When God Is Silent
March 9, 2008
1The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw. 2O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? 3Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. 4So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous— therefore judgment comes forth perverted. 1I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. 2Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. 3For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. 4Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Once upon a time there was a couple with two little boys, Billy who was 8 years old and Johnny who was 10 years old. And like any boys their age, Billy and Johnny were always getting into trouble. So, one day, their mother heard that there was a new pastor in town and this pastor had a reputation for straightening out young mischievous boys. So, Billy and Johnny’s mother called up the pastor and explained her situation. The pastor agreed to see the boys on one condition—that they meet with him individually.
So, the next morning, Billy came into the church. The new pastor was this big, heavyset guy, very intimidating. He sat Billy down in his office, looked right into his eyes, and asked, “Billy, where is God?” Billy’s mouth dropped open, but he didn’t say anything. So, the pastor asked again, this time in an even louder voice, “Billy, where is God?” And once again, Billy just sat there with his mouth hanging open. Finally, the pastor shook his finger in Billy’s face and yelled, “Billy, I want you to tell me where God is.”
But instead of answering the pastor, Billy jumped up and ran out the room. In fact, Billy ran all the way home and then he dove into his closet and shut the door behind him. His older brother Johnny naturally wanted to know what the pastor had said so he followed Billy into the room and knocked on the closet door. “Billy, Billy what happened?” And through the closet door, Billy said, “We are in big trouble this time, Johnny! God is missing…and they think we did it!”
I wanted to start my sermon this morning with the story of Billy and Johnny because I was sure that a lot of you in here could identify with it. I have a suspicion that most of you weren’t exactly angels when you were growing up. I have that suspicion because most of you aren’t exactly angels now. But there’s another reason I wanted to begin with that story this morning. I chose that story because I believe that what Billy said from the closet puts into words something that many of us are often afraid to say out loud. And that is the feeling that sometimes God is missing.
“What are you talking about, preacher?” Well, I’m talking about the feeling that sometimes God just isn’t here. The feeling that despite all of our earnest and heartfelt prayers, sometimes God seems to be silent. If you watch the news, it doesn’t take too long before the question raises itself. Just this week, we read about two young college girls getting killed. We saw pictures of Jewish seminary students who were murdered by terrorists. We heard reports of tornados destroying homes and lives in Florida. And even without seeing it, we are aware that just this week alone thousands of children in our world died from hunger, millions of people live in poverty, and war is tearing apart families and nations. When we look at our world today, it is easy to believe that God is missing. And in the face of such overwhelming problems, we ask the question--Why, if God is good and God loves us, do such terrible things happen in our world? Why does God seem silent?
Out of all the hard questions that we have examined during Lent, this one is probably the hardest question of all. And that’s because, in some ways, it’s the ultimate question. It gets to the very nature of who God is. When we ask “Why do bad things happen?” what we’re really asking is “Does God exist and, if so, why doesn’t God speak out and do something about all these bad things?”
That is the same question that the prophet Habakkuk raises in our passage this morning. Habakkuk says, “How long, O God, will I keep crying out for help without getting an answer? How long will you remain silent while violence tears apart our world?” Habakkuk lived in a time and place just as chaotic as our own; it was a time when society seemed to be falling apart. And yet, the interesting thing is that even though this question is right here in our Bibles, some of us are still uncomfortable talking about it. There are those of us in here who were raised to believe that Christians don’t ask these kind of questions. A few of you might even have wondered whether my sermon title was appropriate. Christian author Philip Yancey once wrote a book entitled Disappointment with God and he said afterwards, he got a lot of angry letters from people who never even read the book. They were just upset about the title.
The idea that we should question God is blasphemous to some people. A lot of Christians will tell you it’s just not right. It’s not our place to question God. If God seems silent, that’s our problem. We should just learn to accept things the way they are. For a lot of folks in the church, that’s the end of the discussion. Those folks would say that to suggest God is silent only demonstrates a lack of faith on our part.
Maybe. But I have trouble with that line of thinking. I have trouble with it for starters because when we open the Bible, we find example after example of people who question God. Psalm 35 says, “How long, O Lord, will you continue to look on?” The author of Ecclesiastes writes, “In my vain life, I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness and there are wicked people who prolong their life in evildoing.” The entire book of Job is one long tirade in which Job essentially puts God on trial. And of course, if we think all that’s just Old Testament stuff, I can remember another famous individual questioning God—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Anybody remember that? We'll hear those words again next week. Jesus, as he was hanging on the cross, said, “My God, My God, why? Why are you silent?”
So, when I hear Christians say that we should never question God, I find it ludicrous. Of course, we question God. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t. When we look around at our world and we see all the terrible things that are happening, the natural reaction is to ask “Why?” And this morning, before I even begin to try and answer that question, I want to be very clear that we don’t have to be afraid to question God. I believe that God is big enough to handle our questions, even our hard questions, even the questions that seem blasphemous. And we don’t have to go through life pretending like we don’t ever think about this stuff. Of course we think about it. Every human has, even Jesus. When we hear about a little child with leukemia or a father of two who’s killed by a drunk driver or a tsunami that kills hundreds of thousands of people, we want to know why. The idea in the church that we are somehow holier or more faithful if we don’t question God just doesn't make sense. I can tell you right now that there are people in our world, non-Christians, who look at the church and wonder why we’re not talking about this. And the answer is because we’re afraid. Because we’ve been taught that it’s wrong. But it’s not. It’s right here in our Bibles. And this morning is the time and the place to stop being afraid.
