ࡱ> 9;6785@ bjbj22 )XX92228j$:ff"!######$$RvG]LLLGL|!L!<Pn=Z @ 2Ȕ< 0!@==jLGGDAId:IPart One: What you hear in the ear In a delightful little book entitled Piano Lessons, Noah Adams, of NPRs All Things Considered tells a story about Leon Fleisher, the concert pianist. Fleisher was in London where he was performing with the famous composer George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. The Emperor Concerto was on the program and Szell asked Fleisher to come to his hotel room so that they could sing through the piece before the concert. There was, of course, no piano in the hotel room. And here Fleisher himself tells it: We were sitting at a table, and I was drumming, playing the table, while he was singing and whistling the orchestras part. At some point he stopped me and said, You made a mistake. And I said, But Ive never played this table before. I hope that you will hear me sympathetically tonight and tomorrow and consider my mistakes as owing to my never having played this table before. My primary venue for the past 21 years has been the college classroom, speaking to students who dont know nearly as much as I do (except for the preacher boys). You people, on the other hand, know a lot. You are biblically literate, theologically articulate and spiritually mature. I feel privileged and challenged to be here. And I thank you for inviting me. When Mack Jones called to invite me up here he ran a couple of suggestions by me, then very quickly and graciously allowed, But you do whatever you would like. Hows that for a carte blanche? Later in an exchange with Marion I asked if he had any directions for me and he basically gave a sweeping gesture toward the biblical horizon as if to say, Go where you will. So in my preparation for our study thats pretty much what I have done. I have meandered through the biblical landscape looking first here and then there. It all sounds very unfocused, I know, and Im not blind to the pointlessness of simply piling up verses that happen to share a common word or two and the eisegetical dangers of such an approach. But in truth Ive made some fascinating discoveries that Im eager to share with you. I. A Place to Begin As our starting point, I want us to hear and consider a verse from the gospel of Matthew. It is set within the context of Jesus calling and commissioning his disciples and preparing them for what lay ahead. There are hard sayings here, troubling sayings, things that are easy neither to hear nor to understand. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; Lets hear the broader passage: Matthew 10:16-33 And once again, verse 27: What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light: and what you hear whispered - literally what you hear in the ear- proclaim from the housetops. A piece appeared in a recent issue of The Christian Century, which was the journal of choice for most of my seminary generation. I dont run into many who read it anymore. Anthony Robinson, the pastor who wrote the piece, recalled that as he was graduating from Union Seminary in New York, he heard two sermons. One speaker urged the young ministers to Preach! Preach! Preach! while another followed with a message to Pray! Pray! Pray! He has concluded in his own experience, Robinson writes, that the two go together. He is right, of course. And just as preaching and praying go together, so also do silence and sound, hearing and speaking. As Bonhoeffer put it, Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech. (Life Together, p. 78) In language development, hearing precedes speaking. For Israel the call to hear comes first: Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone Listen, then speak. Thats the way it moves. Open your ears before you open your mouth. It is the order in which the church carries out it mission. It is the order suggested in the Matthew passage: What you hear whispered in the ear, proclaim from the housetops. II. The Loss of Silence A favorite text for preaching about preaching is Romans 10:14: How shall they hear without a preacher? One is tempted also to ask, How shall they hear unless they listen? For to hear, to listen requires a respect for silence, which the Bible sometimes commends and, at other times, commands. And which, I might add, seems to be a vanishing commodity. Anyone who has ever sat at a traffic light and felt the seat vibrate beneath you and the steering wheel pulsate in your hands from the supercharged sound system in the vehicle beside you knows it to be true. TV commercials why do they have to be so loud? And the ubiquitous cell phone. Yakety yakety yakety in the cars, in the grocery stores, in the restaurants, in the libraries, in the classroom. Is silence falling victim of the tyranny of technology? We were urged recently to observe what was being called Turn off the TV week. Not a bad idea. Next time perhaps it should be expanded to include radio. The French mystic Max Picard had a view on this: Radio is a machine producing absolute verbal noise. The content hardly matters any longer; the production of noise is the main concern. It is as though words were being ground down by radio, transformed into an amorphous mass. There is no silence in radio or true words either, for a situation has been created in which silence is no longer missed and words are no longer missed either, in which words are ground down to a mere radio-noise, in which everything is present and at the same time nothing is present. (The World of Silence, p. 199) Picard wrote those lines more than 50 years ago, at a time when, as his essay makes clear, the substance of radio programming consisted of news, morning devotions, classical music, jazz, and helps for housewives. He knew nothing of rock, hard, soft, heavy-metal, punk, alternative or otherwise. No rap, no Rush, no Radio Reader. The issue for him seemed not to be the substance or the lack of it but the resulting assault upon silence. Echoing Picards views are those of E.B. White: In radio it is understood that whatever else happens, there must never be a silence. This(is most noticeable in the aerial forums, in which the performers are expected to offer an immediate opinion on any subject, and do. Someone must always be speaking, either the ringmaster or one of the experts. The rule seems to be: make sense if you can, but if you can't make sense say something anyway. (The Second Tree From the Corner, p. 111-112) Both White and Picard would have agreed with George Eliots benediction: Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving in words evidence of the fact. Like Picard, E.B.White also wrote more than 50 years ago. He could not have imagined 'talk radio' as we know it. But how prescient his words seem. Were White and Picard Luddites? Hardly. And though neither would have lasted a day in radio, each had the discernment to recognize the banality of much that passes for communication. Negative Silence Now, while we may praise the idea of silence, we should understand that this door swings both ways. Not every form of silence is desirable or commendable. The silence of humility yes. The silence of cowardice no. The silence of contentment yes. The silence of suffering no. The silence of peace yes. The silence of oppression no. The silence of compassion yes. The silence of anger no. The silence of grief? Most of us have been there. There are pictures of this all through the Bible. Recall the friends of Job, how they were stunned into silence at the sight of his suffering and grief, which as comforters they had come to share. And there is a silence generated by fear. You know the story of Anne Frank. I saw an excellent stage production several years ago. There is a power in that drama, when it is done well, to draw the audience into the fear the family members feel as they hide themselves from the Nazis. The audience actually