Silence (Elder Keelan Tuel, 10/29/22)

So, I put this sermon together not realizing that there is mental health, they're going

to have a mental health seminar in a couple of weeks, but this goes very well with that.

My topic is silence.

And if you can think, if you can imagine, think back to your last doctor's visit.

What was it like?

Can you imagine yourself walking into the doctor's office, you check in at the front

desk, you go and you sit in the first waiting room, five minutes, ten minutes, half hour,

maybe more, you finally get back, they take your blood pressure, they count how many times

you breathe in a minute, they take your heart rate, and then you sit there and you wait.

You wait there for another five minutes, maybe fifteen minutes, maybe forty-five minutes,

maybe two hours.

But you wait a long time.

And then finally, the doctor walks in.

How long do you think you get from introduction to when the doctor starts interrupting you?

How long do you think you get?

Five minutes?

Five seconds?

Five minutes total time, maybe ten minutes total time, but before they interrupt you.

So you have to get out your story in this finite amount of time before the doctor decides

to interrupt you.

And you better be a fast talker, you better have researched everything you want to say,

prepared your speech, because he's going to interrupt you at some point.

And let's just, we'll go for the middle of the road and we'll give you that amount of

time in silence.

Whatever you have wrong with you, you better have described it in that amount of time.

Fifteen seconds.

They've done a lot of studies and found that the average time between when a doctor after

introductions and when they interrupt you, depending on the study, you have either eleven

seconds, you have eighteen seconds, or sixteen seconds.

So I just averaged it out and you get about fifteen seconds of uninterrupted time.

That's not a lot of time for the doctor to be silent.

So, you're not able to adequately express everything that you would like to express

to your doctor at that time and that is incredibly frustrating.

But let's compare this to another story that I'm sure some of you have heard before, because

I've heard it before too.

There were some monks at a monastery, high in the mountains, deep in the woods, a long

ways away.

And they followed a rigid vow of silence.

This vow could only be broken once a year, on Christmas and by only one monk.

And so, one Christmas, Brother Thomas had his turn to speak and he said, I love the

delightful mashed potatoes we have every year with Christmas roast.

Then he sat down, silence for another 365 days.

Next Christmas, Brother Michael got his turn and said, I think the mashed potatoes are

lumpy and I truly despise them.

Mind you, once a year.

He's been holding this end for now two years.

And then once again, there was silence for 365 days.

The following Christmas, Brother Paul rose and said, I am fed up with all of this constant

bickering.

They have tons of silence.

And can you imagine this monk being your doctor?

You'd have plenty of time to discuss and tell them everything that's on your heart.

You'd have plenty of time to respond, but you probably wouldn't get very good advice

out of them, except maybe once a year and it might just be about the mashed potatoes.

Laughter ensues.

So we can move away from silent doctor monks and consider a secular source of silence.

And what initially actually made me start thinking about this, it wasn't actually the

mental health week coming up, although mental health is very important and silence plays

a huge part in the mental health of our society.

But the secular source that got me thinking about it was a song called The Sound of Silence.

Has anybody here heard that song?

I'm sure that there are a lot.

Anybody remember who wrote it?

Simon and Garfunkel in what year?

1963.

Was it initially a huge success?

The answer is no.

It was a resounding flop.

When they initially wrote that song, it was a cappella.

There was no music and it was just them singing and it went nowhere until the studio remastered

it a year later and put some music to it and then it finally became a big hit in 1964-65

and it became one of the, it became their first hit and well known around the world.

In Garfunkel, introducing this song on a live performance with Simon in Harlem in June 1966

summed up what the song means.

It's the inability of people to communicate with each other, not particularly intentionally

but especially emotionally so that you see around you, so what you see around you are

people unable to love each other.

And so let's look at a few of the song lyrics.

And you'll just have to imagine the music because I'm not going to play the music here,

but the music's not what's important.

It's the words that I think are important and highlight the point.

In the naked light I saw, 10,000 people, maybe more, people talking without speaking, people

hearing without listening, people writing songs that voices never share, no one dared

disturb the sound of silence.

Fools, said I, you do not know, cancer, or silence like a cancer grows.

Hear my words that I might teach you, take my arms that I might reach you, but my words

like silent raindrops fell and echoed in the wells of silence.

And the people bowed and prayed to the neon God they made and the sign flashed out its

warning in the words that it was forming and the sign said the words of the prophet are

written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence.

So what does this song mean?

What does this song mean to you?

What are we replacing silence with?

We're replacing it with noise.

