always had a radio that was plugged into its own special radio socket in the wall in the kitchen. The radio was on all the time, I think even at night. There was always someone gently talking in the flat, so when I came back home from school it never felt empty. It almost felt like someone was waiting for me at home and welcoming me back.
For a good reason, we associate noise with presence. If there are sounds, there must be a source. This presence may be welcome, like the gentle murmur of the radio or the sound of being greeted by someone you have been expecting. It may also manifest fear or danger, if you are, for example, hearing that someone is trying to open the back door in the middle of the night. But complete silence may be unsettling and we are not usually good with it – we find it awkward, uncomfortable or frankly scary. I think the silence of the Universe, of the outer space, must be a particularly eerie kind of silence; the silence that denotes a complete absence of life and any kind of presence.
Noise can also be a form of announcement. The fanfares have traditionally announced the arrival of someone important. The bells ring in this church, letting the town know that a service is taking place. People tend to applaud when a theatre performance is about to begin. A shot can manifest the start of a race.
In the Bible, important events also tend to come with some noise. In the recent months, we have marked Christ’s Crucifixion, which was accompanied by an earthquake. Easter vigil is traditionally marked by a moment when people in the church make as much noise as possible to celebrate Christ rising from the dead. On the day of Ascension, we remembered the lines from a traditional choral anthem, ‘God has gone up with a merry noise’. On Pentecost, we read how violent wind was blowing before the fire came down from heaven. Each of these events is noisy. The noise, in each of them, proclaims that something very important is happening. Praising God also comes with lots of sound. Psalm 150 tells us to praise God with strings, pipes, trumpets and cymbals. Imagine the volume this can produce! All of the above seems to paint a certain picture: sound means presence; lots of sound means God’s presence.
With this in mind, we approach the fascinating passage from 1 Kings 19, where prophet Elijah flees from the wrath of Queen Jezebel, who worships Baal and rejects the Lord and therefore is not happy with Elijah and wants him dead. Elijah, following the voice of God, ends up in a cave at the top of mount Horeb. He hears a voice that says that the Lord is about to pass by, so he waits in the cave. A few very noisy things happen – mighty wind, earthquake and fire, followed by something translated as ‘a still small voice’, ‘a sound of sheer silence’ or ‘a soft murmuring sound’ – the latter is probably the closest to the original Hebrew but certainly less poetic than the King James’ famous ‘still small voice’. After each of the ‘noisy’ events we are explicitly told that the Lord is not in it. But after the sound of silence is mentioned, we don’t have any affirmation that this is where God is. The narrative just moves on because at this point Elijah recognises the Lord’s presence and, having covered his face, following the belief that he will die if he sees God face to face, steps out of the cave. A voice then asks what Elijah is doing here.
On the surface, this passage teaches us that the Lord’s voice does not have to be loud and dramatic and instead can be found in silence, and we do need to listen to silence to hear His voice and find out what His tasks for us are. However, I think it goes further than this.
Elijah is a prophet, he has a direct line to God. Contrary to how we often think of prophets as people who can anticipate or predict something of the future, a prophet is predominantly someone who can perceive and understand God and share His messages with those who need to hear them. Elijah has been given this role and can hear God whenever the Lord is willing to speak to him. He does not need silence to discern the message. In fact, it is the voice of the Lord that tells him to go to the mountain in the first place. He does not need to learn to listen to God, but it seems that he does need to experience silence for a different reason.
Importantly, this passage is not about the voice of God, it is about his actual presence. The Hebrew affirmatively states that God did pass by and was not in the wind, earthquake or fire, so he must have been present in that silence. In addition, Elijah did not just have to listen to God in silence, he stepped out of the cave, facing a real fear of death, to meet the Lord. Elijah does not see God but he is seen by God in that complete stillness. Perhaps in addition to the lesson in attentive listening, this story invites us to not be distracted by noises, which can be overwhelming and command all our attention. But if we wait for silence and present ourselves before God, we can be seen by Him in our vulnerability, as we are, and then given a charge. This is what happens to Elijah – the Lord hears his concerns about the failures of the Israelites and tells him exactly what to do next. He asked Elijah twice what he was doing at the mountain and both times Elijah gave exactly the same answer but the Lord only replied once Elijah had met him in the silence.
Perhaps we should not shy away from silence not because we can hear better in it but because it allows us to be seen by God, because once we have found ourselves in a place free from any noise and therefore, following our earlier logic, any kind of presence, paradoxically, we end up not with a complete absence of anything and anyone but instead in the most beautiful and powerful presence – the presence of God. The task for us is to find the stillness and solitude that make such an encounter possible. I personally find it a rare occasion. If I am not accompanied by people, I am always accompanied by my phone and something playing on it – not dissimilar from my childhood radio, except usually way less educational. Our lives are filled with so much noise that real stillness often feels like an absolute luxury. And yet, it is worth searching for it. One place I can highly recommend is this church during the week. Perhaps you can think of others. But once you have found it, listen to the gentle murmur and step out of the cave – and then see what happens! Amen