SH-H-H-H-H-H-H! Do you hear that? It’s the sound of silence. And it’s one of the most precious commodities you can claim these days. Even here it’s hard to come by. “Quiet as a church mouse” the saying goes. But you call for a moment of silence and fire truck rolls by on Guadalupe with sirens blaring. Or somebody has a coughing fit. Somebody else drops his hymnal. Or a child decides to try out her dancing shoes on the back of the pew.

Silence…. I just want to savor it for a few moments today. I’m off to children’s camp this week, you know. And it’s not just the children. The other preachers add to the cacophony, too, because you know preachers. We like the sound of our own voice! I had a preaching professor once offer good advice: “Never say anything that doesn’t improve on our silence before God.” Of course, he wasn’t a Baptist preaching professor, because as much as we Baptists have a thing for God’s Word, I suspect we love our own words even more, and I’m not just talking about the preachers. Then again, whose words would ever stand the test of not improving on God’s silence?

Silence…. We live in noisy times. It’s worse in the city, of course, but even in our homes we are so unaccustomed to silence it spooks us. Noise has become such a part of our environment, the lack of noise is what draws our attention, makes us feel something must be wrong. We turn on the television or play the radio just for the sense of company. We run the air conditioner or switch on a fan because its noise will drown out the other noises so we can sleep. You can even buy noise machines for this purpose which imitate waves at a beach or the brush of a rain on your roof. But there is no machine that can create silence.

Silence…. I think silence scares us. In a world that measures how important you are by how busy you are, silence means nothing is happening and you don’t really matter. But the problem is deeper than that. Whatever we make of the stories of demons in the gospels, those demons are always noisy, and the sure sign people are healed is when they can sit in silence before Jesus. You know how it is. In those rare moments you get out to the middle of nowhere, turn everything off and sit still, all your inner noisiness surfaces: the voices of doubt and fear and self-loathing rise and you rush to something noisy to take your mind off of them. We have forgotten how to sit still, how to be quiet, how to rest in inner peace.

Silence…. The word “noise” comes from the Latin nausea, which meant seasickness. And it’s a good comparison because noise is making us sick. I found this on the web under “noise pollution:”

Subjected to 45 decibels of noise, the average person cannot sleep. At 120 decibels the ear registers pain, but hearing damage begins at a much lower level, about 85 decibels. The duration of the exposure is also important. There is evidence that among young Americans hearing sensitivity is decreasing year by year because of exposure to noise, including excessively amplified music. Apart from hearing loss, such noise can cause lack of sleep, irritability, heartburn, indigestion, ulcers, high blood pressure, and possibly heart disease. One burst of noise, as from a passing truck, is known to alter endocrine, neurological, and cardiovascular functions in many individuals; prolonged or frequent exposure to such noise tends to make the physiological disturbances chronic. In addition, noise-induced stress creates severe tension in daily living and contributes to mental illness.

We need to rediscover silence for the sake of our physical and mental health. But we need silence for our spiritual health most of all. As T.S. Eliot complains in Ash Wednesday:

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence

Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice….

Unless we learn to silence the noises beyond us and those within us, we cannot listen. We cannot hear each other. We cannot listen to God.

Silence…. We think too much of prayer as a laundry list of needs we lay before God, the “Cosmic Bellhop,” to use Tillich’s phrase. Or if we are more mature we think of prayer as beautiful words composed for God’s hearing in order “to lobby in the Divine courts for special favors” as Niebuhr put it. But more than anything else, prayer is coming to silence before God and listening for the still small voice, because what God has to say to us is far more important and needed and beautiful than anything we might say to God.

Silence…. Jesus understood his need for it and ours, too. The Bible is often foreign to us. It comes from a different culture in a distant land in a time long ago. But what could be stranger to our ears and to our way of life than this story about Jesus we are hearing today?

“Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics” (Mark 6:7-9).

Well that’s a familiar story. Jesus calls us to do the work he came to do, to bring God’s healing to the world by bringing God’s love into the world, to travel light and use our resources to accomplish the mission. And that is still our mission, our vocation, our common calling before God. Only the twelve actually answered Jesus’ call.

Mark says: “They went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them” (Mark 6:13). Apparently, this success amazed the disciples themselves. They were genuinely surprised at what God enabled them to do when they were willing to risk, to attempt great things in the name of Christ. So later, when they returned, Mark says, “the apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught” (Mark 6:30). You can imagine their excitement as they gather and compare notes with each other. “You won’t believe what we did!” “Oh, that happened to you, too?!” “Wasn’t it exciting!” “Wasn’t it wonderful!” And they can’t wait to tell Jesus.

