Reflections on Prayer: When God Is Silent
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
February 11, 2007
Psalm 13
As I stand here today, and look out on this congregation which is dear to me in so many ways, and has been for so long, I am feeling a sense, almost a heavy weight, of absence. I cannot recall a time when in such a short period of time, we have lost so many active and dedicated and faithful church members: Skip Gehrett, Pat Rollins, Emil Sokolis, Win Hughes, and now Joyce Morrow, who first played the organ for this church in the 1950’s, when it was located on Main Street across from the post office. Some long time church members, Emil over 60 years, some have not been members nearly that long. Skip had been ill for a long time. But they all were such an important part of our life together, and so for now, on Sundays in particular, it just seems like something is missing, that we have been diminished. I am feeling the presence of an absence. But, of course, there can be no sense of absence without sometime, some way, having felt a presence, and every one of the folks I just mentioned, in his or her own way, was a very powerful presence.
Reflecting on absence, and presence, Barbara Brown Taylor tells this story: “My husband Edward is devoted to hawks, and especially to the golden eagles that are coming back to our part of Georgia. Driving down the highway with him can become a test of nerves as he cranes over the steering wheel to peer at the wing feathers of a particularly large bird. Is it an eagle or just a turkey vulture? He has to know, even if it means weaving down the road for a while, or running off from time to time. ‘Keep your eyes on the road!’ I yell at him. ‘Who cares what it is? I’ll buy you a bird book; I’ll buy you a bird! Just watch where you’re going!’”
“Then, a couple of summers ago, we spent two months apart. I thought I would get a break from the hawks. But instead I began to see them everywhere—looping through the air, spiraling in the rising thermals, hunkered down in the tops of trees, seeing them, really seeing them, for the first time in my life. I understood that I was not seeing them with my own eyes, but with Ed’s eyes. He was not there so I was seeing them for him. He was absent…or was he? He was present in me.” Then she adds, “Sometimes I think absence is underrated, it is not nothing, after all. It is something: a heightened awareness, a sharpened appetite, a finer perception. When someone important to me is absent from me, I become clearer than ever of what that person means to me. And what makes absence hurt, what makes it ache, is the memory of what used to be there, but is no longer.” The presence of an absence; but no absence where there hasn’t been a presence.
And, speaking of absence, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” Ever feel that way? I wonder if there is anyone here who has never felt that way, has never felt the absence of God? A loved one dies and we are paralyzed with grief. Days seem endless. The door of life seems bolted shut. “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?” Illness strikes us or a loved one down and there seems to be no end to it. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” Despair fills us, anxiety grips our heart, fear immobilizes us, and we see no light at the end of the tunnel. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”
The silence, the absence of God…I think we know it. Reflecting on worship and prayer, Taylor writes. “It is one of the most peculiar things 21st century human beings can do, to come together week after week with no intention of being useful or productive, but only of declaring things they cannot prove about a God they cannot see. Our word for it is worship and it is hard to justify in this day and age, but those of us who do it over and over again begin to count on it…We may baffle our unbelieving friends and neighbors, but it cannot be helped. Half the time we baffle ourselves, proclaiming good news when the news is so bad, trusting the light when the sky is so dark, continuing to wait on the savior in our midst when all the evidence suggests that he packed up and left long ago.” Why do we keep doing this? I think the Psalmist was asking the same thing: “How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long? Why do I keep doing this?” It is a question that haunts all of us at one time or another. If God is going to be silent, if God is going to choose to be absent when I most need God, then why do I keep doing this—this coming to worship, this praying, this faith?
A Fred Craddock story: “I remember Mrs. Foster when her mother was dying of cancer. Mrs. Foster wanted me to come to her house and have prayer and scripture with her mother, which I did. When I got to the house, she handed me a Lutheran prayer book in German. I said, ‘thought your mother was United Methodist?’
“She said, ‘She was. She married my father who was United Methodist, and they were together in the church for over forty years.”
“I held up the prayer book and asked, ‘Then what’s this?’
“She said, ‘My mother came from the old country when she was a teenager. She’s from Germany, and it would mean a lot to her if you would read the Lord’s Prayer in German.’
“So I read to her the Lord’s Prayer in German, and that dying woman mouthed the words and smiled.”
She remembered and she smiled. She remembered…Maybe that is why we keep doing this, why we keep coming back here—we remember. Even in times of absence, we remember a presence. And so I’ve been remembering. I remember Skip Gehrett standing in the back of her pick-up, distributing surplus butter and cheese in the Grange parking lot. I remember Pat Rollins standing during prayer concerns and telling us about his first hole-in-one, and so many other things. I remember Emil Sokolis fussing with the church furnaces and keeping those filters changed. I remember Win Hughes, with his walker, shaking from Parkinson’s, yet still so actively engaged with the Memorial and Endowment Committee, always thinking of ways to enhance our funds. And when he spoke, we listened! And Joyce Morrow…I remember such faithfulness, even when her health was failing, and I will always remember her in front of that large choir, directing her cantata. So many wonderful memories of all the saints who have graced the life of this church…and of its minister! Again, we are aware of the absence because there was such a powerful, unmistakable, unforgettable presence.
And that finally, is what I want to say about God. When my “baby” sister, who in so many ways brightened my life, died at the age of 40 from a brain tumor, leaving behind her husband and two small daughters; and many times during the long illness and decline of my mother, I was right there with Psalmist: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” I felt the absence of God. But, much as Barbara Brown Taylor says, during those seemingly endless and dark and lonely days, I often baffled myself because I kept worshipping, kept praying, and kept preaching. I found myself trying to proclaim good news even when my heart was gripped by darkness, yearning for God even when God couldn’t seen to care less. Why did I do this? Wishful thinking?
No, I think I was feeling the presence of an absence. Taylor says it’s like this: “You cannot miss what you have never known, which makes our sense of absence—and especially our sense of God’s absence—the very best proof that we knew God once, and that we may know God again. There is loss in absence, but there is also hope, because what happened once can happen again and only an empty cup can be filled. It is only when we pull that cup out of hiding, when we own up to the emptiness, the absence, the longing inside—it is only then those things can begin to change.”
And so it was that, I kept coming here, and not just because you were paying me to be here. For this was a good place to come and remember God, to share stories and reflect on all the times in the past that God had touched my life. And with the sharing, the remembering, came the hope that God would be there again. So even in God’s absence, I prayed for God’s presence. I sang and listened and held out my empty hand that it might be filled with bread and a cup… a presence.
Returning to the Psalmist, in the midst of his lonely despair, I think he begins to remember. God has not always been absent. In fact, there has been abundant blessing. And so he sings: “I rusted in your steadfast love.” And you get the feeling that he will trust again.
I wish I could promise you continual fullness of spirit, a sense of constant and unbroken communion with the divine; answers to all your questions; assurance in all your moments of doubt. But I can’t promise you what I cannot even promise myself. But I can offer you this community, this Word, the stories we tell, the memories we share, and the faith we seek to proclaim. And I’ll tell you what…in those inevitable moments when faith and spiritual life feel like Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones, come in and we will believe for you—it has worked for me—we will proclaim the presence of the absent Lord until he comes again, and we won’t stop until you, like that old German woman, can remember and smile.