|
For Jesus, this is where the
journey begins. It begins in the darkness. It begins steeped
in mystery. It begins in solitude and silence. The
scriptures call this place different names: the wilderness,
the desert, the edges. Whatever the name, Jesus must come
through here before he can go anywhere. He must leave behind
the world he has been called to save. Forty days and forty
nights on his own. Forty days and forty nights in the
emptiness of his own heart and history. Forty days and forty
nights in the unknown. Forty days and forty nights in
solitude. Forty days and forty nights in the place called
silence.
Interesting. Jesus, the chosen
One, the Messiah, the one called by God to heal and
transform the world, begins his own journey by leaving the
world behind. Strange. He has been charged with the most
important task anyone has ever been charged with: saving the
world. You wouldn’t think he’d have any time to spare. If it
were me, I’d have done it differently. Big job with a lot
hanging on it means no time to spare, right? Let’s get
started. Form a committee. Send out some e-mails. Fire up
the copier and the fax. Get the cell phone ringing.
Definitely not the time for a retreat, especially an
extended, forty day retreat. And yet, this is how Jesus
begins. He seems to know that this is how it has to begin.
It has to begin in solitude. It has to begin in the silence.
It has to begin alone. Alone…with just his thoughts.
Alone…with just his God.
This is where it begins for us,
as well. Right here. Lent must begin here. If we want to get
to Easter, if we want to journey with Jesus, then it must
start here…alone…in the darkness…in the silence…in the quiet
places of our hearts and minds. Lent begins here because
every great journey begins here.
The journey we call Lent, our
forty-day sojourn, begins with silence. And truth be told,
this is a hard place to start. We’d probably rather start
just about anywhere else. Most of us aren’t too accustomed
to the silence. Many of us aren’t comfortable with it. When
confronted with silence, we often do our best to fill it up
with noise. We are people accustomed to noise. The traffic
in our cities becomes louder and more congested each year.
Theaters are over amplified and loud recordings seem to fill
every store and restaurant. Telephones, pagers and iPods
ring, hum and beep, filling the spaces of our lives. We are
bombarded by advertising. The airwaves are filled with
constant commentary on everything from politics to gossip,
and the growing number of talk shows fill the voids in our
life with constant chatter. Many of us leave the television
or radio on in the other room to avoid the moments of
silence that might intrude on our lives. Noise has become
the blanket we use to insulate ourselves from the sounds of
sheer silence. And yet, this is where Lent begins. Every
year Jesus asks us to journey with him to the wilderness of
solitude and the deserts of silence.
So why are we so resistant to
silence? Why is this such a hard place to start this
journey? This silence is sometimes so hard because we know
that the same thing that happened to Jesus in the solitude
will happen to us. We know something about the silence: it
isn’t all that silent. There are voices. In the silence, we
cannot avoid the voices—the voices that run through our
heads, reminding us what we are not and what we have not.
Jesus couldn’t escape the voices…they met him there in the
silence. “Turn these stones into bread. Hey, Jesus…yeah,
you, Son of God…I don’t care who you say you are, you aren’t
enough. You haven’t proven anything to anyone. You’re not
enough. You think you’re special? Then prove it. Make
something. Do something. Turn these stones into bread.
You’re only worth what you do for others, and you ain’t done
nothing for nobody. If you are who you say you are, turn
these stones into bread.”
In the silence, Jesus could not
escape the voices. They just kept coming. “Worship me,” the
voice whispers, “and I’ll give you everything. Worship your
career, and it will give you identity. Worship your
ethnicity, and it will give you power. Worship material
wealth, and it will give you the security you seek.” “It is
mine to give,” the voice whispers. “Come bow down. What have
you got to lose?”
In the silence, the voices don’t
seem to relent. “Throw yourself down from here. Surely then
your God will show up.” In shutting out the world, Jesus
finds that the voice eventually goes after his faith,
eventually goes after his God. “Where is your God, Jesus?
You’re out here all alone, hungry, tempted, doubting and
unsure. Where is your God? He seems nowhere to be found.
Test him. Blame him. If your God is real, why doesn’t he
show up to help you? You deserve better than this. Where is
your God? Your God doesn’t seem to care. Your God seems to
have abandoned you. Question God. Test God. Tempt God. Throw
yourself down from here.” In the silence, Jesus confronts
the voices of temptation and doubt, the voices of
uncertainty and disbelief.
That is why we avoid the
silence. Because we know what happened to Jesus will happen
to us. We know these voices all too well. They often come
in the middle of the night, when there is nothing but
darkness all around us. They come when we are empty and
tired. The voices break through the silence:
“You’re not enough.”
“You don’t have enough.”
“You’re not thin enough, rich enough, smart enough, sexy
enough…”
We know the
voices:
“My identity is my job.”
“My identity is my race.”
“My power is in being American.”
“My security is in my bank account.”
Just like Jesus, we too have
been tempted by the voices that find their way into our
minds in the deserted moments of solitude:
“God is gone.”
“God has forgotten you.”
“God isn’t listening to your prayers.”
“God doesn’t care that your mother is sick.”
“God doesn’t care if you lost your job.”
"God isn’t listening anymore.”
We resist the silence because at
least once our cry to God was met with just that: silence.
