THE SOUNDS IN SILENCE

It’s getting to be more and more difficult these days to even hear oneself speak. There is noise everywhere and if we do not hear noise, we probably think we are dead. The TV is on, someone else is on a cell phone, another one is ringing, someone else is texting, and a video game is being played. And even when we can crawl up into a favorite corner and be all by ourselves, it is still difficult to find silence.

We might even prefer it that way. Sitting in silence is not the same as going into our “nothing” box as we men are wont to do on a very regular basis, almost always at the wrong time, as when our spouse is talking to us and we have not heard a word she has said nor have we heard anything else. We are dead to the world and even dead to ourselves whenever we are in that box.

There is silence in which we hear nothing and there is silence is which we hear sounds. That is the silence that is difficult to come by and often one that is also avoided. It can be somewhat frightening to listen to those sounds that come from within, those sounds that speak to us about us, about who we are and what we are about. Those sounds can often be unpleasant and disconcerting, which is one of the reasons why we do whatever we can to avoid listening to them.

Yet we should. For it is only in the recesses of our hearts and minds, when we are still to the world and the world is still to us, that we can hear ourselves. It is only in that silence that we are able to hear our conscience talking to us, our lives and the way we live them speaking to us. It is all too easy for the sounds on the outside to drown out the sounds we can only hear on the inside.

We don’t have to go off on some kind of retreat or seek solace in a quiet room to hear those sounds, but it would certainly help. Yes, we can come up with all kinds of excuses why we can’t do it, why we do not have time to do it, why there are so many more things to do at the moment. And all those excuses would be valid. Life is difficult and the demands placed upon us simply trying to get through this life with some semblance of sanity are immense. No one questions that truth.

But the greater truth is that unless we stop at times to listen to what is going on inside us, to how we are and what we are about, to what we should be about, we will only make matters worse and our lives more complicated. We know that. We truly do. There is not one of us who does not long for some silent time, quiet time, time to think and reflect. We are spiritual beings, are we not? But getting in touch with that spiritual part of us, listening to it, can only take place in silence.

Lent, which is approaching, is as good a time as any and better than most to make and take that time to find a silent spot, that quiet and comfortable place wherever it may be, to listen to the sounds we hear in the silence of our hearts and heads. What we will discover if we make and take that time is that we will want to go back there more and more on a regular basis. The first step into that silence, however, is the most difficult one to take.

TRUTH

In a dramatic scene in the Gospels Jesus is standing before Pilate who has it in his hands, his power, to do whatever he wants with Jesus. He has to give no explanation for his actions or any justification. He is in charge. He has the power. Pilate thinks, because of Jesus’ accusers, that Jesus has come on the scene to become a king, to usurp power not only from Pilate but also Caesar himself.

On the contrary, Jesus tells Pilate, he has come on the scene, come into the world, in fact, the only reason why he was born was for only one purpose, and that is testify to the truth. Pilate, in his cynicism, asks, “What is truth?” and then drops the subject. Perhaps Pilate does not go down that road because he is afraid of the answer. Pilate, like all of us, is afraid of the truth.

Why? Why are we so afraid of the truth especially when we know, as Jesus reminds us elsewhere, that that the truth will make us free? Walter Brueggemann, the great Old Testament scholar, in commenting on truth, says that where truth operates, poverty turns into abundance, death turns into life, war turns into peace and hunger turns into food. In other words, truth is one of, if not, the most powerful forces in the world.

Think about it: whenever (if we have the courage and the will) we truthfully and honestly address issues like poverty, death, war and hunger, those issues, those realities, can be eliminated from this world. But they are realities because we will not address them truthfully. For whenever we do address poverty, for instance, we, in the end, as a society and even individually, come up with what we want to deem as reasonable excuses and justifications for poverty’s existence.

But there are none. We have within is as a nation, certainly as a world, the ability to eliminate poverty, hunger, premature death and even war but only to the extent that we are willing to be honest about the reasons such realities exist in the first place. And the reason: greed. There is poverty in our world because those who have are not willing to share enough of what they (we) have with those who have little or nothing. That is the gospel truth.

