Silence

Two minutes silence.

At the heart of the act of remembrance that forms part of this service today, we share in two minutes of silence. It is a silence sometimes punctuated by the sound of ambulances careering past the church, the patter of rain on the roof, a distant shout or cry in the street, the rustle of an Order of Service, the creaking of a pew, the cry of a child, the stifled cough of someone nursing a cold. The possibility of disrupting this silence reinforces the sense that this is a silence which demands our attention.

We say that silence is golden, but silence can have a number of different qualities. Silence is not a straightforward means of communication. In some ways, silence is capable of more interpretations than even speech itself.

Silence is golden. We may be familiar with the attentive silence of prayer, the unspoken silence shared between two lovers, the satisfied silence that punctuates the end of a meal, the absorbed silence which attends reading a good book, the expectant silence of waiting, the fertile silence of rest and sleep, the joyful silence of watching a child at play. But we are also familiar with the inchoate silence of grief, the baffled silence of confusion, the dumb silence of apathy, the awkward silence of embarrassment, the sullen silence of resentment, the fearful silence of abuse, the seething silence of cold fury, and the calculating silence which simply turns a blind eye to suffering and injustice.   

Two minutes of complete silence: what does this silence mean?

Today we mark Remembrance Sunday and the legacy of two world wars, the first of which was described at the time as the war to end all wars. And yet here we are over a hundred years later, with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the escalating conflict in the Holy Land, genocide in Nagorno Karabakh, the threat of war in Yemen, potential havoc in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, gang violence in Haiti, political instability in Pakistan, and a potential political flashpoint between the United States and China in Taiwan. I mention all these situations to alert us to the distracted and distorted commentary provided by the media, the situations of war and conflict about which people are largely silent. Daily we are confronted with news footage of Gaza, while the invasion of Ukraine fades troublingly into the background. And of course, in the situation in the Holy Land, where even a cry for peace or for a ceasefire can be heard as a form of collusion with an aggressor, the silence of our own political leaders can so easily be construed as the endorsement of one particular side over another.

And yet, today there will be civilians, women and children frightened for their lives, facing bombs and destruction, at the mercy of the extremists on both sides of a conflict who have systematically destroyed the credibility of moderates. The hardliners cynically refuse any real negotiation, trading on the fictions of those social media algorithms which assure their followers of their own rightness.

Each side claims the ‘innocence of the victim’. Each side holds on with a kind of stubborn desire to the sort of moral purity that refuses negotiation. And the tragedy is that we live in a world where the international order, that post-war consensus with the United Nations and other international treaties, which were supposed to facilitate the adjudication of radical differences, the settlement of disputes, and the space for constructive negotiation, that whole world order is breaking down in the face of multiple threats. We also grieve for a post-war consensus which is fast breaking down. The peace which passes all understanding seems now more elusive than ever.

And so we are silent - silent in the face of unbearable suffering; Silent in the face of grief; Silent in the face of death and destruction. There are no words. That is why we are silent.

The gospels invite us to attend to another silence. It is the silence of Gethsemane. The story of the passion of Christ is a story which takes us to the very heart of darkness. It leads inexorably to the Cross, to ‘the silence of God’s Word on Calvary’. In St Mark’s description of this story, Jesus prays in Gethsemane. The evangelist records that the disciples are simply asleep. The prayer of Jesus is met with silence. The obedience of the Son drives him all the way into the dark. His whole identity is given over into silence. We hear God’s Word, the Word made flesh, in the cry of dereliction from the cross. St Mark tells us that on Calvary, Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. Then there is silence.

This is the mystery which we remember in this eucharist, and yet this act of remembrance which we observe day by day and week by week, the commemoration of that Passover in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, this act of remembrance speaks not only of Christ’s death but also of his resurrection. Even at the heart of darkness, the flame of God’s love will never be extinguished, and it is the hope of the resurrection that gives us the confidence to hope even in the face of darkness. We are silent and our hearts are broken at the waste, the costliness, the terror of war and the deadliness of human cruelty.

But the story of the cross reminds us that at precisely the moment we find ourselves in the presence of darkness, we also find the courage to bear witness to that love which will not let us go, to bear witness to the presence of the Risen Christ who challenges us to hold on to the audacity of hope, who offers us a vision of peace, who invites us to make this church a community of hope, and who inspires us to keep the flame of hope burning silently in our hearts.