Making Way With Silence

Making Way With Silence

March 22, 2026

Minister: Rev. JT Smiedendorf

Readings: Luke 5:15-16

Download a printable PDF of this sermon here.

CENTRAL FOCUS:

Silence, in its positive form, makes possible
our wisest and most potent presence, speech, and action.

“But now more than ever the word about Jesus^[a] spread abroad; many crowds were gathering to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. ¹⁶ Meanwhile, he would slip away to deserted places and pray.”

These are the words of our ancient tradition.
May the Living Word of God in Scripture be alive within us, among us, and beyond us.

Gordon Hempton calls himself an acoustic ecologist and sound tracker. He’s been around the world several times over recording sounds, primal sounds, especially quiet sounds. He’s interested in primal quiet and in finding and preserving the last of it on earth. Even before the pandemic, air traffic had tripled since the 1980s, and we are quickly moving from over a billion cars on earth to possibly two billion by 2030. Hempton estimated a few years back that there were then only about a dozen places in the U.S. where natural sounds can be heard uninterrupted by noise pollution for longer than 15-minute intervals.

We humans are making a lot of noise.

Plenty of studies show that quiet can decrease stress levels and lower blood pressure and heart rate; one study showed that silence helped mice regenerate brain cells in their hippocampus. On the flip side, human-made noise has been proven harmful both to people (causing high blood pressure, heart disease, and low birth weight) and natural ecosystems. When a researcher from Boise State University introduced a “phantom road” into pristine Idaho wilderness by simulating the din of traffic through loudspeakers, the noise alone drove a third of the local songbird population away. Some of the birds that stayed, lost significant portions of their body mass, likely because they couldn’t hear to communicate or hunt.

In our Lenten series, we are exploring how we can make our way to Jerusalem as Jesus did, exploring how to journey and where to journey. And on this Sunday, we are bringing our attention to that practice so often mentioned along the way of his ministry, that of seeking out a lonely place to pray, seeking out solitude and silence. Right after the peak experience of his baptism, Jesus was called into the silence of the wilderness to pray before making his ministry public. He prayed the night before choosing disciples, after he fed the 5000, before the Transfiguration, and before he faced crucifixion to name just a few. So, following Jesus, there is something for us to learn here in looking at the power of silence.

First, let me be clear that not all silence is productive or positive.

Silence can be a symptom of spiritual and psychological dis-ease—a consequence of trauma or fear or depression or oppression. It can even be supportive of a demonic status quo. As Martin Luther King said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” And Rachel Carson’s seminal 1962 book about environmental distress was titled Silent Spring. Silence can be negative. We are not talking about dead silence or the silence of complicity.

So what are we talking about in directing our attention toward silence? What was Jesus seeking when he was called to the wilderness and when he attempted to separate from the crowds?

The silence I believe Jesus and many sages sought out seeks a shift in consciousness into depth.

It begins with a simple shift to not talking and to much less bustling about. We are talking about the practice of retreating and resting from our usual habits of inner and outer everyday human dialogue and busy-ness. Silence can also be deepened with stillness (though intentional movement like on a labyrinth can also be a form of stillness).

Seeking silence and silent retreat is a journey, moving from operating in a ‘predominantly doing’ way into a ‘predominantly being’ way. This invitation to silence is not to denigrate speaking and doing, but to deepen them into truth and wisdom by listening to a deeper Voice, connecting with a deeper Source. In the silence that connects us to the pace and perspective of earth and in the silence that has us touching our deeper self, the one below our personality, we are accessing and participating in the Mystery of Being, whom we name God.

The late Catholic monk Thomas Merton said silence can take us beyond our false self to our true self and to God. We can rest in the silence. We can wrestle in the silence. But it does take us, over time as a practice, somewhere that is good for the soul and empowers those times when we need to act and speak.

Merton called this positive silence and creative silence. Says Merton,

Positive silence pulls us together and makes us realize who we are, who we might be, and the distance between those two. Hence, positive silence involves a disciplined choice, and what Paul Tillich called the courage to be. In the long run, the discipline of creative silence demands a certain kind of faith.

That kind of faith is a trust that we can creatively meet, that which our busyness or distracting entertainments keep us from; the anxieties and fears of meeting with alienating emptiness and with the uncertain and unknown. Minister, therapist, and author Wayne Muller shares the story of an accomplished therapist who came to him complaining of a nagging emptiness. When he asked her about her self-worth, about how life was in the quiet moments at night, the silent moments when she was alone, the times when she wasn’t in a professional role, she began to weep. This moment became an opening for her growth, a threshold moment born of pausing and looking at what was in the silence. Muller speaks of “the unspoken fears and sadnesses that speed up our lives” and that “the angels would minister to us if we stopped.” Isn’t that an image to hold and nurture? “The angels would minister to us if we stopped.”

The moments of depth born of silence where we stop our busyness can be the key to informing our action, to shaping our presence within, among, and beyond ourselves.

Each year, we celebrate an American hero and an icon of changemaking:

The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. In those times, we recall what Rev. Dr. King did, his actions of organizing, of faithful witness and speech. In January of 1956, King was arrested for speeding while shuttling black folks around during the Montgomery bus boycott. After being bailed out of jail, he was receiving multiple death threats (calls to his home) and one night around midnight, he received another murderous threat on the other end of the line. King became angry, paced around, made some coffee, and then came to the end of his strength and faith. He stopped. He sat down at his kitchen table. In the solitude and silence, he prayed. Completing his speaking to God, Rev. King then had a revelation of God’s Presence and message that renewed his faith and strengthened him to continue his courageous ministry.

One of Dr. King’s elder inspirations and teachers was the Rev. Howard Thurman, a pastor, theologian, and mystic. Thurman was a key voice in and behind the civil rights movement and, after service as Dean of the Chapel at Howard University and then Boston University, helped co-found the first interracial and interdenominational church in San Francisco, the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. He called for attention and dedication to the inner reality which empowers the outer action, that is, the spiritual life of the individual and of the community as the first place of victory before the outer realization of social change.

It was so for Jesus in going to the wilderness before embarking on his public ministry. It was so for Rev. Dr. King, alone at his kitchen table, in the silence.

As each and all are making way to the important places that represent Jerusalem for us in our own lives and in the life of our nation and world, it is true as well: The practice of positive silence is a spiritual practice that nurtures inner spiritual health and right action, nurtures perseverance and hope, rest and renewal, nurtures the remembrance of who we truly are and who God is. This is the reason that the Board of Spiritual Formation has begun the early stages of involvement with two grant programs meant to strengthen our congregation’s contemplative practice. This is the reason that we have an intentional approach to Easter called Lent because our tradition of faith knows that a shift of consciousness into depth is needed for how we are called to be and what we are called to do to be faithful in our lives.

The practice of silence doesn’t mean we have to make a lifetime vow of silence or even take a several month silent retreat at a monastery or temple. Silence can be a daily practice, perhaps starting with 5 minutes of breath prayer. If we are to follow Jesus, his example calls us to make room for silence. As Rev. Dr. King preached at the first big rally of those supporting the Montgomery bus boycott:

Be still and know that I am God…

Let me conclude this message with a poem by one of our great American masters, Mary Oliver, titled Praying.

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

AMEN.