Sermon of Chaplain John Colatch at 174th Baccalaureate Service

We, the people of Lafayette College, have a tendency to be folks who crave empirical evidence in order to function day to day. If we cannot quantify it, if we cannot electrify it, if we cannot verify it, we’re not quite sure, sometimes, what to do with it. I am going to speak of things a bit more esoteric today, about things that cannot be quantified, about an event that might have been electrified, and realities that can be verified only through personal experience.

But before I get to all that, I have a question for you.“What are you doing here? What do you hope to take away from this?” If you’re looking for a diploma or certificate, that’s this afternoon. Relax, there is no correct answer. You can put away your blue books.

The story I’m going to talk about comes from the Book of First Kings, about a prophet named Elijah. Elijah heard the question “What are you doing here?” when he sought the safety of Mt. Horeb to escape the wrath of Queen Jezebel. It seemed that the queen was a tad miffed after Elijah slaughtered 450 of her priests after they lost an ox-burning contest on Mt. Carmel. The contest was to show whether Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, was the greatest or Baal, the fertility god. Yahweh’s prophet won, Jezebel’s priests died.

Elijah hit the road, because Jezebel said that he would be dead within 24 hours. So Elijah was terrified, and he ran. He ran until he came to a cave on Mt. Horeb. Though most English translations state that he went to “a” cave, there is at least one Hebrew scholar who thinks a more accurate translation is “the” cave. If you are going to say “the” cave, then you must have a certain one in mind. The one that the writer had in mind was the cleft in the rock where Moses experienced the Lord on Mt. Sinai, which was another name by which Horeb was known.

When Elijah came and hid in the back of the cave, the voice of the Lord came to him and asked, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah responded with the best of the woe-is-me monologues in the Bible. I am paraphrasing here: I was the good guy, Lord. I alone represented you, I won a contest with the priests of Baal, I have been a leader, and no one appreciates me. Jezebel wants to kill me.

God was not moved.

Not one to want to pass up an opportunity to show what divine will can achieve, the Lord ordered Elijah to stand at the front of the cave, at which time a parade of natural disasters and wonders marched by. There was a windstorm, an earthquake, and a fire storm. Afterward, there was just quiet, variously translated as the “sound of sheer silence,” “a still, small voice,” and even “the sound of silence, pulverized.” In other words, the quietest quiet that one could ever experience (a quiet that does not exist on the Lafayette campus).

In that silence, the Lord asked, “What are you doing here Elijah?” Elijah again responded by recounting his previous list of woes: “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” In response, the Lord did nothing less than give him marching orders, and Elijah could do nothing other than step off the mountain and continue with the work that had been ordained for him.

Why was he able to come down off the mountain and continue the work that just a day before seemed impossible to him? After all, Jezebel was still tracking him; his life was still in danger. What was it that changed within Elijah, and what caught hold of him on that mountain? Not wanting to dismiss for a moment the persuasive power of a private audience with the Almighty, complete with wind, splitting rocks, and pyrotechnics. I believe that the reason Elijah changed his mind while hiding out on Mt. Horeb was that in the absolute silence after the storm, Elijah was able to regain a sense of his calling.

You see, it was a calling that got him into the line of work as a prophet in the first place. Prophets were believed to be people who were called by God to speak truth to power. When I speak of a calling, I am speaking of a spiritual drive that impels one to accomplish what one believes is his or her life’s mission. It is a drive that comes from deep within, from our very souls.

It is my contention that each one of us has a calling, and such callings reveal themselves to us in assorted ways. For Elijah, having the Lord offer an epiphany involving natural disasters may have enabled him to reaffirm his call, because it had something to do with showing him that no disaster in all of the natural world – not even the regal disaster known as Jezebel – could finally defeat him.

When Elijah went to Horeb, he journeyed not to “a” cave but to “the” cave, where God had first made a covenant with God’s people. Being on that mountain, in that silence, enabled Elijah to recall not only who he was, but whose he was. Elijah could not deny the sacredness of that moment, because he could not escape the impact of his faith on his life and work. It defined him, and the pilgrimage to that holy place enabled him to see that he could no longer hide from the work he was called to complete. Elijah called upon his sacred memory, and that link between Horeb and what happened to him there and Moses and what happened to him there gave Elijah the strength to move on, because he went to a place where he could reconnect with his spiritual roots.

Recently I spent a week’s study leave at the university where I attended divinity school. I had been back there many times since my graduation, but seldom as a student. For one week, I did nothing but read, meet with faculty members, worship, and study in the university library. Some students have heard my description of my activities of that week and have asked, with an expression of incredulity, “And that was a good week?” It was a very good week.

During the first day or two that I was there, I experienced the strangest sense of longing. I kept thinking of all of my divinity school classmates, most of whom I have not seen since graduation. When I sat in chapel, a slideshow began to unfurl in my head with the faces of all of those wonderful classmates, most of them just a couple of years older then than you are now. Their laughter, optimism, questioning – it was all there in my mind.

The divinity school has undergone a building addition and a renovation lately, so the inside, to a large degree, doesn’t look like it did when I was there. So I had to find some familiar ground. Like anyone, I knew where to find it, where they never renovate. I went upstairs to the second level of the library stacks. I discovered that it was exactly as it was when I used to sequester myself away in order to study there. For a brief moment, I was overpowered by all of the memories that came flooding back and all that has happened in my life since then. Loved ones who have died, places I have moved from, people who have come and gone – all of it went flashing by.

