The Sound of Silence (no, not the Simon and Garfunkel song)
This is my sermon for 13 August 2023, for the churches in my benefice. My main readings were 1 Kings 19:9-18 and Matthew 14:22-33.
[long pause] I wonder, what do you think silence sounds like?
[beat] How do you feel about silence? How does it make you feel when you experience it? Are you comfortable with it? Uncomfortable with it? Do you seek it out, or do you avoid it? How does it feature in your daily lives?
It can seem funny to think about hearing silence. After all, isn’t silence the absence of sound? Isn’t the point that we’re not hearing anything? And yet silence is a part of our soundscape. And as such, it is something we experience and that affects us.
When I think about the ‘sound’ of silence, I often think of the silence that comes at the end of a performance of some kind. You know how, if you go to the theatre or to a concert, you experience a beat as the performance ends, before the applause starts. Perhaps the lights go dim on the stage, or the musician rests with their hands and their instrument still in position, before the curtain falls, or the instrument is lowered—before there is action again. In that silence there is a suspense, a kind of anticipation. A holding of the breath before an exhale. It’s the moment before you begin to put words to the feelings that you’ve experienced during the performance; before you begin to form coherent thoughts or even develop opinions. The spell of the show holds and you begin absorb the experience you’ve had before you begin to move; before you head out and on to the next thing. It’s a transition.
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Our readings today both contain moments of silence and transition, moments in which characters encounter God. It’s perhaps most obvious in our Old Testament passage, where we hear the story of Elijah who has come to the holy mountain, Horeb. He’s running out of fear for his life. He’s just participated in a very dramatic face-off with the prophets of Baal in which God demonstrated his existence and his power to the people of Israel and all the false prophets who worshipped the idols were killed; but as a result of this Israel’s queen wants his head. As he flees through the desert, he encounters an angel who sends him to this mountain, where he encounters God and is given instructions for the next stage of his work as a prophet. But let’s pay attention to this encounter:
“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; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When 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?”
I love this phrasing and the way that it builds up suspense… the Lord was not, the Lord was not, the Lord was not… and then [pause] silence. For how long, I wonder? And then, God speaks. It is such a contrast with everything that has come before it: not just the weather on the mountain, but also the high drama of the events with the prophets of Baal and Queen Jezebel. The ‘sound of sheer silence’ is that beat when the performance ends, in which Elijah can begin to absorb what he has been a part of and what has happened to him, through which he becomes ready to hear what God has to say to him and is then able to move on to the next stage of his ministry. Did you notice that Elijah says the same thing twice in the reading? He tells the same story, but the second time he is ready to hear God’s response and to return to Israel.
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There is a similar transition in our gospel reading. This story follows the execution of John the Baptist and Jesus’ feeding of the 5000, both of which are intense, dramatic events. And both events, given the political climate of the time, probably put Jesus’ own life at risk. Even without that danger, Jesus is in the middle of his ministry, busy travelling around teaching, healing, carrying out miracles. There’s a lot going on. And so, Jesus sends his disciples on ahead of him, and goes up a mountain to pray. This is a chance to take a beat, to breathe, to absorb what’s been going on and get ready for what will come next—to experience some silence and meet with God in prayer.
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Our lives may not often—ever—be as dramatic as those of Elijah or Jesus—but they can still feel pretty hectic, perhaps even now, in the middle of August, We live in a world that is always noisy: there is always something to listen to or watch; we’re encouraged to be busy and productive; we have people to care for, demands made on us. It can be hard to find time to be in silence and experience it fully. To let it do its work of letting us hold that beat, to absorb what has been going on, and to exhale, having been made ready for the next thing. To make space for us to notice God.
We can’t all retreat up a mountain on the regular. We probably can’t even all retreat up the hill to Richmond Park as often as we might like—and it can easily feel like we’re trying to find time that just isn’t there, or that we’re wasting the precious time that we do have. If you’re anything like me, you both yearn for that silence, but also don’t quite know how to be in it—often we almost shy away from it. But silence is so important in helping us live well in the world, so necessary for us to be able to recognise that God is with us and to stay in touch with how God wants us to live.
The poor disciples, I think, illustrate some of the dangers of not trying to find this experience of silence. They have to get in a boat sail across a stormy lake. They don’t get a chance to absorb what’s just gone on. Maybe the boat trip could have provided a break, but hey, there’s a storm! And so, when they see Jesus walking on the water, they can’t be calm about it. They’re not able to deal with what is going on well: you can imagine them, flapping around in the boat and Peter initially so keen to go to Jesus, but then getting distracted by what’s going on around him. He is, quite literally, floundering.
But because Jesus has had that beat, that time of silence and stillness, he radiates that to Peter and the rest of the disciples. He says those words—It is I—this I am naming himself both as Jesus and as God, with them in this chaos. He reaches out his hand to Peter and catches him. The wind stops. There is stillness, and a breath in the action for all of them.
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I imagine that many of us here are called upon to be that person quite often: a person who catches others, giving them the space to draw breath and get ready for the next thing—ready to notice God. Hopefully many of us also have these people in our own lives too. But to give this, we need to experience our own moments of silence, even if it doesn’t involve climbing a mountain. I find them in the process of brewing a cup of coffee in the morning, or in sitting on my balcony step for a couple of minutes looking at the garden. I wonder where you find it. Perhaps in the shower, or even as you chop vegetables or knead bread. Perhaps you walk or run without music. Perhaps you light a candle and watch it flicker for a few moments. Perhaps you take half an hour to go to the meditation service on a Monday every now and then! If you struggle to find it, where might it be waiting for you?
Step back from the wind and the fire and the earthquakes, and step forward, like Elijah, into the sound of silence.