THE SILENCE OF GOD
One of the Sehion youth ministers, Sunil James explains how we can interpret the silence of God.
A ONE SIDED CONVERSATION
Have you ever had the experience of desperately trying to pray, when you open your heart, pouring out all your questions and frustrations to the Lord but you still get no response from Him? We all have times when we ask, “Why God, why?” It’s often at these times, when we most need to hear God’s answer that we are left with an overwhelming feeling of complete, utter, dark silence. How can we understand this silence? Only by looking back at history and finding the moment when the whole world stood still and became silent for a moment. From the Creation story in Genesis until the very point of Jesus’ death, Sacred Scripture is action-packed, adventurous, romantic, poetic and enthralling. But for the first time in history, there was utter silence at the moment when Jesus died on the Cross.
THE LANGUAGE OF GOD
Meister Eckhart, the 13th Century theologian, philosopher and mystic, wrote “Nothing so much resembles the language of God as does silence.” He is suggesting that God speaks to us in His silence. The Bible tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8) and He loves us unconditionally (John 3:16). Eckhart is suggesting that God demonstrates His tangible love for us by expressing it in the silence of the Cross. During His ministry, whenever Jesus prayed to the Father He always got a response. We know this from John 11:41, “Father I thank you for having heard me.” But when Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before His Passion, He said, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what You want.” (Matthew 26:39) He also said, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, Your will be done.” (Matthew 26:42) It seems that at this time, His Heavenly Father didn’t reply. It is perhaps due to this seeming silence that “in his anguish Jesus prayed even more earnestly, and His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.” (Luke 22:44) Here we see the silence of the Father towards his beloved Son.
JESUS IS SILENT
Later we are told that Jesus was taken before the High Priest and taking a cue from His Father in Heaven, “Jesus was silent.” (Matthew 26:63) When Peter denied Jesus, He merely looked at Peter and said nothing. (Luke 22:61) When Jesus was dragged in front of Pilate, other than a few sentences He uttered, when everyone accused him, Jesus remained silent. This silence of Jesus was so unusual that the Governor himself was greatly amazed. (Matthew 27:14)
SILENCE AT THE CROSS
When Jesus was hanging on the Cross with His mother by his side, I can imagine His Heavenly Father looking down lovingly at his Son. While the whole world seemed to mock Jesus, God remained silent. But the deepest and most tangible silence occurred when everything in the whole world just stood still as the heart of Jesus beat for the final time on the Cross. At that split second when Jesus died, complete and utter silence prevailed as God gave up His life to redeem the whole world. The most silent occasion in history came in the final expression of God’s love for us. In this deep silence we find the personification of love because in this silence we find Christ Jesus.
THE PRESENCE OF GOD
What does this mean to us now? When it appears that God is silent in answer to our prayers; the silence that God responds with is not just the absence of noise, but the same silence of love that is found on the cross. When God appears to be silent, it is the physical expression of His love for us. In silence we will encounter the tangible and constant presence of God and we can experience His love. So we should not be disappointed if God does not seem to respond to us because, when He is silent, God is responding in love, with love and through love. Silence is indeed the language that God speaks best because it conveys nothing but pure unconditional love.
“He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” Isaiah 53:7