senses and shares the need for silence as the soldiers move through the apartment. A famous producer married a very beautiful but woefully untalented aspiring young actress. Against his better judgment but weak in the face of her pleadings, he cast her as the lead in this play, The Diary of Anne Frank. She turned in a miserable performance, of course, and it was obvious to the audience from the moment she stepped onto the stage that she was out of her element. Nevertheless, they suffered in silence until the scene where she must hide. As the soldiers entered the apartment and began their search the audience found its voice and shouted as one: Shes in the closet! Some traditions put a high premium on silence, of course, notably the way of the mystics and contemplatives which finds its clearest development in monasticism. Thomas Mertons classic introduction to the monastic experience bears the appropriate title, The Silent Life. Silence belongs to the substance of sanctity, he writes elsewhere, recalling Isaiah 30:15, In silence and hope are formed the strength of the saints (Thoughts in Solitude, p. 85) Did Jesus enjoin silence of his followers? There is gospel evidence that at times he did. And he certainly encouraged them to use restraint in their manner of speaking. Whats more, he practiced what he preached. Questioned by Pilate concerning the claims associated with him, he gave no answer. (Matt 27:11-14) Arraigned before Caiaphas who goaded him for a response Jesus was silent. (Matt. 26:62-63) But did he encourage the contemplative life? His commendation of Mary and his rebuke of Martha have, since the 14th century at least, has been held up as the biblical model of contemplatives and actives. Further, Jesus appeared to regard solitude and silence as the natural context of prayer: Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Thats why I find pictures of people praying so troubling. You rarely see an issue of any religious periodical whether to the right or left that does not contain at least one picture of somebody praying. I saw two such pictures in our local newspaper within the past week. As though a picture of some praying offers indisputable testimony to their piety. I could be wrong but I dont think thats a biblical idea. I find myself wondering if it does not occur to the photographer that in the presence of prayer he is standing on holy ground. Take off your shoes, man. Put down your camera. If these people really are praying, then respect the moment; if they are not, then let it pass. Go to your room, Jesus said. Do your praying out of camera range. The Bible offers no program for developing the silent life as such. In fact, the New Testament passages that commend silence are relatively few and are not given to the same purpose. Jesus demands silence of the demon. Paul demands it of women. Although, I think it is instructive to look a bit more closely at the language. Clearly, given the term he uses in 1 Corinthians 14, sigato, his intention is that the women should be silent in church. The word carries with it the sense of  hold your tongue, stop speaking or, if you prefer a more cheeky rendering,  Shut up. In 1 Timothy, however, a different word is used where it is written  Let a woman learn in silence. Here the word is esoukia. Like the other word, sigato, it too enjoins silence but with a different twist. Theres a bit of a charitable spirit at work here for the word suggests the more gentle Give it a rest. Luther was a Paul man, you know. He said once that his wife was a better speaker than he himself was. However, he added, eloquence in women shouldnt be praised; its more fitting for them to lisp and stammer. This is more becoming to them. (Table Talk, 4081 p. 317) Enforced silence, which is taken by many as the real intention of these passages, can be used as an effective means of control. If youve ever taken a trip with two kids in the back seat you know what I mean. But there are other biblical models of this strategy as well. Paul to Titus: There are many rebellious people, idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision; they must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for sordid gain what it is not right to teach. (Titus 1:10-11) Well, there you have it. Then there was Elisha, who brooked no criticism. You know the story of his silencing 42 small boys by setting some hungry bears on them? Its there in 2 Kings 2:23-25: He (Elisha) went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead! When he turned around and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and then returned to Samaria. The silence of control is a silence that oppresses and a silence that excludes. The Bible also knows the silence of guilt. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in some of the Psalms. Psalm 38:13-14: I am like the deaf, I do not hear; like the mute, who cannot speak. Truly, I am like one who does not hear, and in whose mouth is no retort. I am reduced to silence by my sin. Marks gospel offers the story of the boy reduced to silence by spirit possession. Most interpreters regard the symptoms as descriptive of an epileptic seizure. In the world of the Bible, however, demons and spirits were an ever-present threat to a persons health and well-being. The father speaks of the sons affliction as a temporary aphasia, a loss of the ability to speak. Interestingly, the diagnosis Jesus gives suggests a loss of speech and hearing. So he issues the command: You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, (you deaf and dumb spirit) I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again! IV. An Excursus Now, I will be grateful if you will permit me to lead you on a brief excursus. The subject of deafness, since I brought it up, is one that holds a particular interest for me. For more than 30 years deaf persons have been an important part of my life. The last two churches I served as pastor had members who were deaf. My wifes sister and her husband are both deaf and my wife Vickie is a certified interpreter for the deaf. I know and teach sign language. Our son knows sign language. Even our dog knows sign language. We also have a cat who in the manner of cats steadfastly refuses to learn. And if that doesnt tell you enough about my interest in deafness, I can speak with some authority on the subject out of personal experience. When I turned 40, my eyes began to fail and I had to get glasses. When I turned 50, my ears began to fail and I had to get hearing aids. When I turned 60 One of the reasons I wanted to go here with you is to do my bit for deaf awareness. Most people, through no fault of their own, possess a limited understanding of deafness and deaf culture. Some people are surprised that deaf people drive automobiles, hold jobs, get married, raise families and earn Ph.Ds. Nor are all deaf persons the pitiful, apparently helpless characters you sometimes encounter panhandling in shopping mall parking lots. Some are warm and caring persons; some act like jerks. Some are very serious-minded; some have a great sense of humor. A favorite story of a lot of deaf people is the one about the deaf couple staying at a motel. The husband wakes in the middle of the night and is very thirsty. So he puts on his robe and goes looking for the drink machine. He gets his Coke and heads back to his room. The problem is, he has forgotten which room is his. He thinks for a minute, then goes to his car and lays on the horn. A light comes on in every room except one. Problem solved. There is, unfortunately, a widely held assumption that deaf persons are mentally impaired. One reason for that, of course, is the double meaning of the word dumb. Even the Greek word for deaf, kwfos, carries also the meaning dumb, unable to speak. That, by the way, is a terribly demeaning and offensive word to the deaf as