We're replacing it with neon gods known as television and any other sort of secular entertainment.

The re-quote Garfunkel, we are often in silence because we are unable to love each other.

We watch our TV, we drown ourselves in music, we surround ourselves with the noise of life

because it makes it easier for us to comprehend that.

We think back, if I think back in life, whenever I first moved to California, so at this point

that's 12 years ago, I think 13 years ago, but I remember I moved from Tennessee to California

and I remember walking onto an elevator in Loma Linda and I said hi to somebody and they

turned and looked at me like I had three heads.

They had no idea why I was speaking to them.

They would rather stand there in silence.

And I got used to it.

You get onto the elevator, you just don't talk to anybody unless you know them and you

can say hi, but if you don't know them, you just stand there in silence.

Then I moved back to Tennessee, Georgia, and I get onto an elevator and this is nine years

later and someone says hi to me.

I look at them, why are you talking to me?

This is weird.

But I remember this was a thing in my past life.

So I respond.

And how do all of these, the responses go whenever someone says hi, how are you?

I'm fine.

Or you say I'm good, thank you, or you say no problems, or you say I'm fair to Midland.

Everyone has their canned response, whatever it is.

But it's not your true emotions, it's not your true feelings.

You're serving out platitudes just to give them an answer but not actually connect with

anybody.

Rarely, and I have had people rarely tell me this when I've said how are you, they'll

respond, I'm having a bad day.

What's our response to that?

Do we say I'm sorry to hear that?

That is one thing.

Do we stop our day and ask them how they're doing?

Do we ask them why they're having a bad day?

Or do we just give them the same response we always do?

Well I'm fair to Midland, thank you.

Not even listening to what they've said.

I remember going to grocery stores and they say enjoy your food, or restaurants, enjoy

your food, and I respond you too, and then I think wait, I didn't actually listen to

what she said.

They're not going to enjoy their food because they're checking me out.

Or do we just continue to stand there in silence, ignoring what they've said, and try to get

off the elevator as quick as we can because we don't want to interact with them?

Most of us probably pick one of the ones where we don't emotionally connect with them because

it's hard and it's vulnerable.

And these are just terrible examples of how we deal with silence.

Getting off the elevator, running away, or just being truly silent when we need not be.

How did Jesus, what did Jesus do with silence?

He used it to his advantage.

If we look at Matthew 25, 50 to 54, and it says Jesus replied, do what you came for,

friend.

And this is when he's in the Garden of Gethsemane and Judas came up, gave him a hug, kissed

him on the cheek.

And his response is, do what you came for, friend.

And he responds, put your sword back in its place, Jesus said, for all who draw the sword

will die by the sword.

Do you think I cannot call on my Father and He will at once put at my disposal more than

12 lesions of angels?

But how then would the scripture be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?

If we look to Matthew 26, 11, 14, and this is later on in the story when he's standing

in the judgment hall.

Meanwhile, Jesus stood before the governor and the governor asked him, are you the king

of the Jews?

What did Jesus say?

You say that I am.

When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer.

Then Pilate asked him, don't you hear their testimony they were bringing against you?

But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge to the great amazement of the governor.

So how did Jesus use silence?

He didn't try to justify his acts.

He didn't try to fight against him because he knew he would not win.

He knew that he would not bring any glory to God.

So he used silence to his advantage, not because it helped him emotionally, but because it's

what was needed at the time.

As Lao Tao said, silence is a great source of strength and Jesus used it to his great

advantage.

And if that's not brusque enough for you, Will Rogers very plainly said, never miss

a good chance to shut up.

Because oftentimes we speak to cover up our own insecurities.

But Jesus let the truth ring from his actions.

He chose, for the most part, to keep silent and embrace the words of Ecclesiastes 3.7,

there's a time to be quiet and a time to speak.

But why?

Why be silent?

What does that bring us?

How does that help us as an individual?

Well, there's one reason that we can't bear to remain silent is because it makes us feel

helpless.

We are so accustomed to relying on the words, upon words to manage and control others.

If we are silent, who will take control?

Do we let God take control?

But we will never let God take control until we trust him.

Silence is intimately related to trust.

The tongue is our most powerful weapon of manipulation, a frantic stream of words that

flows from us because we are in a constant process of adjusting our public image.

We fear so deeply what we think other people see in us that we talk in order to straighten

out what we understand that they think about us.

If we have done something wrong or even some think that I think you may misunderstand and

discover you know about that, then you'll be tempted, then I will help you understand

my decision.

