Sounds of Sheer Silence

Reflection for Proper 7C Thomas E Wilson, Visiting Celebrant St. Mary’s Episcopal, Gatesville, NC June 22, 2025 Sounds of Sheer Silence 1 Kings 10: 1-15a Psalm 43 Galatians 3: 23-29 Luke 8: 26 -39 Let me start off, not with the lessons themself, but with an old Simon and Garfunkel song: Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again, Because a vision softly creeping, Left its seeds while I was sleeping, And the vision that was planted In my brain Still remains, Within the sounds of silence, In the lesson from 1st Kings for today, the Prophet Elijah has just finished his battle against Queen Jezebel and her prophets. The Hebrew name Elijah, comes from a combination of two names for the Hebrew God; El and Yah. The name means that he understands that he is doubly committed to the Hebrew faith. Now, the thing to make sure you pass on to your children is to never pick a fight with a rich and powerful woman named JEZEBEL. Jezebel is the daughter of the King of a neighboring Kingdom, Sidon, and she was devoted to the Storm and Fertility God named Baal. Her name means “Baal is exalted”. It would be like if you decided to name your child, “Jesus saves” so your child would be raised with an understanding that he or she would be devoted to that idea of God. She brought that worship and devotion of Baal to the court of the Hebrew King Ahab. Ahab’s job description was to be the King under the rule of the Hebrew God, YAWEH. But the King loved the girl, and she ruled the roost as soon as she showed up in town. Elijah could have handled Ahab easily but Jezebel was another story. So, Elijah challenged Queen Jezebel’s priests to a contest; all 450 of them. All by himself, Elijah builds an altar, coveres it with wood and logs. Then he challenged the Priests of Baal, all 450 of them, as an ecumenical gesture, to call upon their God to set the offering on fire, to cook the meat. The Priests spent a lot of energy, shouting, singing, dancing, cutting themselves: all the standard Baal Worship routine, calling on their God to set the offering on fire. Hours passed, as all worship services do, and Nothing happened. Elijah made fun of them when the fire did not come from Heaven. He taunted them that maybe their God, Baal, may be busy, or sleeping, or really busy suffering with an intense intestinal distress in the Celestial outhouse. After all the 450 of them were tired out, Elijah then put water all over the Altar, cut and slaughtered a bull,and laid the pieces on the Altar, all by himself. And then, all by himself, he called upon his God, YHWH, to accept his sacrifice. Then the Altar was covered with a blazing fire. Elijah’s God had won and in a great show of thanksgiving for his God’s power, Elijah then slaughtered all 450 of the Queen’s Prophets, all by himself. In a monarchy, ruled by an evil Queen, you are wise not to win, and even wiser not to gloat by massacring her henchmen. Jezebel puts him on her hit list. Discretion being the better part of Valour, Elijah gets the heck out of town and flees as fast as he can. He keeps running until he hits the wilderness. Then he keeps on running as far as he can go. Then, he clubs a lonely mountain to talk with God. But, his mind is so busy that he cannot stop to really listen. When our minds are full, it is impossible to listen.There are so many places he cannot hear God, but in this place, on the edge of nowhere, he enters into silence, and then, and only then, he hears God in the silence. Many of us who go to church, know something about that situation of when we go to a place of worship and our minds are so filled up with our own agendas, that we get nothing out of that experience. If we are fortunate, the words and thoughts will stay in our brains and later come back when we are reminded with a word or phrase. Last week, I went out to Colorado to see my baby. My baby, Shanon, has been my baby for over half a century. She lives with her husband and their two sons; sons who are in their second decades. One day, I went with my daughter, her husband Steve and one of my grandsons, the one who is studying Environmental Science in College, to the Denver Botanical Gardens Complex. The Denver Botanical Garden is a place of great beauty. Every path we took, we were hit with thousands of wonderful plants, trees, shrubs and flowers. There was a moment when an employee was trimming an amazingly beautiful flowering bush. As the cuttings touched the ground, I fell in love with the beauty. I wanted it! Now I live in a small condo on the Outer Banks, and that means I do not have room for a garden, so this was not something that I was able to buy to beautify my life, plus, even if there was , how could I carry it on the plane ride home from Colorado. Yet, I looked at the cutting on the ground, and I wanted it! The world stopped for me as I looked at that beauty. I asked the gardener, but he told me that wasn’t allowed. I thanked him for the care he took of the garden, and we walked on. But from that moment, there were no words I could come up with about the beauty everywhere. Beauty I could not own, but of which I could marvel. We looked at so many different kinds of flowers and shrubbery, that words seemed so useless. I would stop and look deeply; filled with absolute joy about what God was doing for us and with the gardeners who kept crossing plants to create variations in this creation, But, there were no words deep enough that could be said about all that beauty. I started to walk more slowly, stopping to look more deeply at the beauty, the complexity, of the so many different variations, the gifts from a loving God, who was working with people, so that we could stand in worshipful awe of the plants and the people. I stayed in silence, because words would just get in the way. In the Gospel for today, Jesus confronts a man possessed by demons. Out of compassion, Jesus sets him free from all the noise that had entrapped him. In silence, the man is able to listen deeply, and from the depths of that silence, he is able to speak only the words that need to be said. That is what I need to do more often, and I would suggest to you: listen deeply and speak only the words that need to be said. Sound Of Sheer Silence When I first dated my wife to be, I tried to fill up all my silences, Not knowing what that silence is; It’s when “you” becomes “thee’. But some words do get in our way, Becoming noise without meaning, Conversation turn into demeaning, Ruins what we really mean to say. Let’s take time for us to be still, Leaving spaces for us to grow In the time after we say “Hello Providing room for Spirit's will, Let’s make our sentences to slow, Giving room for our love to grow.