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
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