Silent Action, Active Silence

(1) As we gather and listen to the prelude, we invite our conversation to cease as we prepare to give our cares and worries over to Christ and take up the joyful task of praise of the Father.

It is easy to fall into the habit of idle chitchat instead.

(2) And what happens when it is time for the brief order of public confession and the pause before the general prayer is longer than a few seconds?

There is an uncomfortable shuffling of pages, a nervous cough or two,

and someone is surely thinking, “Come on pastor, let's get going.”

(3) Also, after receiving the Holy communion, it is difficult to be quiet while others are receiving without commenting to our neighbor about something.

There is a time to talk, and a time for silence.

There are times when nothing is the most important and profound thing which we can do....just silence.

Why? Because in silence there is room for the acknowledgment that you and I are not in charge of it all; there is room and time for something new to come into our lives.

A writer put it this way:

To surrender speech is to confess, corporately, that God has the final, defining word about us, our history, and our world.

It is the time when we say that being human is not our ability to persuade and control, but our ability to listen, receive, and acknowledge God's Word.

All of this is background for hearing the Gospel today.

The prayer of Jesus on that last night before the crucifixion, the prayer in John 17, is one of the most profound passages in the Gospel.

We hear nothing from the disciples.

The mood has become dark and still, and the disciples only listen to this deep connection between Jesus and the Father,

and in due course they will hear it as Good News.

No more questions or controversies come from the disciples

They are silent, and thus able to hear part of this conversation between the Father and the Son.

When we read the passage, we need to do it very slowly, because there are so many things being said, and each thing needs to be carefully considered.

These verses seem to revolve around three basic subjects:

(1) Jesus first prays for himself.

Father, glorify me as from the beginning, so that the people will know both the Son and the Father.

(2) Jesus prays next for the disciples who are near him right then:

Protect them, Father, for the sake of your name – that it might be known and honored.

(3) And Jesus then prays for the church in the future:

...that they might be one in the knowledge of Christ and his love for each person,

...that the church's relationship with Jesus be as strong and firm as his relationship with the Father.

Jesus prays for the Father and himself, for the disciples then and there, and for the church in every age.

It is a wonderful model for prayer for us yet today:

--to remember first our connection with the Father,

--to remind God of the present situation of the church,

--and to anticipate the completion of all of his promises.

It is a prayer that is powerful, a prayer that expects things to happen.

Do you and I really expect that things will be different because we pray?

Remember that old story about the town in Texas that was experiencing a drought and asked the pastor to lead them in prayer.

They met on a hillside at the appointed time, but after looking around, the pastor sent them home. Why?

They were there to pray for rain and no one had brought an umbrella!

Someone has said that in our lives we should pray hard and hurl our lives after our prayers.

We should be expecting that God is hearing our prayer and indeed is doing those parts of it which are in accord with his holy will.

Something is going to happen, and happen with us.

Just like the disciples after the Ascension, we are to gather, wait in silence, pray, and expect the Holy Spirit as we get on with the tasks at hand.

The Spirit can redeem the drudgery and anxiety of daily existence and make us truly alive.

The Spirit can take the pain and hard work of caring for an aging parent or grandparent and turn it into a time of thanking God for the mysterious gift of life now, and for all of the special times in the past.

The Spirit can take the members of a committee, the Council, or our group of folks in The Way and turn the conversation into a time of discerning what are one's spiritual gifts, and then applying our imagination to see how those gifts might be best exercised in our lives each day.

The Spirit can take the anxious silence of waiting before a birth, and have it become a time of anticipating what things God may yet do with us and our new family.

The Spirit can take the frightening silence of a sudden illness and hospitalization and turn it into a time to realize that God is not done with me/us yet.

The Spirit can take the lonely silence of old age and turn it into a lively time of prayer for the fulfillment of God's promises and the completion of the kingdom.

And that is just the beginning of the what the Spirit might do with us through our prayers.

Our horizons are so short.

The disciples asked Jesus if he was going to chase out the Romans and re-establish Israel's kingdom.

“Just wait,” Jesus replied, “just wait.”

Our ideas are so small, our horizons short.

As we wait and acknowledge that the power belongs to the Father and not to us, a small bit of power greater than we can ever imagine will be revealed to us.

That is what we are celebrating when we gather for the liturgy:

we are making space and time in the middle of all of our aches and pains, sorrows and worries, for new possibilities, a new kind of sharing, a new community.

In this liturgy there is room for the Holy Spirit to work, and our times of silence may become the Spirit's best workshop.

In addition, we specifically invite the presence of the Spirit in the Great Thanksgiving to effectively bring God's future into our present.

At all of the right times, be quiet, listen, and get ready for new things!

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Yes, Jesus is addressing us!

And it is true, because it will be true, somehow, in God's good time.

May the prayer we sing next truly be God's future enlivening our present:

With the Spirit's gifts empower us

For the work of ministry. [WOV#756]

Let all say: Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.