19TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR A)

1st Reading              1 Kings 19: 9a, 11-13a

Psalm                         85: 8ab & 9, 10-11, 12-13 (R. 7)

R:// "Let us see, O Lord, your mercy, and grant us your salvation"

2nd Reading            Romans 9: 1-5

Gospel                       Matthew 14: 22-33

STAND AT THE ENTRANCE

Friends, Peace and Goodness! Today is the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A). Our first reading is from 1 Kings 19: 9a, 11-13a and the Gospel is from Matthew 14: 22-33. Let us pick a few points from them. 

We stay with the first reading from 1 Kings 19: 9a, 11-13a this Sunday. Let us put in context. To understand what God's question to Elijah means, we must first understand where Elijah has come from. Our text omits verses 1 to 8, and if we do not go back to that part, we shall strip the scene of its dramatic context. Elijah has just come from his battle with the 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah (1 Kgs 18:19). He called down fire from Heaven and also slaughtered the false prophets at the brook Kishon. Immediately, Queen Jezebel threatened Elijah and he ran into the wilderness, sat under a broom tree and asked God to take his life (1 Kgs. 19:4). Later he arrives at Horeb. Horeb is another name for Sinai, the mountain of Moses, the mountain where the Law was given, the same mountain where God's presence had been most catastrophically and publicly displayed in all of Israel's history. Elijah had made a forty-day journey to this mountain, the same duration as Moses on Sinai (Exod. 24:18) and the same duration Israel wandered in the wilderness. The issue is that Elijah is not lost. Rather, he deliberately went back to the place where God was undeniably present, looking for Him. The pilgrim of burnout goes to the holy site, looking for the experience that first convinced him. 

It was at this moment that God asked Elijah, thus, "What are you doing here, Elijah". The question is deceptively mild in English. In Hebrew it is rendered as "MAHLĔKĀ POH ʾĒLIYĀHÛ (מַה-לְּךָ פֹה אֵלִיָּהוּ)". Mahlĕkā means literally "what is to you here?" thus, what is your business here? what is the matter with you that you are in this place? The question has a rebuke embedded in it. Why? Simply because the implicit answer is that a prophet of YHWH has no business hiding in a cave on a mountain. His business is standing before kings (1 Kgs 17:1). It is obvious that Elijah has fled his post. That question is one that demands an account. It is important to note that God asks this question twice (v.9 and v.13). The question is what frames the entire encounter. That question becomes our question this Sunday. God asks each of us "What are you doing here?". I think we should establish that as our first point. 

For our second point, I suggest we take a closer look at the three phenomenon in the encounter between God and Elijah. These three are WIND, EARTHQUAKE, and FIRE. What would they mean to an Israelite reading this text? These three are the three canonical signs of divine arrival in the entire Hebrew prophetic and liturgical tradition. 

The great wind that tears mountains apart echoes the wind of God's arrival in the Psalms. Psalm 18:10-15 describes God coming in a storm, riding on a cherub, with coals of fire and a tempest before him. Nahum 1:3 declares, thus, "His way is in whirlwind and storm." The earthquake echoes Psalm 68:8, which says "The earth trembled, the skies poured, before God, the One of Sinai." Fire was the most unambiguous classical sign of divine presence in the Hebrew tradition. God appeared to Moses in fire at the burning bush (Exod 3:2). The pillar of fire led Israel through the wilderness (Exod 13:21). God descended on Sinai in fire (Exod 19:18). Elijah himself had just called down fire from heaven on Carmel. Every single one of these three phenomena had been, across Israel's entire history, a sign that God was arriving. However, at the presence of these theee, God was not in them. Divine presence at the occurrence of these familiar events was negated. Why?

What God is doing to Elijah at Horeb is dismantling Elijah's theology. Elijah had probably spent his entire life as a prophet learning that these are the only phenomena in which God makes himself present. In fact, 1 Kings 17 introduced Elijah as a powerful man, a prophet of the dramatic and the visible. Elijah announces a drought and it happens. He raises a dead child (1 Kgs 17:17–24). He calls down fire from heaven. This is the ideal that his encounter with God at Horeb seeks to correct, but not to abolish. The wind, earthquake and fire were real, but none of them were God. Why is this important to underscore? In the surrounding religious cultures, in the Baal religion that Jezebel was sponsoring, the storm-god, the earthquake, the fire were themselves the deity. The Ugaritic Baal cycle depicts Baal as the rider of the clouds, the lord of the storm, whose voice is the thunder. Elijah has just defeated the prophets of that storm-god on Carmel using fire. Now, on Horeb, God is telling him he is not the storm, the fire, earthquake. Simply, God tells him by that action not to confuse the mode of His action with His identity.

