“But he answered her not a word.”

(Matthew 15:23)

Isn’t it puzzling — God’s silence? His whole round world in an uproar — people sinning, little children neglected and suffering, evil smelling to high heaven, God’s commandments broken, the beauty of his creation desecrated, polluted, wasted, people starving by the thousands, wars raging, even some of God’s so-called ministries on television in angry argument with each other, hurling charges and countercharges about who’s right and who’s wrong — and God keeping a stony silence. Isn’t it strange? Little wonder that God’s ancient saint should be astonished at this unfathomable mystery and cry, “Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? … Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God. For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head.”

And isn’t it strange — Jesus’ silence at the repeated, reverent entreaties of that poor Canaanite woman beseeching the Son of God to heal her sick daughter, “But he answered her not a word”? How unlike the sympathetic, compassionate Christ!

Do you remember that dramatic production of some years ago where the voice of God broke in on the radio every day for a week, jamming all the channels at an appointed time, the voice of God expressing himself, his pleasure and displeasure, with the way his world was being run? Would not a plan like that be much better, infinitely more fitting the power and prestige of the Lord of the universe, than God keeping an uncaring silence?

Now we must admit that it is thoroughly understandable why God would be silent sometimes with some people. When the prodigal son deliberately turns his back on his own home and, renouncing the life at his father’s side, loses himself in the riotous living of a far country with never a letter home or a glance in its direction, how can the father speak to him? He’s gone. He’s out of earshot and spiritual range. There’s no meeting of minds — no choice but silence. And the Gospels tell us that Christ was silent before Herod and Pilate. And there is little wonder. “Whence art thou?” asked Pilate. “But Jesus gave him no answer.” What could he say to a Herod or a Pilate when the flippancy of the one and the brutal lust for power of the other had so corroded them that there was no true metal left on which his words could ring?

The Expositor’s Dictionary of Texts notes:

The scriptures, which are so responsive to some, are silent to others. Why? The extent to which the Bible is a revelation to any man or woman is conditioned by the moral character and distinctive principles of the person reading it. Among the influences in people which make the Bible a silent book to them is prejudice. If you bring a full pitcher to the spring, you can take no water away from it. If your mind is already made up to reject the Bible, it can give you no answers to your questions. Habitual indulgence in sin will also make the scriptures silent.

Yes, it is understandable that God should be silent sometimes with some people.

But the silence of God with his devoted servants and with us his earnest seekers for him — this is what troubles and baffles us. The broken, yet faithful, heart on whom life has unexpectedly sprung a trapdoor and all that was precious and beautiful is suddenly dropped out of life, and in bewilderment the faithful heart has prayed over and over, “Why, God, why?” and God has answered not a word. And that sufferer who feels his strength slowly slipping away, pleading in trust and resignation with the giver of all life and the sustainer of all health to rescue him, and while help is delayed and he slips farther into the slimy pit, all he gets from heaven above is uncaring silence. And that poor fellow who is fighting for a faith, pummeled by doubts, searching for some assurance of God’s reality and of some evidence of God’s interest in him as a person, getting for all his pains no clear answer from God, just the silent treatment. This is the silence of God that stymies us. How can we explain this strange silence of God?

Can we not say first of all that God is often silent because we or those about us are not ready for his answer? Take the case of Joseph when he was in prison in Egypt. Joseph prayed that he might be delivered from prison, but it pleased God to keep him there for a time that he might be a comfort to his fellow prisoners. And it may be so with us. God may have his own reasons for not granting you some timely blessing at once. God may be dealing with some other member of your family at the same time. He has not completed his purpose, and the delay should not distress or disturb you.

For Ann Lee, the mother of Robert E. Lee, those were hard years in Alexandria, Virginia, when she was left alone to care for her little family because she had a husband who did not carry well family responsibility. When financial worries pressed, and the cupboard was almost bare, and the whole weight of training and directing her children was on her slender shoulders alone, how often devout Ann Lee must have dropped to her knees and prayed for a merciful Providence to lighten her heavy load. And how the uninterrupted divine silence must have puzzled her! But God was working his purpose out. He was making a Robert E. Lee. Douglas Southall Freeman, in his biography of Lee, shows that across the years all who knew General Lee best traced those peerless qualities that made him great — his self-discipline, his sympathy, his gentleness, his strength under stern adversity — to his noble mother and those bleak Alexandrian years. Yes, sometimes God is silent because we are not ready and those about us are not yet ready for his answer.

