A Whispering Sound

Homily for Friday of the Seventh Week in Easter

As Elijah sat in the cave atop Mount Horeb, he heard a heavy and strong wind capable of rending mountains and crushing rocks. God was not in the strong wind. Then Elijah experienced an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, there came a great fire, but God was not in the fire. No, God came to Elijah in a tiny, whispering sound.

Once again, we learn that the Lord may be revealed in the quiet and unremarkable or ordinary things. The story teaches us that God is not more available in the microscope than in the microscopic, that God prefers the small to the large, and that God cannot be limited by our expectations of where and how God will appear or be revealed.

The story also teaches us that God’s voice can actually be drowned out by the loud, cacophonous clamor of the world. Seek God in silence, for it is in the silence that God’s tiny, whispering voice can be heard. Yet, truth be told, human beings often turn away from silence. We tend to fill the silence with other kinds of noise rather than actually sit in a desert of sound. If Scripture teaches us anything, it is that God’s trysting place is the desert.

The presence of God, God’s activity in our life, is more evident the more we leave ourselves open to the possibility of God’s presence where we might least expect it. When God chose to live among us, God’s choice was to come to us as a baby in the stillness of the night. Through his words and his deeds, Jesus never stopped trying to teach us that God was in our midst. When his time with us was drawing to a close, he left us another simple, ordinary, and least expected kind of presence. Taking very ordinary bread and wine, he left us his body and blood.