based on The First Book of Kings, chapters 17 through 19
In which it appears that carrying God’s word
is not an easy job. And Elijah in his despair is
led to understand that God, at the time,
spoke in the sound of his silence.
And it came to pass that an odd little person, a stranger and foreigner, came to tell Ahab, the fearsome king of Israel:
There shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.
He was Elijah. No one knew where he came from.
The sky dried up.
Drought. Famine.
The furious king threatened him. So Elijah slipped away.
When he popped up again one day, completely unexpected, Ahab cried:
You! What are you doing here?! You troublemaker!
And Elijah replied: Not I, but you and your queen Jezebel—you’re the ones making all the trouble by following Baal instead of the God of Israel.
Elijah, alone, defied the prophets of Baal, all 450 of them.
A huge crowd watched from the top of Mount Carmel.
Call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord.
The one who first lights the sacrificial fires wins.
The prophets of Baal started off.
They danced and prayed and beat themselves. But nothing.
No fire. No flames. No god.
Then it was Elijah’s turn. He walked up.
And called out to Yhwh, his God.
And a great fire flared up, wiping out everything in its path.
The victorious Elijah slit the throats of all the prophets of Baal.
And at last upon the kingdom, rain fell.
But the jealous Jezebel wanted him killed, so once again he slipped away,
heading off across the desert, alone.
Exhausted hero. Distraught prophet.
Finally, he collapsed under a tree. Enough! he said. I’d rather die.
Why survive? I can’t do anything right.
Elijah fell asleep.
An angel woke him up. Eat, drink, and get on with it, he said.
Elijah set off again, going the way Moses had gone. Through the desert, forty days and forty nights.
But once arrived at the mountain of Horeb, where God had appeared to Moses, he found no one.
Suddenly, a voice: What doest thou here, Elijah? Elijah replied, I’m alone.
I’m the only one left to defend the love of God; everyone else wants Baal.
And the voice said, God will come.
But God didn’t come and didn’t reply, as he had done in earlier times.
Nothing from the wind off the mountains.
Nothing from the Earth, furiously trembling.
Nothing from the fire.
No; God came in the sound of silence. A sound as soft as dust.
And in his loneliness, Elijah understood: The living God is now the God of the silent and the soft.
Now to Israel, Elijah could return.
And to the sky, where he later disappeared.
And from then on, we never close the door, but wait for him,
Always saving him a chair.
