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The Rev. J. Edwin
Bacon, Jr.,
In my own journey, I have often struggled with both finding my voice and speaking my mind even though my voice was shaking. What I have discovered is that every time I have not spoken what is on my heart, it is because I have been afraid, afraid of disapproval, of others being exasperated with me, of others’ judgment, of marginalization, of being outcast. I believe with all my heart that there is an evil spirit in the world and that that spirit’s name is fear. Anxiety and fear lead to all sorts of destruction. Interestingly enough, the great German pastor, Martin Niemoller, came home from a meeting one day with Adolf Hitler.
His wife asked him how it went, and Pastor Niemoller said to his wife, “Herr Hitler is a very scared man.” You see, the evil spirit of anxiety can lead to much destruction, including the destruction of our own voices. The spirit of anxiety can force us to want all the people around us to be like us. The spirit of anxiety can lead us to be afraid of difference. It is easy to find your voice when everyone around you agrees with you. The tough part of life is speaking your mind when others disagree with you. The interesting challenge of being in a place like All Saints that insists on heterogeneity not homogeneity is that it is such a powerful opportunity to exercise finding your voice and speaking it – even when it is shaking. Speaking your mind even when your voice is shaking is so important in our lives and ministries in the world where church is supposed to train us to live – in the world – not in a little, homogeneous ghetto.
I was helped along my journey by being in a
small- group training program right after my ordination to the priesthood.
The wonderful facilitator we had would open a group meeting by saying,
“Now the person whose heart is beating fast is the person the Holy Spirit
has chosen to speak first.” That was an important learning for me in
beginning to hear and respect the Holy Spirit, speaking through my
un-still, beating heart, as well as through other people – and that is
why, I think, there is a premium placed in this morning’s lessons not only
on speaking but on hearing, as well. When we take this morning’s gospel to
the symbolic level, the spirit of fear kept this youth from both speaking
and listening. Both speaking and listening are central to this morning’s reading from Isaiah. The prophet emphasizes how the Messianic servant practices the holy discipline of listening. “The Lord God had given me the tongue of a teacher that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word – morning by morning, God wakens me, wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious; I did not turn backward.” Isaiah 50:4-5 Last Tuesday and Wednesday there were more suicide bombings in the Holy Land. Dr. David Applebaum, who is a rabbi and a physician, had been in the U.S., giving a lecture about how hospital emergency rooms there deal with the catastrophes they face so frequently. He came home on Wednesday to Jerusalem and in preparation for his daughter’s wedding the next day, he took her, his firstborn, out to a very popular café, the Hillel Café, to tell her what he believed about marriage and how much he loved her. A suicide bomber killed them while they were drinking coffee together. And so, on the next night, instead of her wedding, there was a funeral for father and daughter. I received an e- mail from Yitzhak Frankenthal, who is a friend of this parish, who lives in Jerusalem, whose son, Arik, at age 18, a member of the Israeli Defense Force, was killed by a suicide bomb. He sold his business and said, “The reason my son is dead is because I haven’t done enough to create peace and if there had been peace, my son would be alive.” Yitzhak sent me a reflection on the Hillel Café bombing. He wrote, “I think of all the folly of the politicians who are leading us from one catastrophe to the next and I think about how the people keep silent. I know the painful truth. The body count will continue because our political leaders are petty, little people, so full of themselves that they are clueless about conflict resolution. They slay Palestinians and expect them to exercise restraint. These wise men believe that the occupation can continue – these glorious generals have, for three years now, been letting the IDF win, as the slogan goes. They may be seasoned soldiers,” Yitzhak wrote, “but they are absolutely ignorant about what makes for peace. They believe that by using terror to counter terror they can give us security. They believe that they can devastate the infrastructure of Palestinian leadership and government and at the same time, stop militias from wreaking chaos. They have, for two years now, been pronouncing Arafat “irrelevant,” but what does that make of former Defense Minister, Ben- Eliezer or former Prime Minister Barak or the incumbent, Ariel Sharon, or are they any more relevant than he?”
“How long will it take us to wake up from this ongoing folly – how many more body bags will it take? Have we forgotten what is central to Judaism, ‘Shema –Israel? Hear, O Israel, we pray.’ But Israel is not listening.” The gospel says that after the healing of the boy and when Jesus had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we cast out that spirit?” And Jesus said to them, “This kind can come out only through prayer.” To the degree that we want to foster community and difference at All Saints Church and to the degree that we want to foster a community where people can both speak and hear we must be people of prayer. Understanding that prayer is not about a vending-machine transaction where you go up and you put in your request and then you press the button for what you want and then you put your hand in the receptacle and try to pull that out, but rather prayer is about listening, listening to God and what God wants us to do. Last Sunday, I worshipped in a little church overlooking Puget Sound. When I hear last Sunday’s passage from Isaiah read, I had a wonderful and mystical experience. It was as if God’s hands had come up under my heart and were lifting up my heart. Immediately I felt like the core of my entire being relaxing into the hands of God. I felt I no longer had to be responsible for lifting up my own heart and keeping it lifted. I really felt like love was lifting me. When we begin the Eucharist, we say, “Lift up your hearts.” I had this feeling of God’s hands of love lifting up my heart and I relaxed into that love. That reading last Sunday said, “Say to those with a fearful heart: O be strong, do not fear; your God will come, God will come to save you, then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy.”
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