The Hard Sayings of Jesus: Silence

Listen along as we look at the space between Good Friday and Easter Sunday contemplating the silence of God.

Notes//Quotes:

Psalm 13:1-6 - Jon

 

“Habakkuk lived in the final decades of Judah, Israel’s southern kingdom. It was a time of injustice and idolatry, and he saw the rising threat of the Babylonian empire on the horizon. Unlike the other Hebrew prophets, Habakkuk doesn’t accuse Israel or even speak to the people on God’s behalf. Instead, all of his words are addressed to God. The book of Habakkuk tells us about Habakkuk’s personal struggle to believe that God is good when there is so much tragedy and evil in the world” 

— bible project 

 

1 The oracle which Habakkuk the prophet saw.

2 How long, O Lord, will I call for help,

And You will not hear?

I cry out to You, “Violence!”

Yet You do not save.

3 Why do You make me see iniquity,

And cause me to look on wickedness?

Yes, destruction and violence are before me;

Strife exists and contention arises.

4 Therefore the law is ignored

And justice is never upheld.

For the wicked surround the righteous;

Therefore justice comes out perverted.

5 “Look among the nations! Observe!

Be astonished! Wonder!

(NASB)

 

Habakkuk 2:3

3 For the revelation awaits an appointed time;

it speaks of the end

and will not prove false.

Though it linger, wait for it;

it will certainly come

and will not delay.

(NIV)

 

“One of her colleagues attended a conference on Jungian dream analysis where people wrote questions on cards that were passed along to a panel of experts, among them was a grandson of Carl Jung.

One of these cards told the story of a horrific, reoccurring dream, in which the dreamer was stripped of all human dignity and worth through Nazi atrocities. A member of the panel, read the dream out loud. As she listened, my colleague began to formulate a dream interpretation in her head, in anticipation of the panels response. It was really "a no-brainer," she thought, as her mind, busily offered her symbolic explanations for the torture and atrocities described in the dream. 

But this was not how the panel responded at all. When the reading of the dream was complete, Jungs's grandson looked out over the large audience. "Would you all please rise?" he asked. "we will stand together in a moment of silence in response to this dream." The audience stood for a minute, my colleague, impatiently, waiting for the discussion she was certain would follow. But when they sat again, the panel went onto the next question.

My colleague simply did not understand this at all, and a few days later, she asked one of her teachers, himself a Jungian analyst, about it, “Ah, Lois," he had said, "there is life, suffering unspeakable, a vulnerability, so extreme that it goes far beyond words, beyond explanations, and even beyond healing. In the face of such suffering, all we can do is bear witness so no one need suffer alone.”

- Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness

 

“I know that, as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ's absence of special use, and that it hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility, and putteth an edge on hunger, and furnisheth a fair field to faith to put forth itself, and to exercise its fingers in gripping it seeth not what.” 

—Samuel Rutherford

 

“Honesty. David is in agony and can’t feel the presence of God. he cries out that God has ignored his pain and his sorrow. It is almost a howl, and the fact that it is included in the Bible tells us that God wants to hear our genuine feelings, even if they are anger at him. David never stops praying, however, and that is the key. As long as we howl towards God and remember his salvation by grace (verse 5), we will end up at a place of peace. If Christians do that, by hearing Jesus praying verses 1-4 on the cross, losing the Father's face as he paid for our sins, we will be able to pray versus 5-6 indeed.” 

— Timothy Keller

 

It's enough to drive a man crazy; it'll break a man's faith

It's enough to make him wonder if he's ever been sane

When he's bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod

And the heaven's only answer is the silence of God

 

It'll shake a man's timbers when he loses his heart

When he has to remember what broke him apart

This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not

When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God

 

There's a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll

In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold

And He's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone

All His friends are sleeping and He's weeping all alone

 

And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot

What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought

So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God

The aching may remain, but the breaking does not

The aching may remain, but the breaking does not

In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God

- Andrew Peterson, The Silence of God