“Teaching about Christ begins in silence,” Bonhoeffer told the students in his Christology class in 1933. That’s a very hard lesson for us to learn.
We are so eager to speak that we are impatient with listening. The one who dares to speak of anything important — especially Jesus Christ — without first being silenced by the mystery of that which is beyond our knowing makes a fool of himself and misleads any who might be touched by his words.
We are silent before Jesus Christ until we are brought to our knees in submission, in awe, in worship. We are silent when we sense that we can have nothing to say that is not given us. To speak without first being silent is to create our own words, our own ideas. And they will always be false and empty.
By no coincidence, when Bonhoeffer taught his class on Genesis, he said the same thing.
The place where the Bible begins is one where our own most impassioned waves of thinking break, are thrown back upon themselves, and lose their strength in spray and foam. The first word of the Bible has hardly for a moment surfaced before us, before the waves frantically rush in upon it again and cover it with wreaths of foam. . . . Where the beginning begins, there our thinking stops, there is comes to an end.
Fewer books would be written and deeper thoughts would emerge were we to learn to be silent before our Lord. And that sounds good to me!
An excellent reminder for us all. Thanks.
-Ben