“The Road to Humility is Paved with Silence”

                 

                     The Second Sermon in a series on Humility 

             offered by Toby Jones at FPC of Boyne City 9/18/11

                 (Based on  Psalm 46:1-10a, Matthew 26:36-46)

Last week I introduced the “lost virtue” of humility. I argued – convincingly, I hope – that we Christians have lost touch with this crucial characteristic, this vital fruit of the Spirit. Our lack of humility in our speech, in our attitude, and in our behavior has made it impossible for others to see Christ in us. This week I am here to point the way back home, the way back to humility, the way back to Jesus and his Way.

Let me begin by stating as clearly as I can that just because I am preaching this sermon series on humility doesn’t mean that I am a humble person. I’m not. In fact, I have been guilty of many of the very things I spoke of last week – bad mouthing the president, judging people for their behaviors without knowing the specifics of their lives, and thinking I was seeing the whole picture clearly when, in fact, I was seeing only through a glass darkly. And, ironically, my being a preacher has only bolstered my lack of humility. Having been gifted with the ability to speak and write articulately, particularly in matters of faith, churches like this one have a way of putting me in the front of the room, up high in a podium. So the more I’ve talked and written about Christ, the more I thought I was doing well at the Jesus thing, and, sadly, the less humble I’ve become. Theologian Richard Rohr put it this way in his book Everything Belongs:

“Religion has not tended to create seekers or searchers. Religion has not tended to create honest humble people who [understand that] God is [truly] beyond [us all]…Religion has, rather, tended to create people who think they have God in their pockets, people with quick, easy, glib answers.”

Rohr is right. The Way of Jesus is not a way of words. The spiritual life is not paved with sermons. In fact, it is paved with silence. I have come to believe that if we truly want Christ-like humility, we’re going to have to shut up, or as the Psalmist put it, we’re going to have to “be still” to “know God.”

Just before he died, long-time ABC News Anchor, Peter Jennings, said that his most memorable interview was with Mother Theresa. And in that interview, Jennings asked her one question that I’ll never forget. He said, “When you pray, Mother Theresa, what do you say to God?” She crumpled up here face in a confused expression and said, “Say?…I don’t say anything. I just listen… I just listen.” Maybe that’s why she did such great things for God’s kingdom.

But there’s a reason that we fill all our prayer time up with words, and it’s the same reason we turn the radio on the second we get in the car, and the same reason we turn on the TV the moment we get up in the morning, and the same reason we sign our kids and ourselves up for so many activities and church committees….Do you know what that reason is…?…

We don’t feel comfortable with silence…We don’t do well with sitting still. As Christian contemplative Daniel Wolpert puts it, sitting still and keeping silent confronts us with “the radical impotence of our nature…” and “demonstrates our radical emptiness.” In other words, being still and silent humbles us; it makes us feel less confident, less sure of ourselves. We no longer have words to hide behind. And yet, the great Psalmist teaches that the way to know God, to truly KNOW God, is to be still….

What does it take for you to be still? When was the last time you TRIED being still for a half an hour…for five minutes…or even for two minutes? And even if you succeeded in stilling your body, what about your mind? Good luck with silencing that, right?

I thought about taking time right here in the middle of my sermon to ask us all to be still and silent for just two minutes, but I decided not to. You know why? Because I already know what would happen. The first 30 seconds you’d try to get comfortable and keep from squirming. The next fifteen or twenty you’d be distracted by everyone else as they tried to get comfortable. Then you’d sneak a peek at your watch to see how much time had passed. Then, depressed that you had another whole minute to go, you’d start going through your grocery list or the list of things you have to do when you get home today. And then time would be up and you’d feel no closer to God than you did before we started the whole thing!

We run from silence with our bodies, and if we ever still our bodies, we run just as hard from silence with our minds. And do you know why?…Because we are empty and somehow we know it. We are powerless over our own busy and running minds. We can’t even shut off our grocery lists and our to-do lists for God, and we know it. We don’t sit still and we don’t quiet our minds because we can’t and it’s humbling, maybe even humiliating. Silence is humbling. Stillness is humbling. And so we run from it as fast as we can and with everything we’ve got. We even use Church and church activities to keep us running.

