Holy Week: The Silences of Holy Week

The terrible silences of holy week give spaces for something radically new.. But  we anre afraid, so afraid, that we are going to be alone, that we are forsaken, that there is only absence and death and decay.  We talk about presence, but truthfully, we do almost everything we can to keep it out of our awareness.   We may see things we don’t want to see and have to do something about it.

Transcript

People are seeking solitude.  They are flocking to retreat centers and monasteries in droves in an effort to escape the pace of contemporary life.  They load up in Winnebagos and crowd into parks and wilderness areas to get away.  They buy books and tapes and videos on contemplation and quiet times.  We're all looking for a little peace and tranquility.

 I have been thinking about the silences of holy week.  Holy week is normally when I think of words and sounds and sights.  It began in noise.  Jesus said, as he entered the city, "Hey, if you try to shut them up, the stones will cry out!"  There's a time to shout out and a time to shut up.  This was the passion.

  All through that week, it is the words we remember: the palm-waving, shouting crowd, the words of institution, the disciples' doubtful, "Is it I, Lord?"  Peter's brave declarations counterpoised against his later, "I don't know what you're talking about!  I don't even know the man!"  Judas' chilling contract negotiations with the Pharisees, Jesus cryptic teachings about the end of the world, accusations of the leaders, questions from Pilate, the taunts of the soldiers, the derision of the crowd.

 But what about the silences?  They are there if we look for them.  I think about the silence in the garden while he prayed alone.  Judas, even at that moment, was bringing the soldiers to arrest him.  I think of the silence that must have been exchanged when Jesus looked into the face of Judas.  "Friend, why have you come?"  And then silence.

Jesus stood wordless as Caiaphas prodded him:  "Have you nothing to say for yourself?"  Jesus, says the gospel, was silent and made no answer.  Pilate, too, according to John, hearing the crowd's demand, ran back into the Praetorium and screamed at Jesus, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?"  But Jesus gave no answer.

 Luke tells us of the terrible gaze of Jesus into the eyes of Peter after the third betrayal.  No words were necessary.  That silent look sent Peter into bitter tears.  There is the terrible silence after the cry:  "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?"  Finally, there is the silence of midday, when Jesus breathed his last and darkness was across the whole land for three hours.  What are we to make of these silences?  What does silence "say" to us?  Sometimes we say that someone has "made an argument from silence."  I would like to make an argument for silence.  I believe it can lead us more deeply to Christ for this time.

1)Silence leads us to worship and praise

Have you ever sat together in silence in worship?  It is not fun.  You must wait for everyone to settle down--the businessman who is jingling his coins impatiently, the kid who doesn't understand, the woman who cannot quit sneezing.  Finally, everyone settles down into the rich quiet.  And there is anxiety.  How long is this going to last?  Occasionally, in settings where people are not used to it, someone will peek to be sure the pastor didn't have a heart attack.  It's hard to be still and know anything, much less God!

 Most of all, though, silence challenges the superficial and the trivial.  In true worship we are not amused but confounded.  We do not so much get our needs met as get our hearts and minds completely rewired so that we begin to need in a different way.  

 Mystery is the deep just beyond every human pretense.  It is the silence as the mother and father and doctor in the waiting room await the first cry of a child drowning for its breath.  It is the terror of that phone call in the night.  It is the awful speechlessness after some sinful house of cards we constructed collapses and we are undone.  

Silence reframes our sense of calling

 There is a time for silence as well as speaking.  In Luke 9, the account of the Transfiguration, there is, of course, a lot of blabbering.  They see his glory and Moses and Elijah standing with him.  And Peter starts talking about building booths, Luke adds, "Not knowing what he said."  And that is typical of a lot of our religious talk.  We prattle on, wordy and noisy, not knowing what to say. 

  Many years ago, I went to our senior adult group and Mrs. Mildred Myers was in a pinch--the mayor was supposed to speak and neither he nor the second speaker had arrived.  Mrs. Myers called on me with these words:  "I want to introduce our pastor, Dr. Furr.  Since our two speakers have not yet arrived, he's going to come and talk until they get here."

