Ruth E. Harper - "Listen, The Silence Speaks" (June 25, 1995)
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Transcript
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- | Please join with me in the prayer for illumination. | 0:03 |
Open our hearts and minds, O God, | 0:09 | |
by the power of Your Holy Spirit | 0:12 | |
so that as the word is spread and proclaimed | 0:15 | |
we may hear Your message with joy this day. | 0:19 | |
Amen. | 0:23 | |
The Gospel lesson is from Luke chapter 8 | 0:28 | |
verses 26 through 39 | 0:32 | |
Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, | 0:38 | |
which is opposite Galilee. | 0:42 | |
As he stepped out one day, | 0:45 | |
a man of the city who had demons met him. | 0:47 | |
For a long time he had worn no clothes, | 0:51 | |
and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. | 0:54 | |
When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him | 0:58 | |
and shouted at the top of his voice, | 1:01 | |
"What have you to do with me, Jesus, | 1:03 | |
"Son of the Most High God? | 1:06 | |
"I beg you, do not torment me" | 1:08 | |
for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit | 1:11 | |
to come out of the man. | 1:14 | |
For many times it had seized him; | 1:16 | |
he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, | 1:19 | |
but he would break the bonds | 1:23 | |
and be driven by the demon into the wilds. | 1:25 | |
Jesus then asked him, "What is your name?" | 1:29 | |
He said, "Legion"; for many demons had entered him. | 1:33 | |
They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. | 1:39 | |
Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; | 1:43 | |
and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. | 1:49 | |
So he gave them permission. | 1:53 | |
Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, | 1:56 | |
and the herd rushed down the steep bank | 2:00 | |
into the lake and was drowned. | 2:02 | |
When the swineherds saw what had happened, | 2:06 | |
they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. | 2:08 | |
Then people came out to see what had happened, | 2:13 | |
and when they came to Jesus, | 2:16 | |
they found the man from whom the demons had gone | 2:18 | |
sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. | 2:21 | |
And they were afraid. | 2:27 | |
Those who had seen it told them how the one | 2:30 | |
who had been possessed by demons had been healed. | 2:33 | |
Then all the people of the surrounding country | 2:37 | |
of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; | 2:39 | |
for they were seized with great fear. | 2:42 | |
So he got into the boat and returned. | 2:46 | |
The man from whom the demons had gone | 2:50 | |
begged that he might be with him; | 2:52 | |
but Jesus sent him away, saying, | 2:55 | |
"Return to your home, | 2:57 | |
"and declare how much God has done for you." | 2:59 | |
So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city | 3:04 | |
how much Jesus had done for him. | 3:08 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 3:12 | |
- | Thanks be to God. | 3:14 |
- | The Old Testament lesson is from 1 Kings | 3:19 |
chapter 19 verses 1 through 15a. | 3:23 | |
Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, | 3:29 | |
and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. | 3:34 | |
Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, | 3:38 | |
"So may the gods do to me, and more also, | 3:42 | |
"if I do not make your life like the life | 3:46 | |
"of one of them by this time tomorrow." | 3:49 | |
Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, | 3:54 | |
and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; | 3:58 | |
he left his servant there. | 4:01 | |
But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, | 4:04 | |
