The Other Side of Silence

I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rod of God’s wrath.
He has driven me away and forced me to walk
in darkness instead of light…

Even when I cry out and plead for help,
he blocks out my prayer.
He has walled in my ways with blocks of stone;
he has made my paths crooked…

Yet I call this to mind,
and therefore I have hope

It is good to wait quietly
for salvation from the Lord.

- Lamentations 3

Life

God spoke the world into existence. He spoke through the prophets throughout the unveiling of His character and the history of His people. It makes Advent all the more quietly momentous when we consider its context. After four hundred years of prophetic silence, God spoke to the world again with a gentle whisper. There is a remarkable irony in that the hymn “Silent Night” is more popular than the rest, and only grows in familiarity the busier and louder the world becomes. Perhaps our souls yearn for what our hearts and minds know not.

Many today might say their inability to clearly "hear" from God as a reason for not being a good Christian, or not even one at all. Benito Mussolini would regularly rouse the crowds of Religious Italians asking their "god" to strike his unwavering defense of Atheism down with a lightning bolt. Lightning never did strike Mussolini, and what was mockery for him, is more earnest for many of us: "Why does God not speak in a more habitual and obvious way?

It may be a harder question than the "problem of pain."

If God is good, why is He silent, or appearing so?

Endo's historical novel "Silence" testifies to the emotional weight of this qualm when a Portuguese missionary is betrayed, witnesses his mentor leave the Faith, and is given no clear reason as to how any of this might bring about a greater good.

"I feel so tempted. I feel so tempted to despair. I'm afraid. The

weight of Your silence is terrible. I pray, but I'm lost. Or am I just

praying to nothing? Nothing. Because You are not there."

The spiritual depth of this problem remains just as real to us 500 years later, but we largely avoid the problem of facing the unbearable silence in the first place. We live in the busiest, loudest, most stimulated generation in world history. Even in this part of Georgia, you would have more luck running into a millionaire than someone who regularly sits in silence. We've so engineered this world that even this article, should it happen to reach the very depths of your soul, may shortly be followed up with an advertisement for gambling, the 2024 election, or what have you; and the temptation to keep scrolling, or to check that notification, or to follow that scattered thought presents itself as an ever present itch.

Need more Proof?

A study was done, where people were asked to sit alone with their thoughts, but told that if they wanted to, they could shock themselves by pressing a button. The challenge was to last 15 minutes, but 2/3 of the participants couldn't bear the deafening silence, so shock away they did. One daring soul even shocked himself 190 times, before they removed him out of fear he might actually harm himself.

These problems might have obvious social consequences, as I'm sure many teachers can attest to declining standards of classroom behavior. But these problems are ultimately theological. What is a human being, and how are they meant to conduct this CONSCIENCE they have been given? Is it a sign of progress that technology can better prevent us from sitting with our thoughts, or are we becoming more beastlike from this?

The problem has more practical relevance for the modern Christian: Is my next internet sermon, my next word study, my next discipleship meetup only another distraction preventing me from sitting with my own heart? There are no shortage of activities which allow us to escape our own inner loneliness, but silence may be the one where our loneliness is confronted, it is stared down, and it is consoled.

The line between knowing things about God and knowing God must be drawn somewhere. We each walk our own paths, so it might be that a longsuffering silence is a necessary resting place for our souls to encounter the living Lord.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word

Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence

No place of grace for those who avoid the face

No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Why silence? Perhaps it is because Paul, in the climax of his letter to Ephesus, describes the church as archetypally feminine. Christ is the bridegroom, and the church is His bride, the giver and the receiver. The Christian life is not a rigidly imposed self-help script one rewrites into their life, but a gift received humbly. Silence might be the unfamiliar room where we discern His will from the world's and our own, a room which only grows cozier with time.

It was in the relatively silent Nazareth, a town of less than a thousand people, a town viewed disparagingly by the religious elites of the day (Can anything good come out of Nazareth?) Yet this town would be God's chosen “backwoods” to reveal, through Gabriel, that Mary will carry the power of the galaxies and the stars in her womb.

Where our first mother birthed sin, disobedience, and death, Mary births Grace and Truth. Her response to this noble calling is exactly as Paul symbolized as the feminine disposition of the church: "Let it be according to Thy word."

This response is so foreign to our culture, for we have nearly eradicated the feminine disposition from our spiritual interior. Take the age-old American question, "What do you do?" We ask and are asked that usually as an assessment of how much worth or respect may be assigned to the relevant person, but the measuring stick is almost always the masculine one: How much money, how much influence, how prestigious of an industry? These are the scales of men, but the story of Advent shows the scales of God differ much from where our own eyes would see worth. A Semi-illiterate, teenaged woman from a know-nothing town hardly mentioned from within her own culture is chosen to be the vessel for He who would conquer all the sin and evil in the world and He who would crush the head of the serpent.

