Australian Thoughts at the Weekend 6h and 7th September 2008

Australian Thoughts at the Weekend 6h and 7th September 2008

Sanctuary of Silence!

(Revised from ATAW published 25 Oct 2003).

Almost every day, I encounter hospital patients or family members siting in the hospital chapel. They often say that they love just quietly sitting in prayer and meditation. They remark it is so peaceful and a huge contrast with the noisy, people filled spaces of the hospital.

I, too, love to sit and quietly contemplate as I look either at a crucifix or an empty cross. Sometimes my mind goes to the words:

And when I think that God, his Son not sparing,
Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin:
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee;
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee:
How great thou art, how great thou art!

On Tuesday, I got into conversation with a couple where the husband is wearing the bald headed sign of cancer treatment. They told of how they loved the silence of God’s presence. Eventually, they began to tell me of their hate of the modern, contemporary noise of Sunday night Mass and preferred the early Sunday morning Mass where they could worship in a much quieter way. I could only agree that worship was more than noise.

I began to think that many people say they feel close to God at the beach, in a forest or on a mountain top. Finding God in a sunrise or sunset, also speaks of quietness where one can hear the still small voice of God.

When through the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze:
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee;
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee:
How great thou art, how great thou art!

I am old enough to remember when the Government Radio Network (ABC – then the Australian Broadcasting Commission) came to local churches to broadcast live the morning meeting or service or what ever it was called. These were in the days before television and I guess in some peoples minds were also pre-history.

One Sunday it was the turn of The Salvation Army Nundah Citadel, which was then a showpiece building. It was built to replace the former timber hall which had blown down in a cyclone while being lifted on jacks so that more space could be provided in the newly created ground level rooms. This new Citadel was built to accommodate the post World War II population boom that was taking place in this oldest free settlement in Queensland now a suburb of rapidly expanding Brisbane.

At our church, like most others, this was the regular worship gathering of the faithful and friends. However, the broadcast imposed rules. One that I remember there were to be no babies in the congregation. That was simply because babies do some natural things like crying. So in these days prior to cry rooms for babies, mothers of the young were sentence to stay at home and listen to their church on radio. Please don’t cough or sneeze! I can’t remember if those who were likely to cough or sneeze were invited to stay home. Our church was on a corner, and this meant the windows facing the streets needed to be closed. So did the doors facing the street. It was not desired that the sounds of a passing car or truck or even the noisy people passing by on the footpath might intrude into this sanctuary.

Usually, too, the meeting started close enough to the appointed hour that anyone who said it was late starting was considered a harsh judge. Finishing time? Well that was in the lap of the gods or as our previous Major (Pastor) termed it “God’s agenda”. This day was different. Starting on time was no problem. Such was the excitement that everyone was there early. We were all in our places well before the appointed time. Eager eyes watched ever movement of these strangers in our midst. As these strangers nervously adjusted the microphone an inch (25mm) or moved a cable everyone followed intrigued by the wonders of technology.

[An aside: A few weeks after this broadcast, just to show us how wonderful this new technology was, our Bandmaster organised for a friend to come to the Citadel on a Saturday night with his newly purchased tape recorder. The Corps sections and various individuals provided half a program and then for the second half of the program a packed Citadel sat in wonder and listened again to the previous half program. We even applauded the items again.]

The expectant eyes also looked eagerly at the clock on the wall and people tapped on their wrist watches to make sure they were still going. Some who were not satisfied that their watches were going to continue for the length of the service were seen winding their watch to make sure it kept going. There had been a lot of looking at watches and clocks in the previous weeks. This meeting was not on God’s agenda, the time limits had been set by the radio people. It must start on the beep for 11am and finish in time for the midday beeps. So questions were being asked like how long does it take to sing each hymn?

Prayer time was a problem because usually our prayers are “free”. As some of the old ones said “Salvation Army prayers are prayed from the heart not from a book”. Today, it had to be a book or at least a paper prayer and someone was chosen who could read fluently. That solved the timing there. So the band and the singing group and everything including the sermon were timed exactly. This was not a day for sudden inspiration and sudden inclusions in any way.

So as the ABC clock chimed eleven, the announcer said “This morning’s Divine Service comes from The Salvation Army Nundah Citadel in Brisbane led by Captain Lionel Crown. The band is led by Bandmaster Norman Lewin”. (He was Norm to everyone but this was a special occasion). So the band played its first notes of introduction of the first hymn and the service was underway. There was relief and smiles all round when as the clock ticked to midday and as the band played its last notes, the announcer again said his piece reminding the listeners of the details of “This Morning’s Divine Service”.

How ever we were not free to go. Our meeting was not over. The Captain reminded us that we would sing another hymn, during the singing of this hymn or “Tithes and Offerings” would be received. Oh well, the sound of tinkling coins could not impede on “Divine Service”, could they?

Sometimes our meetings or services or what ever we call the gathering of the faithful for worship are different. They are different sometimes because of the occasion. Other times they are different because the leadership is different. Sometimes because of the music chosen they are different. Sometimes they are very different. Sometimes they are different enough for us to be uncomfortable. At other times the difference will allow God to speak to us in ways that the comforting normal does not seem to.

By today’s standards, even for broadcast or videotaped services, the silence imposed upon the congregation in the early 1950s was ridiculous. People have babies. Babies do cry and babies cry in church. People cough and sneeze and outside noises intrude. It demonstrates to those who are listening that it is a live performance. It says this is a living church!

Some years ago I was introduced to the verse from Isaiah 30:15 (NIV) “This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it”.

More recently I have discovered Isaiah 31: 17 (NIV) “The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever.