I don't know if that made sense.

But if I am trying to guess what it is you're thinking and what you're thinking about me,

then I'm going to try to adjust what it is that I'm, how I'm portraying myself so that

you understand me better.

And I will be very tempted to help you understand my action.

Silence is one of the deepest disciplines of the spirit simply because it puts the stopper

on all self justification.

And about Jesus, Charles Spurgeon puts it very well.

His was the silence of patience, not of indifference, of courage, not of cowardice.

So Jesus' silence was very apt, very appropriate and of a strong will that was meant to win

the hearts of those that he could win.

Let's read, let's look at 1 Corinthians 3, 4 and 6.

It says, love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It does not dishonor others, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps

no records of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth.

Silence if required must be out of love.

Love is not out of love, then the silence is a lie.

So whenever we're standing on those elevator and someone says, how are you?

Or when you ask somebody how they are and they say, my day is bad.

And your response is silence, your response is a canned response, your response is anything

other than emotional, why are you feeling bad today?

Then your response to them is a lie.

And we should always work to do better.

And this isn't a sermon for you.

This is a sermon for me because this is what I do.

I get on the elevator, I'm a doctor, I'm trying to see my patients as quick as I can, I want

to be southern nice, but I don't really have that time to spend and listen to your half-hour

story about why your day is bad.

So we need to mentally adjust that in our heads with Jesus' help so that we can act

out of love.

We are disheartened.

So thinking back to our own brains, why do we abhor silence?

Our brains are built around stimulation.

They are built around noise, emotion, actions, planning.

As children, we never sit down or we rarely sit down.

We're always doing something.

Because we have lots of stuff to do, we are trying to train our brains, we are trying

to stimulate our brains in order to be a productive human being.

We are born with about 100 billion neurons, brain cells.

And each of those neurons are connected to other neurons.

Sometimes each neuron will be connected to five other cells, sometimes it will be 100

or 200 or more.

But they're connected to a lot.

Some of those connections are completely pointless and they do nothing and those cells die.

Some of those cells are very important for stuff like walking, eating, you know, speaking

up front, doing those things of life.

But we have to train the excess connections to go away.

And the only way we can do that is by using the important ones and not using the least

important ones.

So doing nothing, being in silent is not our natural state of growth.

It is the use it or lose it model.

We have to use those synapses in our brain that become important.

And so then as adults, we still have that same mentality.

We have to use it or lose it.

And so naturally we think, well, I must talk, I must do something sitting around in silence.

That's not the right answer because that's not how I've grown up.

We are programmed to abhor inactivity, the silence, that which is not stimulating because

only actions aids in us being in a longer survival.

So because of this, whenever God is silent, our first response is what?

To put words in God's mouth, to try to speak for God.

It takes training, it takes discipline in order to accept silence and not stimulation.

However, the Bible gives us some advice.

Psalms 37, 7, it basically says, shut up, but no, what it really says is be silent in

the Lord's presence and wait patiently for Him.

In other words, be silent and don't speak for God.

And that's really hard for us to do.

Or we can look at Psalms 141, 3, oh Lord, set a guard at my mouth, keep watch over the

door of my lips.

What does that mean?

It means that we shouldn't tell others the words of God.

And there are quite a few people out there that claim to speak for God, Pope, that may

not actually be the voice of God.

Psalms 46, 10, come, behold the works of the Lord.

How He has brought desolations on the earth.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth.

He breaks the bow and shatters the spear.

He burns the chariots with fire.

Be still and know that I am God.

I will be exalted among the nations.

I will be exalted in the earth.

The Lord of hosts is with us.

The God of Jacob is our fortress.

Don't try to do the work of God, but let Him do the work.

Sorry.

And what that means to me is don't try to do the work of God, but let Him do that work

through you.

But it just seems so odd.

Be still and know that I'm God is inserted in the middle of all of this stuff that God

is doing.

He will win wars, He will break spears, He will be exalted, He will be your fortress.

But in the middle of all of that it says be still and know that I am God.

And that takes training.

Proverbs 19, 20 and 21, listen to advice and accept instruction that you may gain wisdom

in the future.

Many are the plans in the mind of man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that we will

stand.

Essentially, to me that means let thy will not my will prevail.

And the last one, Proverbs 8, 13, if one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly

and shame.

Therefore doctors, be quiet, let your patients speak for more than 15 seconds because it

is to your benefit and they've done studies that showed that people that doctors that

listen longer, those patients will give you 90% of the information that you need even

without you having to ask a question.

