Subtraction Problems
A sermon brought forth from Mark 4:35-41 and 1 Kings 19:3-16 preached on Sunday, November 14, 2021
Jesus has a much different idea of what a “storm” was than His disciples had. As the waves knocked against the side of the boat, Jesus remained fast asleep, unfazed by the tumbling sea around Him. The rain came sideways, but that did not concern Him, either.
The disciples, though, were beside themselves. For all their experience at sea, they were unequipped for that storm, and they couldn’t understand why Jesus wasn’t joining them in their frantic search for safety. But the storm didn’t even shake Jesus awake; the disciples had to do that. They woke Him and said to him, “Teacher, don't you care if we drown?”
In his book “Mere Christianity,”1 C.S. Lewis brings words to the monumental task of clearing space in our everyday so that God has a fighting chance to speak. He writes,
“It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”
Yes, that’s it. That’s what life often feels like, doesn’t it? Like getting caught in a windstorm that seems never to end. The bluster of our lives—all the concerns that arise, our overstuffed calendars, the pattern of always-on-to-the-next-thing, and the way those next things come rushing at us (or the way we come rushing at them)—it’s a wonder that we do not arrive windblown and with wild eyes. And even though we’re forever chasing after what’s next on our calendar, it often feels like we’re the ones being chased. Perhaps the storms in which we find ourselves in the middle of are self-created, but they still overtake us. “What’s next?” is always the question.
Is it fair to say we have an addiction to addition? We might wish for a day when our lives don’t feel like we’re drowning in a sea of our own commitments, racing after each one like it’s a dare or a challenge to our sanity, but still we choose the insanity, hoping one day we’ll be able to enjoy that larger, stronger, and quieter life; but for now, we’ll rush around as if today’s effort will afford us rest for tomorrow. We do have an addition addiction. We have subtraction problems.
Elijah was swamped, too, caught in the middle of a few natural disasters of his own making. He was chased into the quiet company of God—dragged into solitude and silence by way of desperation. This was not of his own choosing. Elijah was a prophet who had tough words to deliver to his own people.
The Israelites had lost their way. Led by their king, Ahab, and their queen, Jezebel, the Israelites forgot their own story. They forsook their commitment to God and began worshipping only those things they could control themselves. With their own hands, they carved images into Asherah poles and worshiped them. They left God for their own ways. They gave away their allegiance to the very things they created. We do that, too, and often. But the false gods the Israelites bowed down to were only representations of their own values. They had become a God-desolate people.
We fill our lives with our own distractions, our minds and hearts slowly but surely are overtaken by what we fill our time and our calendars with. We populate our life with them until all we can see is what’s right in front of us. Our cramped lives pull our focus away from God and toward whatever the next thing demands of us. When we’re caught up in the thick of it, we can’t see that we’re losing ourselves in the clutter of our own lives.
Elijah was a prophet, God’s mouthpiece. He saw his own people being misled by Ahab, their king, giving themselves to things that had nothing to do with God. Elijah was the only one in Israel who was God-inhabited, who was anywhere near attuned to the movements of God. God told him it was time to confront his fellow Israelites.
Elijah knew the words God gave him to say to King Ahab would not go over well. Elijah would need to run away and hide because no one as powerful as King Ahab, in his day or in ours, is okay with a truth that doesn’t serve their purposes.
After confronting King Ahab and his queen, Jezebel, Elijah hightailed it into the wilderness of Machpelah, ending up in a shallow cave. Elijah didn’t choose this place; he was driven to it out of sheer desperation. God chased him into forced silence and solitude. He settled down to sleep against a broom tree, then we made his way to the cave at Machpelah thinking he had outsmarted and outran all the storms created by his people’s unfaithfulness, but then, and almost all at once, those storms caught up to him—windstorms and earthquakes, avalanches and fire, but Elijah knew that God did not cause them.
Then came upon Elijah a sheer silence, and that silence was full of God. Elijah was forced by God to slow down enough. And after the storms had come and gone, God caught up to him inside of that silence. God drove Elijah into that cave because Elijah had his own subtraction problems. There God let Elijah sleep. God nourished him, cleared a way ahead for him.
What in your life steals you away from attending to God? Could it be, like the Israelites, that you have crowded your life with your own creations? Or could it be, like Elijah, you’re too exhausted to give yourself fully to the presence of God, scrambling from one thing to another, chasing after, or being chased by, whatever’s next?
What if in the middle of that scramble, God chased you down; and whether you were willing it or not, brought you to a place in which you could rest? What’s it about us that resists being caught by God?
Author and spiritual director, Dallas Willard2 has ideas about that. He writes,
“Silence is frightening because it strips us as nothing else does, throwing us upon the stark realities of our life. It reminds us of death, which will cut us off from this world and leave only us and God. And in the quiet, what if there turns out to be very little between us and God.”
Within the unhurried place of silence and solitude where we are one-on-one with God, we’re no longer in control. Maybe that’s why we avoid it. But it’s only when we surrender to moments like those that God will come close.
It’s strange, but this letting go requires much of us. Within it, our preoccupations cease to occupy us. And we love our preoccupations. In silence, the space they take up inside us can be replaced with God, and silence spent in God’s presence is never empty. If we can see within it, we’ll find it full of God. And inside of the silence, God can help us solve our subtraction problems.
Spiritual director and author, Ruth Haley Barton3 puts it this way:
“God wants to tend to the unfinished places of our soul. But it takes time to entrust ourselves to the presence of God.”
Poet Jan Richardson4 seems to channel Elijah’s experience with God, but she writes for us. Imagine God speaking these words to you.
I know how your mind
rushes ahead
trying to fathom
what could follow this.
What will you do,
where will you go,
how will you live?You will want
to outrun the grief.
You will want
to keep turning toward
the horizon,
watching for what was lost
to come back,
to return to you
and never leave again.For now
hear me when I say
all you need to do
is to still yourself
is to turn toward one another
is to stay.Wait
and see what comes
to fill
the gaping hole
in your chest.
Wait with your hands open
to receive what could never come
except to what is empty
and hollow.You cannot know it now,
cannot even imagine
what lies ahead,
but I tell you
the day is coming
when breath will
fill your lungs
as it never has before
and with your own ears
you will hear words
coming to you new
and startling.
You will dream dreams
and you will see the world
ablaze with blessing.Wait for it.
Still yourself.
Stay.
God is near, and He invites you and me into the sheer silence of His presence. In that unhurried space, He wants to help us solve our subtraction problems.
All praises to the One who made it all and finds it beautiful. Alleluia! Amen.
C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952.
Dallas Willard, Invitation to Silence and Solitude, Introduction, 2010.
Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Silence and Solitude, Introduction, 2010.
Jan Richardson, A Cure for Sorrow, 2015.