There is disease and premature death in impoverished countries, even in our own, because it is more important to make billions of dollars in profit on medicine than to take less and take care of those who can’t afford the necessary medication to get better or not get deathly ill in the first place. That, too, is the gospel truth. We go to war as nations to insure our lifestyle remains viable at the expense of others. We waste enough food in this country alone to feed millions of starving people. That is the gospel truth.

The truth is we know that. None of this is rocket science. But asserting the truth is dangerous, as Jesus pointed out and because of which Jesus became a victim. Telling the truth and making it a reality all costs us something. It may not cost us our lives but it will cost us something: downsizing, fewer toys, sharing, compromising. The list is long. The truth is that we are reluctant to face the truth because we are not willing to pay the price.

JESUS WAS RIGHT

Life sometimes, probably more often than we think or can even imagine, is a two-edged sword. In one sense Jesus was wrong when he said on the cross that those who were putting him to death did not know what they were doing. They certainly did. They were having him killed because he was a danger to the establishment, meaning them. As the High Priest opined, it would be better for one man to die than for the Romans to have an excuse to interfere with and take away their priestly privileges.

On the other hand, Jesus was right because they truly did not understand both the implications and far-reaching effects of their actions. All they saw was one man, innocent though he was, being the scape goat whose death would allow their lives to go on in relative peace. In effect their action was truly a two-edged sword even if they only saw one side of that sword.

Isn’t that true for so many of our actions? We tend to see only the immediate effect of what we are doing. We cannot see, because it is impossible to see, what the long-term effects of any of our actions, even our words, will be. The results of Jesus’ death on the cross can only be seen from hindsight and not foresight. So, too, with us. While we hope our actions will be as beneficial in the long term as we deem them to be in the present, we cannot be certain that that will occur.

That’s the two-edged sword. The problem is that we often deceive ourselves into believing that what we are doing is not only good for us in the present but will also be good for others in the long run. Or at least we want to believe that to be true, which allows us to do what we are doing in the first place. And the reason why these actions can be so deceiving is that we take some kind of pleasure from them in the here and now.

The High Priests took immediate pleasure from Jesus’ death and probably never even considered whether or not their would be long-term ramifications from their actions. They were just too rapt up in the moment. Aren’t we all at times. It is only in hindsight, when learn of the ramifications of our actions, that the realization of what we did sets in, for good or for bad.

We trust that our good actions will produce good results. We know our selfish actions will not, even as we may try to convince ourselves otherwise. We may even try to convince ourselves that our selfish actions will be beneficial to others. But the pleasure we get from doing what we are doing clouds the truth. We can’t and we won’t let ourselves see beyond the moment.

In many ways its all so simple and basic: first-grade stuff. Back in the day my text book was called Think and Do. Think first before you act. Think about the consequences as best you can. It was tough for this first-grader and it hasn’t gotten any easier over the years. Maybe it isn’t supposed to, life getting more and more complicated as we grow older. On the one hand, we know what we are doing. On the other hand, we really don’t; but we need to try to understand as we best we can before we act.

JESUS WAS WRONG

Whenever I read the Bible, there are lots of verses that I have trouble with and wish they were not there, verses like telling me that if I want to follow Jesus, I need to turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile and be kind to those who are not kind to me – stuff like that. I suspect that I am not alone in having such feelings. Following Jesus can be quite uncomfortable and quite demanding at times.

Of course, the truth is that whether we like it or not, we know this to be true; and even though we fail more often that we would like to, certainly more that we would like to admit either to ourselves or to others, we do make a very good effort every day to take what Jesus has to say very seriously and make a very serious effort to comply. It is not always, if ever, to be a Christian.

Even as much as I know Jesus is absolutely correct in what he says, there is one verse in Scripture, one utterance of Jesus, with which I take umbrage and think Jesus was wrong. That is the verse where he is hanging on the cross in sheer pain and agony and looks at those who are putting him to death and then asks God the Father to forgive them because, he says, “they do not know what they are doing.”