  One of the traps of the church is to believe that the kingdom, like nature, abhors a vacuum, that we must always say or do something.  Henri Nouwen once said that there is a ministry of presence and a ministry of absence.  There are times to step back and let a child struggle alone.  There are times when a couple must be left together to "work it out."  Sometimes we have to give a job to a worker and trust them to do the best they can. 

  True love allows a polite distance, so that the beloved has room to walk toward the lover.  True love does not go away, but waits patiently nearby for the resounding whisper of the heart that says, "Yes."

 This is a good model for the church's ministry.  It is not our task as the church to "win" every person we invite.  Neither is it our call to heal every wound that we dress.  God saves, God heals, God transforms.  We are the witnesses who go and stand nearby on God's behalf, a reminder whenever they see us, that God's people have not forgotten nor have they given up on us.  Our presence says clearly, "The offer is still good.  Come."

  But even more, the silences call us to more reflective discernment about what we are doing.  Our call is not to fill up every moment of the day with activities and then declare that the kingdom has come.  Silence invites us into a healthy distance from what we do.

Silence invites us into our truest selves         

 Philip Yancey wrote that he always thought of solitude as a form of craziness.  He thought of hermits as self-obsessed people, sort of like the Unabomber--slightly mad.  Thomas Merton corrected this misconception for him.  "To be really mad," Merton wrote, "You need other people.  When you are by yourself you soon get tired of your craziness.  It is too exhausting."

 In my own life, I have found this to be true.  The poison has come in trying to be or do what others want.  Freedom comes in the silence where I meet God's true call.  

  We're afraid, so afraid, that we are going to be alone, that we are forsaken, that there is only absence and death and decay.  We talk about presence, but truthfully, we do almost everything we can to keep it out of our awareness.  If we ever touch it, taste it, hear it, smell that presence, it might turn our lives upside down.  We may see things we don['t want to see and have to do something about it. 

We might hear the truth and recognize that our lives are killing us.  We might taste the goodness of God and realize that we have satisfied ourselves with lesser things.  

  We must be still, let the darkness come, cry out in the absence, stand in the silence, for such things to happen.  That's why the cross is so disturbing.  After all the words fall silent, all explanations are given, after we have made it into a system that justifies rather than shatters, there is still silence.  The silence of this true teacher.

 Those same silences are still here with us, today, now, anytime we want to seek them.  We can go there and kneel and find something that is not visible to this win-win, kick 'em in world of ours:

  After all the talking and tears between a husband and wife after a betrayal, after the counselors and their words of empathy and clarification, there is a silence in which the mystery of faith or sorrow must prevail.  It is out of this silence that they decide, "We are going to try again."

When you arrive at home after the funeral.  It is too horrible to talk about or conceive, so you go home and are surrounded by family and friends and storytelling and plates of ham and chicken.  There is laughter and wiping of eyes.  And finally, one by one, they say their awkward goodbyes and leave.  The house gets quiet, so still that it is palpable.  In that stillness, that empty, dark moment of exhaustion, there is a silence in which faith must go on when all the other props have released us.  

 There is that place of abandonment when you have been given the lab results or the layoff slip, after you have moved through all the proper stages and feelings when you must now face the silence. It says, "You can go on."

 There is the silence that comes when life itself has let us down.  We may have spent thirty years in a single delusion about ourselves or something we counted on.  We held it tenaciously, so tightly that we had no room for the new to come.  It was why Pilate and Peter and Caiaphas and the people were not ready for a cross.  It was too counterintuitive.  

 The terrible silences of holy week give spaces for something radically new.  We are too fixed by impossible expectations, fantastic ideals that we are in danger of missing it.  That honest sinfulness would have advantage over whitewashed respectability.  That despairing cries would reach farther than pious prosperity.  Surrender leads to power.  Humility is the way of greatness.

Leonard Cohen put it in his song, “Anthem” this way

Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack, a crack in everything 
That's how the light gets in. 
That's how the light gets in.

 Admit the crack in everything.  That is the doorway to this table and this week and this Lord.  The only one, the one that lets the light get in.

                                                 Bibliography

         Farley, Edward.  "A Missing Presence"  The Christian Century, March 18-25, 1998, 276-277.

         Yancey, Philip.  "A Cure for Spiritual Deafness."  Christianity Today (April 6, 1998), 80.