Shalom Mennonite Church
Sunday, July 12, 2012
Texts: John 6 and 1
Kings 19
Eric Massanari
“faith
by subtraction”
...and after the great
wind...
after the earthquake...
after the fire...
came the sound of sheer
silence. (from 1 Kings 19)
There is a sound to
“sheer silence”—
a sometimes deafening
sound.
It is the sound of a
whirlwind of thoughts
blowing through our busy
minds.
It is the sound of a
roaring storm of emotions
gripping our hearts.
It is the rattling sound
of fears
quaking in the hollows of
our guts.
It is the crackling sound
of our carefully-assembled
answers
burning up in the face of
wonder and mystery.
We are often quite deaf to
this sound—
the sound of sheer
silence—
and to the Voice that is
able to speak there.
We live with the volume
turned up—
way, way up—elsewhere in
this life.
So it is difficult to hear
the silence,
to venture into the place
where we are led to face
into the truth of our
lives.
All this is
understandable, since
hearing the sound of sheer
silence
can be disturbing,
unsettling,
and transforming.
It can feel easier, more
secure, to stand in the
noisy and careless places
of our certainty,
and our personal agendas
for contentment,
than to venture out to the
mouth of the cave with Elijah
where our answers are
flipped into questions,
our fullness to emptiness,
our knowing to
not-knowing.
Who wants to go there?
Elijah did not want to go
there.
He went into the arid
silence of the desert
only because he was
fleeing for his life.
He was despairing.
He was hiding out.
He was ready for life to
end
because life as he knew it
and come to an end.
In the cave,
after the wind-storm,
after an earthquake,
after a fiery
conflagration,
only then,
in the stillness that
followed,
the sheer silence finds
Elijah.
And he steps out into a
place
no security,
no assurance,
no power,
no hope,
no faith.
Nothing.
Nada.
Nothing,
and at once,
everything.
Emptiness,
and at once,
fullness.
I hear the sound of sheer
silence in the gospel story, too,
though it may not appear
quite as obvious.
You can see people in this
story avoiding it,
avoiding the place of
mystery and uncertainty,
and preferring to remain
in the place
of their own comfortable
answers and agendas.
The Jewish leaders have
pegged Jesus
as the son of Mary and
Joseph of Nazareth.
How dare he speak of being
nourishing “bread from
God.”
Preposterous!
Jesus own disciples
struggle with this teaching.
It is a hard, confusing
teaching.
Much different than any of
them would
expect from the Messiah.
For some it is too much;
they take their leave.
Others, however, are
willing to continue
onto this uncertain ground
where
this strange teacher keeps
asking
them to let go of yet one
more
explanation, one more
answer
that they thought was
iron-clad.
Much like Elijah,
they step to the edge,
and wait, and listen.
Accepting that for the
time being
there is no certainty,
no security,
no assurance,
no power,
no hope,
no faith.
Nothing.
Nada.
At least not in the sense
that they once knew.
The people in these
stories
are being challenged to
let go
in order to find that
which
they are most deeply
searching for.
To find faith by
subtraction.
In realm of religion,
particularly Christian
religion,
and particularly in
flavors
of Christianity that have
emerged
in the West over the
centuries,
we tend to think more
about
faith as something that
comes by addition:
faith is learned,
it is inspired,
it is taught,
it is brought by people of
faith
to those who do not have
it.
And when doubts are
experienced,
we reach for the right
input to assuage them.
We encounter someone
facing deep doubts
so we offer a book, an
article,
a new practice,
in the hopes it will add
something that
wasn't there before and
take care of the doubt.
We in the West place a
high value
on information and
knowledge
and being able to
articulate and
convey faith through
words.
There is a gift in this.
There is also liability.
Our words, our answers,
our explanations that we
assemble in faith
can give us the
misperception
that we actually possess
the answers!
Our explanations about God
become barriers to true
experience.
Our conceptions start
getting
in the way of meaningful
enounter.
We forget sometimes that
at the heart of things
we, like everyone else,
must humbly admit to what
we do not know.
