The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

            Almost at the start of every funeral that happens in this church, we hold a moment’s silence in which to honour the person whose coffin is there before us. But what does such silence mean? That might seem an odd question – silence is just silence – an absence of sound and therefore an absence of meaning.
            And yet if we consider some of the situations in which silence prevails we can begin to see the different meanings it might have. Sometimes at the end of a concert or opera the audience remains silent after the last note has died away. The silence is the measure of the impact the music has had upon them and the length of the silence can be an indicator of the volume of applause which will follow. On the other hand I have been present at  a fine performance of that deeply disturbing opera Wozzeck where I felt it would have been better if we had all departed in silence.
            Then there is that moment in King Lear where the king asks his daughters how much they love him. It is a pathological question that ought not to have been asked and to which any answer will be at the least problematic. Cordelia, who, unlike her two sisters truly loves her father,  can find no answer except ‘to love and be silent.’
            Or again there is the healing silence of the  psychotherapist. He or she does not comment or intervene or react and so the ‘person on the couch’ ceases to feel that he has to shape his words according to what he thinks the therapist will find acceptable;  the silence creates a space in which the client can begin slowly and painfully to say what he needs to say.
            And then of course there is the silence of  death. You stand at the bedside and though you may begin to speak the words trail off into silence. There may be thoughts racing round in your head but none of them can be said there. Conversation ceases to work and words no longer feel like  a way of helping one another. One of the most powerful thoughts may in fact be a remembrance of a different kind of silence in the past – the silence of not having said words which you wish now that you had said.
            And lastly in this context we might remember the silence of Jesus. The record of Jesus on trial before the High Priest and then before Pilate is full of silences. Both judges are trying with very little integrity to find out the facts – or at least the facts that will allow them to condemn Jesus or release him. And initially Jesus does not reply. He remains silent. And when he does eventually say something it is not really in the form of a reply. Even in the dialogue with Pilate recorded in John’s gospel, Pilate asks questions which Jesus answers on a level Pilate can’t or wont understand. The silence of Jesus is a refusal to get into an argument to win it – an argument which is only a play for power. This silence is a recognition of a situation in which words wont work. And what Jesus does eventually say is a testimony which requires silence if it stands any chance of being understood.
            And so to come back to the silence near the start of a funeral, the silence with which to honour the dead. That silence can signify a variety of meanings: it can signify respect for a life completed, and which can never be summed up in the many words which will follow; the silence can be a sign of respect for the grief people feel for a death which has come too suddenly or tragically; the silence might point to the many conflicted thoughts and feeling people may have about the deceased, for whom the prayers for forgiveness may be truly necessary; or the silence may simply signify the fact of death which comes to us all and in the face of which all words are profoundly challenged. The silence is an acknowledgement that all the words which will come after it in the service may feel somehow inadequate.
            Silence then can have many meanings – we might almost say it is noisy with possible meanings. And yet all of them also recognise that there is something there for which words are inadequate – a hinterland of sense which can’t be put into words or thoughts. The silence in itself hints at the inexpressible.
            We often say that someone is reduced to silence. And yet in the contexts we have been considering silence enlarges us. Beauty, or injustice, or therapeutic attentiveness or tragedy or love provide us with experiences which we cannot hope to put into words because they are always somehow bigger than we are. We sense more than we can express, we know more than we can say. We know that what we do say is stumbling, and inadequate and yet in spite of that we grow through this struggle with words which have to give way to silence.
            When in death we lose someone we have loved that sense of not knowing what to say is something to hold onto. Our inability to say adequately what we feel is so important because it keeps us in touch with an experience – a love – a loss – the importance of which we only begin to grasp in the silence. In the silence we begin to discover the truth of love, justice, beauty or healing, because they exist independently of us. And however hard we try, they will always be greater than we can express in words.
            As Christians we say that this sense of some larger, something inexpressible comes from God. We discover God both in words and in the silence from which they come and back to which they lead. In the struggle to put into words what we really feel, God is present, just as in the silence he is also present.
            And as Christians we also believe this. In God the truth of all those things we struggle to express here,  endures and is held for us. When we return to God, from this world of our inadequate speech, the full reality of those whom we have loved, all that we have given ourselves to do and to enjoy,  will also be there  in God, waiting for us. Amen.
This sermon was inspired by ch. 6 of Rowan Williams ‘The Edge of Words – God and the habits of language’ (2014) and tries to express some of the ideas found there.