faith by subtraction

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.