Be Still and Know

We are made of word. And we are made of silence. We need both for life, for love. Silence is as important to knowing ourselves and others as words. As the intervals of silence between the notes of music permit music to breathe and take flight, so silence in the intimacy of love lets love unveil and fulfill itself, lets us connect directly to another, bare being to bare being. Words distinguish and differentiate, words separate; silence bridges and accepts, silence unifies.

We need both God’s words and silence. God’s words grant us one form of knowing; God’s silence permits yet another form, the intimate knowing of God’s Being, knowing and being known by our being. I have known God in silence with a nearness and power greater than words can contain or explain. Yet I still need God’s words in my covenant with Christ, just as I need love’s words in my marriage with Kathleen.

If we had only words and memories in our marriage, with no touching or togetherness, how empty of intimacy and power our marriage would become. Just so, if we have only God’s words, history and promises, but no silent nearness or sensed presence, how devoid of intimacy and power would our covenant become. Not just for us, but also for the living God. For when we commune with God in silence, God also communes with us; and as we have need of God, so in ways beyond our vision and grasp, God has need of us.

God has to get our attention before God can get through to us both God’s words and silence. On the road to Emmaus, Christ incognito had to get the rapt attention of two forlorn disciples before He could open Scriptures to them. It was when they were silent and listening that their hearts burned within them, that the Spirit birthed Christ’s truth in their souls. And Christ waited until the breaking of the bread before revealing Himself. Christ waited until they were silent, watching and waiting. Christ became as God’s altar to them; He reenacted His sacrifice of body and blood, offering what silently saves us, what shall save the world, when the altar of Christ, the altar of self-sacrificing Love, is known at last as God’s silent altar in our midst.

Thus does God’s say to us: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Stillness precedes knowing. Our noisy world interferes with our knowing ourselves, others and God. Sound hides as well as reveals, it cloaks the soul which dwells in silence, it shrouds the mystery in us which stands forth only in quiet. For being to know being as such, words must cease. Words may precede and guide knowing, and succeed and confirm knowing. But knowing, intimacy itself, is beyond words, beyond language. What may be spoken of Spirit is only Spirit’s history and hope, past and future. Spirit’s present abides in silence, in the eternal now of Presence.

We are however in desperate need of history. And we are in desperate need of hope. We need Scripture and sacrament, past and future. We need words to orient and inform, clarify and guide. Yet as a kiss is greater than the breath the lips release before or after, to ask or give thanks for another’s lips, so silence is greater than sound, presence greater than word.

We are so full of words, that God may have to literally strike us dumb to get our attention. God did so to Elizabeth’s husband, Zechariah, when he expressed doubt to the angel Gabriel concerning God’s gracious decision to give them a son, who would become John the Baptizer. God silenced Zechariah for the entire pregnancy of his formerly barren Elizabeth. When his speech finally returned at John’s birth, he praised God mightily, humbly. He likely never doubted God again.

We worship God in silence as well as in song, in opening to the present Presence as well as listening to God’s words and addressing God with our own words. Where is the heart of our sanctuary, the center which abides ever silent? It is the altar, the scene of sacrifice, God’s for us and us to God. In a world full of noise, the altar attests to the silent presence of God.

As the altar is the center of God’s sanctuary, so also are our hearts the center of our souls. Our hearts understand better in silence, and there is a silence in our hearts which words cannot dispel or dissipate. It is the silence of God, of God’s being with us and our being with God. It is silence which invites love in, which furnishes love’s soil, as words furnish love’s nutrients. Silence lets love live and grow in us undisturbed.

Barbara Brown Taylor has something important to say about silence and sound and God’s sanctuary:
“‘There is more silence in one person than can be used in a single human life,’ writes Max Picard, who laments a world drowning in a downpour of noise. When he looks around for some means of survival, he says that sometimes a cathedral looks to him like a great ark into which all creation is being gathered to save it from the flood of noise…. Most people are so used to wading through the noise that they do not even notice how deep it has gotten. If someone were to tell them it was about to close over their heads they would not even be able to hear the warning, but a few of them have noticed what is happening. They are the ones walking up the steps of the cathedral, toward the promise of silence. The steps are littered with beepers, with telephones, with Walkman radios and portable CD players…. Inside, it is another world. It is so quiet they can hear one another breathing. It is so quiet they can hear the candles burning, the flowers spilling their sweet scent. There is no question where all that silence is coming from. It is rolling toward them from the altar, the still center of the ark, where it is so quiet they can hear Someone Else think” (“When God Is Silent”,96-98).

I had a pivotal encounter with God’s altar in the spring of 1976. I was wrestling with whether to return to parish ministry. I had served as a student pastor in Wisconsin for two and a half years. I had left the parish a year before, after completing my Master of Divinity and entering a doctoral program at Northwestern University. I missed preaching, I missed pastoring; yet I was a busy full time student, with the additional responsibility of a teaching assistantship.

To make ends meet, I also worked part time at a retirement home in Evanston, as a chaplain. The home had a quiet little chapel where I liked to pray. On the Monday after Easter, while walking by the chapel, I glanced at the altar through the open doors. It seemed so gently inviting that I stopped and prayed. As I gazed at the altar, it seemed to slowly come alive with God’s presence. Silently I waited for God, for God’s word. I stared at God’s altar as a watchman strains for dawn.

Then God’s word came out of the silence, less breaking the silence, than blessing it with meaning. The unmistakable voiceless echo of God addressed me with a single word, a word which changed my life and set me to doing. God’s word to me was simply: “COME!” I did come, right then; I entered the chapel, knelt at the altar and thanked God for answering my heart prayer. God gave me the word for which I had waited: go back into the parish. I went home, made the request phone calls, and by July, I was a country parson once more.

God’s altar is the place of offering. It is where God offers us God’s Being; it is where we offer God our being in response to God’s invitation, presenting ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship. We meet God being to Being at the mute altar of mutual love.

What will it take for God to get your attention? Do you want to meet God; do you want God to still the noise within you? Then come to the silent altar of God; let the silence dwelling within you merge with the silence between you and God. Let words arise as they may between you, words of shared life. Yet do not let them turn you from the present Presence, from the One who is with you always, in whom and with whom you shall abide being to Being forever. Be still and know.