I remained there for just a few moments before returning to the busy common areas. I was strangely refreshed and re-invigorated. That wee bit of memory overload reminded me of the years of preparation I had spent there and of all of the people, faculty, and classmates, who had touched my life and had a hand in my spiritual formation and professional development.

As much as I lingered over the thoughts of my divinity school years and of my youthful self working, laughing, playing, and questioning, I realized that I would not go back to those days even if I could. I have grown too much since then. I have married, and my wife and I have raised two wonderful children. I have served at several colleges and universities and have worked with a generation of students. They and you have touched my life in ways that continue to form me. I would never trade that. That trip back to divinity school enabled me to pause, reflect on my calling and move on. For that week, Duke was my Mt. Horeb, and though I have never forgotten or denied my calling that was mine at the age of 14, that place re-energized me and re-affirmed the direction I have chosen in order to live out that calling.

Over the years, I have seen many people, students and faculty alike, react with blank stares at the mention of a calling. Perhaps I can understand their reaction. How do you explain to someone the something that forms you from such a deep place within your being that you know it to be true, period? People have stories of their callings; others continually search for evidence of a calling, while still others doubt that such a reality exists. There is an account of a reaffirmation of a calling that is deeply affecting, that of Martin Luther King, Jr., who had a Mt. Horeb experience at his own kitchen table.

As David Garrow recounts the event in his biography of King, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (this is going back to the 1950’s), King had experienced a very difficult few weeks after the onset of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and his assumption of the presidency of the Montgomery Improvement Association. King felt that the first few weeks had gone well, but that once the white community realized that the bus boycott was not going to go away, folks began behaving badly. He began to receive nasty telephone calls, sometimes as many as 40 per day, threatening his life and the lives of his family. His home had even been firebombed. He took the abuse for a while, but then came a night when he felt that he could take it no longer. He was sitting at his kitchen table at midnight drinking a cup of coffee and trying to shake the terror that he felt as a result of the most recent phone call, in which someone threatened to blow his brains out and blow up his house. I quote from King’s account of that night.

I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born. . . . I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken from me any minute. I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted, and loyal wife who was over there asleep. And she could be taken from me, or I could be taken from her. And I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any longer. I was weak. Something said to me, you can’t call on Daddy now, he’s up in Atlanta 175 miles away. . . . You’ve got to call on that something in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about, the power that can make a way out of no way. I prayed a prayer and I prayed out loud that night. I said, “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now. . . . I’m losing my courage, and I can’t let people see me like this, because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak.” Then it happened, and it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world. . . . Jesus promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. . . . Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared.

For King, the kitchen table in his home was transformed into a holy place. This account illustrates that it is not as important where we are when we discover or remember our calling as it is that we do discover or remember it. Those who would scoff at King’s account of his kitchen table experience would do well to read up on what happened afterwards. His life was never easy after that. He was always in danger, and eventually he was killed for his activities on behalf of those who were disenfranchised. But he never lost his memory of that night at the kitchen table and never wavered from the faith-basis for his work. He saw that work as his calling, and people forget that of all the things King was, the first was a Baptist preacher and a prophet. It was only by affirming that sense of call that he found the strength to carry on.

Elijah needed the timeout, the silence, on Mt. Horeb if he was to find the strength to continue on his journey. Because of that experience, he could continue his work with confidence. For Elijah and for King they had a story, the story of an experience that linked their faith to their life’s work. When the Interfaith Youth Core visited our campus in March, their representatives told our students, “When you feel passionately about something, don’t just quote facts and figures, tell your story. Tell why that issue matters so much to you. Folks may not like your story, folks may not believe your story, folks may disagree with your story, but they cannot dismiss it, because it is your story.” It’s the same with callings.

So, as you prepare to leave this place that has been your home for four years, I hope you will go with the sense that you have been called to do great things. Only you know if you feel a sense of being called by something or someone beyond yourself as you embark on a journey to a career. Whether you are headed to a job right away, to grad school, or to your home while you plan your next move, listen to the silences that will find you from time to time.

If silence is not something that comes your way often, go looking for it. If silence makes you uncomfortable, embrace it anyway. So, take out the earphones to your MP3 player or turn off the computer and seek out a place of sheer silence and listen for a voice beyond your own. If you cannot find a place, look harder and search far and wide. It might be right under your nose.

If you don’t hear or sense a voice or an urging right away, listen harder. Don’t give up; it will find you. You may identify that voice as that of a supreme being or you may decide that it is your better nature speaking from deep within you. Once you identify that voice or urging, listen carefully and for a sustained period of time. Such active listening can be life-altering. Callings need not be justified or defended, because the actions springing from such a place of deep spirituality will speak for themselves. They did for Elijah. They did for King.

Elijah came off the mountain, passed on the mantle of prophecy to Elisha, as he had been instructed by God, and was taken into heaven in a fiery chariot. I cannot promise the same results for you. Martin Luther King continued to speak out in the face of injustice and, though his life was taken, his prophetic spirit helped transform the civil rights movement in the United States into a tsunami that washed over every corner of the country.

If you think for a moment that you cannot effect great change, be it in the world, your community, your workplace, or your home, think harder. You will need to be vigilant lest you miss the silences in which the voice of the One who is the source of our calling speaks to you. God is not in the earthquakes, nor the firestorms, nor the hurricanes of our daily lives, but in the pulverizing silence that follows such events. There is a place where you can find the physical and spiritual space to remember who you are and whose you are, and what you have been called to do. May God bless you on your journey.