and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. | 4:08 | |
He asked that he might die: | 4:12 | |
"It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, | 4:16 | |
"for I am no better than my ancestors." | 4:20 | |
Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. | 4:24 | |
Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, | 4:28 | |
"Get up and eat." | 4:32 | |
He looked, and there at his head was a cake | 4:35 | |
baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. | 4:38 | |
He ate and drank, and lay down again. | 4:43 | |
The angel of the Lord came a second time, | 4:46 | |
touched him, and said, "Get up and eat, | 4:49 | |
"otherwise the journey will be too much for you." | 4:52 | |
He got up, and ate and drank; | 4:56 | |
then he went in the strength of that food 40 days | 4:59 | |
and 40 nights to Horeb the mount of God. | 5:02 | |
At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there. | 5:07 | |
Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, | 5:12 | |
"What are you doing here, Elijah?" | 5:15 | |
He answered, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, | 5:18 | |
"the God of hosts; | 5:21 | |
"for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, | 5:23 | |
"thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets | 5:26 | |
"with the sword. | 5:29 | |
"I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, | 5:30 | |
"to take it away." | 5:33 | |
He said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, | 5:35 | |
"for the Lord is about to pass by." | 5:41 | |
Now there was a great wind, | 5:45 | |
so strong that it was splitting mountains | 5:47 | |
and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, | 5:50 | |
but the Lord was not in the wind; | 5:53 | |
and after the wind an earthquake, | 5:56 | |
but the Lord was not in the earthquake; | 5:59 | |
and after the earthquake a fire, | 6:01 | |
but the Lord was not in the fire; | 6:04 | |
and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. | 6:07 | |
When Elijah heard it, | 6:12 | |
he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out | 6:14 | |
and stood at the entrance of the cave. | 6:17 | |
Then there came a voice to him that said, | 6:20 | |
"What are you doing here, Elijah?" | 6:23 | |
He answered, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, | 6:26 | |
"the God of hosts; for the Israelites | 6:29 | |
"have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, | 6:31 | |
"and killed your prophets with the sword. | 6:34 | |
"I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, | 6:37 | |
"to take it away." | 6:40 | |
Then the Lord said to him, | 6:42 | |
"Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus." | 6:44 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 6:50 | |
- | Thanks be to God. | 6:53 |
- | Will you join me in the spirit of prayer? | 7:04 |
May the words of my mouth and the meditations | 7:12 | |
of our collective hearts | 7:15 | |
be acceptable, O God, our rock and our salvation. | 7:17 | |
Amen. | 7:22 | |
The phone rang. | 7:25 | |
Immediately I sense that this was not | 7:27 | |
the typical voice of my 14-year-old | 7:30 | |
I-love-life-boarding-school son. | 7:33 | |
Now for the record, we are not rich | 7:36 | |
and Nathan is not bad. | 7:39 | |
Nevertheless, every fall he is boxed up | 7:41 | |
and shipped off to a New Jersey boarding school. | 7:45 | |
Nathan's conversation didn't begin | 7:49 | |
with the normal pleasantries. | 7:51 | |
Hi, mom. | 7:53 | |
How are you? | 7:54 | |
What you been up to lately? | 7:55 | |
No, instead Nathan launched into this lament | 7:57 | |
about a created short story he had written | 8:01 | |
for English class. | 8:04 | |
He said to me in a rather abrupt way, | 8:07 | |
I am going to read this to you | 8:10 | |
and I want you to listen and you tell me what grade | 8:12 | |
