2022.06.19 | Listening for the Still, Small Voice
“Listening for the Still, Small Voice”
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Juneteenth 2022
Sunday, June 19, 2022
I Kings 19:1−15 (NRSV)
One hundred fifty-seven years ago today, June 19, 1865 enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally got the news that they were free. Though their freedom had been granted by President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation made on January 1, 1863, folks in Galveston didn’t get this liberating news until 2.5 years later, due to the significant geographic distances between Washington, D.C. and Galveston, Texas, limited communication channels, and most slaveholders’ refusal to accept the news.
African Americans created the slang term “Juneteenth” for this day by combining the month with the date of the occasion.
In popular culture President Lincoln’s move is often framed as one grounded in his moral character, the National Archives is more transparent and acknowledges that the President’s decision was a military move designed to rally enslaved people to join the Union Army and defeat the Confederacy and stave off French and British support. Because the proclamations was a military move, it did not officially end slavery in the US; it only declared it illegal in the Confederate states.
Nevertheless, the President’s decision did prompt the release of many enslaved people, who joined the Union Army. Over 200,000 African Americans joined the Union Army and contributed to their own and thousands of others' liberation.
President Biden signed the bill into law last year, declaring Juneteenth a federal holiday. Earlier this year, Governor Newsom declared this occasion a state holiday. And, by this time next year, I expect that all of Alameda County’s public entities, Eden Church, and numerous other organizations will have declared Juneteenth an official holiday, too.
II
This brief history of Juneteenth is a reminder that freedom is a process, and the road to justice is a long and circuitous one. We’ve come a long way in the United States in advancing liberty and justice for all, and we have a long way to go.
We were reminded during the plenary at the NCNC UCC Annual Meeting, yesterday, by the keynote speaker that there are three major steps to justice for all, and they don’t come easily. The first is equality. The second is equity. The third is liberation. And, now in the field of public education and public health, folks are now recognizing the need for a fourth step: inclusion. (Borrowed from the American University’s Diversity & Inclusion site.)
III
The prophet Elijah was hip to the fact that justice was a process, and it wasn’t guaranteed. Like other prophets who came before him, Jeremiah had the unenviable calling to speak truth to power, and to face the repercussions of doing so.
The way that the story goes in I Kings 19, Elijah lived and served during the reign of King Ahab, when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was suffering through a three-year drought that had caused a famine in the land.
The famine, Elijah explained, was the result of immoral and unjust leadership in the nation. Specifically, Elijah said that Queen Jezebel’s worship of Baal, the Canaanite fertility god, and her insistence on the superiority of the monarchy over the divinity of Yahweh was the cause of Israel’s demise.
One chapter back in the book of I Kings, Elijah challenged the royals (Ahab and Jezebel and their cultic prophets) to a duel to determine whose prophets—and ultimately, whose god—was greater. The terms of the duel were these: Elijah proposed that each party prepare a sacrificial offering, and call on their god to ignite a fire. Whichever prophet could invoke a fire first would be the true prophet, and their god would be confirmed as the true God. Ahab and Jezebel agreed to the duel and the prophet’s proposed reward for the winner.
In the end, Elijah (and ultimately Yahweh) won the contest. His prayers were answered and the drought ended. Elijah rounded up and killed the false prophets. He restored Israel’s conventional religious practices. And, he sent Ahab to his summer palace to celebrate the end of the drought.
The story might have ended happily with an abundant harvest, but it did not. When Ahab arrived at his summer palace, and told Jezebel what had transpired in the capital, she was furious, and she demanded revenge against Elijah. She swore that she would have Elijah within 48 hours, and she sent a messenger to deliver the death sentence.
The notice was received. Elijah was terrified by the news and fled to Beer-sheba, a desert city in Judah, far out of the reach of Jezebel, and then continued another day’s journey into the wilderness. Exhausted by his flight from the queen and the desert heat, the prophet settled under a broom tree and prayed that God might bring his misery to an end, but God did not. Instead he was provided with nourishment and further direction to travel on to Mt. Horeb (Mt. Sinai).
Elijah got up, ate and drank, and traveled another 40 days and 40 nights to Mt. Horeb, where he sought shelter in a cave. While hunkered down, the prophet was called out of the cave where he experienced a powerful wind, then an earthquake, and then a fire. Elijah was in awe of these events, but understood that God was not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but God was, indeed, in a whisper which only he heard--a whisper that guided him to travel on to Damascus where he anointed Hazael, King of Aram Damascus, Jehu as King of Israel, and the prophet Elisha to be his successor.
IV
Periodically I find myself reflecting on Elijah’s story, because I have always admired people in every generation who have demonstrated great courage and acted on their convictions, in spite of the consequences that they faced. How they’ve gotten clear on a position, found the courage to speak up, and perhaps, most importantly, how they’ve stayed the course when they’re wearing down and their allies are drifting away.
I’ve wondered how more recent prophets, like Elijah, have done it. For example,
How did Harriet Tubman, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, do it? How did she make several trips into slave-holding states, leading dozens of individuals to freedom in the North, including her own family and friends from the plantation where she was raised?
How did abolitionist Sojourner Truth, a slave “owned” by a Dutch farmer in Upstate New York find the courage to raise the question, “Ain’t I a woman?” amidst gatherings of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in “free” New York?
And, how people like Fannie Lou Hamer, the daughter of Mississippi sharecroppers, found the courage to show up at the County Courthouse and insist that she be allowed to register to vote. How did she keep on registering voters after being jailed and beaten by the police, thrown off the plantation where she worked, and got numerous death threats?
I’ll tell you how. They went through their own gauntlet of challenges, like Elijah did--challenges that seasoned them and made them stronger--and eventually they discovered the importance of finding a place of sanctuary, where they find peace, and wait for the whispering God to give them direction.
It’s just that simple, and it’s just that hard. If you want to discern what is right, good, and fitting, you take the time to discern. If you want to be able to stay the course, you have to find Sanctuary and quiet your soul so that you can hear the whisper of the living God.
It’s not that God can’t or won’t use pyrotechnics to get her point across. It’s not that God can’t raise his voice and try to get your attention. God’s capable of that and a whole lot more.
The reason for the whisper is because God knows, if they don’t whisper, we will just keep charging ahead--with our hearts pounding, muscles exhausted, and trauma brains on high sensory alert--when what we most need to do is to stop, take time for sabbath, and listen for God’s divine message. Amen.