23 February 2007

“Silence has become God’s final defense against our idolatry. By limiting our speech, God gets some relief from our descriptive assaults. By hiding inside a veil of glory, God eludes our projections. God deflects our attempts at control by withdrawing into silence, knowing that nothing gets to us like the failure of our speech. When we run out of words, then and perhaps only then can God be God. When we have eaten our own words until we are sick of them, when nothing we can tell ourselves makes a dent in our hunger, when we are prepared to surrender the very Word that brought us into being in hopes of hearing it spoken again—then, at last, we are ready to worship God.

“Only an idol always answers. The God who keeps silence, even when God’s own flesh and blood is begging for a word, is the God beyond anyone’s control. An answer will come, but not until the silence is complete. And even then, the answer will be given in silence. With the cross and the empty tomb, God has provided us with two events that defy all our efforts to domesticate them. Before them, and before the God who is present in them, our most eloquent words turn to dust.”

- Barbara Brown Taylor, When God Is Silent, 38-39, 80.

It was ten years ago today: February 23, 1997. I was sitting in a computer lab at the Pryor Science Building at Harding University, feverishly fighting with a C++ program that refused to do what I was telling it to do. It was the spring semester of my senior year, and I was finally taking an entry level computer programming course that was required on the Biochemistry degree plan. (To this day I am certain that it was the computer's fault. Without a doubt, I had a deft mastery of this computer programming language less than two months into my only semester of studying it. But that is a different story.)

It is funny how consumed and perturbed we can become when things do not seem to go our way. At 10:30 that Sunday night, I was engrossed by the need to make this computer do obeisance at the commands of my finger tips. The computer had another idea. I was Nebuchadnezzar to the PC’s was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Like the times our black lab decides defiantly to ignore the voice of my command, it would not cooperate. I was frustrated, confused, and angry....

How quickly things change. How quickly a single moment trivializes what once seemed so important. It is amazing how clear the events of the evening still are in my mind. Instead of bowing to my commands, the computer finally convinced me that it was king. I left the room of defiant 486s and headed back to what were known as the East Side Apartments. (I think they were torn down recently.) You could safely say that I was in what some might call a aggravated huff. When I walked through the door, I basically bypassed my roommate of almost four years with the insincere pleasantry of "How are things going?" He said almost nothing. I went back to the bedroom and tossed my bag on the bed. When I came back he stayed unusually quiet, even for an accounting type, sitting silently, pensively on the couch.

Within minutes our phone rang. It was not a normal ring, but the shorter, broken ring, that signaled it as an off campus call. By the time I picked up the phone, silent CPA was already gone, out the door like a flash of lightening. “Hello.” On the other end of the phone my dad's voice broke an uncomfortable silence. “Eric, I want you to know that we are all alright.” It was an instant tip off that something was, in fact, not right in the world. To this day I am not sure whether that was the right way for my dad to start the conversation, but I cannot think of any other, more appropriate way to start it. (My parents will always be much wiser than I!)

Over the next few minutes, my parents told me that my cousin Brian, one of my best friends, had been killed in a car accident on the way back to York College. He was a freshman youth ministry major and the starting goal keeper for their soccer team. He had a heart for the people of Zimbabwe and planned to return to the Nhowe Mission to work with the students there. Brian’s life touched thousands of people, simply because he lived the life of Christ. There were over 1,200 people who came to celebrate and honor his life at the funeral. At least two opposing soccer teams from the Wichita, Kansas area, guys that he had played against for years, came to the funeral to honor the way he lived his life because he emulated the life of Christ.

When my parents were finished, I dropped the cordless phone, hit the door with both fists (hard enough that my watch popped off of my left wrist), and fell like a sack of grain to the floor. Within seconds, my best friends were around me, laying hands on me, listening to me wail, and holding me in the midst of my pain. As soon as the phone rang, Brent, the silent accounting student, had stepped out to get Jeff and Kile from across the breezeway.

There are no words to describe my love for those guys. They were and are my community of faith. They entered my suffering that night in a profound way. As I sit here now, I am still unable to find the words to thank them for what they did for me that night and in the weeks and months following. They were Christ in the midst of my brokenness and despair.

What happened to my cousin that night was not right. I was frustrated, confused, and angry... I believe that our God brings life out of death, that he is a God of resurrection and new creation. (Some amazing things happened in the wake of Brian’s tragic death that can only be attributed to the action of God’s breaking into the world in the midst of our chaos. As I look back on my own journey, I now realize that I would probably not be in ministry if it hadn’t been for the long chain of events that unfolded in the years after his accident. Ask me sometime, if you want to hear how it impacted my spiritual journey.) My faith rests on the belief that God is working for the restoration of his world. Yet, the waters of chaos still break in all too often for my comfort. I cannot explain why God chose to just set boundaries or limits on their movement. Why did he not choose to vanquish them altogether? I guess that is why God’s creative work is an ongoing process. At times chaos seems to reign and God seems too silent, but God is still in the business of restoring life out of the chaos and death that come, even when we may not see his creative work. I guess that is a part of living the life of faith.

Today is a reminder of that. It is a reminder I need in the midst of car wrecks, hurricanes, and malignant cells that overtake the bodies of the faithful. In those times God can seem far too silent, but sometimes the silence of God is our only hope. It is in that silence that we are reminded that we cannot domesticate God. It is there that we come to see God move and act in ways that surprise us, that go beyond all that we could ask or imagine. So, out of the silence, we cry out together, trusting that an answer will come. “Rise up, O Lord, make your face shine on us, so that we may be saved.”

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“So much has changed, and so much has happened these years.
But still I find that you are waiting here.
We have a bond that nothing can change
And still I find a peace of mind whenever I hear your name
And if I seem too quiet now there are no words to show you how
I love you.”

- Glen Phillips and Toad the Wet Sprocket, “Brother”