GOD FOUND IN SILENCE AND DARKNESS

The Invitation to the Great Feast: Excluding the High, Mighty, Wealthy and Healthy, and Including the Poor, the Sick, the Lame and the Oppressed

The Sermon for the Second Sunday After Trinity

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

Introduction

My dear brothers and sisters, people of St. Alopen’s Church here in East Asia, welcome to the Second Sunday After Trinity, a Sunday where we read the Gospel about Christ’s parable of the Wedding Supper, in which the servants go out into the highways and byways of the world, to gather up the poor, the sick, the lame, the oppressed, into the feast of feasts, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, which is the beginning of God’s Kingdom of the New Heaven and the New Earth. This Sunday is a profound memorial to what the Kingdom is - what it means to us in practical terms, and how we should interact with it. It is an invitation, and one that is easily turned down by the rich, the content, the happy and the comfortable. It is an invitation that requires active participation. It is an invitation to a covenant that defines our lives and our realities, and makes everyone equally uncomfortable, because it requires us to submit to God in absolute and total obedience. Let us thank the Lord for this Sunday and all it reminds us to do and to be, as we love one another as He has called us to love and manifest the Body of Christ by the power of the holy and life-giving Spirit!

Scripture

The Epistle for this morning’s Liturgy of St. James is found in 1 John 3:13–24 -

Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.

The Holy Gospel for this morning is Luke 14:16–24 -

At that time: Jesus spake unto the Pharisees this parable: A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: and sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.

The Sermon

Beloved in Christ, on this Second Sunday after Trinity, we stand before the veiled face of God, shrouded in the Cloud of Unknowing. The Introit from Psalm 18 whispers, “The Lord was my upholder: he brought me forth also into a place of liberty,” yet this liberty is no comforting embrace but a vertiginous expanse, a confrontation with the limits of our frail imagination. The Tabernacle of Exodus 26–27, with its golden boards and cherubim-woven curtains, gestures toward the divine, yet conceals a deeper silence. The Gospel’s Great Supper (Luke 14:16–24) and the Epistles (Romans 13–14; 1 John 3:13–24) call us to act, yet their summons leads us to the edge of a void where human striving falters. Today, we embark on a Dantean ascent, a Miltonic pilgrimage, through the darkness of divine mystery, where the soul beholds the unutterable silence of the Creator, figured in gold yet veiled in shadow.

The Tabernacle: A Golden Veil Over Silence

The Old Testament lesson unveils the Tabernacle, its “fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet” a radiant facade, its cherubim guarding a sacred enigma. This is no mere tent but a paradox, a material echo of the heavenly pattern shown to Moses, as St. Gregory of Nyssa writes in Life of Moses: “The Tabernacle is the soul’s mirror, reflecting divine glory yet concealing the unapproachable.” The gold and shittim wood, alchemized as Paracelsus might dream, point to transformation, yet their splendor masks a deeper truth: God dwells in silence. Isaac Newton, in his divine geometries, saw the Tabernacle’s proportions as a cipher, but even his prisca sapientia could not pierce the divine darkness.

Our Northumbrian saint, the Venerable Bede, in On the Tabernacle, speaks of the curtains’ loops as unity, but this unity is not harmony—it is the tension of holding opposites: the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknowable. St. Augustine, in Confessions, laments, “I sought Thee in the stars, but Thou wast in the silence of my soul.” The Tabernacle’s golden boards are a skene, a Greek stage, a “scene” where the divine drama unfolds, yet its heart is the Holy of Holies, empty save for the Shekinah’s silent glory.