I have often thought about the quiet times. In worship we draw near to God. Particularly, on His Day we enter His House with His people to give our praise to Him. The tradition of The Salvation Army is noisy worship. It is a brass band instead of a sedate organ. We tend to favour songs that move along and with a chorus that we can clap in rhythm and the ladies play their timbrels (tambourines) to. We tend to call our hymns “songs” as hymns seem to suggest slowness and staid religion of other days, and dare I say dreary churches? Some older Salvationists see a booming bass drum as essential and the bare minimum for a “band”. But we do know how to draw ourselves into a quiet time of meditation and prayer. The singing in prayer will be softer. The accompaniment is more sensitive to the moment.

It is interesting while Jesus went to the Synagogues and the Temple in Jerusalem, we see that some of his more special times of prayer were in the quietness of the garden. Out there away from the crowd he was alone with His Heavenly Father. We can not assume that Jesus preferred the loneliness of the garden over the gathering together for worship but I think we can assume he gave himself wholeheartedly to the times of traditional worship led by the official authorities. The interaction we have recorded is not so much the normal but the times when something especially marked the time of worship and fellowship in the environment of the worship place. Similarly, we so often mark for memory not the everyday but the special day in our experience.

John Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker. To him the “every day” worship was quiet meditation. He was a skilled poet who lived in the USA in the 1800s. He was not excited by the noisy revivalist churches and popular tent meetings and evangelical missions. I guess my beloved Salvation Army was counted amongst the ones he disliked. However, it was not only the noise he disliked. We have a part of one of his poems in The Salvation Army Song Book (and it appears in many other hymnals. He looks at the Soma intoxicated monks of India and the “haschish-drunk” who claim to be closer to spiritual things in their drug induced state and suggests that some noisy Christian services have the same effect.

I certainly don’t agree with Whittier about the music we find so helpful in worship. However, just as the strangers from the ABC caused my church to look carefully at our time of worship, so we can reflect prayerfully on what we are doing when we gather with the faithful in God’s House on His day.

Do we ever think about what we call worship and why certain things are included in our meetings or worship service?

…………………………………………….

I have highlighted – in capitals – the familiar hymn part of Whittier’s poem:

“The Brewings of Soma”

JG Whittier. (1807-1892)

"These libations mixed with milk have
been prepared for Indra: offer Soma to the
drinker of Some." Vashista, translated
by Max Muller.

The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood curled;
"Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Brink milky sap," the brewers spoke,
In the childhood of the world.

And brewed they well or brewed they ill,
The priests thrust in their rods,
First tasted, and then drank their fill,
And shouted, with one voice and will,
"Behold, the drink of the gods!"

They drank, and lo! in heart and brain
A new, glad life began;
They grew of hair grew young again,
The sick man laughed away his pain,
The cripple leaped and ran.

"Drink, mortals, what the gods have sent,
Forget you long annoy."
So sang the priests, From tent to tent
The Soma's sacred madness went,
A storm of drunken joy.

Then knew each rapt inebriate
A winged and glorious birth,
Soared upward, with strange joy elate,
Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate,
And sobered, sank to earth.

The land with Soma's praises rang;
On Gihon's banks of shade
Its hymns the dusky maidens sang;
In joy of life or mortal pang
All men to Soma prayed.

The morning twilight of the race
Sends down these matin psalms;
And still with wondering eyes we trace
The simple prayers to Soma's grace,
That verdic verse embalms.

As in the child-world's early year,
Each after age has striven
By music, incense, vigils drear,
And trance, to bring the skies more near,
Or life men up to heaven!

Some fever of the blood and brain,
Some self-exalting spell,
The scourger's keen delight of pain,
the Dervish dance, the Orphic strain,
The wild-haired Bacchant's yell, -

The desert's hair-grown hermit sunk
The saner brute below;
The naked Santon, haschish-drunk,
The cloister madness of the monk,
The fakir's torture show!

And yet the past comes round again,
And new doth old fulfill;
In sensual transports wild as vain
We brew in many a Christian fane
The heathen Soma still!

DEAR LORD AND FATHER OF MANKIND,
FORGIVE OUR FOOLISH WAYS!
RECLOTHE US IN OUR RIGHTFUL MIND,
IN PURER LIVES THY SERVICE FIND,
IN DEEPER REVERENCE, PRAISE.

IN SIMPLE TRUST LIKE THEIRS WHO HEARD
BESIDE THE SYRIAN SEA
THE GRACIOUS CALLING OF THE LORD,
LET US, LIKE THEM, WITHOUT A WORD
RISE UP AND FOLLOW THEE.

O SABBATH REST BY GALILEE!
O CALM OF HILLS ABOVE,
WHERE JESUS KNELT TO SHARE WITH THEE
THE SILENCE OF ETERNITY
INTERPRETED BY LOVE!

WITH THAT DEEP HUSH SUBDUING ALL
OUR WORDS AND WORKS THAT DROWN
THE TENDER WHISPER OF THY CALL,
AND NOISELESS LET THY BLESSING FALL
AS FELL THY MANNA DOWN.

DROP THY STILL DEWS OF QUIETNESS,
TILL ALL OUR STRIVINGS CEASE;
TAKE FROM OUR SOULS THE STRAIN AND STRESS,
AND LET OUR ORDERED LIVES CONFESS
THY BEAUTY OF THY PEACE.

BREATHE THROUGH THE HEARTS OF OUR DESIRE
THY COOLNESS AND THY BALM;
LET SENSE BE NUMB, LET FLESH RETIRE;
SPEAK THROUGH THE EARTHQUAKE, WIND, AND FIRE,
O STILL, SMALL VOICE OF CALM!


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