We fill our lives with noise so we don’t have to confront
the voices that we hear in the silence.
And yet, it is where Jesus goes
to begin this journey—right into the heart of silence, right
where it is quiet, right to where one cannot escape those
inner voices of despair and doubt.
But something else happens to
Jesus while he is in the solitude and silence. In the dark
wilderness of the quiet, in the midst of the tempting voices
of his inner doubts and demons, another voice is finally
heard. Eventually underneath the other voices comes the
still, small voice of God. Somewhere in the midst of these
forty days, Jesus hears another voice. He hangs on until its
whisper is finally discernible.
“Jesus, you’ll be fine. You’re
enough. You’re enough because I’m enough. Don’t worry. One
doesn’t live alone on the bread they make…on the money they
earn…the degrees they hold. No, one lives on my breath and
my spirit. And Jesus, I assure you, my spirit is upon you.”
In the silence, Jesus can
finally hear the voice of God say to him, “Jesus, do not
worry. You can trust me. The things of this world will not
last, but my love will. The things of this world will
eventually disappoint you, but my love won’t. You can trust
me, Jesus. You really can.”
And it is through the silence
that finally the reassurance of God is revealed. “Jesus, I
am here. I always am. I always will be. Even when it doesn’t
seem like it, I am. No need to worry. No need to panic. No
reason to test my love. Trust me. I am here. Things will
work out. All will be well.”
It is in the silence that a
second voice will eventually be heard. The still, small
voice of God will eventually speak. But if we learn anything
from Jesus’ experience, we learn that seldom does the voice
of God speak to us before the voice of temptation and doubt.
These voices will make their case. They always do. But in
the silence, God’s voice will eventually be heard, as
well—if, like Jesus, we too are willing to sit and wait and
listen.
And so this is where the journey
must begin. It must begin by journeying first to solitude
and silence. We must find our quiet place. This Lent, we
will be looking at many different ways prayer can influence
our lives, and there is no better place to start with prayer
than right here in the silence. At its heart, prayer isn’t
having the right words to say. It isn’t about words at all.
At its heart, prayer is simply sitting in the presence of
God. Nothing more. Nothing less. And there is perhaps no
better way to learn how to sit in God’s presence than in
silence.
And so as we begin our Lenten
journey, let us follow Jesus into the silence—into the
places where God’s voice will eventually be heard through
all the other voices that run through our head. It is where
the journey must begin. Think about the rest of Jesus’ life
and ministry. He was a busy man. He had quite a schedule to
keep. Lots of people to see. Feeding projects to reorganize.
Future leaders to train. And yet he was never too busy for
prayer. Time and time again through his ministry, Jesus
would return to the silence. He would seek out quiet places
so that he could once again hear the reassuring voice of his
Father in heaven.
So perhaps the very first thing
we need to do as a part of our Lenten journey is to make
some space for silence, some space just to sit in the
presence of God. We need to have moments to be immersed in
something other than our work-a-day worlds and jam-packed
schedules. This Lenten season, many of us are reading the
same book, Traveling the Prayer Paths of Jesus. One
of the quotes that struck me was about just that, about
finding time in the midst of a busy life to be immersed in
prayer. This is what John Indermark wrote:
Jesus immersed himself in prayer
when there was so much to be done and so little time to do
it. Why? Time to nurture the spirit was not, and is not, a
secondary luxury to be attended to only after all the
real work gets done. It precedes busyness and
routine… The question is not whether you can afford to have
such times of immersion and inspiration. The question is
whether you can afford not to have them.
So how do we find the time for
that kind of quiet in the midst of schedules that simply
don’t seem to have the space to squeeze in anything else? I
think we need to start slowly. Find ten minutes at some
point during each day. Set the alarm just ten minutes
earlier and find a spot in the early morning to just sit and
enjoy a few quiet moments. Come back from lunch just ten
minutes early. Shut your door. Turn off the phone. Shut off
the light. Take your shoes off for a minute if it helps you
step away from the world, and just take in a few moments of
silence. Maybe it is in the car. Just once this week, try a
silent commute. No radio. No books on tape. No cell phone.
Just you and God and the quiet. Or maybe for you it’s at
night, just before you shut your eyes. Lately I have found
myself kneeling down at the edge of the bed at night after
Bridget is asleep—just kneeling there for a few minutes with
hands folded and eyes closed, to just be in gratitude with
my Lord and Savior. So whatever we can do to carve just a
few minutes each day for silent prayer will help open us up
to ways God is speaking to us. Our Lenten journey begins
right here—in the quiet recesses of our hearts, in the
silent presence of our loving Creator.
Each week of our Lenten journey,
we will use a different pair of shoes to represent the
different ways Jesus will call us to follow him on this
journey. This week our shoes are slippers. Slippers are not
shoes to be worn out in the world, but the shoes we wear
when we are in the comfort of our own homes. The slippers
can remind us to take time to break away from the world and
return to our home in God. The slippers will remind us that
we do not need to be “on” every moment of every day, but
that it is perfectly okay to find moments to just sit and
reflect. So this week, let us try to take some “slipper
time”—some moments of personal retreat where we can sit and
listen for the voice of God.
The silence. It is where the
journey begins, and it is where God will meet us to walk
with us every step of the way.
|