is the unfortunate reference to a deaf person as a deaf mute. So widely held has been the deafness equals retardation view that it was not until the 20th century that the practice of confining deaf persons in asylums for the insane was halted. Later still was the granting to deaf people the right to vote. Historically, the church has not been kind to deaf persons. The church fathers, Augustine included, shared the view of the deaf as retarded. There was also the assumption that just as they could not hear because of a defect in the ear, so they could not speak because of a defective vocal mechanism. What they seemed not to understand was that the normal development of speech was dependent upon hearing. And so the deaf were generally viewed as defective persons. What is worse, during the Middle Ages it was held that since deaf persons could not speak the necessary words of the sacrament, salvation was not available to them. What I encountered in ministry to the deaf persons in my congregation (about 75 in the last church I served) was that many of them carried with them the effects of having for so long been regarded as defective or partial persons. George Carlin, the comedian, asks: If you pull the wings off a fly, does it become a walk? I found some deaf persons wondering about themselves, If you take away a persons hearing, does he become something else? Simone Weil, writing as a Catholic, ponders the question whether bread that has gone moldy is any less the body of Christ when the priest has consecrated it. And is a person whose world has gone silent any less reflective of the image of God? Some struggled with the question (the wrong question), Why did God make me deaf? These are not questions easily answered or dismissed. But they are important questions for ministry. I hope and pray that our declared inclusiveness as a Christian body will seek ways to make the church accessible not only to deaf persons but also to all handicapped and marginalized persons in our society. The bright hope expressed in Isaiah 29 and 30 anticipates the liberation of the blind from darkness, the deaf from silence and the lame from immobility. Charles Wesley set the vision in one of his hymns and has given us one of the brightest, most joyful, most hopeful verses in Christian hymnody: Hear him, ye deaf, his praise, ye dumb, Your loosened tongues employ, Ye blind behold your Savior come And leap, ye lame, for joy! As one who resists the depreciation of the hymnal in worship, I will tell you that when Christian contemporary music starts producing lines like that, I will be the first to raise my voice in song! The deaf know silence in a way that we hearing people only imagine. V. The Silence of God The most dreadful silence of all, however, is the silence of God. Such a prospect accounts for the frequent appeal of the Psalmist: O Lord, do not be silent; do not be far from me! (Ps. 35:22) Lord, do not refuse to hear me for if you are silent to me I will soon be dead. (Ps. 28:1) Do not hide your face from me; do not turn your servant away in anger. (Ps. 27:9) Some of the Old Testament prophets were masters at heaping ridicule upon practitioners of non-Israelite religions. A classic passage in Second Isaiah (chapter 44) laughs the idol makers to shame. Habakkuk notes the silence of the idols and the gods they represent: What use is an idol once its maker has shaped it a cast image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in what has been made, though the product is only an idol that cannot speak! Alas for you who say to the wood, Wake up! to silent stone, Rouse yourself! (Habakkuk 2:18-19) Even the apostle Paul weighed in on this discussion as he wrote to the Corinthians: You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. (1 Corinthians 12:2) The word he uses here is aphona, silent, voiceless. So this is the biblical assessment of the dumb heathen gods as the Jerusalem Bible renders the passage. They are silent. They have no voice. They do not speak, cannot speak. Pray to them but they do not hear. Call them but they will not answer. This is the scene as it unfolded on Mt. Carmel, youll recall. (1 Kings 18:20-40) Now its obvious that Elijah had a certain psychological and tactical advantage here. It was his game. He made up the rules. But the prophets of Baal didnt seem to have a problem with it. They went along. And at the designated moment they began to call on their god: O Baal, answer us! And they even did a little dance but there was no voice, no answer. So they turned up the volume, calling louder. And in what may have been a desperate bid for divine sympathy, they began to mutilate themselves. But it didnt work. There was no voice, no answer, no response only silence from an insensate god. Elijah scoffed at the prophets of Baal: no voice, no answer, no response. Nothing. And how sweet it was! Elijah was the man! He probably strutted. Probably did a little moon walk. Elijah and Yahweh what a team! Admittedly, he did get a bit carried away there at the last when he had all the prophets of Baal killed. He wasnt thinking, of course. And there were repercussions. Jezebel is going to silence Elijah. (1 Kings 19:1-18) But at Horeb, the mountain of God where Moses had heard the voice, Elijah had to deal with the silence of his own God. A voice greets him at the cave but is it the voice of God? The text doesnt say so and, in fact, only suggests that Elijah gets a message from God. The word of the Lord came to him. Later a voice speaks. Again there is no identification of God as the speaker. The emphasis of the passage falls on the absence of God, or at least the silence of God. Earthquake, wind and fire but the Lord was not in it. Where was the God whose power burst forth in lightning and fire and smoke on Carmel? Where was the God who thundered in the face of the pagan Baal? Earthquake, wind and fire! And after the fire what? A sound but what? This passage has long challenged translators. a low murmuring sound NEB, a gentle breeze JB, CEV, the soft whisper of a voice TEV, a gentle whisper NIV, a still small voice KJV, RSV, a sound of gentle stillness ASV (alt.) But the one that captures my imagination moist vividly is the NRSV: the sound of sheer silence. The Old Testament scholar Samuel Terrien, in his book The Elusive Presence, helped bring this passage into the light for me. His own translation of the line is the sound of utmost silence. It is not the absence of sound that Elijah experiences here but the presence of silence. Terrien takes issue with the notion encouraged by the King James translators that Elijah was hearing the still small voice of conscience stirring within him, an idea popularized in the 19th and 20th centuries. Nor is it the nothingness of mysticism and existential thought. But it designates a reality that is preparatory to the awareness of presence. The idea that silence is nothing more than a vacuous void fails to do justice to the biblical understanding of the concept. There is a power in silence that may be engaged for good or for ill. Annie Dillard, whose way with words is like that of Mozart with music, knows the power: The silence gathered and struck me, she writes, It bashed me broadside from the heavens above me And what is giving someone the silent treatment if not to engage the power as a means to injure? But there is a power in silence that nourishes and renews. We come to our clearest understanding of this in worship. VI. Silence and Worship I cannot imagine a more challenging time to be a pastor than now. Among my pastor friends I do not know of a single one who has not felt caught in the tension of the so-called worship wars, a sad designation if Ive ever heard one. But worship has become a difficult issue for a great many churches. No, thats not right. Worship has always been a difficult issue for the church. And