Sunday, June 22, 2025

1Kings 19: 8 - 15 - Sunday, June 22, 2025

 a time to honour the Indigenous Day of Prayer and National Indigenous Peoples' Day

19th century Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier, paraphrasing today’s scripture from 1st Kings, memorably described the voice of God as the “Still, small voice of calm.”

What a wonderful description of the holy heart of God. We come close to the divine presence within when we become quiet enough to sense that our heartbeat, and God’s heartbeat, the heartbeat of the entire created order, are the same thing.  The still, small voice of calm, which may be heard when we quiet our own self-talk and the endless banter of our opinionated world, unifies us with God and with everything.

In my personal story, there was a time when my survival depended on learning how to quiet myself enough to hear the still small voice of calm.  It was late in 1999 when my willingness to allow the insistent and never-ending lineup of unfinished tasks to demand my heart and soul 24/7 caught up with me.  Through a combination of strategies, supports and a rebuilt understanding of my life’s purpose before God, I learned how to tell the constant chatter of my psyche to chill out and wait its turn. A new trust in the soul-affirming stillness of God was the key.  Life would still have demands insistently tugging on my sleeve, but I no longer believed that my human value would be measured by the quantity and quality of tasks I had completed. Even in times of tumult, I knew the love of God, the still, small voice of calm.

In our faith history, we heard a reading today from 1st Kings in which Elijah most definitely needed a break.  As with all of the Israelite prophets, he was used to having people upset with him, but this was worse. Growing religious tensions in the land, fuelled by King Ahab and Queen Jezebel and their love of the fertility god, Baal, had dropped the prophet into a bubbling cauldron of rivalry and hatred.  This erupted in a fiery and gory scene, and the extinguishing of the priests of Ba’al and Elijah needed to hide in the hills. The prophet desperately needed God’s guidance on whether it was now time for him to just be safe, and stop being God’s messenger, or if God had further need of him. And then this happened, as described in scripture:

The Lord’s word came to him and said, “Why are you here, Elijah?”

Elijah, speaking with a combination of desperation and cognitive distortion, explained how he was the only one left who had remained faithful to God.

The Lord said, “Go out and stand at the mountain before the Lord”

A very strong wind tore through the mountains and broke apart the stones …but the Lord wasn’t in the wind.  After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord wasn’t in the earthquake.  After the earthquake, there was a fire, but the Lord wasn’t in the fire.  After the fire, there was a sound. Thin.  Quiet.  [the “still, small voice of calm”]

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his coat [and] went out and stood at the cave’s entrance. A voice came to him [once more] and said, “Why are you here, Elijah?”

God queries Elijah about his purpose – “why are you here, Elijah?” - then demonstrates how the voice of God is often to be heard, not in the fearsome uproar, but in the stillness.  And then, having demonstrated this powerful, silent, holy presence, God asks again: “why are you here, Elijah?”  What do you seek, here in the mountains?  What do you need in order to re-engage the needs of the people?  Will you know next time, to listen for the silence when the noise is overwhelming?   These questions of discernment are an important part of our interim ministry time with you here, as you and we together discern God’s calling for now and the future.  To reset the question from God to Elijah, we wonder with God, “why are we here?”

So: this scripture of the still small voice has a personal connection for me, an important role in our Judaeo-Christian faith history, and an enduring place in our ministry here in the south Okanagan.  In addition to these, there is one more connection I’d like to share with this reading from the 1st book of Kings.

As already mentioned, today’s worship service follows the Indigenous Day of Prayer, and the National Indigenous Peoples’ Day.  We have lived in Cree and Saulteaux territory in Saskatchewan, in treaty 7 lands of the Stoney Nakoda and other first peoples in Canmore, and now, on the lands of the Okanagan Nation Alliance.  It is clear to me that listening for the voice of the Creator in all things plays a key role that is widely-held within Indigenous cultures.

Chief Clarence Louie of the Osoyoos Indian Band, in his book Rez Rules (pp. 281-282), tells how protracted negotiations about an ancestral burial site at swiws point were resolved.  As time dragged on, government negotiators pressed him for a decision. “I knew these people genuinely wanted to help me” he writes, “but I also knew that this decision was above corporate Canada’s and government’s way of thinking.  I shook my head and told them in one sentence what I was going to do. ‘I’m going to go down to the site soon… and listen to the wind.’

“Someone in the room asked, ‘How long before you come to a decision?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘As long as it takes.’  A few days later I drove to the site, walked silently around the ancestor’s grave a few times and sprinkled some tobacco there.  I walked down by the water and listened to that great sound of water lightly pushing up against the rocks on shore…. As a Native leader, sometimes the best thing you can do is go out on the land and listen to the wind. Listen to all the sounds of nature.”   That aligns almost completely with patterns I heard from Stoney Nakoda elders, for whom no decisions were rushed, in order to make room for everyone to have a say and for the Spirit to have room to be heard as well. To me, this sounds like another instance of seeking the still small voice of calm, the voice of Creator God.  

Now, in a traditional sermon, I would now be summarizing these instances of interactions with the still small voice into a strong but wordy summary. What’s going to happen, instead, is we’re going to spend some quiet time in the presence of God’s still small voice, making room for the God of the ages to speak without words.

I invite you, then, to get comfortable in your pew… feet flat on the floor if possible, shoulders relaxed, eyes closed or averted… now, take three deep cleansing breaths… and in the quiet,  notice your breath and the beat of your heart.  That heartbeat you notice, is the life of Creator God beating in you, nothing short of the heartbeat of creation.  Feel the emergence of life in that holy gift, and as you continue to breathe in and out, bask in your connection all of creation, and the God who gives us life... the still small voice… of love, of life, of light….

We gradually return our focus to this room,  and with that I invite you to open your eyes as you are ready… and as we remain seated, we will sing together hymn #37 in More Voices, “Each blade of grass.”

References cited:

Louie, Chief Clarence.  Rez Rules.  Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2021.

United Church of Canada. https://united-church.ca/blogs/round-table/why-indigenous-day-prayer#:~:text=In%201971%2C%20the%20observance%20of,a%20National%20Aboriginal%20Solidary%20Day.

Whittier, John Greenleaf. “Dear God, who loves all humankind.”  [hymn VU 608] written 1872.

© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge

No comments:

Post a Comment

Galatians 3: 23-29 - Canada Day Sunday, June 29, 2025

 When I was twelve years old, I fell in love… …with the music of Stompin’ Tom Connors.   At first, I thought his whole schtick was a jok...