The Great Supper: A Feast at the Edge of the Abyss

The Gospel’s parable of the Great Supper beckons us to a divine invitation, yet its guests refuse, clinging to land, oxen, and marriage: petty idols before the infinite. Like Dante’s souls in Inferno, they are trapped in their own circles, blind to the banquet’s cosmic weight swirling above them. The Caroline Divine Lancelot Andrewes, in Preces Privatae, writes, “We are called to the feast, yet stumble in the shadow of our own making.” The master’s call to the “poor, and maimed, and halt, and blind” is no sentimental inclusion but a summons to those broken enough to face the void, as St. Cuthbert, in his windswept solitude, saw Christ in the destitute.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann calls the Eucharist a cosmic liturgy, yet even this sacrament is but a skene, a scene pointing beyond itself. We remember the recently departed scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser’s Unseen Realm, and how it reminds us that the divine council, glimpsed in the cherubim, operates beyond human grasp, in a silence that deafens, but one that is inhabited by all the faithful saints and martyrs of all time. The master’s command - “compel them to come in” - is a divine violence, dragging the soul to the precipice of mystery, where, as St. Columba found amidst stormy seas, God’s voice is a whisper in the gale.

The Epistles: Duty in the Shadow of the Void

Romans 13–14 and 1 John 3 call us to love and obedience, yet these are not consolations but burdens. St. John’s “love in deed and truth” (1 John 3:18) is a labor under the weight of divine absence, as Abba Poemen warns: “To love is to carry the cross of another’s pain.” St. Aidan’s gift of a horse to a beggar was no mere charity but a defiance of the world’s noise, a step toward silence. Romans’ “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14) is, as Tim Mackie, one of my favorite recent biblical scholars, notes, this is a call to new creation, a new reality where Christ manifests a completely new modality of being. Yet, Fr. John Meyendorff’s work on theosis reminds us that this call is no easy ascent to a pre-determined divine end - it is a stripping away, a kenosis into the divine dark.

The alchemical maxim of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which many ancient Christian philosophers thought was the musing of the ascended Enoch - “As above, so below,” hints at correspondence, but the “above” is a void where human categories dissolves. St. Maximus the Confessor writes, “God is known in the negation of all things,” a truth our Anglo-Saxon saints - Hilda, Bede, Guthlac - lived in their austere contemplations, facing the fens’ desolation as a mirror of divine mystery.

The Ascent: Through the Cloud of Unknowing

The Gradual from Psalm 120 - “When I was in trouble I called upon the Lord: and he heard me”- is no cry of triumph but a plea from the "via negativa", the dark night of St. John of the Cross. St. Guthlac’s battles with demons in the wilderness were not victories but surrenders to the Lord, his soul scoured by silence, his heart held from the evil by the overwhelming truth of God's complete presence. The Offertory’s “Turn thee, O Lord, and deliver my soul” (Psalm 6) is a gasp at the edge of despair, where, as Paracelsus knew, the crucible of suffering yields not gold but emptiness.

Imagine the soul’s ascent, like Dante climbing Purgatory’s terraces or Milton’s Satan gazing at Eden’s forbidden light. We scale the peaks of contemplation, past the Tabernacle’s golden veils, past the Supper’s crowded hall, to the highest point of knowing. There, at the summit, we find no blazing throne but a vast void, a Cloud of Unknowing. St. Dionysius the Areopagite writes, “We ascend to God through darkness, where all names fail.” The Creator, transcendent beyond all worlds, veils Himself in shadow, as Exodus 20:21 declares: “Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.”

Yet this void is not absence but presence, figured in the Tabernacle’s splendor, its skene a stage for the Shekinah’s silent glory. The Greek skene, root of our “scene,” converges with the Hebrew Shekinah, the divine indwelling, and both resolve in silence. As St. Gregory Palamas teaches, “God’s essence is beyond essence, known only in stillness.” The Communion antiphon, “I will sing of the Lord, because he hath dealt so lovingly with me” (Psalm 13), is no joyous hymn but a trembling chant, fading into the quiet of divine encounter.

The Silent Glory: The End of All Scenes

Beloved, the readings lead us not to answers but to silence, where the Tabernacle’s gold and the Supper’s feast are but shadows of the unutterable. Picture the soul, like Dante before the Empyrean, standing at the edge of creation. Below, the cosmos spins - galaxies, choices, joys, and pains - yet above, the Creator dwells in darkness, His presence a silence that deafens. The Shekinah, the divine glory, fills the Tabernacle, yet its ultimate symbol is not light but quiet, as 1 Kings 19:12 reveals: “a still small voice.”