if it hasnt been, then we probably havent taken it as seriously as we should. Most of us probably have some ideas about how worship should be done. I know I do. I tell my students that when it comes to worship, Im the most conservative guy in the room. I just find myself unable (or unwilling) to appreciate or to follow after all the latest trends and innovations on worship. But I try to give attention to them because I know I must. As a part of my constant quest to find fresh material and resources for use in my Worship class at CSU, I review the literature. Recently I bought and read a short text on the subject, Reinventing Sunday by Brad Berglund. Which is not bad. Im prepared even to give it a qualified recommendation. But even with that, I felt as though I was in the company of the Martha Stewart of liturgy. I think what troubles me is the functional approach to worship that directs the focus on the worshipers. What do we need to do to get the people in here? You know the familiar Kierkegaard analogy: most services proceed as though the people are the audience, the preacher and choir the performers and God in the wings as the prompter. Kierkegaard insists that it is God who is the audience, the people the performers and the worship leaders in the wings offering the cues. Most Baptists know the name John Bisgano. He speaks for the many when he says, Long-haired music, funeral dirge anthems, and stiff-collared song leaders will kill the church faster than anything in the world. Lets set the record straight for a minute. There are no great, vibrant, soul-winning churches reaching great numbers of people, baptizing hundreds of converts, reaching the masses that have stiff music, seven-fold amens, and a steady diet of classical anthems, none. Thats not a few. Thats none, none, none. (Steve Miller, The Contemporary Music Debate. p. 229) And, of course, he may be right. Nevertheless, I think there needs to be some clear understanding as to the nature of worship. Are worship and evangelism the same thing? And if we decide that they are, that Bisagno is right, still the questions do not go away. What are we doing and how can we do it best? Now I am not prepared to argue that there is only one right way to do worship in spite of my bullheadedness about some things. Worship is, first of all, response and it must be acknowledged that theres no single mode or category of expression in which our responses must be couched. Whether in the stark simplicity of a storefront mission or amid the lavish appointments of a Russian cathedral, God is worshiped. Whether to the rhythm of the tambourine or the soaring notes of the pipe organ, voices are lifted in true praise. Whether in the halting affirmations of the unschooled preacher, or in the sonorous tones of the doctors of the church, the Gospel is preached. Whether in the frenetic outpourings of the Pentecostals or the patient waiting of the Quakers, the Spirit moves. A distinction is often drawn between liturgical and non-liturgical churches. The Catholics, Episcopalians and Lutherans fall on one side of the line (the wrong side, I was led to believe as I was growing up) while Baptists, Pentecostals and some others stand on the other side. Methodists and Presbyterians cant seem to make up their mind. I spent the first 17 years of my life in a Bible-believing, devil-fighting, knee-bending, soul-saving, amen-saying, fundamentalist and proud of it Baptist church. But we were also liturgical. At least we had a liturgy. We didnt know it and would have vigorously denied it had we been accused of it but we had a liturgy. Even when I was seven or eight years old I could have walked you through it from beginning to end. From the first note of the organ to the echo of the last hymn it was ordered and predictable. The most noticeable departure came on those Sundays when someone would get saved and join the church. Then the choir would burst forth in glorious song: Ring the bells of heaven, there is joy today, For a soul returneth from the wild! Had we had a prayerbook, that would have been Rite 2. But things always began on the same note. In what was surely the most solemn moment of the entire service the choir would sing the call to worship: The Lord is in his holy temple The Lord is in his holy temple Let all the earth keep silence, Let all the earth keep silence before him. Keep silence, keep silence before him. (Habakkuk 2:20) But, in truth, thats pretty much where we left the silence. I guess you might say we elected not to follow the choirs urging. From that moment on we gave ourselves up to such talking and preaching and praying and singing as youve never heard. And I do believe God was in it. Still, I am left to wonder at how we fumble with efforts toward silence in our services. We seem almost fearful of it, not knowing what might happen if we allow it in. We cant seem to handle it. Theres a kind of compulsion to fill the cracks: so even designated moments of silence are covered over with music. One of Reynolds Prices characters, Kate Vaiden describes her efforts at worship in these terms: (God and I)go our ways in silence as though that says it all and to say more would be so say less. But the guiding principle for services of worship so often seems to be, Keep it flowing, make it smooth, beware of dead space. Is this the influence of radio? Television? If there truly is power in silence, power to refresh and renew, shouldnt we open ourselves to it more? Youve seen the poster, Sometimes I sits and thinkssometimes I just sits. Maybe thats the ticket. Maybe there is something redemptive in just sitting. For God alone my soul waits in silence declared the Psalmist. (Psalm 62:1) Can we ever find our way back to the place of waiting? The editor of the local newspaper, Stanley Moore, was a member of my church in Morganton, North Carolina. He was a competent journalist and a devoted churchman and he had a rollicking sense of humor. Spending time with Stanley brought me to the realization that there were a lot of similarities between our two professions. One afternoon I turned to the editorial page to see what or who Stanley was giving a fit and what about. It must have been a slow day at the News Herald because the commentary was uncharacteristically brief. In fact, it was apparent that he had gone to the barrel to pull a snappy quote to use as a filler. (Something no preacher has ever done.) Heres what I read: I like the silent time before the service begins better than any sermon - Ralph Waldo Emerson. Immediately I sat down and wrote Stanley this note: I like the white space in the margins of the newspaper better than any editorial. And I signed my name. The next day he wrote a column the gist of which was Touche! Emerson had a point, however, and Stanley had a point in quoting him. Something happens in the silence cannot be replicated in the sermon. What you hear in a whisper, proclaim from the housetops. What you hear in a whisper. Hearing comes before speaking. That is a physiological reality and a theological one as well. Would you speak? Would you preach? Then listen. God speaks but he seldom shouts. Listen, then. Listen for the whisper. Part Two: proclaim from the housetops. Last night we talked about listening to God. Jesus said, What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light: and what you hear whispered in the ear, proclaim from the housetops. We considered together the experience of worship as an exercise in listening to the whisper or, if you prefer, to the sound of sheer silence. I want us to continue our walk together this morning, stopping here and there to consider and reflect on the things that we encounter. And I want to move in the general direction of the second part of the verse, that which enjoins proclamation. I.. Learning to Listen Hearing precedes speaking, we said last