you think I should have made on this paper. | 8:17 | |
Well, as I listened I tried to do so objectively. | 8:22 | |
I tried to forget that I am Nathan's proud parent. | 8:25 | |
I wanted to give this English professor the credit due | 8:31 | |
a teacher in a nationally acclaimed prep school. | 8:34 | |
Well, Nathan began to read. | 8:39 | |
And honestly as he read I tried, honestly I did, | 8:41 | |
I tried to convince myself that this wonderful paper | 8:45 | |
that he was reading must have received low marks | 8:49 | |
because without a doubt it was filled | 8:52 | |
with misspellings and punctuation errors | 8:55 | |
and all these things that I could not see | 8:58 | |
through the hearing of it. | 9:01 | |
And then Nathan read on. | 9:05 | |
And he rather artfully described this wonderful scene | 9:08 | |
of an elderly hermit who lived | 9:13 | |
in a bleak winter forest. | 9:16 | |
And I was sort of taken into this whole story. | 9:19 | |
And then all of a sudden a sentence came | 9:22 | |
that shattered my objectivity. | 9:25 | |
In the midst of his description, | 9:29 | |
when he talks about | 9:32 | |
this austere yet peaceful environment, | 9:33 | |
he says, | 9:38 | |
the silence echoed. | 9:41 | |
Well, I guess I must have let out this sigh | 9:45 | |
of appreciation for the rich symbolic imagery, | 9:49 | |
and Nathan stopped me short. | 9:53 | |
And he said, "You like that?" | 9:55 | |
Before I could even answer he went on and he said, | 9:58 | |
"You know what my teacher wrote about that | 10:00 | |
"on my paper? | 10:03 | |
"He wrote 'not possible'. | 10:05 | |
"And when I asked him after class why not | 10:09 | |
"he said, 'How can silence echo | 10:13 | |
"'when it doesn't make a sound?'" | 10:16 | |
Well, so much for my objective analysis. | 10:20 | |
All I could think of throughout the reading | 10:24 | |
of the remainder of the paper was how little | 10:26 | |
this English professor knew a bout silence. | 10:28 | |
I know silence echoes. | 10:33 | |
I've heard it. | 10:37 | |
I mean, having lost a child to boarding school | 10:40 | |
and another son to Duke University, | 10:44 | |
and a husband to cancer, | 10:48 | |
I know something about the sound of silence. | 10:50 | |
Now clearly I don't know everything. | 10:56 | |
I don't know as much as the prisoner incarcerated | 10:58 | |
on death row. | 11:02 | |
I don't know as much as the patient | 11:04 | |
awaiting test results. | 11:07 | |
I don't know as much as the lonely elderly | 11:09 | |
in the nursing facility. | 11:13 | |
But I do know enough to know | 11:16 | |
that silence has the capacity to echo. | 11:19 | |
And now you see why out of those lectionary verses | 11:24 | |
that were read today, I was grabbed | 11:27 | |
by Elijah's encounter with the divine stillness. | 11:30 | |
I nearly laughed in solidarity with my poetic son | 11:35 | |
when I read these two phrases back to back. | 11:39 | |
The sound of sheer silence, period. | 11:43 | |
When Elijah heard it. | 11:46 | |
Mr. English professor, you may have a string of degrees | 11:49 | |
behind your name, but you sure don't know | 11:53 | |
much about silence. | 11:56 | |
Trust me, it can be heard. | 11:58 | |
So what does it take to hear it? | 12:02 | |
To some it takes going to hell and back. | 12:05 | |
Look at poor Elijah. | 12:09 | |
Bless his heart, he has just stood before King Ahab | 12:12 | |
and confronted him with his apostasy. | 12:15 | |
He has challenged queen Jezebel's Baal prophets | 12:18 | |
to a contest. | 12:22 | |
The deal is this. | 12:24 | |
Both sides will build altars on Mt. Carmel | 12:26 | |
and then they will ask God to send fire upon the altar. | 12:30 | |
And the god who complies will be considered | 12:34 | |
the real bonafide, authentic, legitimate God. | 12:37 | |