But look at where all our running has gotten us. William Butler Yeats said it best in his famous poem, The Second Coming:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

  Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

Do you really need me to remind you how stressed out and depressed and addicted and short tempered and fragmented we’ve all become? It’s because our center can no longer hold. When you strip away all our words, all our activities, and all our running around, guess what is left…? NOTHING! There is nothing there at our core. We ARE the falcons who can no longer hear our Falconer. In fact, we don’t even try to hear Him anymore. We don’t even listen. We won’t shut up. We can’t even quiet our minds.

So you see, my friends, it is, indeed, humbling to practice the ancient spiritual discipline of silence. In even attempting to give God 5 minutes of silence, 5 minutes of us listening to Him, we come up against our own inadequacy, our inability, our emptiness, and our utter fragmentation. But that’s no reason not to try to recover this ancient and vital spiritual practice. This is, after all, GOD and KNOWING GOD that we’re talking about!

And so I want you to try. I want ME to try. Ten minutes, five minutes a day, to sit quietly, silently without phones and voices and appointment calendars, NOT praying, as we’ve come to think of it. NOT saying words to God in our head, but just waiting on God, just listening, saying nothing, except maybe “Jesus…oh, Jesus.” And in that awkward, squirmy, uncomfortable silence, if all you accomplish is the realization of how weak, unspiritual, and distracted you are, that’s a GOOD thing, especially if you let that realization HUMBLE you.

But I have a hunch that if we practice and stick to this lost discipline, some other things may happen to us as well, things like what happened to Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Do you remember that moment in Jesus’ life? Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane was certainly NOT filled with words. In terms of what Jesus actually said in this three-part prayer, the prayer was very short. In fact, let’s time it…Who has a second hand on your watch? (Call on a volunteer) Will you time me as I say the exact words Jesus said in Gethsemane? Ready?

     “My father, if it be possible, take this cup of suffering from me…yet not as I will, but as you will”….How long was that? ____ seconds! You know why that’s important? Because the text tells us that each of these little prayer times Jesus had lasted one HOUR! One hour! All Jesus said in that entire hour took 20 seconds! Yet he was in prayer for one hour - X 3! That means that each hour consisted of 59 minutes and 40 seconds of silence! Listening – not talking, not asking, not ‘God gimme’s’ – just listening!

Some look at this prayer Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and wonder whether it was answered or not? Some would say no, for Jesus went into the prayer time about to be arrested and killed…and he came out of the prayer time and was arrested and killed. Three hours of prayer didn’t change Jesus’ circumstances at all – not one bit!

But I see this prayer time much differently. I have come to see this prayer as one of the most powerful examples of what silence and listening to God can do. Why? Because while Jesus’ CIRCUMSTANCES didn’t change in this instance – Jesus HIMSELF DID. He came into the garden a fearful, troubled man. He said to his disciples that he was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, he then prayed to God, saying, “If it be possible, take this cup of suffering from me, Father.” Then he listened for 59 minutes and 40 seconds. Now the next time Jesus spoke in this prayer, his words were slightly but significantly different. Did you notice the change? He said, “If it is NOT possible for this cup of suffering to be taken away unless I drink it, thy will be done.” Can you hear how God had begun working on Jesus’s heart during Jesus’s listening. Gradually, through listening and silence, Jesus began to see, understand, and accept that God wanted Jesus to go through the suffering. God didn’t change Jesus’s circumstances; but God DID change Jesus.

 And finally, after his third hour of LISTENING prayer, Jesus was truly ready to face his circumstances and carry out God’s will. The passage says that Jesus rose, went to his disciples and said, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Look, the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let’s go! My betrayer is at hand.” And Jesus walked boldly, empowered by his silent time with God to meet his betrayer and his crucifixion head-on with bravery, determination, and the assurance of God’s presence with him.

     

My brothers and sisters, it is in silence that we find how humble, weak, and needy we are. And finding that out can keep us humble. And it is also in silence that we find out just how much God loves us, how present He really is, in spite of our weakness and frenetic distraction. In silence we find our center, our core, our true identity. In silence, God works on our hearts, just as He worked on Jesus’s heart in Gethsemane, giving him the power and the strength he needed to face his cup of suffering.

     

May each of us recapture this lost discipline of silence. May each of us come to understand what Mother Theresa understands – that true prayer isn’t about what WE say…it’s about listening for what God might say…and being humbled by it.

The road to humility is paved with silence…Amen.