night. Unless for some reason, we are born with a defect in the hearing system, we do not have to learn how to hear. We just do it. Short of resorting to some artificial means of muting sound, we cannot control our hearing, either to lower or increase the volume or to shut it off altogether. But speaking is another matter. We have to learn how to speak. And we have to learn how to listen as well. For as we surely know, hearing and listening are not the same thing anymore than seeing and perceiving are. Worship brings us to the place of listening to God. His is the voice we seek. Zedekiahs question to Jeremiah is the question we bring to every gathering for worship: Is there a word from the Lord? (Jeremiah 37:17) It doesnt always happen, of course. Or if it does, we dont always get the message. Carlyle Marney used to say that sometimes God just doesnt come to the meeting. But sometimes, I suspect, we do not hear because we do not listen. Perhaps, as we suggested earlier, it has to do with an unwillingness to give ourselves over to the silence where the whisper is heard. Now, we did not address this last night but, before we go further, I want to suggest that it is important also that we listen to one another and to the voices that speak or cry outside the walls. Like many of you, I have not come lately to our protracted Baptist struggle. I have been in the trenches. When I was a pastor in North Carolina back in the 70s, there was a man in my association who was one of the leaders of the Fundamentalist coalition in the state convention. From his church office he published a Sword of the Lord type newsletter which was mailed to pastors all over the state. He was unrestrained, not to mention uncharitable, in his personal attacks on those he and his colleagues identified as unworthy spokesmen for the things of God. To my own constant amazement, however, and perhaps to his, we maintained a cordial, if guarded, relationship. Being pastoral neighbors, I guess we had entered into an unspoken agreement to get along as best we could. At least that was my read on it. He would rail against churches across the state that had women deacons but never challenged us for the five who served in our church. He would call down the wrath of God on any church that even thought about ordaining a woman for the ministry but was silent when we ordained Judy Winton. We sat next to each other, he and I, at an associational banquet one night. (I suspected that the seating was arranged by the Director of Missions who had a warped sense of humor anyway.) My table companion and I were both eager to move beyond the awkwardness we felt, and so we tried to make conversation. He led off. Tell me, Brother Guerry, he said, do you spend a lot of time in counseling? Yes, I replied, I consider that a fairly important part of my ministry, a necessary part. How about you? No. No, I dont he said. I dont do counseling. Ive discovered that when youre trying to build a great church you really dont have time to listen to peoples problems. I could not help but be reminded of Bonhoeffers comments on listening: he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too.Anyone who thinks his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God (or for) his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies. (Life Together, p. 98) Ive lost track of that good brother but I imagine that he is still out there somewhere building great churches. And Im fairly confident that he isnt spending a lot of time listening to peoples problems. One cannot read the letters of Paul without being impressed that he took seriously the importance of mutuality within the fellowship if the church. And it is clear that he considered it something that had to be tended and worked at. His appeals were so much a part of his correspondence that it is not necessary to list the proof texts. And, without elaboration, we simply note that the church must never be inattentive to voices of need outside the walls. Our efforts to do mission work must somehow proceed with a willingness not only to speak but to listen. For to listen is to affirm and to affirm is to actualize the gospel message. But we must also listen to ourselves. The church is called to speak and speak we must. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light: and what you hear whispered in the ear, proclaim from the housetops. We have a message to proclaim, good news to share, a story to tell to the nations. But when we speak, what is heard? Any preacher in the room knows well the experience of being credited with having said things we didnt say at all. How is it that a sermon that is so clear on paper and sounds so good when we speak it can be so misheard? Thats not what I said! Okay, but thats not what I meant! The poet Robert Browning wished for the gift to see ourselves as others see us. For preachers in particular and the church in general we might wish to hear ourselves as others hear us. II. The Gift of Language Part of the problem lies in the nature of language itself. We are dependent upon it but it can undo us. The essayist Lewis Thomas reminds us that the gift of language is the single human trait that marks all of us genetically, setting us apart from all the rest of life. Language is the universal and biologically specific activity of human beings. We engage in it communally, compulsively, automatically. We cannot be human without it; if we were to be separated from it our minds would die (The Lives of a Cell: p.105) Language is a good gift of God, a marvelous and liberating feature of his creative work within us. By the magic of language we can be transported to realms of the imagination, lifted high above the ordinary and carried along on the wings of beauty. Language can delight us, energize us, thrill us, encourage us, comfort us, challenge us. Barbara Brown Taylor reflects on this in her book The Preaching Life, which, by the way, I required of students in one of my classes last semester. She writes: A while back I read James Micheners Hawaii, with its harrowing description of a sailing ships repeated failure to navigate the stormy Strait of Magellan. The missionaries on board were lashed to their bunks as the ship heaved back and forth; waves crashed over the deck, washing food supplies overboard and pickling every surface with salt. This went on for weeks, until everyone was sick with scurvy or dying of thirst. Safe in my own chair and two hundred miles from the nearest ocean, I became as seasick as anyone on board. Such is the power of language. But, as with so many other tools at our disposal, language can be engaged for and given over to devious purposes - to intimidate, to injure, to mislead, to deceive, to confuse, to dismiss, to exclude, to oppress, to control. And thats just the short list. We can see it at work in playground bullies and heads of state. Go ahead, make my day! Tough talk intimidates. This is a lesson we teach early: See my finger? See my thumb? See my fist? You better run! Or language may be used to injure. Again, children learn early how this works and that it works. Meanie! Sissy! Scaredy cat! Name-calling that might appear as innocent enough on the playground eventually gives way to racial epithets and character assassination. In some instances the intention may not be so much to injure as to dismiss, to suggest that the object of ridicule is not worthy of serious attention or consideration. I was in seminary during the 1964 presidential campaign. There was a lot of name-calling on both sides but I have never been able to erase from my mind hearing Lyndon Johnson refer to Barry Goldwater as a ranting, raving demagogue bent on destroying the world and himself with it. Language may be engaged in such a way as to obscure, either intentionally or unintentionally. A plumber wrote to the National Bureau of