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Emmanuel Friedens Church
Schenectady New York
January 28, 2018
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Mark 1:21-28
1. In ancient Israel, there were prophets who rose up, appointed by God, to guide the people. They took their cue from God! They were thought of as being like Moses. They spoke powerful words of judgment and of warning, of liberation and of hope. But when they spoke, what was to prevent their abusing the power of God for their own ends?
What does truth look like? I raised this question with our sermon-shaping bible study on Wednesday evening. I asked how you can tell a true sermon from a false one. We talked about things like whether a preacher’s actions match the words. We talked about how powerful and compelling some speakers can be, sometimes for the altogether wrong reasons. Then we talked more generally about how we can tell if people in our lives are telling the truth. We talked about “track-records”. We shared our musings and puzzlement.
It isn’t always easy to tell true from false, right from wrong. I’ve been reflecting on this all week. Here’s a few hints.
It does not happen every day. But every once and again, you and I will find ourselves confronted by a voice full of pain and anger, a voice possessed by a spirit of hatred or suspicion, a spirit of bigotry or of agonized jealousy. Often, we can tell its character not just by what it is saying, but by the tone, by the sense that the speaker is possessed by some power or passion beyond his or her own making. I am talking about the voices of those caught up in a tide bigger than themselves, claimed by spirits bigger than personal illness- by the spirit of the times perhaps, or by a web of bad ideas and vicious anger that can come to grip a group, or a nation. It is one thing to be caught up in a sacred Spirit, or in joy, or even in deep grief. It is another to be possessed by a spirit that wants to play god.
I remember one Sunday morning, as I sat in Quaker meeting; it was sometime in 1977 or ‘78, and I was not yet twenty. I remember when he first stood up, an ordinary looking man in a grey tweed sport coat, who looked like many of the other members of the Society of Friends present.
It was a non-program meeting for worship, meaning no readings, no hymns, just silence, and any one moved by the spirit was welcome to speak.... And others did, while I stayed rooted to my pew. But then he stood. And it didn't take long to figure out something was wrong.
He spoke for a long time, spoke angrily, about the Russians, and about nuclear weapons, and how we needed to be ready to use the bombs, needed to be ready to obliterate the enemy... That day, after he sat down, no one in that meeting, a room full of Quaker pacifists, nobody said anything much. After a while one of the "weighty friends" who sat on the elders’ bench stood up. He said something softly about the Friends having a longstanding testimony for things that make for peace.
The next week I was back again, and so was the man in the tweed jacket. This time he ranted longer, got red in the face, full of anger and fear. Again he spoke words of hatred, words of war. As soon as he sat down, that second Sunday, one of the elders again rose. He said something like this, gently but firmly: "It is not customary for Friends to turn to violence to solve problems. For hundreds of years we have refused to bear arms. While we do not like to contradict one another's witness in meeting, or impede the inner light, we do not believe that angry testimony which calls for war and annihilation as solutions to human conflicts can be informed by that inner light. Friend must be mindful of this testimony.” After he had spoken, the elder sat abruptly.
A third Sunday came. And the man in the tweed coat stood again, to rant some more. We all flinched inwardly, but no one knew what to do. He went on for about ten minutes. He was getting really fired up.
And then, a miracle occurred. An elder stood again, not waiting for the speaker to finish. The man in tweed was as surprised as I, I could see. But he wasn't about to stop. Undaunted, the elder began to speak. Two voices filled the air, but one gave way to the other, the voice of anger overcome by a gentler firmer tone: "Friend, your testimony is not in keeping with the practice of Friends or of this meeting. You must either be seated immediately or leave this meetinghouse."
I was in shock. What would he do? Simply obey, or rant on? I couldn't believe he would listen to some other balding guy in spectacles. But he did. I remember the healing silence, which followed, as the voice of provocation, the voice full of fear, the voice that tasted of the lust for death, left the meeting. Someone had spoken a powerful word: a word not of hatred but love; not of anger, but conviction; not of force, but of gentle and firm truth.