Now to add drama to the challenge, | 12:42 | |
Elijah pours water on his altar. | 12:46 | |
A big show off. | 12:49 | |
Need I tell you who wins? | 12:51 | |
I didn't think so. | 12:54 | |
Elijah then has the 450 prophets of Baal | 12:56 | |
slaughtered | 13:00 | |
and Jezebel in retaliation says to him, | 13:01 | |
"You're next, bud." | 13:05 | |
Well then of course Elijah is fearing for his life, | 13:07 | |
runs away, goes to Beersheba. | 13:10 | |
He is going as far south as he can | 13:13 | |
and still be in the settled cultivated land. | 13:16 | |
But that's not far enough. | 13:19 | |
He lives his servant there and travels yet a day further | 13:21 | |
into the wilderness. | 13:25 | |
And there we find him under an isolated broom tree | 13:27 | |
praying for death | 13:32 | |
and then falling asleep. | 13:34 | |
Clearly the work of a prophet is frustrating | 13:37 | |
and exhausting business. | 13:40 | |
God seems to understand. | 13:43 | |
God lets him rest and gives him food, | 13:46 | |
enough nourishment to last him for his long journey | 13:48 | |
all the way to Mt. Horeb. | 13:51 | |
And at this point Elijah then | 13:54 | |
makes his residence in a cave. | 13:56 | |
Now, I've always thought it was rather ironic | 13:59 | |
that this ninth century BC | 14:02 | |
Arnold Schwarzenegger | 14:06 | |
who has just blown away 450 Baal prophets, | 14:08 | |
runs and hides at the threat of a woman. | 14:12 | |
Maybe it's true, hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn. | 14:15 | |
My late husband used to describe me by modifying | 14:20 | |
the words of David Banner right before | 14:24 | |
he turned into the Incredible Hulk. | 14:26 | |
You remember that? | 14:29 | |
He used to say, and my husband would say of me, | 14:30 | |
"Don't make her angry. | 14:32 | |
"You wouldn't like her when she's angry." | 14:34 | |
Well, to say that Elijah was did not like | 14:38 | |
Jezebel when she was angry would be a gross understatement. | 14:42 | |
In fact he was terrified of her. | 14:46 | |
So here's Elijah holed up in a cave | 14:49 | |
when all of a sudden he's told to go out | 14:52 | |
and to wait for the passing by of the Lord God. | 14:54 | |
Now I don't know what you would expect | 14:59 | |
if someone told you to go out and wait for God to pass by. | 15:01 | |
I don't know what you would expect. | 15:04 | |
But we aren't told, but I think clearly | 15:06 | |
it would be accurate to say | 15:10 | |
that earthquake, wind and fire would just about sum it up. | 15:11 | |
If you look at the expectation of the prophet Isaiah, | 15:16 | |
you can get a clue. | 15:20 | |
Hear Isaiah's words. | 15:22 | |
And in an instant suddenly | 15:25 | |
you will be visited by the Lord of Hosts | 15:27 | |
with thunder and earthquake and great noise | 15:30 | |
with whirlwind and tempest | 15:34 | |
and the flame of a devouring fire. | 15:37 | |
That's the way theophanies, divine appearances, occur. | 15:42 | |
God appears to David on the wings of the wind. | 15:46 | |
God appears to Moses in the burning bush. | 15:49 | |
And don't forget God has just appeared | 15:52 | |
to Elijah by igniting a very wet altar. | 15:54 | |
Clearly, Elijah would have anticipated God | 15:58 | |
to be in the earthquake, wind and fire. | 16:01 | |
But God is in none of it. | 16:04 | |
God is in the sound of sheer silence. | 16:07 | |
The still small voice. | 16:11 | |
The low murmuring sound. | 16:14 | |
Or to put it in the words of poet John Keats, | 16:17 | |
"And then there crept a little noiseless noise | 16:21 | |
"among the leaves born of the very sigh | 16:24 | |
"that silence heaves." | 16:29 | |
Fortunately Elijah didn't live at the end | 16:34 | |
of the 20th century. | 16:36 | |
Today, competing voices drown out | 16:39 | |
the voice of silence. | 16:42 | |
