When God is Silent

by Barbara Brown Taylor

Overview

“Reading of God’s silence in the Bible gives me courage to explore the practice of restraint in preaching—not as a deliberate withholding of God’s word nor, I hope, as a rationale for my own reticence, but as a sober reaching for more reverence in the act of public speaking about God.”

In these 1997 Lyman Beecher Lectures in Preaching delivered at Yale Divinity School, Barbara Brown Taylor focuses on the task of those who preach and those who hear sermons in a world where people thirst for a word from God. How may we approach this seemingly silent God with due respect, proclaiming the Word without violating the silence, by speaking with restraint?

Her first chapter examines the late twentieth-century language with which we talk about God in theology and speak to God in prayer. The second chapter addresses the question of God’s communication in Scripture and how the “voice of God” was heard less and less in the land as the centuries progressed. Finally, Taylor explores what the silence of God means for Christians and how we may exercise “homiletical restraint” in speaking of the divine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781561013258
Publisher:	Cowley Publications
Publication date:	01/25/1998
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	129
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest. She holds the Harry R. Butman Chair in Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College in northeastern Georgia and serves as adjunct professor of Christian spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur. Recognized as one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English language by Baylor University in 1995, Taylor has published numerous collections of her sermons and theological reflections, including The Luminous Web, Speaking of Sin, and Gospel Medicine.

Editorial Reviews

In her 1997 Lyman Beecher Lectures, Barbara Taylor probes the question.. . : In a culture afflicted with rampant word inflation, how can preachers hope to bear effective witness to the Word?. .. “The instinctive reaction of many preachers. .. only exacerbates the problem. Perhaps, Taylor hypothesizes, instead of trying to compete with the incessant, empty chatter of the day, preachers should honor and cultivate a space for sacred silence. In broad and deft strokes she lines out the sweep of salvation history, suggesting that ‘revelation’ has always been as much (or more) a matter of what God leaves unspoken as of what God states. In this book. .. Barbara Taylor has framed a fitting space for further reflection.

David J. Schlafer

Barbara Brown Taylor’s When God is Silent is a gem of a little book. The Lyman Beecher Lectures she gave at Yale in 1997 are presented in an attractive new format from Cowley Publications which suggests that one has picked up something of an art book, something to be cherished. It is a little book both in size and in the scope of the author’s intent—but on handling and browsing through it, the reader become immediately conscious of an economy whose very modesty speaks its worth.. .. From the threads of ordinary experiences which we all can recognize, Taylor weaves something that gives voice to what we have not quite been able to say for ourselves, but something to which we find ourselves giving a deep interior assent.. .. The journey of just 130 small pages is a rich labyrinth of meditations—on music and silence, on the statistics of our broken world, on the imagination, on the writings of mystics both ancient and modern—all of them serving as gathering places for poetry and insight, reflection and prayer.. .. This book should not be left to preachers alone; it is a handbook for those who hear the whisper of God and want to listen. It is a book about the fragility of our words and the depth of God’s silence—and it is ultimately a book about the music that results from the crashing of our words against that silence of God to carry on its very failure some of the song of God’s own music.

Rev. Bruce Jenneker

Barbara Brown Taylor’s concise, pithy and challenging prose is evidence that she is practicing what she preaches: that Christian pastors take more care with the words they use and treat language with economy, courtesy and reverence.. .. All too often, Taylor insists, Christians are part of the problem rather than people who offer an alternative. It isn’t simply that the jargon of psychobabble is working its way into worship, but something deeper: a lack of trust in the essential mystery of God’s word.. .. If Taylor is eloquent in describing our misuse of language, she is even more eloquent when meditating on the value of silence, on ‘the game of divine hide and seek [which is] part of God’s pedagogy. .. [making] silence a vital component of God’s speech.’ She offers concrete and practical suggestions for ways to improve our relationship with both silence and the words God has given us.

Kathleen Norris