Our second reading continues the narrative that Pam just began. Let’s listen together for what the Spirit is saying to the Church in 1 Kings 19:9–18:
At [Horeb, the mount of God, Elijah] came to a cave and spent the night there.
Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Why are you here, Elijah?”
He answered, “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.”
The word of the Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “Why are you here, Elijah?” He answered, “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.”
Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel, and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill, and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. 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.”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!
Can we actually hear silence?
In August 1952, before the packed open-air Maverick Concert Hall near Woodstock, New York, pianist David Tudor set a stopwatch for 33 seconds and sat down at the bench to play an unusual masterpiece: a three-movement composition by John Cage titled 4’33”. Pushing the limits of avant garde music, the piece arguably downplayed Tudor’s abilities. Because he was known for his experimental edge and incredible right-hand reach, the crowd paid rapt attention, waiting for Tudor to showcase his skill…but for 33 full seconds, he simply sat and turned blank sheet music without once touching the keys.
He then opened and closed the lid for the second movement: watching the hand of the stopwatch tick for two minutes and 40 seconds. At last, he reopened and reclosed the lid for the final movement: another one minute 20 seconds of silence. He stood, took a bow, and left the stage (1).
Some in the audience applauded, but it’s anyone’s guess whether they appreciated the piece or were simply relieved that it had ended. The composition became a silence heard around the world as people rushed to weigh in on whether it was a nihilistic commentary, a joke, or a brilliant meditation on Zen.
The journal Scientific American relates this story of the concert that wasn’t in an article about the findings of interdisciplinary researchers from Johns Hopkins. These researchers set out to find answers to a question that has troubled psychologists, physicians, and philosophers alike: How does sensory perception work, and what happens when it is absent?
“[Silence is] the absence of sound. And yet it often feels like we can hear it,” says the paper’s co-author and assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences Chaz Firestone. “If silence isn’t really a sound, and yet it turns out that we can hear it, then hearing is more than just sound” (2).
Indeed, their experiment concluded that the brain perceives silence and sound in the same way. In truth, silence is rarely (if ever) total. Even in the quietest moments, we may still hear the low hum of our own body: breathing, a heartbeat, the subtle shift of wind or the distant world carrying on. In that sense, silence does have a sound—often soft, ambient, even sacred. Spiritually, silence can also be a space where the soul listens—a soundscape where God speaks.
In this sense, each of us can recall silences we have “heard”…
Some are restorative, like a first cup of coffee in the predawn before anyone else in the house or neighborhood is stirring or a breathtaking sunset that inspires the hushed appreciation of hikers at a summit.
Some are charged, like moments of waiting to receive test results or the palpable silence of sitting with someone in despair—the kind of silence that dares us to break it with even a single word that will not seem trite in the face of suffering.
Some confront us, like silences that masquerade as peace and challenge us to wrestle with our own responsibility in the absence of prophetic courage and truthful speech to abusive power.
What kind of silence did Elijah encounter on the mountain to which he journeyed through the wilderness, desperate for a word from the Lord?
Commenters have argued over this question for centuries, making equally defensible cases that God spoke in a still, small voice or that Elijah needed precisely to wait for God’s revelation in the stilled hush that followed the flurry of cosmic happenings (wind, earthquake, and fire). In recent years, the frenetic pace of contemporary life has led many to interpret this story as an invitation for us to retreat from the noise of society and the clutter of constant messages—to stop, find quiet, tune out all distractions, listen deeply for the Spirit’s stirring within, and wait for God to make our next steps clear (3).
Maybe that message resonates for you. It does for me, especially amid the chaos of our national and international political relations, in which violence escalates and threats and displays of power replace slower and quieter methods of dialogue and diplomacy. I was tempted to stop here and invite us all to sit in silence for the bulk of the service. Yet, if we take the whole of this narrative from 1 Kings to heart, I believe that silence is a good start, but that we can’t stop there.
This episode in Elijah’s life tells us something about the difficulty of the prophetic life, helps us appreciate his spiritual transformation, and invites us to consider our own.
An essential part of Elijah’s prophetic call is to trouble tyrannical power, and the problem is that he has done precisely that. He clashed with King Ahab (1 Kings 17), brought rain to parched lands, called down fire, and killed 450 prophets of Baal at Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18). And, as the cycle of violence usually goes, his tremendous victory has not made him triumphant and fulfilled but has kindled the murderous wrath of Queen Jezebel and, with it, his own terror and emptiness. So he flees for his life on a 40-day and 40-night journey that recalls Moses’ time in the wilderness, going to the very location where Moses met God in storm, earthquake, and fire and received the commandments that would guide God’s people (4).
Desperate, perhaps, for similar guidance, Elijah has come to the end of his own power and his will to continue. The prophet’s righteous anger and the cycle of violence have led to his sense of isolation and despair, and—unlike Job’s humble response to the divine voice speaking in a whirlwind—Elijah restates his case, demanding a divine hearing about being the only faithful one when God questions him. We can imagine that he felt like he had fought the good fight and received only a death sentence in return (5).
Like Moses hiding the cleft of the rock to meet God, he takes shelter in a cave, perhaps hoping God will make a phenomenal appearance (cf. Exodus 33:22). And when God reveals Godself, the divine manifestation does not show up on the Richter scale as expected, but it still invites a seismic shift in Elijah’s—and our—perspective.