They are many and their name is Legion, | 16:45 | |
and like those that possess the Gerasene demoniac, | 16:47 | |
they plead against annihilation. | 16:50 | |
They con us into believing that truth | 16:54 | |
can be found in those things that make | 16:57 | |
the biggest show and possess the greatest noise. | 16:59 | |
Last week I discussed this sermon with one | 17:04 | |
of the ministers in the Wilmington District | 17:06 | |
and he asked me, | 17:09 | |
"Have you seen 'The Wizard of Oz' lately?" | 17:11 | |
Well, it's been a long time. | 17:14 | |
So I went straight to Blockbuster, | 17:16 | |
rented the colorized version of the 1939 movie. | 17:18 | |
To watch the "The Wizard of Oz" during office hours | 17:24 | |
legitimately | 17:28 | |
must be akin to Elijah napping and eating cake | 17:30 | |
in the middle of the day with God's blessing. | 17:34 | |
What a treat. | 17:37 | |
As I watched, I got the point. | 17:39 | |
Dorothy and her companions are fooled by wizardry. | 17:42 | |
They believe in the smoke and the fire | 17:47 | |
and the electronic voice. | 17:51 | |
That voice by the way reminds me a lot | 17:53 | |
of the voice that you can create here in Duke chapel. | 17:55 | |
It's powerful. | 17:58 | |
In fact, their belief in the wizard to bring wholeness | 18:01 | |
depends on these very apparitions. | 18:04 | |
And then suddenly everything changes. | 18:08 | |
Dorothy's little dog Toto goes over | 18:11 | |
and with his teeth grabs the curtain and opens the curtain | 18:14 | |
and truth is exposed. | 18:17 | |
Behind the curtain standing, manipulating the controls | 18:20 | |
is a powerless little man. | 18:24 | |
And when he realizes that he has been seen, | 18:27 | |
he quickly closes the curtain. | 18:29 | |
And in one vain attempt to maintain | 18:31 | |
the illusion of power, | 18:35 | |
he speaks boldly into the microphone. | 18:36 | |
"Pay no attention to that man | 18:40 | |
behind the curtain." | 18:42 | |
Well, today there is not just one voice | 18:45 | |
telling us to pay no attention | 18:48 | |
to the powerlessness of the seemingly powerful. | 18:49 | |
There are a legion of voices. | 18:54 | |
And what we as Christians know | 18:57 | |
and what the world so desperately needs to hear | 19:00 | |
is that there is a still small voice of calm | 19:04 | |
that has the power to bring wholeness. | 19:08 | |
And that voice is Jesus. | 19:12 | |
In Luke's account of the Gerasene demoniac, | 19:17 | |
there's one part that I've always questioned. | 19:19 | |
I have never understood why the townspeople | 19:22 | |
were afraid of Jesus. | 19:25 | |
I can understand why they might be afraid of demoniac. | 19:27 | |
Anyone with any sense would run from a raving streaker | 19:32 | |
who lives in tombs and has the Hulkish ability | 19:36 | |
to break out of chains. | 19:39 | |
But what I can't understand is why | 19:41 | |
the local folk would be upset and nervous | 19:45 | |
when they saw this same man fully clothed | 19:48 | |
and in his right mind. | 19:52 | |
Why would they fear Jesus, the giver of sanity? | 19:55 | |
I can imagine why they would ask him to leave. | 19:59 | |
For heaven's sake, he just destroyed somebody's livestock. | 20:03 | |
But why be afraid? | 20:07 | |
Interestingly enough in all three synoptic gospels, | 20:10 | |
right prior to the incident of Jesus calming the Demoniac, | 20:13 | |
Jesus calms the sea of Galilee. | 20:18 | |
And oddly enough the disciples are fearful | 20:21 | |
when they see Jesus' ability to bring calm. | 20:25 | |
Perhaps not as obvious to you, | 20:29 | |
but Elijah also demonstrates fear. | 20:31 | |
He will not look at the silence | 20:34 | |
but instead he covers his face with his robe. | 20:37 | |
I sense today a fear in this one | 20:42 | |
who only wants to bring calm into the midst | 20:44 | |