You just have to sit there and be willing to listen.

But is silence always the right answer?

As we've kind of sort of discussed before, silence is not always the right answer.

Matthew 21, 12 and 13, what happened?

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling.

He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those who were selling

doves.

It is written, he says, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a

den of robbers.

So this is the example, Jesus was not silent.

It was not needed in this case.

And if we apply that to our world today and thinking about the good words coming to us

are getting drowned out by everything around us, the loudness of our world is simply getting

louder, making it harder to hear truth.

And I'm talking simply just in the volume of everyday things around us.

The wise and God-centered voice is being drowned out by all of these competing interests.

May it be music, may it be our cell phones, may it be traffic if you live in a big city.

It is getting drowned out.

So even when a good and godly person does stand up, their voice is drowned and they

are just not heard.

And if someone does speak and if someone is heard, then they are yelled at and they are

chastised for their truth and then they are ignored.

And they are, what do they call that?

Whenever you get deplatformed.

You get deplatformed, shunned is the word.

Canceled.

You get cancelled is the new word for it.

And so then nobody is going to listen to you at all anymore.

If they disagree with your opinion, then they will cancel you.

So let's look at one example.

The world is getting louder.

Loudness above 85 decibels are damaging to our hearing.

And above 70 decibels over the long term can cause hearing loss.

So I had to nap on my phone just to see what the average volume was during Sabbath school

and during the special music.

During Sabbath school it was about 54 decibels, which is about average talking loudness.

And during special music it was 75 to 85 decibels.

So certainly a little bit louder, but not damaging.

But let's think about fire trucks.

Fire trucks have to be louder than all of the noise around us, otherwise you don't hear

them.

And so back in 1912, siren, fire truck sirens were at 96 decibels, which is, you know, not

damaging over, you know, a few minutes of time while the truck is passing you.

Then in 1974 they had to increase it to 114 decibels.

And then in 2019 they had to increase it to 123 decibels.

And if anybody remembers the decibel scale, an average rock concert is 120 decibels.

So the loudness of fire trucks just going past us just to get over the drone of life

that it is now, it has to be louder than a rock concert for anybody to hear it.

Music has increased in volume by 39% in the last 20 years.

And that's not the loud part of the music, that's the silent part of the music has gotten

significantly louder.

So there is no silent parts of music anymore.

Construction equipment is still a construction equipment, but it continues to be very loud

at about 90 decibels, but it's all the time because there's so much construction going

on.

Ambient noise in cities and traffic, ambient noise in cities are due mainly to traffic

and it accounts for about 80% of the sound.

And that's a 40% increase in the last 25 years.

In some areas of New York City, it can be 73 decibels, which is pretty common.

And remember, over the long term, that's damaging to our hearing.

And it can be even be over 90 decibels.

And the highway and federal highway administration says that average traffic is about 70 to 80

decibels.

So the world is just loud.

Can you imagine living next to a running washing machine all the time, which is about 70 decibels,

day in, day out, sleeping, awake, always next to that washing machine?

And that would be hard.

You would never be able to have a good conversation because when I'm standing next to it, I can't

hear much.

I'm getting older, I know.

And I probably listened to a little bit too much loud music when I was younger.

But it makes conversations hard.

It makes listening to God hard.

It makes listening to other people hard.

And this comes with a lot of side effects personally, physically, like increased risk

of strokes, of heart attacks, of heart, just hypertension.

But then it also comes at an increased cost of our connection with others, our connection

with God.

Proverbs 31, 9 says, speak up, judge righteously and defend the rights of the afflicted and

the oppressed.

So when we use our voice, it should be for truth, it should be for the good and for God.

Proverbs 5, 11, do not participate in unfruitful deeds of darkness, but expose them.

John 15, 18 and 19, if the world hates you, you know that it hated me first.

If you were of the world, the world would love its own.

But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore

the world hated you.

Silence is not always wrong, nor is a loud voice.

May we not let the silence go around us, nor that we are drowned in a sea of boisterous

noises.

Either way, but rather we need to incorporate this biblical advice to listen with intent

to those that are around us.

Act with fervor for the oppressed, the sick and the lonely, and to be quiet when we need

to be.

And then I'll close with one final quote from Theodore Rothke, an American poet who won

the Pulitzer Prize in 1958.

And he said, may my silence become more accurate.

And I think that should always be our ongoing prayer that we would know when to be silent

and when we need to listen to those around us for their mental health, and then if others

listen to us for our mental health as well.