Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33
Two aspects of life – constant realities to our ancestors of just one hundred years ago – are virtually unknown to us today, namely sheer silence and utter darkness. What passes for quiet or dark in the modern world would be piercing and brilliant to those of earlier generations. And particularly those of us who grew up or lived in truly urban areas, we forget how accustomed we are to the backdrop of sound and light – which are, in fact considered to be hallmarks and indicators of modern living, of modern civilisation. Indeed, we find that for many people the absence of both or either makes them to feel inordinately and inexplicably uncomfortable, frightened even. When was the last time you sat in a dark room, and listened to the sheer sound of silence? Or sat silently with a friend for a length of time? How long before it became rather unnerving? How long before the thought “I must get up and do something, I must think of and say something” won out over the posture of simple presence? Undoubtedly, both silence and darkness carry with them uncomfortable resonances of fear and of the unknown; most certainly they carry with them resonances of death – “dark and silent as the grave” the saying goes. And certainly very practical reasons may abound for the steady eradication of darkness and silence from our modern world, but the therapist in me cannot help but consider it – in part – as indicative of an increasing human need to avoid naked presence to ourselves, to one another and to God; the human need to be in control.
For those of us uncomfortable with the dark, uncomfortable with silence it may be disconcerting to come across the observation that in the Judaeo-Christian tradition it is in both silence and darkness that God and God’s purposes are continually revealed. Clearly this is true in Elijah’s encounter with God on Mount Horeb. The very human expectation of God revealing God’s self in obvious power – wind, earthquakes, fire – is almost ridiculed in the narrative with the re-current trope “but the LORD was not in…” the wind or the earthquake or the fire, as each case may be. It is rather when Elijah can bring himself to hear the sound of sheer silence, that any revelation of God can be made. It is only when he can trust the silence and make himself present by stepping out of the cave, stepping out from himself, hat he can understand who God really is in this situation and what God is saying. Job similarly recounts “Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on mortals,
dread came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake….A form was before my eyes; there was silence, then I heard a voice: “Can mortals be righteous before God?
Can human beings be pure before their Maker? (Job 4:13-14, 16b-17). In the Gospel of Luke we see how it is only after he has been made mute that Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, can come to understand God’s real purposes.
Few of us like being driven into the silence, but it is only in the silence – the sheer silence – that we can really hear both ourselves and God. Ironically, also it is in the dark that we can ever really see. Despite the image of light in the Tradition, the great events of salvation history seem to happen in the dark – the parting the Red Sea and the salvation of the Hebrew children, the nativity, the crucifixion, which even while taking place in the middle of the day is an event shrouded in mysterious darkness, and Christ’s vindication over death happens from within the darkness of the tomb, hidden from human sight; and each of these events carry with them a fearful and dangerous element. It was in the darkness of night and the semi-darkness of early morning, with its attendant fears – after all, when we find ourselves in the dark and fearful even the revelations of God my seem deceptive and untrustworthy – yes, it is in that darkness that Peter is called to trust, that he is called to come to Jesus over the water. And even though he falters, even though he sinks, this encounter in the darkness of the early morning and amidst the darkness of his doubt is instrumental in bringing the others to faith: “And those in the boat worshipped [Jesus] saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’ ” (Matthew 14:33) Darkness can rob of us the ability to see, both physically and intellectually, and yet may open us up to understand what we thought to be impossible or make us to give up the control which seems too easily grasped in the light.
Conventional prayer notwithstanding, nor traditional images of a God resplendent in light, there are in the frightening experiences of both silence and darkness revelations of God’s nature and work which can be communicated in no other way. Perhaps this is true because of the posture in which both silence and darkness places us, that of sheer and naked presence; but with that nakedness comes also a disconcerting uncomfortableness from which we readily seek to flee. After all, who I am if I am not talking? Who am I if I can not see things clearly? I establish my persona with sound and I carve out by path and future in light, and that is certainly good and beneficial. Each one of us, after all, must make her or his own way in the world. However, the attendant and unspoken fears are that if I cease to speak I may just cease to exist, and if I cease to construct my life and plans in the “garish light of day”, I may well lose my command over both. As I hinted at the start, I have for a long time believed that the noisy world we have built and the seemingly endless idle chatter we create, as well as our obsession with light and almost unending need “to see it all” – both physically and intellectually – are indicative of a fear of death, the ultimate loss of control. And it is all about control. If I can paraphrase the words of Marilyn McEntyre from her book, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies: “noise [and light insulate] us from the silence [and darkness] that [expose] us to encounters with self and God, and the voice of the Spirit that groans within us in ways that we may not control. To choose silence [and darkness] is to risk that encounter.” Another way of speaking about encounter is presence. To choose silence and darkness, then, is to risk presence – naked presence – before God and before each other.
Think for a moment what it would feel like to stand or sit before another – a friend, a partner, a child; to sit before them in silence and to sit with them in intellectual darkness, that is laying aside any preconceived notions or ideas about who they are, laying aside what we think we know, all that we project onto them. Imagine sitting before that person in absolute and naked presence. Funnily enough, the better we think we know the person, the more difficult the exercise becomes. It can become even frightening as we lay aside our controlling and well-practiced tools of encounter: our words and our light. How long do you think you could bear it: five minutes, ten minutes thirty minutes? As is with others, so it is with God. For so many even seasoned Christians, the posture of silence and darkness, the posture of naked presence, are fearfully frightening or completely unknown in their prayer or spiritual life, in their relationship with God. With their words and their glaring light, they carry God in their pocket. Their religion is sure, confident and above all controlled, according – not to God’s – but to their own will and purposes. So few of us even seasoned Christians step out of our comfortable and controlled cave into sheer silence and uncertainty; so few of us even seasoned Christians step out from the safety of our little boat and into that fearful and precarious darkness. So few of us even seasoned Christians step out at all, risk our dying to control, risk the encounter of naked presence.
Ultimately, if we cannot countenance silence, if we cannot bear darkness, the path to a genuine relationship with God becomes extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible. Our relationship with God can only ever be a relationship with our projections, our words and our thoughts, a mere exercise in control. Ironically, sound and light obscure our ability to see and hear. In a world of increasing sound and decreasing darkness, in a world where control and self-assertion are more and more prized and rewarded, this is perhaps one of the most important and appropriately counter-cultural posture religious persons have to offer the world. The posture of silence, the posture of darkness, the posture of naked presence.
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