of the chaos of our lives. | 20:47 | |
During annual conference one night, | 20:50 | |
I stayed up late with a college son of a friend of mine. | 20:51 | |
He is a professed agnostic | 20:56 | |
and has many questions about God. | 20:59 | |
We talked until midnight, two hours I believe, | 21:03 | |
about everything from creation to infinity. | 21:06 | |
And finally I said, "I think we all need to get some rest." | 21:11 | |
His mother had told me that he was having | 21:15 | |
trouble sleeping at night. | 21:17 | |
Before we went to our rooms, | 21:19 | |
I called him by name and I said, | 21:21 | |
"You need to listen for God to speak to you." | 21:23 | |
I'll never forget his nervous response. | 21:27 | |
He said, "Oh, Mrs. Harper, please don't tell me that. | 21:31 | |
"Not before I go to bed. | 21:34 | |
"I wont' sleep a wink all night." | 21:36 | |
why do we fear? | 21:39 | |
Why do we fear listening to the silence? | 21:40 | |
That's the question I had to ask my self | 21:44 | |
after my husband Lee died a year ago. | 21:47 | |
I hated the calm, I hated the stillness | 21:50 | |
that his absence created. | 21:54 | |
And I wondered, why was I so fearful of the quiet? | 21:57 | |
And then it came to me. | 22:02 | |
I was afraid that I would listen, | 22:06 | |
listen intently and hear nothing. | 22:09 | |
Nothing at all. | 22:13 | |
The thought occurred to me that I might be like | 22:16 | |
the Canaanite woman who pleaded with Jesus | 22:18 | |
on behalf of her demon-possessed daughter | 22:20 | |
but got no answer from him at all. | 22:23 | |
What if I really did stop, became quiet, listened | 22:27 | |
and still heard nothing? | 22:32 | |
It's safer to stay in the whirlwind | 22:36 | |
to keep things stirred up. | 22:38 | |
That way we don't know if the silence is speaking or not. | 22:39 | |
Our daily routine of squeezing just as much | 22:44 | |
as we can into 24 hours, | 22:47 | |
of constantly telling people how busy we are, | 22:49 | |
of cramming something into every idle moment, | 22:53 | |
of keeping the noise level high | 22:57 | |
and the thought level low. | 23:00 | |
All this confusion | 23:03 | |
saves us. | 23:07 | |
It keeps us from | 23:09 | |
getting into the deeper side of life. | 23:12 | |
It protects us from finding out | 23:15 | |
that our lives are nothing but shallowness | 23:19 | |
and we are scared half to death. | 23:22 | |
This was my first fear. | 23:26 | |
What if the silence doesn't speak? | 23:27 | |
And then came my second fear, | 23:30 | |
what if it speaks and I miss it? | 23:34 | |
Or worse yet, what if it speaks | 23:37 | |
and I don't like what it says? | 23:41 | |
I don't know what's more terrifying, | 23:45 | |
a silence that's mute | 23:47 | |
or a silence that speaks | 23:49 | |
an unwelcomed message. | 23:51 | |
Helmut Thielicke in his book "The Silence of God" | 23:55 | |
claims that behind unanswered prayers | 23:58 | |
are God's higher thoughts. | 24:01 | |
What would it take for us to break free of our fear | 24:04 | |
long enough to listen for God's higher thoughts? | 24:07 | |
Clearly it would take realizing that God loves us, | 24:11 | |
that we are cared for unconditionally, | 24:15 | |
that God wills our good. | 24:17 | |
One of the most comforting text for me | 24:21 | |
this long and lonely year comes out of Jeremiah. | 24:24 | |
"For surely I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord, | 24:28 | |
"plans for your welfare and not for harm, | 24:33 | |
"to give you a future with hope." | 24:37 | |
or in the words of the Apostle Paul. | 24:42 | |
If God is for us, who can be against us? | 24:44 | |
When we know that God is for us, | 24:48 | |
we know that the divine calm is not to be feared. | 24:50 | |
After hearing the low murmuring sound, | 24:55 | |
Elijah steps out of the cave. | 24:57 | |
