II Kings 4: 8-37; Psalm 142; I Corinthians 9: 16-23; Mark 1: 29-39
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at The Cathedral Church of St. Paul the Apostle, Springfield, Illinois, on Sunday, February 8, 2014.
“MAINTAINING
OUR CONNECTION TO GOD WITH SILENCE”
(Homily text: Mark 1: 29-39)
“Be still and know that I am God,”
Psalm 46: 10 tells us.
Ever think about the importance of
knowing the Lord and in being able to commune with Him in silence and in
quietness?
Apparently, Jesus knew the
importance of being able to get away to a quiet place for prayer and for
communion with His Father, for Scripture tells us in a number of places that
that is exactly what He did.
Before we look at today’s gospel
passage, and of Jesus’ consistent habit of finding a quiet place to pray, allow
me to relate some of my own experiences with silence and with finding God in
the quiet and still times of life:
During my seminary years, I had a
wonderful spiritual director named Dabney Carr.
Dabney was a fine priest in the Virginia tradition. Anyway, he maintained a practice of beginning
each time with a person he was meeting with by starting with five minutes of
silence. Somehow, he had a timer that
would let him know (silently, of course) when that five minutes was over. Dabney assisted the process of being quiet by
keeping a candle burning on the table in the center of the room. The lights were dimmed to allow visual
distractions to blend away.
At first, those five minutes of
having to be absolutely quiet and silent seemed like an eternity! I found it hard to get my brain to slow down,
to allow it to dump all the things I’d been thinking about before I entered the
room. Needless to say, I was very
uncomfortable with being quiet.
After we’d been meeting for awhile,
I began to get more and more accustomed to the silence. And, in time, sometimes Dabney would ask me
if I wanted another five minutes before we began our discussions. I came to the point where I cherished the
silence and the stillness in my mind and in my heart that that silence and that
stillness brought with it.
Now, let’s turn back to our gospel
passage for this morning…..
We would do well to recall the
setting for this morning’s reading:
Jesus’ ministry has begun in the
region of Galilee. He has been healing
people, delivering them from various diseases in the process, and He has been
casting out the demonic powers of evil that were enslaving people, as
well. It’s no wonder that His ministry
was beginning to attract more and more attention.
In fact, all throughout the first
half of Mark’s gospel account, we read several times that Jesus tried to keep
His fame from spreading. But the crowds
keep getting larger and larger. Simon
(Peter) affirms this trend as he comes to the Lord in our passage this morning and
says, “Everyone is looking for you,” as he finds Jesus in a desolate place,
praying.
It’s worth noting that Jesus’ fame
spread, in part, because of His power over disease and over the powers of
evil. But beyond that, Jesus’ fame
spread because He genuinely cared for people, and because He came to deliver
them from the things that afflicted them.
By contrast, the leadership of the people in His day behaved in just the
opposite way: They were self-centered,
interested in maintaining their own prestige and position, and they avoided
anyone who showed signs of illness or disease, judging them to be sinners who
were unclean.
But with this last comment, I
digress from the main point of this homily, which has to do with silence,
quietness and with communing with God.
In recent times, many Christians
have discovered the necessity of being silent.
We can see this in our own 1979 Book of Common Prayer: Looking at page 364, just after the
consecrated Bread of the Holy Communion has been broken, we read this rubric:[1] “A period of silence is kept.”
It’s worth noting that our current
edition of the Prayer Book is the first Anglican Prayer Book to intentionally
take the matter of silence into consideration.
No Anglican Prayer Book before the adoption of the American book has
ever made specific provision for silence.
So here, with this rubric, we see
that a period of silence is to be kept.
There is no discretion allowed in keeping it.[2]
At other times, silence is
suggested, but not mandated. Such an
example can be found on page 360, at the beginning of the Confession of Sin. There, we read this rubric: “Silence may
be kept.”
Many people, especially if they
encounter an Episcopal service for the first time, remark on the quietness that
precedes the beginning of the service.
To be sure, not every Episcopal church is that way, but I’d guess that
most are. To some, the quietness is
taken to be a sign that the congregation isn’t a friendly or welcoming one. So, it may take some exposure for newcomers
to appreciate the quiet times which are a hallmark of our worship.
Lent is coming in a week and a
half. May I encourage the use of
practices that encourage silence, quietness, and a time to hear God’s voice in
the stillness? Here are some ways that
we might use to “Be still and know that I am God”:
Pray
the Daily Office, that is, Morning Prayer and/or Evening Prayer. These services are found in the front of your
Prayer Book. The suggested readings
which are used during the service are found at the back of your Prayer Book, Since we are now celebrating the Fifth Sunday
of Epiphany, the readings for this week will be found on page 946 of your
Prayer Book. We are in Year One of the
cycle of readings. Praying the office
will take about 15 – 20 minutes.
Use
a devotional such as Forward Day By Day:
Readings, a brief commentary, and a prayer are arranged for each day
of the month. Using such a resource
would take about five minutes to do.
Consider
reading your way through one book of the Bible:
You might consider reading one chapter a day, or a portion of a
chapter a day. May I suggest you begin
with Mark’s gospel account, which we are currently reading on Sunday mornings?
Observe
a time of complete quiet and stillness: Try
Dabney Carr’s practice of observing five minutes of silence. That means it would be important to find a
place where the TV and the radio are turned off. It would mean finding a place where there
aren’t distractions that would prompt your mind to wander off in any number of
directions.
These are only a few of the many
possibilities that we might use to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, as He went away
into a deserted place to prayer and to unit with His Father. He benefited from such times, and we will
benefit, as well.
AMEN.
[1] A rubric is a direction which is found in
the text of the service. Its name
derives from the fact that, in earlier times, such directions were written or
printed in red print, hence the name, coming from the Latin.
[2] Such a rubric is called a “mandatory rubric”. Other rubrics are called “permissive
rubrics”. For those who are studying for
the ordained ministry, their final exams will almost always have some question
or another about the difference between the two.
