This blog provides a meditation on the Episcopal daily readings along with a headline from world news:
ISLAMIST PARTIES LEAD AS EGYPT VOTES 
1 Kings 19:9-18
9At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ 10He answered, ‘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.’11 He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ 14He answered, ‘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.’ 15Then the Lord said to him, ‘Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. 16Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. 17Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. 18Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.’
The Hebrew for “sound of sheer silence, is bat qol, literally, the “daughter of a voice”, and so we should translate, ” a small voice”. “Still small voices” and “sounds of sheer slence” come from the banal religious imaginations of western translators who want to make the characteristics of the voice into a spiritual experience. The much more sophisticated narrator of the books of Kings knows that what is truly hair-raising about the quiet voice is its power to command, in this case to command Elijah to undertake a series of actions which will bring about a jihadist coup in Israel against the easy-oasy secularists who honour the gods of the land and refuse to bow to the “shariah law” of Jahweh, the ancestral God of Israel. I make the point in these contentious terms in order to emphasise how far away we are from John Greenleaf Whittier’s dotty hymn with its “still, small voice of calm.”
How ready are we to applaud a prophet who hears God’s voice when nobody else can hear anything and who justifies his high-handed interference with his people’s politics with reference to God’s command? Of course we can say, on the other hand, that the Israeli establishment was also easy-oasy about injustice to the poor and complicit with the new urban middle class who were enjoying prosperity and power. In comparison with them the prophet stands for clear standards of right and wrong that apply to all citizens. These are questions that clearly have a bearing on the issue of traditional Islam both in secular socieies like the U.K., in places of Islamic rule like Iran and now in the countries of the so-called Arab spring. A good starting place for mature thnking on this issue might be the extent to which the Christian religious tradition includes what we have come to describe as Islamic. John Knox’s social ethics may have been fairly similar to those of the Ayatolah Khamanei.
John 6:15-27
15 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, 17got into a boat, and started across the lake to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18The lake became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19When they had rowed about three or four miles,* they saw Jesus walking on the lake and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. 20But he said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’ 21Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land towards which they were going.
22 The next day the crowd that had stayed on the other side of the lake saw that there had been only one boat there. They also saw that Jesus had not got into the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. 23Then some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
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