Standards to say that he had found that hydrochloric acid opens plugged pipes quickly. He wanted to know whether it was advisable to use it. A scientist at the Bureau replied as follows: The uncertain reactive processes of hydrochloric acid place pipe in jeopardy when alkalinity is involved. The efficiency of the solution is indisputable, but the corrosive residue is incompatible with metallic permanence. The plumber wrote back, thanking the Bureau for telling him that this method was all right. The scientist was disturbed about the misunderstanding and showed the correspondence to his boss another scientist who immediately wrote the plumber: Hydrochloric acid generates a toxic and noxious residue which will produce submuriate invalidating reactions. Consequently, some alternative procedure is preferable. The plumber wrote back and said he agreed with the Bureau hydrochloric acid works just fine. Greatly disturbed, the two scientists took their problem to the top boss. The next day the plumber received this telegram: Dont use hydrochloric acid. It eats hell out of the pipes. We often resort to euphemisms to avoid offending delicate sensibilities and that is certainly a legitimate use of language. To some degree its the stuff of manners. But it can lead in the direction of the kind of linguistic excesses often tagged by the watchdogs of Doublespeak. The Department of Defense must have written the book on the subject. Official policy there dictates that the preferred terms are servicing the target, not bombing, force packages, not warplanes, hard targets for buildings and soft targets for people. Several years ago a Political Action Committee distributed among its members a booklet entitled Language: A Key Mechanism of Control. It suggested that when speaking of their own party candidates use such words as environment, peace, freedom, fair, flag, we-us-our, family and humane. When speaking of opponents words such as betray, sick, pathetic, lie, liberal, hypocrisy, permissive, and self-serving should be used. In the world of commerce, workers are no longer fired but are reclassified, deselected, outplaced, non-retained, or non-positively terminated. Can we assume, therefore, that the loss of ones job is less bitter because the language is more refined? And there is, in my judgment the most odious and depersonalizing term ever to be given a place in the corporate lexicon: human resources. Wendell Berry, one of my favorite essayists, has a gift for exposing and exploding our pretensions as well as anyone I know. He writes, ironically, that one of the assumptions of our culture is that the sign of exceptionally smart people is that they speak a language that is intelligible only to other people in their field or only to themselves. This is very impressive and is known as professionalism. Every profession has its jargon. My wife, who is a speech pathologist, loses me the moment she begins to talk about discrims, and artics, and modifieds. The use of slang has the same effect. It identifies the members of the group and excludes the uninitiated. But once the slang terms find acceptance among the wider populace they are abandoned by the group in favor of new obscurities. Thats why its so uncool when parents try to use their teenagers slang. So uncool. Take my advice and dont do it. You probably dont do it well and you will only embarrass yourself, not to mention your son or daughter. III. Speaking of Ourselves We use language to establish a sense of who we are or how we want to be regarded. And its not just athletic teams that do this, either to locate themselves high on the scale of perceived ferocity e.g tigers, gamecocks, panthers, hornets. Or to suggest strength and courage and prowess as in the braves, the warriors, the knights. Or were so cute you gotta love us team names the cubs, riverdogs, crawdads. So also, the way we name ourselves as churches or organizations says a lot about what we think of ourselves and how we want others to think of us. There is a certain prestige about belonging to the First Baptist Church or First Methodist Church. And even the designations Baptist and Methodist, though originally given as terms of derision, are monikers that we wear proudly most of the time. There used to be a church in Charleston called the Christian Faith Workers Bible Way Church of Jesus. They covered all the bases. What are we to conclude about a church that bills itself as a bible-believing fellowship? Or the way one Baptist leader described his own congregation as a God-loving church. Are such claims meant to suggest that folks in the church down the street dont believe the Bible? That the folks in the church across town dont love God? Well, something like that I guess. Think for a moment about the CBF name and what sort of image it is intended to project. Cooperative we are people who can get along with anybody. Were not the ones that started the fight. Baptist you want to see what a real Baptist looks like? Thats us! Fellowship together and loving it! Mainstream? Not too conservative, not too liberal, but just right. The Alliance - Allies in the fight for truth, justice and the American way. And then youve got the Baptists Committed of Texas. Baptist weve dealt with, Committed - what a great word and what noble thoughts it inspires. Texas? I dont know how much that does for image building. So whether all the things we try to suggest by the way we name ourselves are justified, still we are not shy about using language specifically designed to impress. We have an idea about how we want to be seen and we work at making it happen. IV. What Are We Saying? But, of course, we are not only seen, we are heard. We have considered that hearing precedes speech and as the church we must listen before we speak. But faithfulness demands that we lift our voices, in the language of Isaiah, that we cry aloud and spare not! When the church finds its voice, what does it say? Or, more importantly, what is heard? When we preach, what do we preach? Well, we preach Jesus. Or we preach the Bible. Yet, I will have to agree with the argument that there is a lot of Bible preaching that isnt gospel preaching. Not much good news about it. In recent years Ive spent a good bit of time among the Disciples of Christ. Actually I have probably preached in as many Disciples churches as I have in Baptist churches. My engagement with these folks brought me to the source of the oft-quoted dictum: Where the Scriptures speak, we speak: where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent. Thomas Campbell a founding father of the Disciples movement said that in a meeting in 1809. One of my Disciples friends tells me that it was Martin Luther who first made that statement. He says also that it was unfortunate that Campbell saw fit to quote Luther or that the quote wasnt quickly forgotten. He notes that a good many curious practices stem from this remark. For example, it apparently confirms the Churches of Christ, also descendants of Campbell, in their refusal to use instrumental music in their services of worship. Claims to just preach the Bible rest on the assumption that when the Bible speaks we are clear on what it says and what it means. Warren Carr used to say that the Bible doesnt always say what it means but it always means what it means. And this brings us close to the root of much of the ongoing dispute about biblical interpretation. Students who come into my Bible survey classes their first semester in college often bring with them certain wide-eyed assumptions about the Bible. Not placing a high value on shock tactics, I do my best to deal gently with them. We talk about the nature of language and the necessity of considering the contexts in which language is set. I tell them about going to buy some shampoo and finding there on the shelf two different brands sitting side