Baloney! They knew exactly what they were doing. They were putting to death an innocent man for some very selfish motives. And to make matters worse, they did not care. Jesus was making their lives, the lives of the Jewish leaders who orchestrated his condemnation, very difficult if not downright miserable. Better to shut him up permanently than to change their ways even if they had to come up with some trumped up charges. As for Pilate, he could not have cared less about Jesus’ guilt or innocence.

No, they all knew perfectly well what they were doing. And Jesus knew they knew even if he vocally, for his executioners to hear, said otherwise. They knew. But, and here’s the kicker, he forgave them anyway. Can you imagine that? Jesus, dying in excruciating pain, raises up on that cross and up and forgives them. That must have been a real kick in the pants when they heard his words. Or it should have been!

But, then, it is a real kick in the pants for me and, I suspect for all of us. The truth is, maybe the issue is not that Jesus was wrong in saying that those who were putting him to death did not know what they were doing. Maybe the real truth is that we have a difficult time coming to grips with the first part of Jesus’ utterance: “Father, forgive them.” Let’s be honest, were we in Jesus position, the last thought on our mind and the last words we would utter would be words of forgiveness.

There are a lot of things Jesus said we had to do if we wanted to follow him. Almost all of them we sometimes begrudgingly accept yet try as best we can to fulfill and follow. It is this issue of forgiving unconditionally those who knowingly and willingly hurt us with which we have a great deal of difficulty and would rather not. That said, the bottom line, the unvarnished truth and the greatest kick in the pants, is knowing that God also forgives me when I knowingly and willing do that which I should not.

WE ARE GOD IN THE WORLD

When I was studying theology, one of the authors I had to read was Karl Rahner, an abstruse German (that’s probably redundant) Jesuit (which may make him even more abstruse!). It usually took me three readings before I could understand what Rahner was trying to convey. Sometimes I never did get it. Maybe that’s why he was a theologian and I turned out to be a simple parish priest.

One of Rahner’s deep but very-insightful and certainly profound observations was that when we are human in the fullest sense, we are “God’s existence in the world”. By that Rahner means – at least that’s what I think he means – God is in the world, God works in this world of ours in and through human beings. Whenever we do Godly deeds, we are being God in this world. God works in and through God’s creatures and God’s creation and really in no other way. Why? God only knows the answer to that; but what we do know is that is how God has chosen to act in this world of ours – for better or for worse.

Of course the “for better or for worse” all depends on how we human beings act. The burden for making this world the world God intends it to be therefore is laid upon our shoulders and it is a burden that we cannot avoid carrying. We may not want to carry such a load – who would? – but we have no choice. It comes with the territory of being human in the fullest sense.

In essence this means that when we begin to question why things are the way they are, when we ask why bad things happen to good people, we are really asking ourselves why we allow such bad things to happen. Being God’s existence in the world means that we have responsibility for what goes on in this world, for preventing the bad and for doing the good. God works in and through us.

It is a burden. There is no doubt about that. There are two ways of going about carrying this burden, or at least the attitude that should underpin everything we do. There is the positive attitude, if you will, and there is he negative one. On the one hand we can define ourselves by what we stand for, what we support. On the negative side, we can define ourselves by what we are against. Perhaps even more we can define ourselves by who we are rather than by who we are not.

It’s a mindset. When we choose to define ourselves by who we are and what we stand for, then we have the responsibility for living out those stances. We are doing something and not simply standing around opposing but doing nothing. We may be in error about what we believe is right, but at least we are acting and we are open, open to learning that we might be in error and open to change.

All this can be somewhat frightening as well. To think that whatever we do is a reflection of God in and to the world should give us pause. The responsibility can be overwhelming if we think we have to go it alone. But we do not because we have one another and because it is impossible. Jesus didn’t go it alone because he could not. That’s why he gathered a group of disciples of which we are a part. We are now God/Jesus to the world.