May 18, 2008
“Opportunities to Speak Up”
Luke 21:7-19
In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Cat’s Cradle, there’s a conversation between two members of an office staff that goes like this:
“Did you ever talk to Dr. Hoenikker?” I asked Miss Faust.
“Oh, certainly,” Miss Faust replied, “I talked to him a lot.”
“Do any conversations stick in your mind?” I inquired further.
“There was one,” Miss Faust recalled. “He bet I couldn’t tell him anything that was absolutely true. So I said to him, ‘God is love.’”
“And what did he say?” I wanted to know.
“He said, ‘What is God? What is love?’ But God really is love,” Miss Faust insisted, “no matter what Dr. Hoenikker said.”
Amen. Let’s hear it for Miss Faust, and may her tribe increase! So many believers today are reluctant to talk about God with other persons, to speak about what matters most to them, to share their deeper feelings, to declare their certainties about the Christian faith and the discoveries they’ve made along their spiritual journey, to declare what it means to know Jesus as Lord and Savior and to invite others to claim that same relationship.
People who study human behavior tell us that most of our conversation consists of what they call “middle language,” talk disconnected from our emotions and real concerns. That’s why we become involved in safe and noncommittal dialogue and prefer to discuss ideas, but not how we feel about those ideas. So we talk about the weather, trivia at work, neighborhood gossip, our current diet, taxes, the bargains we’ve found, Dear Abby’s column, why our sports team lost the big game last week, joke about our golf score, compare the performances of automobiles, review the last movie we’ve seen, discuss our allergies and where we’ll spend our vacation. Research and countless surveys find that such concerns dominate our conversations and only rarely do we speak of holy things.
Why? Do we think our faith and our deepest spiritual yearnings are too personal and private to share? Emily Dickinson thought so and wrote, “People talk of hallowed things aloud and embarrass my dog.” On the other hand, is it because we’ve been troubled by people who truly believed what they were saying simply because they talked too much and too long about their religion?
Or is it because we’re reluctant to share our beliefs, our passions, ecstasies and miracles, our answers to prayer, our joy in the Lord because other people may consider us a fanatic or weird, denounce and ridicule us, judge us as hypocrites and self-righteous, and reject us? Or will sharing our love for Jesus and our life in God lead others to see us as neurotic, weak, dependent and phony? One educator tells how it was for him:
I was now a Christian, I who had always regarded Christians with pitying disdain, must now confess to be one. I did so with a curious mixture of emotions. Part of it was my not wanting my sophisticated friends and fellow [scholars] to know. I wanted to conceal my faith, to tell no one, and yet, I knew if I were to take a stand for Christ, I had to tell others.
It’s strange, isn’t it, that such reservations and hesitations don’t prevent us from giving testimony about other parts of our life. I mean testimony in every other area of life is enthusiastic—just watch the commercials on TV where everyone from film stars to gifted athletes are eager to tell us how great this kind of deodorant or that automobile is, and how this kind of margarine or that kind of soap will make life more exciting and us more appealing. Or consider the interview format programs on TV that showcase people testifying about their lifestyles, their past exploits and their opinions on just about every kind of subject.
Testimony is not out of style today! Anyone who falls in love wants to testify to the whole world how wonderful life has become. You can’t keep a proud parent or new grandparents quiet—they entertain you with stories about the baby, show you pictures and will go on for as long as you’ll listen. You don’t have to coax good news out of the person who comes from the doctor who has told her that the tests are negative, that there is no malignancy. You don’t have to wait long for the research scientist to announce, “It’s working! We’ve found a cure!” Such testimony is so explosive that it’s spontaneous, without studied response or concern about proper vocabulary or effect. But why do we remain so hesitant when it comes to giving testimony about God, about our life in Christ?
Certainly, such testimony is called for by Jesus and was encouraged in the early church, despite the pagan and often hostile environment in which the witness occurred. Those first believers were to confess with their lips that Jesus is Lord and to tell the story of Jesus, repeat his teachings and by their lives witness to the redeeming power of his resurrection. As one New Testament scholar observed, “The gospel began in friendship; one loving heart setting another on fire.” It was that simple and yet that profound. In this morning’s reading from the Bible, Jesus, in talking to his disciples about the end time with its tribulation and persecution, told them, “This (time) will give you an opportunity to testify (to speak up). So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom …”
No, testimony
is not out of style, no matter how it
may be ridiculed. Speaking of sacred
things and sharing what Jesus means to us, and how God’s love is our foundation
and hope, are all we are asked to do. I’m not talking about the somewhat
overzealous person who seems to bubble over with an enthusiasm for living
because of his or her encounter with Christ.
I don’t have a problem with that.
There’s no way that anyone is going to keep this person from sharing the
Christian faith with others, and rightly so.
One such man, who had recently become a Christian, was at a movie
theater, and was eagerly looking for an opportunity to tell someone, anyone,
about the new life he had discovered in Christ.
Finally, when someone came up to where he was seated and asked, “Pardon
me, but is the seat next to you saved?” the man quickly replied, “No, are you?”