All that having been said, just being able to ask the question doesn’t mean we’re gonna find a good answer. And by a good answer, I mean an answer that satisfies us. But I do think that there are several things we can take away from this passage in Habakkuk when we consider the question of God’s silence.
The first thing I think it’s safe to say is that sometimes when we think God is silent, it’s because we’re too busy talking to hear what God is saying. Did y’all catch that? Let me repeat it just to make sure. Sometimes when we think God is silent, it’s because we’re too busy talking to hear what God is saying. I’ve found that there are many times when I’ve prayed for something and when I didn’t get the answer I wanted in the timeframe I wanted it, I just filled in the answer myself. Y’all ever do that? There are those of us in here who are so uncomfortable with God’s silence that we speak on God’s behalf. And if we can answer our own prayers, why does God need to speak up? In Verse 2:3 of this passage, God says, “If my answer seems to be taking too long, just wait for it; it will surely come.” Sometimes, in our impatience to get an answer from God, we make the mistake of giving ourselves the answer we want to hear.
You see, another thing I think this passage reveals to us is how uncomfortable we are with silence, period. Some of us in here are so uncomfortable with silence we feel obligated to speak even when we don’t have anything to say. Y’all know that when I came to Park View, one of the first things I changed about the service was to incorporate a time of silence into our worship. We call it the minute of silent reflection. And I can tell you that for some people, that minute is the longest part of the whole service. For some of y’all, that minute seems to last an eternity. Especially when we first started it, I would look out in the sanctuary and notice people kind of anxiously looking around. I could just see y’all thinking, “What’s going on? Why isn’t anybody saying anything?”
You see, we’ve been conditioned to think that silence is bad. And that’s happened because we live in a noisy world. There’s always some kind of noise going on in the background. Noise fills up our lives—TV, radio, computer, cell phones, sermons—they’re all noise. They’re all telling us something. And I’m afraid that somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten what silence really is. It’s become so foreign to our everyday experience that we don’t know what to do with it when we have it.
But this passage, and others like it in the Bible, seem to suggest that maybe silence is important. And in fact, maybe silence is one of the ways that God can speak. We all know the famous story of Elijah on Mount Horeb. Elijah saw the fire, and the whirlwind, and the earthquake, but God wasn’t in any of those things. God waited to speak in the silence.
What does that mean? I think it means that sometimes the only way that God can get our attention is with silence. Our lives have become so noisy that the only thing that really makes us stop in our tracks is complete and absolute silence. The Psalmist wrote, “Be still, and know that I am God.” How often are you and I quiet enough to listen to God in the silence?
I’m not talking about being quiet so that we can put words in God’s mouth. I’m talking about being quiet long enough to experience the holiness of God’s silence. You see, I think it’s a mistake to assume that God’s silence is the same thing as God’s absence. That’s another mistake we make. We look at our world, we read our newspaper, we say our prayers, and if God doesn’t respond immediately in the way we think God should respond, we assume it’s because God doesn’t care or God is missing.
But I want to say this morning, when children suffer, and when our relatives have cancer, and when natural disasters kill thousands of people, I don’t think God is silent because God approves of what’s going on. On the contrary, I think God is right here, beside each and every person who struggles in our world. That is the promise of the passage from Romans that Betty Ann read a few moments ago. And it is the same conclusion that Habakkuk reached as well. In verse 4 of Chapter 2, God responds to Habakkuk’s question by saying that the righteous shall live by faith. To live by faith is to acknowledge that even in the silence, God is not missing. To live by faith is to claim that while God may be silent, God is not asleep. To live by faith is to confess that in the battle between good and evil in our world, our God has taken sides. Our God is at work for the good of the world.
Living by faith isn’t easy. It’s hard for us to wait and listen to God in the silence. But I’ve found that in the silence, God is not the only one we hear. In the silence, we also discover our own voice. Not to talk over God so that we can fill in the answer ourselves. But that we listen to God in the silence and then, out of the silence, we respond to God. Because sometimes the silence moves us, just like it moved Habakkuk, to speak out and challenge the injustice in our world. And I wonder if maybe that’s what God wants. Maybe God doesn’t always speak with a booming voice from heaven because God wants us to speak. Maybe we think that God is silent in our world because the people of God are silent in our world. And maybe part of what it means to live by faith is to have the courage to speak out. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the prophets over the last few weeks, it’s that God can use our hard questions to change the world. This morning, we have an opportunity to still ourselves long enough to hear God in the silence. And as we embrace that silence, I pray that we will find our own voice so that we can faithfully tell the world that God is here. AMEN