God’s Primary Language Is Silence

And after the fire, there was a tiny whispering sound.

As you might remember,
I just got back from vacation.
I had been in Florence for a conference
on artificial intelligence for the first nine days,
where I gave four presentations over those days.
They were jam-packed days of busyness.
Then I had the great opportunity
to go to Sicily and visit with a friend of mine,
with another friend,
and we spent two weeks there.

It was great to catch up and see my friends,
but I must confess,
one of the struggles with vacation
is that you get out of your routines, right?
You do not have as much control of the environment,
and that was certainly my case.

I noticed that I was not getting my solitude prayer time.
I could not go out for the walks
because it was over 100F every day.
That did not help, right?
That accounts for an hour of my prayer each day.
Admittedly, I have a high expectation of prayer,
because I normally spend an hour and a half
to two hours a day alone in prayer.
That got cut in half.
I could tell the difference.

And notice what happens here.
It was not anything bad.
Here I was doing some good work
with artificial intelligence,
and doing some other good work on vacation,
being with friends and catching up.
None of it was a bad thing.
It was all good.
And yet, slowly, what crept in was a displacement,
a displacement of the quiet time,
the time alone.
It happens very subtly,
but yet very deliberately.

I do not think I am the only one who struggles.
I know as parents you are getting ready
for school to come back,
and you too have come back from your vacations.
You too have often struggled
with trying to get any time alone.
The struggle is how do we carve out
that private time with the Lord
so that we can listen to Him?
Because it is not just about saying your prayers,
talking at God,
but learning to listen to that tiny whispering voice.

If you notice, like in our own lives,
it is not just our kids, it is our business.
Our whole economy here in Silicon Valley
is go, go, go.
It is busy, busy, busy.
It just keeps going at us.
And we call it the attention economy.
I might call it the attention deficit economy,
because we seem to be always
sort of picking up and going.

We seem almost allergic to silence.
We seem to resist pausing.
Here in Silicon Valley,
those who are even making these machines,
and many of you are involved in those companies,
you too have the same struggle.
You are going full pace, meeting deadlines.
And it is hard to slow down,
because slowing down or pausing
seems like either failure or seems like laziness.
But you see, that is not what we say as people of faith.

Today’s readings enter this in a really powerful way.
Now, this first reading is so dramatic.
It is one of my favorite Old Testament passages.
This is Kings at its best, right?
The drama goes on.
What you have to understand is that
we are on Mount Horeb right now,
but we just left from Mount Carmel.

What happened at Mount Carmel
was that the prophet Elijah was being challenged
by all the other false prophets.
And he has a throwdown with them.
He says, look, come on,
you call upon your gods,
and I will call upon my God.
So go ahead, call upon your gods.
Burn up this sacrifice.
So they have all these animals,
and they are dancing, and they do all that,
but no one shows up.
So Elijah then shows off.
He says, douse the whole thing with water.
And they pour gallons and gallons of water.
No, put more water, put more, douse the whole thing.
Then he says a simple prayer,
and boom, the fire of heaven comes down.
And everybody is in awe.
Oh my, you have the God of Israel.
And they are in complete awe.

Then the queen, Jezebel, does not like it.
She sends an assassin to kill him.
He turns to God and he says,
wait, wait, wait, wait, this is not fair,
and now he is on the run.
It is 40 days and 40 nights.
What do we hear?
We hear Moses.
What mountain are they on?
Moses’ mountain, Horeb.
What cleft are they in?
The cleft on which he received the Ten Commandments.

So, we are expecting drama.
And what does Elijah do?
He is waiting in the cave for more drama.
Okay, let us bring it on,
the pyre and the fire again.
So God says, I am going to be coming by this mountain.
Step outside the cave.
And so he hears a mighty wind.
He says, oh, this must be it. Nope.
Then there is a mighty earthquake. Nope.
And then there is a fire, and he goes, this must be it. Nope.
And then he hears a tiny whispering sound.

You see what happens?
So dramatically different.
And he recognizes that.
Just so you know,
the tiny whispering sound, translated from the Hebrew,
and this is probably a better translation,
as “an inaudible sound made audible.”
What we would call the sound of silence.
And in that, he hides his face in his cloak,
like Moses at the burning bush.
Tiny sound of silence.

Now why is all this so important?
It is because, you see,
God does not follow our rules.
He follows His rules.
He comes to us not necessarily in drama,
although that does happen on occasion, very rarely.
But He typically comes to us in the sound of silence.
You see, that is the part that we need to understand.
And we need to be able to hear that sound of silence.
So we have to address our allergy to silence, to pausing,
because that is our biggest hurdle.
And it is as much for me as it is for you.
So we need to work together on this.

So what does that look like?
It is a skill, my friends.
It is something we learn.
You do not just wake up one day
and then pause and everything stops.
That is not the way it works.
You have got to actually learn how to do this.
That is why we have the SEEL program,
the Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Living.
That is why we put on so many sessions
teaching you how to pray.

Because it is a skill that, in my estimation as a church,
we have failed generation after generation,
because we have not taught you how to listen,
how to pray.
Oh, we have taught you how to say your prayers, yes,
but we have not taught you how to be still
and listen to the quiet, whispering voice.

I have learned a thing or two in ministry
about God’s presence.
There are those who complain that God is not present,
that He is silent.
And I am going to tell you that they are wrong.
I can guarantee you, in fact, that they are wrong.
Because you see, God’s primary language is silence.
So we have to understand that.
It is a powerful language,
because what comes with silence is presence,
and presence matters.

I have been at enough deathbeds to know
that a sick person or a dying person
does not need more words.
That is not what they need.
What they need is presence and silence,
because the silence holds the presence gently.
And in that moment, love is felt powerfully.

That is what God does for Elijah.
He does not come in the drama anymore.
He comes in the powerful presence of silence.
He holds it.
Elijah is embarrassed because he hides his face in his cloak.

See, here is the irony in today’s gospel.
Peter struggles with the exact same thing.
But here is the miracle before the miracle.
As he hears Jesus’ voice across the stormy waters,
he heard that tiny voice in the midst of a storm.
And he begs Him, tell me to come.
And he comes.
Jesus hears his voice, and hears his doubting.
He says, why did you doubt?
You had it.
You understood the silence.
You understood My presence.
Hold on to that.

My friends, we need to commit to prayer.
Now, I understand your busy lives.
I get it, we all do.
And especially with children, young children,
it is just go, go, go.
I get it.
But we have to find some way
to learn to listen to God in our every day.

Now, that might be by getting up 10 minutes earlier
to be in silence before the Lord.
Or when they go to bed,
10 minutes before you do anything else,
just take five minutes even.
Or maybe it is just five minutes
before you come in from the day’s work into the house.
You pause in the driveway,
and you catch yourself, and listen to God in that silence.
Or when we are out walking,
that it is not filled with music or words,
but to just listen.

To listen to what happens as we walk around.
And you will start to notice things, my friends.
A flower blooming,
a bird singing,
children laughing,
children screaming,
children crying.
You will start to notice things.

Like I did the other day.
I was walking down this street here in Morton Avenue,
and there was this old guy in a Corvette,
and he is blaring the music,
and he is singing to his heart’s content
with the roof down.
And I am laughing, because he is completely off note.
He does not care.
That is not what matters.
It is in the glorious moment of that presence.

Let us make a commitment to ourselves this week
to find a pocket to pause,
a pocket to pray,
a pocket of silence,
so that we can hear God speak to us
and call us to come and to follow Him.

After the fire, there is a tiny whispering sound.
It is the Lord.