Be Still

What if the Christian life was less about what we do and more about what we don’t do? Less about theologies we uphold and more about thoughts we let go of? What if the real challenge of the Christian life is to be still? A notion that contrasts sharply with our western way of living, where we base one another’s merit and our own, on how much stuff we have going on. In fact, it’s become a stripe of honour to share just how busy and, therefore, how very important we all are. It’s something I’ve been keenly aware of myself when I stepped into chaplaincy – constantly needing to remind myself that I was literally paid to be still. And so I made a pact with myself that I would never tell people how busy I was. But the irony was almost comical. Everyone else would tell me how busy I must be instead! And so, I wonder – honestly – if the biggest threat in our modern world is not polarizing politics, waging wars or even the cost-of-living crisis. I wonder if it’s the inability to be still. But something happened this past week that caused most of the world to enter the quiet, even if it was only for a minute. At 11am on Remembrance Day, people stopped what they were doing, and put down their phones. It’s a moment that holds feelings of gratitude, regret, sorrow, anger and pure presence at the horrors of war. A moment that recognizes we wouldn’t be able to say how busy we all are if it wasn’t for the real sacrifices that were made in these wars. And it’s a moment that makes us keenly aware of how blessed we are not to be living through these horrors, at least here in Australia. And yet, it strikes me that this minute of silence is perhaps one of the only practices people across the world observe at the same time. The only kind of silence many will willingly and consciously enter their whole lives. And it’s understandable. Our world is not only a noisy place; despite the relative freedom we reflected on, on Nov 11, our world is still filled with all kinds of horrors that keep us reactive, in fear and clinging to the edge of our seats, as we ask, when will it all fall apart and are these the signs of collapse? So when we hear today’s Gospel reading — stones thrown down, wars and insurrections, nation rising against nation, famines, plagues, betrayals, persecutions — it doesn’t sound like the end of the world. It sounds like the news. And it was. Because the author of Luke isn’t describing a distant future, they are writing from the world they knew then: a world where the Roman Empire had destroyed the temple, levelled its stones, scattered its people, and left an entire faith community wondering how to live when the center of their world had ended. And so Luke, as well as the other Gospels, emerge from this ache, the literal rubble they are standing on, amidst an ending that is already underway. And into that world — a world that looks uncomfortably like ours — Jesus speaks three quiet, impossible things: Do not be terrified. Do not prepare your defense in advance. In your endurance, you will gain your souls. And perhaps this is what the mystics, the saints, the desert mothers and fathers have been quietly whispering for centuries — that endurance is not preparing more but releasing more. That the true work of salvation is not found in our striving, but in our surrender. St. John of the Cross, a 16th century Spanish Carmelite poet, mystic and companion of St Teresa of Avila, lived and breathed this surrender. Imprisoned by his own religious brothers for daring to call the Church back to simplicity, he spent months in a dark, airless cell with barely enough space to kneel. The only light he would see was when he was brought out for public lashings and the light that would dimly stream through a hole from an adjoining room. He had no change of clothing and only lived on water, bread and scraps of salt fish. Yet, in that darkness, when all his earthly attachments had been stolen from him, he began to glimpse the light that no cell could shut out. It was there he wrote of this realization particularly in his most famous work, ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’: that it was in being stripped of everything where his soul met God, truly, for the first time. And it’s in this strange union that we might be able to begin to understand Jesus’ strange words amidst the darkness of his time and our own: that the only thing that endures is the soul in union with God. Everything else is always ending. For the world ended when the Temple stones were thrown down. It ended on the shores of Gallipoli, it ended in Auschwitz and Hiroshima. It is ending in genocides in Gaza and Sudan, in the slow burn of a planet gasping for air, in corrupt leaders who use God’s name to build their own empires and ballrooms and it ended that fateful day on the cross. And yet, amid all this ending, Jesus does not tell us to fight harder or shout louder. He says, “Do not be terrified. Do not prepare your defense in advance. For in your endurance, you will gain your souls.” The disciples wanted signs, warnings, strategies – to know what was going to happen. They wanted to get ahead of the end that was coming. But Jesus invites them into a deeper knowing: a wisdom born of unknowing, a surrender that trusts God will meet us not in our readiness but in our release. A release we catch a glimpse of on the 11th hour of the 11th day on the 11th month. A release we catch a glimpse of at our Meditation groups on the 11th hour of every Wednesday. Because it is in these moments — when our defenses fall, when nothing is produced or performed — that something sacred begins to speak. Not our words — but the Word rising from within, groans, perhaps, too deep for words themselves. A wisdom Jesus calls “testimony”: the Greek marterion — meaning ‘to bear witness’. That is, not a rehearsed speech, but a life that listens deeply and watches carefully to the God who is always drawing near. And we can only bear this kind of witness when we enter the stillness. This is what St. John of the Cross found — that as the walls closed in, a different space opened, a space no person could destroy: his enduring soul in God. And when he finally escaped that cell, his life blossomed into a ministry he never could have prepared for. Because it was born not from readiness but from surrender. Now hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying we need to lock ourselves in cells or meditate for hours. I’m not saying suffering is a doorway God requires. And I’m not trying to gaslight those who are feeling the real impacts of the load they take on in their lives from caring, working and just generally trying to hold it all together. What I am saying is this: the kind of stillness Jesus speaks of is born whenever we stop resisting reality and start resting in the truth of God’s presence within us. Not in withdrawal from the world, but in a way of truly entering it — where endurance is not grinding effort or trying to make sense of the noise, but rather an endurance that witnesses the presence of God even as the world ends again and again and again. So I wonder: if our busy-ness comes not from doing too much but, rather, from doing apart from God? And I wonder if our constant state of noise is drowning out the still, small voice that longs to show us what salvation looks like here and now, in that still, small space within us? Because we in the Uniting Church are do-ers. We show up. We step in. We serve where others won’t — and that’s holy. And yet, the shadow side of this is when I’ve asked what makes our action Christian rather than simply just good, I have found many Uniting Church folk struggling to find an answer. And yet, the difference couldn’t be clearer than day. An answer we are given decisively in our scripture today: Our action is meant to flow from the place where our souls are united with Christ — not action for God, not action to prove God, but action from God. Because when we live from the un-busy center — the still point where God and soul meet — our work ceases to be striving. It becomes participation in God’s quiet salvation already unfolding within us. And so, it’s this truth that might just get at the crux of our world issues – a way that just might save our souls, mine, yours and everyone else’s: a way that loosens our grip on the endless doing as if our busy-ness will save us. A way that stops us building defenses against what is already passing away. A way that lets the stones fall. A way that lets the noise still. A way that trusts that even as the world ends — God is still being born in the rubble. And in the silence — a similar silence that falls each year on the 11th month, of the 11th day at the eleventh hour or at 11 here on a Wednesday — may we remember that God’s Word has never needed our preparation, only our enduring, unprepared and testifying souls. So what fear is God inviting you to let go of? What preparation is God asking you to release? And how is the Spirit – the same Spirit that hovered over the silence before the world began — bearing witness in you? Because when the world ends — as it always does — it will be in the stillness where God’s quiet strength will save us.