When we think about silence, Latter-day Saints almost always think in apocalyptic terms. We take special note of the 3 ½ hours of silence that precede the ultimate upheaval of nature, when corruption prevails on earth causing a dreadful silence to reign in heaven (Revelation 8:1-5, Doctrine & Covenants 38:11-12).
But there are two types of silence talked about in scripture. There is this silence in heaven that corresponds with the indifference of men on earth, when the heavens over our head becomes as brass because the hearts of men on earth have become hard as iron (Deuteronomy 28:23). There is also the silence of the human soul responding to the nearness of God and the approach of His kingdom. Silence in heaven signals the hardening of God’s heart—He is no longer listening to us. Silence of the soul reflects the breaking and softening of our own hearts. It is a token that we are beginning to listen. Thus this saying from Habakkuk, “The Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him (2:20).” The Lord Almighty whispers to King David, “Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10).” “Keep silent before me…and let the people renew their strength (Isaiah 41:1).” This is the silence that we should welcome into our sacred meetings.
Scripture speaks of inappropriate behavior on sacred occasions as revelry and rioting. When the people of God refused to follow the prophet up the mountain, they eventually grew tired of waiting for him and demanded that Aaron make them a golden calf for worship. God was aware of the hullabaloo below and sent the prophet back. As Moses and his counselors approached the people, the noise of revelry reached their ears.
“And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp. And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear (Exodus 32:17 - 18).”
The affront of revelry is best defined, I think, in the Book of Mormon as, “making…merry…with much rudeness”—such merriment is evidence that the revelers have forgotten “the power that has brought them hither (1 Nephi 18:9).”
Common behavior among Gentiles, such merriment was particularly abhorrent during meals—a meal having a sacred connotation in the Hebrew tradition. “Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh” became a proverb of special circumstance and meaning to early Christians who found it necessary to guard against a tendency to turn the Lord’s Supper into mere social occasion (Proverbs 23:20). This was especially true for St. Paul and others who took the Gospel into Greek cultural settings.
“I find that you bring divisions to worship—you come together, and instead of eating the Lord’s Supper, you bring a lot of food from the outside and make pigs of yourselves. Some are left out and go home hungry. Others have to be carried out, too drunk to walk. I can’t believe it! Don’t you have your own homes to eat and drink in? Why do you stoop to desecrating God’s church? Why do you actually shame God’s poor? I never would have believed you would stoop to this. And I’m not going to stand by and say nothing (1 Corinthians 11:20-22, The Message).
What Paul finds appalling is the way in which a sacred gathering has been permitted to degenerate into a mere social occasion. These Christians in Corinth were not coming together to meet the Lord as much as they were coming together to meet, impress and flatter one another, to correlate, back-slap and exchange the myths people tell about themselves. Once again, the people of God were willing to send a prophet up the hill—this time Jesus to Golgotha—while they stayed far back and enjoyed a bit of revelry.
And now, once again, noise in coming from the camp—and it is not the noise of those who strive for spiritual mastery, not the noise of those who engage in spiritual warfare, but the noise of those who make themselves merry with much rudeness.
Silence is not the absence of noise so much as the absence of our noise. Silence happens when we put ourselves into the Light of God. There are many Christian disciplines that ought to be done in silence once we have placed ourselves in the Light—things to do as we enter the chapel and take our seats, during the prelude—things we should be doing while the emblems of our Lord’s suffering and death are being taken to the congregation. In the next column, we’ll talk about these spiritual disciplines.
It seems that we have forgotten the power that has brought us here. We have forgotten our Lord’s prophecy of the unseen presence in our midst. If we accept Jesus’ promise to be present when we are gathered together in His name, then I suggest that we adopt the practice of contemplative silence when we come together to partake of the Lord’s Supper. That is, after all, what Paul told those merry Saints of Corinth to do.
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