Tag: Rowan Williams

“God Needs Our Silence”

Photo by Robert Arrington on Unsplash

So often we try to convey or communicate the character and work of God to others by stepping up the noise and the activity; and yet for God to communicate who and what God is, God needs our silence.

Rowan Williams, Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons, p. 98

We need preachers.

We need activists.

And we need contemplatives.

We need persuaders and prophets raising their voices and pricking our consciences and pointing the way.

And yet we need something else, too. God calls for our attention, and one way to give it is through silence.

Rowan Williams is right to observe that Christians frequently work very hard to proclaim the message and move the masses, to persuade and preach the gospel, to call people toward repentance and the good deeds that accompany it.

He is also right to remind us that if we are to truly encounter God, if we are to learn who and what God is, we need to stop, silence our mouths, still our souls, rest, and pay attention. We need to turn toward God so that we can be transformed by God.

I think one way to avoid God’s communication is to fill our lives with noise. This is true in both the secular and religious realms. I think a major source of our modern spiritual poverty is due to the lack of quiet spaces, places, and people. I don’t know if God “needs” our silence. I do think God invites us into silence, because we need God. Silence is the means to the encounter. The end is God.

In silence we discover our need of God. In silence we discover we have needs only God can address, murmuring underneath the surface, distorting our vision, disrupting our peace, dividing our communities, diminishing our souls–though treatable with divine aid. In silence we attend to God, and God attends to us. We encounter God as God is. And we encounter ourselves. God helps us see what we’d otherwise miss or deny. False ideas of God are exposed, and true knowledge of God is revealed.

In silence we communicate with God. More importantly, God communicates with us. There is time for preaching and for action, and there is much work to be done. God sends us out. But we must not neglect silence. We must not neglect the invitation to be still. God gathers us in. We enter God’s presence. We quiet our souls. We receive. We are restored. We are renewed.

When God sends us out again, we’re better messengers, servants, and ambassadors. We’re better equipped to glorify God, because in silence, we have beheld God’s glory.

The Need for Silence

So often we try to convey or communicate the character and work of God to others by stepping up the noise and the activity; and yet for God to communicate who and what God is, God needs our silence.

– Rowan Williams, Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons, 98

The spiritual life involves speaking and not speaking.

In speaking, we issue invitations. We draw attention and take action. We converse, convince, and persuade. We do.

In not speaking, we stop. We become silent. We are still. We listen, contemplate, and consider. We be.

The church has always needed heralds. Romans 10:17 says, “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” In Romans 10:13 we find, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” In Romans 10:14-15, Paul asks, “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’”

The logic is easy to follow. The person who hears and responds in faith does so following a proclamation of the message of and about Jesus, brought by another person who has been called and sent forth for that task.

The best gospel ministry marries proclamation to demonstration. We are told what the kingdom of God is like, but then we see it, it is put on display. In Matthew 4:23, we read that “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” There is not only speaking, but activity.

And yet to plumb the depths of God, to know who God is and what God is doing, there comes a time for silence. Psalm 46:10 says, ““Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.” In Psalm 62:5, we read, “For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him.” Lamentations 3:26 reads, “It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”

Even Jesus withdrew to lonely places to pray. Jesus surely spoke. But he also surely took time to listen, away from the noise, the activity, and the constant demands.

Ecclesiastes 3:7 reminds us, there is “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.” Observe each in its own time, do not neglect either. There is speaking and not speaking. There is action and stillness. There is doing and being.

God call us to both.