Nevermind the fact that he's supposed to have been | 24:59 | |
on the mountaintop a long time ago. | 25:02 | |
Nevermind the fact that he didn't so much | 25:04 | |
as stick his head out when the Lord passed by. | 25:06 | |
The Lord meets him anyway. | 25:10 | |
Isn't it wonderful | 25:13 | |
how God is willing to speak to us | 25:14 | |
even in our disobedience? | 25:17 | |
In response to the summons, Elijah steps out | 25:21 | |
to the entrance of the cave and his honest to God dialog. | 25:23 | |
And sure enough God said some things | 25:27 | |
that I know Elijah doesn't appreciate. | 25:29 | |
For example, | 25:33 | |
"Elijah what are you doing here?" | 25:36 | |
After listening to Elijah whine | 25:39 | |
a little while about his lousy life, | 25:41 | |
the silence speaks again, | 25:43 | |
this time with an even harder message. | 25:46 | |
Elijah, go back. | 25:49 | |
What? | 25:52 | |
Go back to the administrative minutia? | 25:54 | |
Go back to the relentless ringing of the telephone? | 25:59 | |
Go back to the squeaky wheels that constantly demand grease? | 26:04 | |
Do I have to? | 26:09 | |
Yes. | 26:11 | |
But in the midst of it all from time to time, | 26:12 | |
be still and know that I am God. | 26:15 | |
And when you feel tempted to feel | 26:19 | |
every waking moment with meaningless activity, | 26:22 | |
repeat these words to yourself a few times. | 26:27 | |
Don't just do something. | 26:33 | |
Stand there. | 26:36 | |
Clearly we all need a divine sanction | 26:39 | |
that tells us we don't have to constantly | 26:41 | |
be doing something that we can stand still | 26:43 | |
for a few minutes and think and feel. | 26:46 | |
A little inner control over the chaos of our lives | 26:49 | |
would not hurt any of us. | 26:52 | |
In fact, it might pull back the curtain | 26:54 | |
on the demonic powers and principalities | 26:57 | |
that invade our everyday lives. | 27:00 | |
It was Tuesday mid afternoon, | 27:05 | |
the second day of annual conference. | 27:07 | |
The middle of the pension report. | 27:10 | |
Only one delegate elected to general conference | 27:13 | |
and many, many more ballots yet to be cast. | 27:16 | |
My election seemed less likely | 27:21 | |
with the casting of each new ballot. | 27:22 | |
To keep from losing myself in disappointment, | 27:26 | |
I picked up a book and began to read. | 27:29 | |
For one brief moment, | 27:33 | |
God translated me out of that | 27:36 | |
situation and into a realm of peace. | 27:39 | |
I read as Dag Hammarskjold described his life | 27:43 | |
at age 51. | 27:46 | |
I thought to myself, "I'm almost there." | 27:49 | |
He wrote about meaningless honors. | 27:54 | |
He defined himself as trapped into the straight jacket | 27:58 | |
of the immediate. | 28:02 | |
And this is the vision for which he longed, | 28:06 | |
to step out of all of this | 28:09 | |
and stand naked on the precipice of dawn. | 28:11 | |
Acceptable, invulnerable, | 28:16 | |
free, | 28:19 | |
in the light, with the light, of the light. | 28:21 | |
Whole. | 28:26 | |
What a vision. | 28:28 | |
And isn't this what the silence says? | 28:31 | |
Step out of all of this | 28:34 | |
and stand naked on the precipice of dawn. | 28:36 | |
Yes, go back. | 28:41 | |
Face the frenzied pace. | 28:43 | |
Only now be aware of the things | 28:46 | |
with bells and whistles that demand | 28:49 | |
to be possessed and yet | 28:52 | |
invariably calm to possess. | 28:55 | |
Be aware that true caring can only be demonstrated | 28:59 | |
through honest attentiveness | 29:02 | |
and be constantly aware of how critical it is | 29:06 | |
to stop at regular intervals and commune | 29:10 | |
with the divine calm. | 29:14 | |
Mr. English professor, | 29:19 | |
if you would just listen, | 29:23 | |
the silence speaks. | 29:26 |