But then comes the strange part: Jesus responds, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mark 6:31). What?! They can’t wait to tell Jesus how special they are, how successful they’ve been, what miracles they’ve seen, what wonders they have accomplished. They expect: his congratulations, his celebration, a big party, maybe a beach ball to toss around awhile. Or: a management meeting to plan the strategy for their next campaign, and an immediate return to the work, because, time’s a’wastin’ and there are so many hungry, hurting, demon-tortured souls to save. They expect him - we expect him - to say, “Stay at it! Get back to work!” But no. “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”

Silence…. You find these intentional interruptions of Jesus’ ministry all over the gospels:

Mark 1:35: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, (Jesus) got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”

Matthew 14:23 “After he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,….”

Mark 6:46 “After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray.”

Luke 5:16 “But (Jesus) would withdraw to deserted places and pray.”

Luke 9:28 “Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.”

Matthew 6:6, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches: “But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Matthew 14:23 “After he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.”

Matthew 26:36 “Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I go over there and pray."

Silence was the first thing Jesus sought. You remember. Right after he was baptized, Mark says, “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tested by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him” (Mark 1:13-14). Seeking silence…. Jesus taught it. And he practiced it. Because he needed it. “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” Jesus understood that prayer – coming to silence before God – is the beginning point of our mission, the prelude to all right action, the source of our sustained, effective engagement for God in the world. In the silence we experience God’s abiding presence. In the silence we receive God’s healing love. In the silence we hear God’s guiding voice. In the silence we find the sustenance our souls need, the bread of life, the ever-flowing fountain that will not run dry. “Be still and know that I am God” urges the psalmist (Psalm 46:10). In the silence we center ourselves in God. And every good word, every good work comes out of the quiet where God holds us.

God built us this way, founded the Sabbath from the very beginning of creation as a day of rest and re-centering. But what commandment is more ignored in our culture and in the church than God’s call that we should “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy” (Ex 20:8)? It’s one of the big ten, you know? Even the Reformers, biblically conservative as they were, recognized that Sabbath-keeping was not about setting rigid restrictions but about rest, restoration, and especially quiet, about finding those times and spaces where we can disconnect, step off the treadmill, leave the rat race, counter the culture, and seek peace for our souls.

Silence…. “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” We are a busy church. You are a hard working people. I’ve had folks tell me, “For a congregation your size, you do so much for the community.” And that is something for us to celebrate. Yet we also wrestle with burnout, don’t we? We too easily separate our service from our worship and forget first and foremost we are a spiritual community.

I know that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). I realize that worship, prayer, and meditation can become so much spiritual navel gazing, narcissistic and self-serving if it does not lead us into action to help others and make this world a better place. We have seen too many churches that were “all talk and no walk,” people “so heavenly minded they were of no earthly good.” But it is also possible to be so busy, so active, we forget who we are and whose we are and why we are doing what we do. The needs are endless and the work relentless and we become bitter, cynical, angry, dried up souls if we do not reconnect frequently with the One who waits for us in silence.

So! “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” Take a vacation occasionally. Honor your day off. Make worship and meditation and prayer a habit of your heart, as important to your routine as brushing your teeth. Practice Sabbath. Seek silence. Seek God. And everything else will fall into it’s proper place.

Silence…. There is a time for work. There is a time to be noisy, even in worship. But we try to incorporate silence into our time together each week, and I have had visiting preachers tell me how much your ability to be silent in worship surprised and pleased them. It’s unusual in Baptist worship. Still, our silences are always too brief for me. Let’s enjoy a longer one today. You’ve planned to be here until a little after noon. Let’s take five minutes before God. Time out. I’ll watch the clock so you don’t have to. I invite you to still yourself, not to talk even in your mind to God. Stop the incessant mental chatter and be quiet. Concentrate. Listen. And let God restore your soul….

Silence…. Out of the quiet God speaks. Out of the quiet God calls us forward once more, to the good work of our lives. So let’s get busy, but remember, God waits for you in silence again up ahead, and everything you do between now and the day we are together again comes out of the quiet where God holds you close. Amen. May we pray?

Why are you so quiet God, so silent even when we beg for your voice, your action, your intervention? Is it not to teach us to keep silence like you, so that like you our words once spoken will count for much and our actions once taken will be precise, deliberate, and essential? Is it not to lead us to the stillness where we can “let go and let God?” Give us wisdom to follow your example and find the Sabbath spaces we so desperately need. Then let all our words and all our deeds flow from hearts made quiet before you. For Jesus’ sake, amen.