Fifth Sunday of Lent

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I imagine that most of us have some kind of a scheduling method to keep our days and weeks and months organized. Maybe it’s an old-fashioned appointment book, or an app on our phone, or a big calendar on the pantry door. So much is going on that we need help to remember everything.

On the one hand, being a good planner is a gift. At work, managing a household, caring for a person with medical needs – knowing how to organize and plan is a huge help. Deadlines create the urgency some of us need to get things done in a timely fashion. All that is good.

However, planning can also be an act of trying to control life. It can get in the way of tending to how things actually want to unfold and ripen. Our minds are buzzing with plans and details and agendas; it can get quite noisy in our heads, and that keeps us from listening fully to how the Holy One is actually speaking into our lives; what the Divine desires for this season of my life.

I know that I am always thinking about the future, always imagining what lies ahead, always planning the next steps. Yet when we are always making plans for what we want to happen, we lose the opportunity to pay attention to the call to something we could not have imagined.

When we make plans, we aim to direct the trajectory of our lives. But life is often calling us to bigger things than our planning mind wants, or is able to, imagine. Our planning creates internal chatter that distracts us from the new vision God might be holding out for us.

The desert mothers and fathers embraced something that moved the chatter away: silence.

Before we explore this further, we do need to make clear what kind of silence we are talking about, because there is a shadow side to silence. Some silences hide secrets and abuses. Silence can be poisonous, as when someone’s voice is being silenced or when we stay silent out of resentment or anger. Silence can be used as a weapon in a relationship; think of “the silent treatment”. There is also the silence of hopelessness and giving up and feeling overwhelmed by life. Or the silence that comes when we feel someone else has all the answers and our voice doesn’t seem to matter. These are toxic silences. They are not what the desert elders practice.

Instead, the desert mothers and fathers are talking about silence that is life-giving. They urge us to seek the kind of silence that is attentive and that emerges from a sense of calm and peace. Such authentic silence is very difficult to achieve.

In fact, one story from a desert father goes like this:

It is said of Abba Agathon that for three years he lived with a stone in his mouth, until he had learnt to keep silence.

The kind of silence the desert elders sought is an inner stillness, a silence that allowed them to hear the sacred whispering in their lives.

Silence is the primordial sound of God, speaking into our lives. The Prophet Elijah encountered God’s presence in a sound of sheer silence. God still speaks to us in the silence, but that voice is often drowned out in everyday chatter. Some of that chatter is created by our planning ahead: anticipating events or conversations, scheduling meetings, making to-do lists, or other forms of trying to direct the future. Silence helps us to rest for a while and let go of this continual hum of the mind.

Silence is challenging. That’s why we create all kinds of distractions and noises in our lives so we can avoid it. Waiting rooms have magazines, elevators have music, and everyone has their phones, so we do not need to endure any silence without something to distract or entertain us.

Last weekend, I spent several hours in my backyard trying to get rid of invasive species like English Ivy and Winter Kreeper. My autopilot made me reach for my I-pad so I could put on a podcast to listen to while I weeded. But I had just worked on this sermon and so I decided to not take anything with me that would keep my thoughts busy. In silence, I worked. I could hear the neighbor’s dog bark, and another neighbor’s rooster crow, and many different birds sing – all marvels of God’s creation that I would not have heard had I brought my podcast. By being silent, I found myself connected with God’s creation and refreshed spiritually,

During our last women’s retreat, we spent half an hour in silence. Even though there were many of us in the building, we kept silence, pondered Bible quotes, prayed, and just opened ourselves up to God’s voice coming through to us. It was really refreshing.

Silence encourages us to release our desire to control the outcomes of everything and instead enter into the organic stillness from which new fruit can arise.

In our gospel reading, Jesus talks about fruit arising and ripening. He reminds us that we are rooted in something much greater than ourselves, and this rooting gives us the nourishment we need to unfurl into the world. Rooted in Christ, we can extend branches into new directions and produce fruit we hadn’t planned for. This unfurling has the divine presence as its source and direction.

So often we are driven by what constricts us rather than opening ourselves up. Calendars and plans and schedules and appointments regulate what we do and what fruit we bring and into which direction we unfurl. Letting those schedules direct us and override the silence can lead to harm.

Like when my youngest daughter was in 8th grade and came down with strep throat on a day when I was part of the synod’s worship team for a big event. I made a doctor’s appointment for her, dropped her off, and then told her to walk him and lie down. And I went to the event. Because it was scheduled. What was I thinking? That decision is still haunting me. A bit of silence with God would have led to a very different outcome, one guided by love and the need of the moment, rather than mu calendar.

On the other hand, letting go of those constrictions might lead to blessings.

One woman describes being at a retreat center and deciding to go for a walk at the lake on the grounds. She scheduled half an hour so she would be back at the retreat center for lunch. But when she arrived at the lake and gave in to the silence, she felt herself drawn to keep going into the forest. She ignored her previous plans and followed this sense of calling. She writes, “I didn’t know how far I was going, and it didn’t matter – I had surrendered to whatever would come next.” It felt liberating and holy.

How often do we release the hold our plans have on us to yield to what is happening in the moment and give it space to unfurl?

It’s not how our society works. In our world, knowing where we are going is prized. Every time New Year’s Eve rolls around, we are bombarded with marketing about setting goals and making resolutions. In this kind of world, getting “lost” feels frightening and counter-cultural.

And yet, how often have there been unplanned, even interruptive moments that turned out to be immense blessings or critical turning points? The day we ignored the dishes and instead sat on the carpet and played with the kids, now a cherished memory we hold dear in our hearts. Or the day we planned to go shopping but something told us to visit our neighbor or parent or senior church member, and it turned out that person was in dire need of caring company. Or the time we signed up for a class as a fluke and ended up finding a new career or hobby that fulfills us.

Silence enables us to see things in a new way, to release our plans and to observe how we are unfolding into our true calling for that season in our lives. When we make space to listen, we can notice what is ripening within us and rejoice when it is coming to fullness.

This is a time of year when many of us plant seeds in pots or tend potted bulbs, like tulips or daffodils or amaryllis. If this is true of you, make watching this plant part of your daily spiritual practice. Witness the slow growing and ripening and unfolding of leaves and petals. Let this process inspire your attention to the growing of your soul, the branches and fruit of your spirit. It is a visual aid to honoring the slow ripening of your soul. As you witness the plant each day, ponder what wisdom it has for you, in this season of life, in this Lenten journey.

This week, we are invited to fast from the desire to control the direction of our lives. Let us open ourselves up to the grace of silence. In the silence, let us be aware of our being rooted in Christ, of God’s voice calling us, and of things already ripening and unfurling from which a new garden can grow. Amen.

A closing blessing

Ripening One,

Dazzle us with the rhythm of your seasons woven into all of Creation.

Help us to see how release and rest are necessary for flowering and fruit.

Bring us reminders each day of our own holy unfolding

From waking to working to playing to waning.

Release our grip from calendars and planners,

Soften our need to make something happen, to try to control the outcome,

And reveal your impulse arising in us in a hundred different ways.

Guide our hearts and soften our impatience.

We celebrate this wild grace at work, in its own time, its own tempo,

Inviting us into this sacred dance of trust. Amen.