We, too, must honor the
sound of sheer silence.
St. Thomas Aquinas, one of
the most revered
(and wordy) theologians in
Christian history,
wrote these words in the
introduction
to his master work, Summa
Theologica:
Since we cannot know
what God is, but only what God is not,
we cannot consider how
God is but only how He is not.
Elsewhere, Thomas adds:
This is what is
ultimate in the human knowledge of God—
to know that we do not
know God.
Thomas' method was
referred to as the via negativa, “negative way.”
Another name it has been
given in Christian theology
is apophatic theology,
from the Greek word apophasis, “to deny.”
The apophatic tradition in
Christianity
has never been the
dominant one in the West.
But it has always existed
as a corrective
alongside the dominant
current of theology
that is quick to assert
who and what God is.
God is Love.
God is Father.
God is Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.
God is healer,
justice-maker, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.
Yes.
And no, would say the
apophatic way.
Such statements remain our
own names and therefore
they, at best, speak only
in part about that which
remains beyond our grasp
or understanding.
Our names become boxes and
blocks.
We see a sparrow and we
say, “look another sparrow”
and we do not see that
this sparrow is unlike any other.
We live with our
conception rather than the reality.
We say “God is Father”
or “God is Creator”
and we start to get stuck
in the name or conception
rather than what is.
The via negativa or
apophatic way
would say that the path
towards God
is also one on which such
names and conceptions
must be released—we may
need to be emptied
of such things to come to
deeper understanding and experience.
We must be willing to
accept the sound of sheer silence
of our own limited
perception and understanding.
God is not attained by a process of addition
to anything in the soul,
but by a process of subtraction.
Meister
Eckhart
As
soon as I understood
(even
to a limited degree)
that
this is G-d's world
I
began to lose weight immediately...
Leonard
Cohen
Even the name we so often
use, “God,” remains a conept.
The Jewish tradition has
long honored this
by maintaining that the
truest name
is, in the end,
unspeakable
by human tongue or mind.
It is possible to practice
this unweighting,
this path of subtraction.
It can take the form of
contemplative prayer
and meditation which
invites one to repeatedly
step out to the mouth of
the cave with Elijah
to dwell in the sheer
silence.
However, quite often we do
not learn this by choice;
we are led onto the via
negativa
by the circumstances of
life:
encounters with numinosity
and wonder,
or by challenges we face
into,
or by great losses,
suffering and grief.
Sometimes life itself
awakens us
to the reality of ultimate
mystery
and all we do not know.
C.S. Lewis, another
theologian of the West
who had many words to say
about God
as an apologist for the
Christian faith,
said that he had never had
any doubts about
the after-life, people
living beyond death.
That was, until his wife
died.
When she died he had to
admit
he was no longer certain.
He likened the certainty
of faith he had held to a rope.
It's
like a rope. Someone says to you,
'Would
your rope bear the weight of one hundred and twenty pounds?'
'Yes.'
'Okay,
well we're going to let down your best friend on this rope.'
Suddenly,
now you're not so sure about that rope.
During this time of deep
grief,
Lewis wrote in his diary
that
we cannot know anything
about God,
and even our questions
about God
are on some basic level
absurd.
We've been programed to
think of this as a horrible place to be—
this place of nada,
nothing.
Someone get that fellow
some choice passages of scripture,
a good theologian or
pastor, someone to shore up his flagging faith!
I've been that one called
in on the emergency,
to give some word, some
prayer,
some explanation for the
unexplainable.
And sometimes I've made
the mistake
of offering a very feeble
and frayed rope for rescue.
When, in the end, what is
most needed
is standing together in
the disturbing, transforming silence,
listening with hearts that
have been broken open.
I've come to believe that
this may be the place
where we move closest to
that which we call God,
and when faith emerges
through subtraction.
At the mouth of the cave
on the side of the
mountain where
there is no certainty,
no security,
no assurance,
no power,
no hope,
no faith.
Nothing.
Nada.
Here is where we hear the
sound
of sheer silence,
and then,
perhaps,
a voice,
a still, small voice.
