The Mystery of Silence
By Rev. Dr. Ed Hird
Few of us like getting the ‘silent treatment’ from those
that we care for. Silence can sometimes
be a painful expression of relational tension and even cutoff. The flip side of silence and solitude is that
it can be an important key to personal and spiritual growth. We live in a noisy cluttered hi-tech world
where silence is often hard to find. Choosing
silence can increase our ability to hear the still small voice that is trying
to get our attention. Jesus was often
going off into the silence of the wilderness to be alone.
Recently my wife and I watched Martin Scorsese’s gripping
new movie Silence. It was based on Japan’s leading novelist’s
book which tells the story of a seventeenth-century Portuguese priest in Japan
at the height of intense persecution. The
recipient of the 1966 Tanizaki Prize, it has been called "Shusaku Endo's
supreme achievement" and "one of the twentieth century's finest
novels". Endo tells how the
Japanese Christians once numbered 400,000 and had enjoyed great favour even in the
Japanese inner circle. Then Christianity
was outlawed in the 1600s, resulting in drownings, burnings, and other
atrocities. The priests were under great
pressure to publicly give up their faith, in order to end the persecution of
the Japanese Christians. The symbol of
this persecution was being forced to tread with one’s foot upon the crucified
face of Jesus. In a review by the New Yorker, John Updike described the book Silence as "a remarkable work, a
sombre, delicate, and startlingly empathetic study…”
The author explores the image of silence where the priests
had been painfully silenced. The most
painful silence seemed to be the silence of God in the midst of the great
suffering. The priest Rodrigues prayed:
“Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent?” As the persecution intensified, Rodrigues
prayed again: “Lord, it is time that you should break the silence. You must not
remain silent.” Near the end of the novel,
Rodrigues confesses to Jesus: “Lord, I resented your silence”, to which Jesus
replied: “I was not silent. I suffered along with you.” The crucified Jesus whispered to Rodrigues:
“I am with you. You have nothing to fear.”
Another time, the suffering Jesus said: “I will not abandon you.” Rodrigues could not take his eyes off what he
called the beautiful face of the suffering Christ. As Rodrigues ended upon trampling upon the face
of Jesus, he heard Jesus say: "You may trample. You may trample… It was to
be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's
pain that I carried my cross." Rodrigues
learned that Jesus’ silence was not absence, but rather expressed the mystery
of his suffering love for all humanity. Could
God’s sometimes mysterious silence be a sign of how much he cares?
Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector
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3 comments:
Ed, thanks for bringing this piece of Christian history and the film to my / our notice. Silence, especially in the midst of anguish and suffering, surely presents itself as a discomforting mystery to us.
"Could God’s sometimes mysterious silence be a sign of how much he cares?" Hmm, now that's a serious question and worth pondering. ~~+~~
I believe that God is often silent through the turmoil and the noise. We are too busy/distracted/downcast/stubborn to hear, anyway. But it doesn't mean the Lord isn't there, carrying us through. He is. It is then He IS also, like you & Rodrigues suggest, suffering with us. Only after, when a hush falls over our lives or the situation, then we see and understand His voice and purpose better. I can truly say I understand this from something that happened in my life. A good thoughtful post. Thanks, Ed.
Appreciated the message of this post. Thank you.
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