This silence is not despair but the threshold of awe, where, as St. Hilda found in Whitby’s winds, God speaks in the absence of sound. The Collect’s “perpetual fear and love” is no balance but a trembling, as Lancelot Andrewes writes: “I fear Thee, O God, for Thou art hidden.” The Eucharist, our Supper, is a skene, a scene where bread and wine veil the silent Christ, who, as Fr. Schmemann writes, “is present in absence, known in unknowing.”

My Personal Experience

This sermon connects to my own existential crisis and deep agony at the realization that keeping God's law or serving Him with my life does not protect me from suffering like the most sinful man; like the starving dog on the street, like the innocent carp caught by the fisherman, having my head bashed in and thrown back into the water because of a destain for my race. The cruelty of the world still exists, even though I do what is right. As the Psalmist says, the wicked men prosper, the heathen rage, the immoral man delights in debauchery, and while I originally thought that God would preserve the righteous, we are destroyed all the day long.

My transformation is realizing that I have no social contract with God. God won’t give me what I want merely because I acknowledge him as God and do what he says. This is the bare minimum, and it doesn't exact any special treatment or protection. The reason to follow God is not because He will bless us, but because He is God, we are created, and our lives come from God and go back to God. We go through immeasurable suffering and loss in life. Everything we know will be destroyed. Everyone we know will die. The only thing in life that is constant is change. The only thing that remains is the vast silence and void of God's existence. We follow Him, not because He alleviate our suffering, gives us permanency and stability that can never be taken away or changed, but that in our weakness, our deaths, our sufferings, and our failures, as well as our creative triumphs and passing phases of beauty, God is with us, loves us, and allows us to have life... and hopefully, eternal life.

When I feel like giving up or losing faith, I hear God's voice in the beauty of bagpipes and the wooden-smooth voice of the Irish flute... simple, joyful, dancing with the heart of a child, innocent and kind, loving life. And, I remember the Incarnation of Our Lord. He rejoices in us, even when the hardship of life overcomes us and makes it hard to breathe. He loves us, even when we don't love ourselves. He rejoices in us, even as we struggle to find light in the midst of despair. God love us... even when we don't believe it. We see that this morning in the epistle reading. We are the poor, the sick, the stupid, the lame, the deaf, the dumb, the enslaved. We find our way, inexplicably, to the Marriage Supper by God's grace.

Conclusion: Standing in the Silence

Beloved, let us ascend through the darkness, the dark unknowing, past the Tabernacle’s golden veils, past the Supper’s fleeting joys, to the silence where God dwells, where nothing exists but His incomprehensible being. Let us, like St. Bede, ponder the Scriptures’ depths; like St. Columba, brave the storms; like St. Guthlac, face the sheering void. The divine mystery is no comforting love but a confrontation, a silence that strips us bare and makes us able to understand the severe and profound implications of His existence – His self-sufficient and everlasting Godhead. As we approach the altar, let the Eucharist be our skene, a scene of silence where the Shekinah whispers into our hearts with a divine melody.

In the words of St. Maximus, “God is the end of all, known in the cessation of knowing.” Let us stand in this silence, at the edge of the void, where the Creator’s darkness is our only light, and His silence our only song.

The Collect

Let us pray…

O Almighty God, Father of all being, who dwellest in the thick darkness of thy unutterable Name, and yet hast figured thy glory in the golden Tabernacle of thy presence: Grant us, we beseech thee, to pass through the clouds of unknowing, wherein our highest wisdom deceiveth us to deny thee, who art the very ground of existence and the breath-giver of our lives. In the silence of thy Shekinah, teach us to abide, that, stripped of all vain imaginings, all false idols, all self-complementing trifles, so that we may know thee as the Most High, veiled in mystery yet ever near; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.