And then, there’s this: Sometimes God is silent because circumstances have to be rearranged and readjusted to bring greater benefits than we have ever dreamed of. How long was it that Saint Paul prayed for healing of some illness or physical defect, his “thorn in the flesh”? While the apostle prayed, God was silent. God never did answer that prayer save with a silent “no,” for all the while God had something better in store for Paul. God was going to give Paul more grace, and when Paul knew that, he said he would rather keep the thorn and have the grace. The same thing is true in the case of the Canaanite woman who came asking Jesus to heal her daughter. The Lord gave her, at first, no encouragement at all, but the delays and hindrances he put in her path only increased her faith and made her more determined to get what she requested of him. She stands out as one of the great figures of all spiritual history. Her faith was being stretched and expanded and made glorious by the silence of God!

And let us not forget this — that God’s gift to us of our freedom imposes upon God an obligation of some silence. All parents should understand this. We have our time when we can be vocal with our children and pass on to them something of our ideals and values for life, but the time comes when with the child grown into adult freedom, we parents must keep a discreet silence.

A few years ago some of us enjoyed watching “The Barchester Chronicles,” an offering of public television’s “Masterpiece Theatre,” and some of you may remember what Anthony Trollope said in his novel Barchester Towers about that inept clergyman Dr. Stanhope, that though he had never intended not to influence his children’s morals, yet he had been so idle about the matter that he had found no time for doing it, until the chance to do it had gone forever.

God gives his word to us in Christ. He sets us in his world where we may be nurtured by his Church, but he will not compel us. In granting us our freedom and complete spiritual autonomy, he has imposed upon himself some obligation of silence.

Also, God’s decision to use us for proclaiming his word and influencing the development of his children has imposed an obligation of silence upon him. Suppose God were always shouting down our errors and drowning out our moronic babbling? But God is a God who believes in the principle of delegated responsibility. And one of the reasons for God’s silence, says Henry Drummond, the popular Scottish lecturer, in one of his texts, Spiritual Diagnosis, is that “God offers men and women the glory and honor of sharing in His work and He wishes human souls to be graven with the marks of other human souls in all their free and infinite variety. No two leaves from a tree are the same, no two sand grains, no two souls. And as the universe would be a poor affair if every leaf were the counterpart of the oak leaf or the birch, so would the spiritual world present but a sorry spectacle if we were all duplicates of John Calvin.”

Why is God silent on the great questions of heresy and orthodoxy that disturb the Church? One divine oracle, one thunderclap from heaven could settle any controversy. But no, that is not the divine pleasure. God has set a desire for truth in all his children’s hearts, and each must seek it according to the light given him or her. And God’s silence should temper us with both toleration and humility.

Years ago, when Drummond came to lecture in our American universities, his liberal theological views, his interest in science and the evolutionary hypothesis stirred some opposition in certain conservative quarters of the church. He was invited by Dwight L. Moody to speak at the conservative conference center in Northfield, Massachusetts. But shortly after his arrival there, a delegation waited on Moody and insisted that he question Drummond on the soundness of his faith before allowing him to speak. Reluctantly, Moody agreed to do it the following morning. The delegation questioned Moody right after breakfast as to his success:

“Did you see him?”

“Yes,” said Moody.

“And did you speak to him about his theological views?”

“No,” said Moody. “I did not. Within half an hour of his coming down this morning he gave me such proof of being possessed of a higher Christian life than either you or I that I could not say anything to him. You can talk to him yourselves, if you like.”

God’s momentous decision to use us in proclaiming his word and influencing the development of each immortal soul in its infinite variety has imposed on God an obligation of silence, which in turn points us in the direction of humility and toleration.

But finally — and certainly this is most important of all — silence is God’s own chosen, clearest language for communicating with the human soul. We do not know him until we learn to “be still and know that he is God.” The prophet Elijah, standing on the mountain, felt the earthquake, saw the raging fire, and heard the roaring wind, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, wind, or fire. Then there came to Elijah the “still small voice,” or, as The Interpreter’sBible points out the original Hebrew rendering is more accurately translated, “a sound of gentle stillness.” God, as defined in the Westminister Shorter Catechism, “is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth” and he speaks in the language of silence to the souls of men and women.

In “O Little Town of Bethlehem” we sing:

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven
No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him, still the dear Christ enters in.

And for us the supreme significance of God’s silence is that we, too, have need of silence in which he may speak to us.