But what happened after the fire? The author says in the Hebrew "QÔL DEMĀMÂ DAQQÂ (קֹול דְּמָמָה דַקָּה)". Let us deconstruct that carefully. Qôl is sound or voice. Demāmâ is from dāmam, which means to be silent, to be struck dumb, to cease. It is the word used for the silence of death in Psalm 94:17, when the Psalmist said, "If the LORD had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence (demāmâ)." Finally, daqqâ means fine or thin. It is the same word used for the fine flour of the grain offering in Leviticus 2:1. The phrase is therefore something like "a voice of crushed, pulverized silence". It is a sound so fine it is on the edge of being no sound at all. This is what is mostly translated as "a still small voice". Why is this very important to underline? 

The point is that it is not that God never uses spectacular means. In fact, he does and he will again. It is that spectacular means are not the measure of his presence. The prophet who can only find God in fire will be destroyed by the discovery that fire is not always where God is. The believer who has been trained to expect God only in the dramatic moments, in the revival, the miracle, the undeniable public sign, will collapse when the silence comes. Horeb is the school in which the most spectacular prophet in Israel's history learns to hear silence. The lesson and the second point is that God is most himself in the word that addresses the will.

Let us stop with the third obvervation. The text beautifully told us what Elijah did when he heard the sound of utter stillness. The author said "he wrapped his face in his mantle and went and stood at the entrance of the cave". There are two actions to explore. 

The first action is the wrapping of the face in the mantle. The Hebrew word for the mantle is ʾADDERETO (אַדַּרְתּוֹ), from adderet, which is a wide, heavy cloak, specifically the garment that identified Elijah as a prophet. Remember that in 2 Kings 1:8, Elijah is identified by his adderet, thus, "a hairy man with a leather belt around his waist". At this description, Ahaziah recognises that it is Elijah. The mantle was the visible and public sign of the prophetic office, the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of a vestment. When Elijah wraps his face in it at the sound of the divine stillness, he is covering his face with the very thing that marks who he is. This action brings the man Moses into perspective. At the burning bush, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God (Exod 3:6). The Hebrew verb is YASTER (יַסְתֵּר), which is to hide, to conceal. The posture of the face covered before the divine presence is the posture of the creature before the Creator, the servant before the one whose holiness exceeds what the human eye can endure.

Closely, I think there js something more specific happening with Elijah's use of his mantle. He is covering the symbol of his prophetic identity with itself. He is, in a gesture, acknowledging that his prophetic office is not what qualifies him to stand before the divine presence. He comes before the silence as a creature and not as a wonder-worker. The adderet covers the face, not the other way round. Notice that adderet will appear again at Elijah's departure. When Elijah is taken up into heaven in 2 Kings 2:13-14, the mantle falls from him as he ascends, and Elisha picks it up. He strikes the Jordan with it and says that "Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?" And the waters part. The mantle holds the prophetic anointing forward. It is the instrument of succession. Therefore, when Elijah wraps his face in it at Horeb, we are watching the same cloak that will eventually pass to Elisha, which is the thread of prophetic continuity being used in an act of creaturely submission before the God of silence. The most powerful thing Elijah carries is also the thing he uses to hide his face. 

The second thing Elijah did was to go and stand at  the entrance of the cave [PETAḤ HAMMEʿĀRÂ (פֶּתַח הַמְּעָרָה)]. We need to pay attention to the fact that he does not walk out of the cave or run away from it in terror and fear. He moves from the interior of the cave where he has been hiding, in the depths of his withdrawal to the threshold, to the entrance. He stands at the boundary between the hiding place and the open mountain. This is a posture that is neither full retreat nor full advance. It is the posture of one who has heard something in the silence that makes the interior of the cave insufficient as a permanent address, but who has not yet fully answered the call to come out. It is precisely at this threshold that God speaks again the same question, thus, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" The encounter does not require Elijah to be fully recovered before God addresses him. The threshold is enough. The face at the entrance is enough for the commission to begin.

Pax et Bonum