Sit Down and Shut Up

How does that old joke go? We can’t wait for our children to learn to stand and to speak, so we can tell them to sit down and shut up.

Sitting down and shutting up speaks of obedience and order. When we can get our kids to do that then we feel like we’re in control. We have accomplished something. At least, we think, we won’t be embarrassed by them. That’s a great motivator. Which airline has that ad campaign: "Want to get away?" It is a campaign based on avoiding, or escaping, humiliating moments. Whoops, you put your foot in it. Whoops, you went too far. Whoops, you said too much. Want to get away? Sit down and shut up.

It is advice many of us should take more often. We have this insatiable desire to fill silence with the sound of our own voice. I’m writing this at the end of my conference on preaching (and yes, here’s a case when shutting up might have saved me some embarrassment. By telling you about this conference I may have raised unrealistic expectations. I can hear it now: "You’re not any better than you were before you went!" Anyway...) It has been a wonderful experiences, filled my soul in ways I didn’t expect. But it has also reminded that even preachers are human – as if I needed reminding. I suppose it was unrealistic to expect reverence and silence out of 2,300 preachers before worship. But the noise seemed excessive even in that over-filled setting. Worship leaders constantly struggled to get the thing started because we couldn’t sit down and shut up!

One of the scriptures for Sunday is about this very thing. Psalm 131 is a tiny little psalm tucked away among larger statements of praise and lament. Statements such as "Unless the Lord builds the house..." and "Out of the depths I cry to you" and "How good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity" and "O give thanks to the Lord for he is good" and "By the rivers of Babylon - there we sat down and wept" and O Lord you have searched me and known me" and on and on and on. In the midst of all these words is Psalm 131. It goes like this:

Psalm 131:1-3 O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. 2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. 3 O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time on and forevermore.

On the face it sounds mousy. "I’ll just sit in the corner and not say anything because I am out of my comfort zone." It is like finding yourself in a conversation with quantum physicists. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too momentous for me. I don’t want to display my ignorance, so I’ll keep quiet.

Certainly, God’s ways are not our ways. Certainly, God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Certainly, to speak of God at all is to dabble in mysteries beyond the intellectual capacities of the human mind. Bishop William Willimon gave a lecture on "The Homiletical Value of Bewilderment" saying this very thing. We can’t always explain, we don’t always understand. Better to sit down and shut up than to make even more of a fool of ourselves.

And yet, the Psalm doesn’t seem to be about withdrawal. It doesn’t seem to be asking us to put our heads in the sand, to cover our ignorance or our sinfulness away from the blazing eyes of the mystery of the universe.

Instead Psalm 131 invites us to lean into that mystery with satisfaction and contentment. Like a weaned child, it says, filled up with the presence of mystery; filled up with faith and hope and love - and not worried about unanswered questions.

We don’t do that very well, do we? We want answers. We want to be convinced. We want information to pass on to the seekers around us and within us. But the Psalmist tells us we don’t need more information. So, quit asking your questions – sit down and shut up – and hope in the Lord.

Jesus says it a little differently in our Gospel passage for this week. The end of the sixth chapter of Matthew:

Matthew 6:25 - 7:1 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you-- you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.

Do not worry about your life ... seek first the Kingdom of God. Don’t worry about stuff. Don’t worry about sustenance. Don’t worry. Be happy! Can it be that easy? Doesn’t that just raise a whole host of other questions? Doesn’t that open up new avenues of worry? Rivers of anxiety come rushing over us and sweep us out into a sea of uncertainty. What should we do? How will we know? What do we say? With whom do we associate? How do we organize ourselves? And on and on and on. We worry. We wonder. We whine, and ask, and pout and feel put out by our ignorance. And we turn inward, thinking we have to find our own answers, we have to figure this out for ourselves, we have no one to rely upon except ourselves, we must...we have to ... we ... we ... We sit down and shut up.

Do not worry about tomorrow. Like a weaned child be satisfied with the questions. Be filled up with a fleeting awareness of a Presence we can’t explain or control. Be content with glimpses of grace in the beauty of a flower or the flight of bird. Be sustained by a shy smile of a grateful child, or a gesture of love from a healing heart. Be at work in the world from your fulness in the face of so much emptiness – an emptiness we can’t fill with our words. It will take much, much more than that.

O Israel, O Church, sit down and shut up. And hope in the Lord.

Shalom,
Derek C. Weber