Speaking in Fine Silence

In the days following the September 11^th attack on the World Trade Center, reporters and native New Yorkers spoke of the change that had fallen over the city: In the place of rush-hour traffic there were empty streets. In the place of strangers, rushing by, hardly noticing one another, there were smiles, and strangers who became neighbors, simply by making eye contact with one another. In the place of the chaos of a modern metropolis, there was an eerie calm that had fallen across “the city that never sleeps.” New York City was silent. When was the last time you were?

I don’t mean last night as you slept. I don’t mean ten minutes ago when we paused in our confession. I am grateful for our moments of confession. They are intensely personal and important moments in our corporate worship. But silence is a gift from God, a treasure whose richness must be mined and managed with careful attention. Especially in our over-crowded, always-busy, extra-noisy world, we need to learn to give more attention to silence.

As a child I was accustomed to spend many hours alone in my rowboat, fishing along in the river, when there was no sound save the lapping of the waves against the boat. There were times when it seemed as if the earth and the river and the sky and I were one beat of the same pulse. It was a time of watching and waiting for what I did not know -- yet I always knew. There would come a moment when beyond the single pulse beat there was a sense of Presence which seemed always to speak to me. My response to the sense of Presence always had the quality of personal communion. There was no voice. There was no image. There was no vision. There was God.[1]

In our world, we can scarcely escape the noise of sounds. Our clock radio awakes us each new day to the constant reports of violence, to the marketing of our modern madness, and, lately, to the deafening sounds of war. After a shower, we hurry through breakfast, neglecting table-talk so we can allow Matt and Catie to entertain us on the Today show, and give us the latest gossip and the low-down on the newest gadgets. In the car, we pop in our favorite CD and rock or bop or sing with Bing all the way to the office. The day is filled with the whistle of fax machines, the rattle of copy machines, the constant murmur of a multitasking, multi-user world of Windows and the World Wide Web, bringing the clatter of “You’ve got mail,” and Instant Messages.[2] On the way to lunch, we read the latest movie and restaurant reviews on our Palm PC’s, and on the way home for a late supper, the message on our cell phone reminds us to stop by Harris Teeter -- we’re out of milk. At home the telephone gives us not peace, and the late news puts us to sleep so we can start over, renewed, refreshed, revitalized for a new day!

In the midst of the mind-numbing pace of our modern world, God says, “Be Still.” Into the noise of a soul-desensitizing clamor called technology and entertainment, God breathes, “Be Still and Know.” With a campaign of war raging in Afghanistan, bodies being pulled still from the “ground zero” of terror, and the threat of biological destruction growing in our subconscious psyches, God speaks, “Be Still and Know that I Am.” With carols in the air, and the joyous hell of happy holidays upon us, God glances at our calendars – booked and over-booked -- and thunders in fine silence, “Be Still and Know that I Am God.”

The words of the 46^th Psalm are among the best-known in all of scripture, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble…” Martin Luther translated them for his now-famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” But what exactly is this God’s strength? What is this God’s power? What is this God’s help?

“According to the ancient Near Eastern view of the universe, the mountains were both the foundations that anchored the dry land in the midst of a watery chaos and the pillars that held up the sky.”[3] The mountains held the universe together, so if the mountains crumbled… the whole world crumbled. The writer is picturing an apocalyptic scenario of a nuclear proportion. Even if they drop “the bomb...” Even if the towers collapse in dust and flame... Even if the cancer returns... Even if he leaves me with the kids… Even if I am pregnant… Even if I fail to graduate…

Even if “the mountains fall into the heart of the sea… God is in the midst of the city!” Which is to say, “God is with us.”[4]

The militant language of the psalm has understandably, yet unfortunately led many readers to claim the destructive acts of war as the vengeance of their God. “Come, and behold the works of the LORD, see what desolations [God] has brought on the earth.” But in his commentary, Clinton McCann suggests that these words might best be understood as sarcasm: See what desolations God has brought: wars -- cease; and the weapons of war -- are broken, shattered, destroyed with fire.

Only if we can stop our senseless warring in God’s name.[5] Only if we can silence the maddening noise. Only if we can “Be Still” -- can we know this awesome God.

We must learn to be stewards of stillness. But even if, in the midst of chaos, we should learn to be still, we must understand, yet, how God speaks in that quiet. Thomas Merton once said, “Religious silence is silence that is undertaken as an act of worship. Whether I hear God or not makes no difference.”

