Sounding Silence

Pastor’s Epistle—March 2022

It is traditional in the season of Lent for Christians either to give up some food or other small pleasure, or to take on some new spiritual discipline. The classical Western fast involves eating only one full meal a day while also avoiding meat. The East tends to be stricter, relegating the faithful to bread, water, salt, and greens. By Easter they usually get pretty hungry.

Few Lutherans embrace such rigors today. Giving up sweets or alcohol for a time seems more up our alley—especially when one considers that Sundays aren’t included in the 40 days of Lent. Others take up reading challenges, like the one I issued in January, that Christians crack a Bible and read our sacred Scriptures. Or they come to special Lenten services, preparing us for Holy Week. Worship was February’s challenge.

Since Lent is a catechetical time, special emphasis is placed upon Christian instruction, and so we’ll have not only a weekly Wednesday evening Bible study at 6:00 on Christ as Lamb of God, but also a midweek Vespers series to follow at 7:00 on angels and their names: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, and even Abaddon, the Destroyer. You’re more than welcome to join us for any and all of the above. In fact, I rather hope you do.

But your pastor’s challenge for you this month, for this Lent, is something even simpler yet really rather difficult: I challenge you to set aside a slice of silence every single day. I want you to intentionally make time just to be, just to breathe: not to exercise or read or watch TV, not to chase after earnings, entertainments, or efficiency, but just to sit and still your soul in silence. If you have kids, you may need to lock your door for a bit.

You can start off small. Indeed, you’ll likely have to. Set a timer for five minutes. Don’t play music or otherwise distract yourself, and try not to fall asleep (though if you do, that’s probably healthy too). Sit, cross-legged if you can, close your eyes, and focus on breathing. Focus on silence. Focus on the presence of God who is always all around us, yet of whom we rarely seem aware.

Your mind will wander. That’s only natural. Some of it might be the movement of the Holy Spirit. But when you find your thoughts too far afield, bring them back to center with a simple prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Or even more simply, focus on the name “Jesus,” He in whom God and humankind are one.

It takes some getting used to, sitting in the silence. It makes us nervous because our world is so filled to the brim with noise. But sitting there, waiting for us in the quiet, we always find God and we always find our soul. Soon you may find that five minutes pass all too quickly. Set your timer then for seven, or 10, or 15, or 20. I know a fellow who sits in silence, thinking only of Jesus, for an hour every day. That’s something to which I aspire.

As you may well have heard me say, this too is a type of prayer: what Christians call contemplation, sitting in silence in the presence of God. In a world beset by war, strife, debt, anxiety, atomization, fear, disappointment, despair, broken hearts, and tempestuous change, taking a moment every day to get in touch with the eternal, the timeless, the infinite—? It can make all the difference in the world.

Keep it up for 40 days, and you might just make it a habit. You’d be glad you did.

In Jesus. Amen.