The Nativity - Lorenzo Lotto

If in the eyes of God, one Mary is worth 1000 Pharisees, would the call today be much different? Christ's parable of the widow's two pennies would suggest that it is not. The paradox of the Faith is we don't have to do anything for God, but we have to be willing to surrender everything. And it is quite often our "doing" that gets in the way of our surrendering. Perhaps the silence is where we learn the difference between.

Mary signs up to bear a Child and to raise Him. Every parent intimately understands that this endeavor is far from a simple "gift"; it beckons the sacrifice of formerly tranquil nights and once cherished moments of "me time." Not to mention the agony of assuming relentless responsibility for the fragile existence of another soul during its helpless and vulnerable years.

Mary might have it easier than us in having a sinless Child. Yet, Mary's "Let it be according to Thy Word," is not only signing up to bear a child.

It is also an unspoken pact to bury one.

Death

You learn a lot about people when you have the opportunity to watch how they handle death. The death of parents is known to put many marriages on the rocks. The death of friends makes the surviving ones rethink life habits, the death of a cherished spouse commonly affords the surviving lover only a shortened time until death rejoins them again.

But the death of a child? Words may never fully describe the depths of this despair.

The closest I've encountered is from a distant cousin. A child from a complicated divorce. He never could get his life together, and was by all accounts a "floater." Still living at home way beyond what is socially acceptable according to American standards. He threw a party in that house, made a mess, and was so afraid of his father's reaction, he shot himself.

His father died of a heart attack a few months later, perhaps because it was so broken.

The reality of God is a question mark for many, as countless books, podcasts, and conversations weigh the scales for both sides. The reality of a broken world is assumed as fact by even the youngest of children.

Kazuo Ishiguro, an atheistic Japanese novelist, deals sympathetically with this reality in The Buried Giant. A tale set in Arthurian England, with the disbanding of the Roman Empire in those regions, and all the consequent chaos. The story follows an old couple who have allowed adultery to mar their marriage, ultimately resulting in the death of their son. The surrounding villages have also been at each other's throats with warbands constantly settling scores with neighbors, killing each other’s men and taking their women.

Ishiguro's creative solution to deal with this problem is a magical mist, produced by a sleeping dragon, which makes all forget even the recent past. The adultery is forgotten, the death of their son is forgotten, and all of the feuding and fighting is forgotten. The novel follows the couple as they try to "find their son," and the mastery of the book is in the slow and somber unraveling of the truth. Reality can only remain hidden for so long. The Buried Giant will eventually rise.

The novel ends with the couple now re-remembering the death of their son, the adultery between them, and with an ominous foreboding of what is to come with recovered memories among the whole land. The blood feuds rekindle, and the English world will once again be hacking their neighbors to death. Ishiguro recognizes that such a "mist" might help restore some order to the world, a blank slate to start fresh, but for his world, it remains only an illusion.

For the attentive readers of the gospels, what makes Advent special is what makes it address this tragedy in our species. Would it not be so easy if we could forget the past? But unlike the novel, Advent does not distract from the problem that cuts through each and every human heart; it stares it down and confronts it. After 400 years of silence, the Lord will speak. He may speak more quietly than expected. He may speak less triumphantly than expected. But He will come.

Jesus enters Jerusalem on the 40th day of His earthly life. The family is greeted by Simien, who, on acting on faith that he would see the Messiah before his death, took Jesus in his arms and praised Him. He blessed the family but then turned to Mary, prophesying that "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel... so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too"

Jesus would enter Jerusalem again on His last days. His triumphant welcome would turn sour by the week’s end. Where thousands would follow Him when times were good, now only a few loyal remain; He was betrayed by a friend, scorned, beaten, and mocked. The scales of men have rendered his life worthy of a criminal’s death, and so it was.

He said a few things on that day at Calvary, but Christ's last words to Mary relay Gabriel's Annunciation with the full force of its now unraveled weight.

“You Will have a Son, you shall call Him Jesus, He will reign forever..."

But also, you must bury Him.

Christ's last words are that prophesied "Sword to the soul" With blood dripping from his head, his wrists, his legs; beaten, naked, whipped, and now pierced to the cross, He turns to his mother and says only,

"Behold, your son."

Michelangelo’s Pieta

Mary's response to Gabriel may still be the same LOGICALLY, but surely the emotional weight goes down bitter as gall. Even if it means I must bury my Son, "Let it be according to thy Word,"

Fortunately for Mary, and for us, that was not the end of the story.

Advent is a story of God meeting a waiting people, and the reality of his birth in Bethlehem is also a hope that he might meet us each day... in each heartbeat. But we must not fear the silence, and we must not fear the night. For as He first came to the world on a starry and silent night at Bethlehem, He similarly offers us tender moments of our reminded salvation if we press into the very things we might fear the most.

As we wait, we poor banished children of Eve,

Weeping and wailing in this valley of tears,

Show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus

On the other side of silence, God waits.