Rather than dismiss Elijah’s pain and exhaustion, God, who has already provided physical sustenance for Elijah in the wilderness, now reaches out to him with a message that balances reassurance and realism, comfort and challenge. Christian ethicist Melissa Snarr summarizes that message this way: “You are not alone. I care for you. Now get back to it.”
God’s prophetic mission will continue, and Elijah is only part of it. Seven thousand faithful will join him. Elijah’s next assignment is to leave the mountaintop, re-engage the political process by appointing new kings, and share power and responsibility by passing on the prophetic mantle to Elisha.
Maybe some of us, like Elijah, are exhausted, discouraged, and afraid of the future of our country and the world. Maybe we too need to hear that we are not alone and that God cares for us. So how does this story speak to us now—and how may it empower us to “get back to it?”
Father Richard Rohr takes up that question in his latest book, published this year, about how the spiritual journeys of the biblical prophets offer wisdom for faithful living in our “age of outrage” (6). To Rohr, Elijah’s encounter with God on Mt. Horeb is part of a necessary transformation—a maturation process that moves the prophet’s concern from the individual to the collective, from an “I” to a “we.”
He writes of the prophets in our scripture:
“If you quote or follow the prophets in their immature stages, you might end up eating your children (Jeremiah 19:9), firebombing the temple, and meeting a God who is mainly known for wrath, vanity, divisiveness, pettiness, and petulance (Ezekiel 13). More likely, these verses depict our untransformed self speaking as if it were God (which is exactly how the untransformed self likes to speak). You must stay with the text and follow the prophets’ progress toward the full word of God” (7).
Then, he continues with a caution about would-be prophets today:
“Prophets who continue to lead (or end) with their rage have only half of the message, it seems. They have the anger but lack the compassion; mere moral positioning and ethical ‘answers’ are not really the work of conversion…In our times, it is common to confuse articulate passion with prophecy when it is often simply untransformed anger that will not change anything in the long term or lead us anywhere good. Passion and prophecy are not the same thing” (8).
As we face the injustices unfolding around us each day and turn our hearts again toward the vision Jesus called the kingdom, or reign, of God, we remember the Church’s prophetic calling. How do we recognize prophetic speech as a bold invitation to seek justice and serve the common good?
Rohr suggests that we start by asking the following questions:
Is the message calling forth the fruits of the Spirit [which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22–23)]?
Does the energy of the prophet point radically to the divine or stop with the pyrotechnics and oratory of the prophet themselves?
Does the speaker need to “win” too much? Are they driven by a need to be right?
After Elijah’s violent victory on Mt. Carmel, he desperately needed a different kind of parade—he needed the Lord to pass by, not in displays of force but in the gentleness of a question piercing a deafening silence: “Why are you here?” An ancient audience would have recognized that the chaos of the wind, earthquake, and fire meant to get ready, for the Lord was about to pass by. Perhaps that’s no less the case with the chaos we experience now.
We might draw strength from the spiritual “Kum Ba Yah,” in which the singer calls on a power greater than their own, asking God to “come by here.” While the song has been dismissed by some as a quietist anthem, its roots in the spiritual tradition of enslaved Africans calling upon God for liberation have given it a place in prophetic movements for decades—inspiring God’s people with courage and perseverance.
Friends, God’s prophetic movement will continue, and we are only a part of it. Let’s humble ourselves and ask God to come by here. Let’s make space to listen for God’s reassuring voice and for our next assignment (10).
Silence is not empty.
It hums with the sound of waiting—
the stillness that brings clarity about how to move forward,
the holy echo of your own becoming.
Silence holds the weight of words unspoken,
and the grace of some truths not needing to be said.
It is not the absence of noise,
but the presence of depth—
a sacred hush where truth settles in,
where God comes by,
quiet as dusk,
sure as breath.
The world may clamor for answers,
but in sacred silence,
you may find something better—
a question worth living:
“Why are you here, child of God?”
or
“Whose voices are pointing you toward the divine?”
or
“Which silences are worth keeping, and which are you called to break?”
and
“Who will go with you?”
[A time for reflection follows the sermon this week.]
Sources:
(1) Shayla Love, “Do We Actually ‘Hear’ Silence?” (Scientific American website, July 10, 2023; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-actually-hear-silence/).
(2) Ibid.
(3) Cf. Andy Greenhow, “Second Sunday after Pentecost—June 22, 2025” (Presbyterian Outlook website, June 9, 2025; https://pres-outlook.org/2025/06/second-sunday-after-pentecost-june-22-2025/).
(4) In both poetry and prose of the Hebrew Scriptures, natural phenomena generally convey divine power and precede or coincide with encounters with God (cf. Judg. 5:4–5; Hab. 3:3–6; Ps. 18:8–10; 68:9; 104:4 for poetic examples; Exod. 19:16, 18; 20:18 for prosaic parallels). See Mordecai, Anchor Bible, 453.
(5) C. Melissa Snarr, in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, Volume 3, eds. Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, and Cynthia L. Rigby (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2019), 90.
(6) Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage (New York: Convergent, 2025).
(7) Ibid., 12.
(8) Ibid., 83.
(9) Ibid., 84.
(10) For an extended commentary on this connection, see Kimberly D. Russaw, “Commentary on 1 Kings 19:1-4 [5-7] 8-15a” (Working Preacher website, June 22, 2025; https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-3/
commentary-on-1-kings-191-4-5-7-8-15a-2).
