Questions of Silence

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. -Abraham Lincoln

I was born to talk. 

My dad, when he had enough of my rambling, would say to me, "you could talk the ears off a brass monkey." I'm not sure I knew exactly what that meant but I knew it was his way of telling me to shut up. I spent so much time in the principal's office for talking in class that the principal from the local high school where my mom taught thought I was the office assistant at the elementary. As I've grown older, I have learned that I am a verbal processor, that I have to talk things out to understand them better. This often looks like a spew of unrelated mutterings and apologizes as I chase rabbits only to realize that everything I was trying to say made no sense at all. See, processing.  And yet, it is in the act of speaking that I find myself most fully connected with others and even with God. This deep connection has forced me to contemplate how I use my words, to dig into the meaning and power of speech. One of the scriptures primary lessons on on how to speak is to not do it. The Teacher in Ecclesiastes warns that we are human and thus our words before God must be few. Jesus' brother James also commands us to be slow to utter a word, but instead to speed to listen. Jesus himself warns that merely calling someone a fool can bring fiery judgment upon us. But, as one born to talk, learning to be silent is rather hard. 

Jesus showed excellent skill in public speaking. His proclamation of ministry intent at the synagogue, the sermon on the mount, the sermon on the plain, the pronouncement of woes against hypocrisy, and his various parables all exemplify a person who not only had something rather valuable to say but also wielded the power to say it well. Yet there are these times when Jesus is oddly silent, especially before the Sanhedrin. With his life on the line, he offers no great rhetoric to prove his divinity or even his innocence but merely remains silent, save a few choice words. Even though I know the ending, that He must die, I still read that story and just want him to stand up and tell them off, but he remains silent. He had the wisdom to know that no matter what he said, the end would remain the same and so he used his silence as a witness.

But this scenario is not likely for my daily encounters. How did Jesus speak in his day-to-day conversations? One great example is found in Luke 10:

Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. "Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life? 

He answered, "What's written in God's Law? How do you interpret it?" 

He said, "That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence-and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself." 

"Good answer!" said Jesus. "Do it and you'll live." 

Looking for a loophole, he asked, "And just how would you define 'neighbor'?" 

Jesus answered by telling a story. "There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead.Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side.Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man."A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man's condition, his heart went out to him.He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable.In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill-I'll pay you on my way back.' 

"What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?" 

"The one who treated him kindly," the religion scholar responded. Jesus said, "Go and do the same."

Here we see a conversation dominated by questions. These are not integrating questions but ways of opening up, disarming one another. I recently watched a movie in which a teenage boy and girl try to get to know each other better and they play a game where they can only ask questions. The interesting thing is that it works, the questions spoke of a desire to not promote oneself but to know the other. Jesus here knows that the religious scholar wants to know what he's about and Jesus turns the question right back. Jesus seems less concerned about "preaching" the truth here as he is about connecting with this man. Even though Jesus speaks the most in this encounter, He never makes any commands other than supporting the conclusions the religious leader makes himself.  Jesus could have simply explained all this without the use of leading questions and story, but by doing so, He let himself be silent and listened to the answer that was already inside this man, and inside us all. 

In our conversations we should be quick to listen and slow to speak. And in so doing we may find less and less need to defend ourselves and our beliefs but to nurture the truth that is already in those around us. And just maybe, the act of listening will nurture the truth within us as well. The religious scholar challenged Jesus to find justification for how he treated his neighbor but in listening to Jesus' story he finds no defense of his definition of who his neighbor is, only a plea to be a neighbor. He finds not the answer to his question but the answer to a much more important one. And perhaps, he finds what he asked about in the beginning, eternal life.

What, I wonder, will we find?