by side. I pick up the one and read: For Healthy Full-Bodied Hair. I consider this for a moment. Then I reach for the other bottle and read: For Dull Limp Hair. No, I say to myself as I return the second bottle to the shelf. No, thats not the kind of hair I want. Id better buy the other. And the students laugh at this, of course. They know that one the bottle must be read if you want this kind of hair while the other means if you have this kind of hair. I also take the students to 1 Corinthians 7:39 which, in the Greek, reads, in part: If the husband falls asleep, the wife is free to marry anyone she wishes So what husband in his right mind is going to nod off in his La-Z-Boy in front of the television? He wakes up, his wife is gone, theres a note: You fell asleep. Ive gone to marry Fred. Oh, Dr. Guerry, dont be silly, my students say, It means if the husband dies. Of course thats what it means. Anybody can see that. Well, maybe. But is it always so clear? If it were, I suspect that the church, to whom it is given to raise a gospel voice before the world, would be sending far fewer mixed signals. When I was a young pastor in Virginia back in the 70s, I once prepared what I thought at the time was as outstanding a Mothers Day sermon as had ever been preached. I listed the title in the worship bulletin as Youve Come a Long Way, Baby, after the popular Virginia Slims commercial of those days. But alas! For all that might have been good about the sermon, noting the gospels affirmation of women and celebrating the advances made in the status of women, for all that might have been good about it, it was lost on some of my parishioners. I learned after the service that one dear lady, a very distinguished matriarch of the church, had taken offense. It was reported to me that she came into the sanctuary, settled into her usual place in the pew and opened her bulletin to prepare for worship. Then her eyes fell on the sermon title. According to my informant, she closed her bulletin, picked up her Bible and her purse, in that order, and left. Now Ive always been fairly thin skinned and, I will tell you, I was brought low by that news. I wasnt sure how I was going to deal with it. I only knew that there was trouble ahead. And if Miss Annie had been bothered by it, how many others were there who did not register their disapproval, at least not to me? My attempt to be relevant and clever had succeeded only in my being trite and offensive. In a funk I drove to the hospital that afternoon to make some calls. On the way I turned on the radio thinking, perhaps, to take my mind off my blunder. A familiar voice, that of another local pastor, greeted my ears. I didnt know this man well but I knew that he served an independent Baptist congregation just a couple of miles from my church. It was their practice to record the Sunday morning service and broadcast it on the local station later that same afternoon. So I found myself listening to another Mothers Day sermon. I dont remember everything he said, of course, but Ill never forget this: Women should never work outside the home. But if they do, they should never have authority over a man. Whats more, he continued, no woman should ever have been given the right to vote. Well, by now Im feeling myself on the very edge of conviction. Surely the Lord is in this place, I am thinking to myself. And then Brother Ralph rose to the best and highest within him as he spoke directly to the husbands of the congregation: Men, you are the head of the house. The Bible tells us that a wife is to do whatever her husband tells her to do. And if your wife refuses to obey you, you need to take her home and beat the snot out of her." (This is the good news of the gospel. Thanks be to God.) I turned the radio off and I felt some better after that, knowing that I was not the only idiot preacher in the county. But I will give him this much - his trumpet gave no uncertain sound though I think a little ambiguity would have been nice. Incidentally, I have prayed often that God will forgive me for my own homiletic transgressions and excesses and I trust him to do that. The farther I go, the more strongly I believe in a sacramental view of preaching. VI. How Are We Saying It? This past semester, just finished, I taught a course in Galatians. I decided to have the students prepare and submit a sermon manuscript on an assigned text. There were a couple of pastors in the class but most of these kids had never had an assignment like this. So they approached the task unequipped with a knowledge of homiletics. The thing that seemed to surprise them most about the assignment was the idea of actually writing out a sermon as though this were unheard of. I suspect that these students sermons were, for the most part, modeled after the preachers they have listened to all their lives. At any rate, the most remarkable feature of most of these efforts was the sheer absence of ambiguity. The language of their sermons was filled with the blind confidence that what they were saying was absolute and indisputable. Paul Tillich observed in one of his sermons that answers that carry the weight of undisputed authority silence the passion for truth. Still, how often have we heard this defense of dogmatism: If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle? True. But a careful reading of that passage in its context will recognize it not as a caveat against theological or homiletical ambiguity but against conflict in the church over spiritual gifts. Now, if somehow all this is coming across as an apologetic for obscurity in the message we are privileged to proclaim from the housetops, hear me out. Emily Dickinson has this line in one of her poems: Tell all the truth but tell it slant Success in circuit lies (Complete Poems, No. 1129) Many of the poets concurred. A line from Shakespeare: by indirection find directions out. This, after all, is what poetry does. Tillich, who had a keen eye for both poetry and preaching, argued that the gospel cannot be simply thrown at people like a stone. If we should take this counsel to the housetop, does it mean, then, that we strive to obscure and becloud what is clear and obvious? It doesnt mean that at all. But preaching the gospel demands attention not only to what is said, but how it is said. Life is filled with ambiguities and uncertainties. Our minds are uncomfortable with paradox. People yearn for absolutes and will grasp at them wherever they have found them. Thats why clichs have such an appeal. In the world of politics and commerce, they meet us as slogans, urging us to join, to support, to fight, to vote, to buy. In religious experience they are taken up because they are so accessible, so manageable and so quotable. They ring with certainty and finality: God said it, I believe it, that settles it! But for all its apparent wisdom the clich is usually nothing more than a pale substitute for genuine piety and mature thought. Dispensed with a tone of authority, they are held above examination and are treated as canon law or Holy Writ. I once had a Sunday school teacher who dispensed them to us as though they had been thundered from Sinai itself. One of his best, I remember, was this: The Lord never put a praying knee and a dancing foot on the same leg. And every generation sees the rise of new ones: God is awesome! What Would Jesus Do? The Prayer of Jabez A friend remarked recently that everywhere you turn there is talk radio. What we really need, he said, is more think radio. Hes right, of course. But that can be applied to the church as well. It is often said of preachers that generally speaking, we are generally speaking. And, truth be told, a lot of preachers take on the persona of a Dick Vitale when the step into the pulpit, saying more than they know, saying it too loud, too long, and too often, and when all is