But like poor old Elijah, we too love the show-God who answers our pious public prayers, especially when our enemies get what is coming to them in the process. We want to hear the voice of the God who thunders from the mountain, and we expect to like what “our God” says.

The prophet Elijah was doing battle with Jezebel, the pagan wife of King Ahab of Israel. She was threatening Israel by mixing its worship of Yahweh, with her worship of the foreign gods of Baal. In the chapter prior to our text for today, Elijah wins the ultimate prophet’s contest against 450 prophets of Baal. The prophets call out to Baal, to rain down fire from heaven and to consume their sacrifice. There is no answer. Elijah then douses the entire scene with a flood of water and prays to Yahweh. The scripture says “Then the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench…”[6]

But even with this announcement from heaven, Elijah still cannot trust his God. He still fears Jezebel, so he flees, crying out to God, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life…” But a patient God takes Elijah by the hand and leads him up to the mountain, hides him there in a cleft in the rock, and this terrible God passes by.

“Sometimes I think we do all the talking because we are afraid God won’t. Or, conversely that God will. Either way, staying preoccupied with our own words seems a safer bet than opening ourselves up either to God’s silence or God’s speech, both of which have the power to undo us. In our own age, I believe God’s silence is the more threatening, perhaps because it is the more frequently experienced of the two.”[7]

If, when we pray, the voice of God sounds strangely like our own… If, when we pray, God replies to us using our own language, our own dialect, our own vocabulary… If, when we pray, God frequently justifies our own needs, our own desires, our own causes, our own wars… perhaps it is not God who is speaking back to us.

Some of you have known the strange, silence of God. You have asked for a voice, and have heard nothing in return. Because our praying is often selfish and nearsighted, when God answers in “fine silence” -- too many of us turn away, disappointed that either there is no God, or worse, yet, that a silent God simply does not care.

“Is God more at home in silence than in word? Is the moment of most profound silence the moment of God’s most profound presence? ‘I don’t know,’” he answers himself, “but at my wife’s bedside, where words were hollow and cries powerless, the strongest, most powerful reality was silence.”[8]

The pastor of my church in Birmingham was a former college basketball player. At 6’5” Jim filled up a room when he entered it. Over my four years there, I learned why his ministerial presence was just as large. Late one afternoon I was called to the hospital, to the bedside of a dying man. I arrived and greeted the family. I felt like I stumbled around awkwardly for a half-hour. Do I stand? Sit? Put my arm around his wife? Do I stay in the hall with the son? What do I say? Should I pray?

When Jim did arrive, I was relieved, and eager to watch and learn. As I knew he would, just by being there, he brought a sense of calm to the room. He hardly spoke to the family. He walked straight to the bedside and sat down. He took Richard’s hand and without a word he sat there holding that lifeless limb, stroking it gently No one seemed to care that he had no words to say. He was there.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that in the centuries following Jesus’ death, the church baptized his words and his way with the ecclesiastical stamp of certainty, of assurance, of dogmatic truth. In so doing, the Christian church was born in, and has always been centered in belief. “Confess your faith,” the priest would say to baptismal candidates. And the reply would come, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth…”

But the faith of the Jews, of whom Jesus was one, centered not in “belief,” but in “listening.” What was the central scripture for the Jews? The scripture that was recited each morning? “Hear O Israel… Listen O Israel… the Lord your God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. All your soul. All your might.”[9]

We need to reclaim some of our own Jewish faith. We need to listen more, even if we have to believe less, in order to do it.

[1] Howard Thurman, Disciplines of the Spirit.

[2] America On-Line, the largest provider of internet service features a man’s voice who says, “You’ve got mail,” when a new e-mail has arrived. “Instant Messenger” is also an AOL trademark program.

[3] Keck, Leander, et al, eds. The New Interpreter’s Bible, Clinton McCann, Jr., “Vol. IV, Psalms,” p. 865.

[4] The name Hebrew name, “Immanuel,” means “God is with us.” The prophet Isaiah foretold of a child who would bear this name (Isaiah 7.14), and the Church later ascribed the name to Jesus, the Word of God, “made flesh” (John 1.14).

[5] McCann says a better translation of “Be still and know…” is “Stop!” or “Throw down your weapons!” and “depend on God instead of yourself.” See note #3 above.

[6] 1 Kings 18.38

[7] Taylor, p. 51.

[8] Taylor, p. 72.

[9] Deuteronomy 6.4-5

[10] Someone commented that the deaf do not experience “silence.” Silence is a perception only for those who hear. The deaf do “hear” vibrations, though they cannot hear sound.