1 Kings 19.1-18

A STILL SMALL VOICE

(1 Kings 19.1-18)

Whenever I sing the hymn, "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind", I always think of St Aidans Church, Cherry Lane, Liverpool.

St Aidans was the daughter church of Walton Parish Church where I served my first curacy. When one becomes the senior curate, since we usually had three or four curates at a time, one was appointed as Priest-in-Charge of St Aidans.

The organist was a rather colourful character whose hands on the keyboard did not synchronise with her feet on the pedals. I think it would be fair to describe her as an organist of limited ability.

Whilst I always insisted on choosing the hymns for the morning Eucharist, I permitted her to choose them for the evening service so as not to tax her musical talents too much.

I quickly discovered that this was not a good idea since at least once every two or three weeks we would have "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind"!

But that was not all!

In the choir was a tall elderly man called Arthur who always insisted on singing the line "O still small voice of calm" extremely loudly. I am sure he would have been heard at the parish church a half-mile away!!

Time and time again, I would tactfully suggest, and sometimes not so tactfully, that that particular line should be sung quietly. Whilst he would agree, it made absolutely no difference.

And so I became accustomed to the loud voice of power, rather than the 'still small voice of calm'. As a result, the contrast with the earlier line 'speak through the earthquake, wind and fire' was completely lost.

And it is that contrast which is so important since it holds the key to its meaning.

The hymn is based upon the above Old Testament Reading which comes from the First Book of Kings and concerns the prophet Elijah.

Elijah is found hiding between the rocks on Mount Sinai where Moses also encountered the presence of God.

And the reason why he was hiding is because, to use his own words, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left. and they are seeking my life to take it away". In fact, we are told twice about his reason for hiding - or perhaps we should say for sulking - within 18 verses.

However, to understand fully the reason for his hiding, it is necessary to go back a little bit in history.

The French writer, Pascal, once said that the whole course of Western history was changed by the shape of Cleopatra's nose. And we might say that the course of Israel's history was profoundly affected by the eccentricities of one woman: Jezebel.

Jezebel was the Phoenician wife of Ahab whose father, Omni, had encouraged him to marry her in order to strengthen relations between Israel and Phoenicia. It was essentially a marriage of political convenience.

But in marrying Jezebel, Ahab got more than his father had hoped for. Jezebel brought with her her religion of Baal. In fact, in order to keep his wife happy, he built a massive temple to the pagan god.

Whilst King Ahab was merely seeking to keep Jezebel happy, whilst he continued to worship Yahweh, his policy of religious tolerance was abused by Jezebel who was fanatical about her religion. She imported a great number of Baal prophets and paid for them out of the public treasury and began a campaign to "cut off the prophets of Yahweh". Those who remained loyal to Yahweh were eventually driven underground.

Now it is into this situation that the prophet Elijah arrived in the 8th century BC, stepping across the River Jordan living a semi-nomadic life on the edge of the desert. His dress was of garments of hair and he wore a leather girdle. His appearance must have been a strange sight in the cultured land of Israel.

Eventually he challenges 450 prophets of Baal and a further 400 of Ashram to a contest on Mount Carmel to prove whose was the most powerful God.

A pile of wood was placed upon the mountain with a view to inviting each god to set it alight.

Despite much frenzied dancing and prayer, the prophets of Baal failed. But Elijah, who first poured water over the wood, succeeded and the wood caught alight.

However, the victory was short lived and the people quickly turned their backs upon Yahweh again, whilst Jezebel, in her fury, went out in search of Elijah with a view to killing him.

Hence, in our Old Testament reading, we find him hiding in a cave on Mount Sinai. Hence also, we find him depressed. And hence also, we find him sulking thinking God has let him down 'although he alone has remained faithful throughout.'

In his wilderness experience, Elijah is forced to go back to the drawing board and discover God afresh.

Up until now, he had assumed that God revealed his powerful presence through dramatic actions only.

Through dramatic actions such as wind, so strong that it was capable of splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces, recalling the words of the psalmist who says:

"The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars... The voice of the Lord causes the oak to whirl and strips the forest bare."

But we are told that "the Lord was not in the wind”.

Neither was God's powerful presence to be found in the dramatic actions of an earthquake, which "shakes the wilderness".

Finally, God's powerful presence was not to be found in fire through which he revealed himself to Moses upon that same mountain many years earlier, when we are told that, "Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire. The smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln whilst the mountain shook violently".

No. God's powerful presence was not to be found in dramatic actions as wind, earthquakes or fire, but rather through the 'still small voice of calm' which the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates as 'a sound of sheer silence'.

Contrary to what Elijah may have thought, he is not the only person remaining faithful to God in Israel.

God had also ensured that there is a small, but significant remnant. “Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel. all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him", which concludes our Old Testament reading.

Like Elijah, there is an awful danger that we expect God to reveal his powerful presence through dramatic actions in the world.

But more often than not, he reveals his powerful presence through weakness. He reveals himself through the still small voice of those who remain faithful to him, despite the pressures of the secular world around them.

In every age, there have been those who have kept the torch of faith burning brightly in the darkness of the world around them.

And that torch has now been passed to you and me.

Like the prophet Elijah, it is very easy to get depressed and think that "I alone am left".

We need to remind ourselves, time and time again, that God's powerful presence is more often than not revealed "through the still small voice of calm', rather than through the big voice of dramatic action.

And that is why I tried desperately to persuade Arthur to lower his voice on the final line of the hymn. To lower it in order to remind him, and everyone else, that the church today is called to be that "still small voice" which can still express the presence of God in the world around us, as God once did, through a babe in Bethlehem, many years ago.