said and done, having said little. The best book I have ever read on preaching, hands down, is a little volume by the late R.E.C. Browne called The Ministry of the Word. Sadly, its out of print. But and this to the preachers among us if you ever come across a copy, go quickly, sell all that you have, then run, dont walk, and buy it. Browne argues effectively for what he calls the essential untidiness of preaching. As preachers, he writes, we face the temptation of seeing ourselves as gods, knowing all and explaining all. That is, he says, we are tempted to make our minds tidy. But a minister of the Word, he continues, is not one who has all the answers he is one who has the way of answering that leads to further questions. Have you ever noticed how frequently Jesus left people with questions? This, too, is the way of the rabbis. A man complained to his rabbi: Why is it that you rabbis always answer a question with a question?Says the rabbi: So, whats wrong with a question? My man Browne argued for leaving room for the questions. Its not the simple sermons for simple people that make folks attentive to the gospel message. Its not to tell a person what to see, but to sharpen her perception. Its not to define the love of God but to describe it. In this insistence, Browne stands in the company of one of the brightest lights of preaching in the 19th century, Frederick Robertson of Brighton, England. A shy man, he was, nevertheless, a compelling preacher. His sermons can still be read today to great benefit. His perspective on effective preaching was that it is best done suggestively, not exhaustively. Now if all this preacher talk is causing some of you to feel left out, I apologize. It is not intended. For the whisper in the ear comes not just to pastors. The housetop from which the message is proclaimed is not a clergy only zone. And even when the words are formed in and sounded out of the mouth of the preacher, it is the church that proclaims. Preach suggestively, counseled Robertson, not exhaustively. This was his way, I think, of raising a word of caution against reducing the substance of the gospel to mere platitudes. It was a call to an awareness that the gospel meets us with paradoxes and ambiguities that draw us this way and that, keeping us alert to dynamic of the Spirit. When John Bunyan had completed what was to become his classic work, The Pilgrims Progress, he wrote a preface in the form of an apologia. Either anticipating criticism or having received it from advance readers, he felt it necessary to defend his method. Rejecting the prosaic style of narrative, he opted for the more oblique approach of allegory. His critics (the literalists of his day) argued that made-up stories werent solid. Bunyan answered them: Be not too forward therefore to conclude That I (lack) solidness, that I am rude; All things solid in show not solid be; All things in parables despise not we Lest things most hurtful lightly we receive And things that good are, of our souls bereave. (The Pilgrims Progress, p. 34) And noting that the Bible itself was sometimes given to less than straightforward declarations, but made frequent use of parables, metaphors and figures, Bunyan argued that even through those dark devices the light of truth shown brightly. In other words, he seemed to be saying, if its good enough for Jesus, its good enough for me. Bunyans recognition is a critical one for the church. It speaks to our efforts to be faithful in the proclamation of the gospel. Moses wasnt the only one who grew nervous at the prospect of having to declare the divine message. We share his anxiety. We too want for eloquence in the face of so daunting a task. There was a student in my classes at CSU several years ago, a young black man who was preparing for the ministry. He was eager to preach and, in fact, had a natural gift for it. Ben told me one day after class that on the following Sunday he was going to preach his first sermon. Naturally, he was nervous. His anxiety was heightened by the fact that he would be preaching in his home church before his parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, friends, Sunday school teachers and so on. (Ben knew that passage about a prophet not getting very far with his own people.) Still, that wasn't the worst of it. No, Ben would be preaching before his own pastor, a seasoned preacher who had served that church for more than thirty years. The way Ben described him, I imagined that if the Lord God should ever retire, this man would probably move on up to take His place. When Ben showed up in class the day after his pulpit debut, I asked him how it went. "Well, things started off pretty good." he said, "My pastor was sitting right there behind me. When I made my first point I heard him say, "Mm hmm!" When I made my second point I heard him say, "Uh huh!" But when I made my third point and heard him say "Uh oh!" I knew I was in trouble." Now young Ben learned something about communication that day. There are times when ordinary language gives way to other forms of expression - a sigh, a sob, a moan, a groan, a whine, a wail ... or maybe just a well-placed "uh oh." But the message was clear enough. This where we find ourselves in our efforts to be faithful as gospel witnesses. We struggle, we grope for the words. We pray for the liberation of our tongues. And still we discover as faithful witnesses have always known, words are insufficient to express the inexpressible or describe the indescribable. Again, I am not contending here for more timidity about sharing the gospel. God hasnt given us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:7) But it seems to me that there is a place for holy restraint, a reverent reluctance to say more than we know and a hesitancy to say it with no sense of our own limited understanding. We, that is the church, are not experts or authorities in the things of God; we are witnesses. We are as one hungry person to another telling where there is bread. We are the thirsty among the thirsty pointing the way to refreshing fountain. Like the man healed of his blindness, we may not be able to respond to all that is asked of us about the wonders of grace. Sometimes, however, in a need to validate ourselves as those most possessed of a pious wisdom we give quick and easy answers filled with distortions and half-truths. The unfortunate compulsion among Christians and especially among preachers is to settle every ambiguity, resolve every paradox, and answer every question. I heard Carlyle Marney say once in the unmoderated manner of his speaking for which he was so well-known, that one of the greatest moments of liberation came for him the day he realized that as a preacher I dont always have to be so damned right! A lot of us arent there yet. Perhaps we never will be. I was the guest preacher once at a church near Walterboro. Our three-year-old son Ben was in the church nursery. There was a speaker on the wall that relayed the service from the sanctuary. One of the workers told me later that as I began to speak, Ben stopped his playing, looked up, pointed at the speaker, and announced, Thats my daddy trying to preach. Ouch! But isnt that where we all are? Someone has said that the task of preaching ought to be approached as trying to say the best things in the best way. Thats the challenge for the church, not just for the preacher. We have the treasure in earthen vessels. The things that we are given to say we dont always say well. When we speak the Word, we dont always speak the true word. Like Brother Ralph there in Virginia and like the one who stands before you this morning, we sometimes invoke the name of the Lord in vain. But we keep on, dont we? We can no more ignore the whisper in our ears than Jeremiah could ignore the fire in his bones. 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