We do not want to force our faith on people. We cannot give faith to anyone else, for faith is a gift of God. All we are asked to do is share our own faith story and thereby encourage others to claim God’s gift of faith for themselves, to confirm and strengthen them in what they’ve already been given by God. This we are to do in love and with profound respect for the integrity of those with whom we speak. We do so humbly, without a trace of self-righteousness or any sense of spiritual superiority. D.T. Niles was fond of saying, “I’m only a beggar telling other beggars where there’s bread.” This because what we tell is nothing we’ve done or accomplished ourselves, but the wonder of God’s amazing and empowering grace that saved us, centers us, challenges our best and assures us of eternal life. Some of the most moving testimony that has blessed me has come from ordinary persons in commonplace ways, but with such spiritual depth and certainty that I yearned for the glory that was in them. Even now as I think of such persons, I cannot think of them long until I’m thinking of God and Jesus.
In a book by Max Lucado, who’s a widely read Christian writer today, I share this passage:
There you were leaning against
your pickup in the
In the middle of such a game you approached us . . . You were nervous. You shifted your weight from one leg to the other as you began to speak. “Uh, fellows,” you started. We turned and looked up at you. “I, uh, I just wanted, uh, to invite . . .” You were out of your comfort zone. I had no idea what you might say, but I knew that it had nothing to do with work. “I just wanted to tell you that, uh, our church is having a service tonight and, uh . . .” What? I couldn’t believe it. He’s talking church? Out here? With us? “I just wanted to invite any of you to come along.” Silence. Screaming silence. The same silence you’d hear if a nun asked a madam if she could use the brothel for mass. The same silence you’d hear if an IRS agent invited the mafia to a seminar on tax integrity. Several guys stared into the dirt. A few shot glances at others. Snickers arose just inches from the surface. “Well, that’s it,” you said, “uh, if any of you want to go . . . uh, just let me know.” After you turned and left, we laughed. We called you “preacher” and “the pope.” We poked fun at each other, daring one another to go. You became the butt of that day’s jokes.
I’m sure you went back to your truck knowing the only good you’d done was to make a fool out of yourself. But if that’s what you thought, if that’s what you thought, you were wrong.
Max Lucado cites that incident on the oil fields of
Look at our world today. Thousands upon thousands of children are orphaned by HIV-AIDS. In our world, more than 3 billion (that’s with a “b”), 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day while governments spend obscene amounts of money on budgets of death and destruction. Violence prowls the land of whatever country is your home. Our planet earth is warming much more quickly than it appeared just a decade ago, and toward an end we can’t quite imagine yet.
People in our beloved churches are anxious and that anxiety is often expressed in the language of fear. Some fear that the church is slowly dying or worse, becoming irrelevant. Others fear a sinking economy and that the church is going to run out of money. Some fear that the church won’t grapple with the big social issues of our day. Others fear the church will grapple with the big social issues of our day.
The story is told about a man whose wife was ill so he decided that he would do the cooking. He did quite well at it until one day he became very ambitious. He thought he would bake some bread. As often happens the first time around, he misread the recipe and put two pounds of yeast into the dough. After faithfully following all the other instructions, he put the dough near the heat and waited. Some time later his wife called down from her upstairs bedroom, “Have you put the dough in the oven yet, dear?” Frantically, the husband replied, “Put it in the oven? I can’t even keep it in the kitchen!”
That’s the good news: the leaven of the Word of God, the name of Jesus! You “can’t even keep it in the kitchen.” You can’t even keep it in the church. It just and must expands into the world. You and I have some wonderful opportunities to speak up about our faith. Your words are more effective than mine because people look at me and others who have been ordained in ministry as professionals. But you’re not getting paid to share your faith. No, testimony is not out of style in a world where people are dying to have someone care, to have someone notice them, where people have been searching a lifetime for certainties and loyalties that will last past the next spasm of pleasure. Testimony is not out of style where people are lonely and don’t know why, who have everything while possessing nothing, people who have given up hope, people who want to die and others who are afraid to die, people who are not happy because they feel they don’t deserve to be happy or must expect the worst in order to survive the next crisis.
“Uh, we’re having a service tonight at our church. And, uh, if any of you would like to go, uh, just let me know.”
That may be all we say, but it may become the threshold by which God touches our friend or a stranger and changes life for them and gives them tomorrow. So be it! Let us pray:
Loving and gracious God, you are the one to whom Jesus prayed when his loneliness was unbearable or the demands of life were beyond his strength. In following him, teach us to pray for those who encounter one tragic circumstance after another and ask us, “Why?” Teach us to pray for those who have lost too many struggles and want to regain their will to fight on and ask us, “How?” Teach us to pray for those who ask us nothing and seem lost in their addiction or self-absorption. Teach us to pray for those who are confined to beds or attached to machines or live with constant pain. Teach us to pray for those who walk the streets alone, not knowing where they are going or why. Finally, teach us to pray for ourselves, that we may learn to love more, listen more, and be bold in the sharing of our faith. Amen.