A second true story: I had only been at Lake Avenue Baptist Church a few days as the pastor when J, a member, came out to me. She did it by bringing a casserole to the house, saying how glad she was to have me as a pastor and introducing me to her partner, standing next to her at the door. It was 1992. Over the course of the next few years, that congregation, like this one, was exploring where we stood on welcoming and affirming lesbian gay and bisexual folk.
It came down to a church meeting in 1995, when we had the discussion and finally were preparing to vote on becoming a welcoming and affirming church. During that conversation, someone asked, rhetorically, “Why do we need to make a statement? Everyone already knows they are welcome here.”
Up to that point, J had been silent. A part of our ongoing conversations behind the scenes, she had never come out to the church, she would hate that kind of drama. But after she heard the words “Everybody already knows…” she rose to speak. Quietly and in measured tones, she told that congregation “Everybody didn’t know. I thought I probably could tell you, but I wasn’t sure. When I got married privately to the woman I loved, I couldn’t tell you. When we split up ten years later and I was going through all the hell of a divorce, I thought I could tell you, but I didn’t because to lose you too would make it all so much worse. I couldn’t risk losing you too. Everybody doesn’t already know. I didn’t know.” J had found her voice. She spoke the truth with simplicity and courage and grace. And she risked losing us that day too, the community she loved—she risked it for the sake of God’s truth.
2. The book of Deuteronomy reminds us that the character of a genuine prophet-- a genuine messenger of God's word-- is evident simply from whether that prophet speaks words from the one living God, and not in the cause of other false gods. A genuine prophet is one who refrains from speaking a word which is not God’s truth; one who refrains from claiming for his or her own private opinion the status of divine revelation!
My Quaker hosts were convinced that day in 1978 in their souls that the God they knew would not speak words of nuclear holocaust-- and that to speak in such a way, a way full of hatred and anger, was to raise up in God's place other powers, other fears, gods of metal, gods of rage, gods, indeed, of death. They knew that a blasphemy was occurring in that sacred place of community. So, one of them arose, and spoke with authority, spoke the powerful word, and bade the false spirit be silent. And it was silent. It left.
J’s testimony in Rochester years later was given in a different voice, given for the sake of love, not hate. It was given at personal cost and embracing the risk that she would be ostracized or lose friends. And it came from a soul in communion with the Holy, even though she might not have presumed to say so. It was a voice of truth.
3. In ancient Israel, God raised up prophets to guide the people…but prophets are rare now at best. Today God raises up little communities, prophetic communities, many times communities no one seems to listen to at all. Nonetheless these communities are charged, like the prophets before them, with the task of carrying a powerful word from God.
In these challenging days, in this challenged city and nation and neighborhood, it is this little community’s task to seek out truth and proclaim it.
We know from scripture, from our own experience, that God’s truth makes for life, not death. We know from our own struggles and those of our ancestors that God’s truth has to do with healing wounds, not worsening hate. We know from experience, and we know from our teacher and friend Jesus, that God’s truth is rooted in the power of love, and the power of justice, not the power of acquisition, not the power of greed, not the power of fearsome force.
We will not be saved, nor will we be able to offer others hope, by the power of our own wisdom and might. Only the word of loving truth, which cuts to the heart, and frees the spirit, offers hope deep enough to be worth speaking.
This is the power, which is shared with us, in Christ Jesus. This is the power that can, if we let it, flow through us from Christ.
Whether the challenge we are facing is a family dispute or a political confrontation, may we rise to the challenge. May we grasp it gently yet firmly; acting and speaking mercifully, and faithfully.
When the time comes for us to hear and discern what is the real, the powerful, the faithful word, may we quietly sense where forgiveness calls, and where justice calls. May we discern where hope calls, where love calls. And, when it is time to act and to speak, may we act, and may we speak, in gentleness and justice.
Graphic: Henn, Ulrich. Healing the Sick, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. A photograph of relief art on the doors of St. James Cathedral, Seattle Washington.