Gospel: Mark 27-37 1st Reading: Isaiah 50:4-9a 2nd
Reading: James 3:1-12
Last week on our
camping trip, we woke in the middle of the night to pouring down
rain. We were prepared with our tarp over our tent and our food and
utensils packed safely in the car. In the morning it was still
pouring, so we went out to breakfast and then to the 70 millimeter
film The Sound of Music. I've seen the Sound of Music 8 or 10 times
and I know most of the words to the songs. But it really wasn't
until I saw it this time that I connected with a deeper message of
the film. You probably all noticed this a long time ago, but
sometimes it takes me a while to catch on. What I noticed was pull
in Baron VonTrapp between the values of this world as represented by
Baroness Schrader and higher godly values as represented by Maria.
The Baroness was so attractive and rich. She is who everyone would
expect he would marry. She was powerful. But she was cold and
unloving. She was planning to send the kids to boarding school.
Maria, on the other
hand, represented God's values. She had learned as a postulant in
the Abbey to “Find out the will of God, and to do it.” She was
poor in money and fashion, but she was focused on God's will and
values, and had a lot of love to give and she told the truth, even
when the truth was hard to hear. She told the Baron about his own
children and reunited the family into a good balance where they began
to enjoy each other's company and to communicate. She would not have
been the expected choice for him to marry.
This struggle of
the Baron's was one he was fighting in his political life, as well.
Should he do what everyone else expected him to and follow the
violent values of this world or should he follow his own heart and
his own values? In the end we can see that if he had married the
Baroness, perhaps he would have turned his back on his own values and
become an officer in the Nazi military, but because he married Maria,
because she was always strong and outspoken and true to her values,
he knew he had to be as well, so, of course, they fled Austria.
Maria was not known
for holding her tongue, if you remember the film. She often got
herself in trouble because she was so outspoken. Our readings for
today, are all about the power of speech and the words we say, but
also the difficulty in controlling our words.
Speech is powerful.
Words can hurt us so deeply—scar us for life. Things our parents
said to us or that children said to us when we were young still echo
through our minds. We remember the sting of criticism or the elation
when we were praised. One can “sustain the weary with a word,”
according to Isaiah. But also a rumor can spread like a forest fire,
according to James, and cause mass destruction. Worse than anything
that has ever been said to me, is the memory of things I have said
without thinking. I once told another pastor who had just started to
grow a beard that he looked like a homeless person. He didn't choose
to take this with humor. I once asked a person how far along she
was, when she wasn't pregnant. But the same thing has happened to
me, and I was standing in a donut shop, so I have to forgive myself
this human mistake, and it was a long time before we got donut again!
I am proud to be an
introvert. I process my thoughts internally in quiet. I enjoy being
by myself and having time to think things through. I get in less
trouble that way. When I was a kid, I was so introverted, when I had
to make a phone call, I would write down everything I needed to say,
and really psych myself up, because it was so overwhelming to me. I
still sometimes write out whole scripts of what I need to say when I
am stressed, so that I feel prepared and don't just shut down.
Although I am an introvert, I have entered a profession where I have
to do quite a bit of public speaking and be social. Maybe that is
part of what attracted me to being a pastor, is that I have to force
myself to interact more and I do get a lot out of meeting people and
hearing their stories. Of course, introversion and extroversion are
more of a continuum than all or nothing. As the pastor, with a
seminary education, with a visible leadership role, people sometimes
look to me to tell them what to think or say or believe. I might
have some context for some reading from the Bible that might be
helpful, and I try to offer that, when I do. But for me, I see my
role more as helping people learn to express what they think and
believe and to discuss that with each other. As I look around a
room, say at Bible Study or a meeting, I am figuring out who has more
power in the room and who has less, who has spoken the most and who
the least, who might have a story to share that we haven't heard yet.
Usually, I am one of the most powerful in the room, so it isn't time
for me to share more. I get tired of my own stories, I want to hear
from someone else. As a more powerful member of the group, it is a
better use of my power to keep quiet and let other people talk.
In the Sound of
Music, Maria ends up talking a lot and Baron Von Trapp very little.
My guess is that this is a reversal of what the Baron was expecting.
He was used to giving orders and being in charge. He was the most
powerful. But Maria had a rudder that was directing her. She was
heading toward stormy seas by butting heads with the Baron, but she
had values that needed to be upheld and she knew they would lead to a
happier household if she held firm. She went through that storm and
came out the other side. She said what needed to be said, the truth,
and she let the family decide how that would affect them. The Baron
could have chosen to stay the course, but he let her affect him. The
more powerful one stayed silent as the less powerful one spoke on
behalf of those who had no voice at all, the children. And because
of that, a household covered in a shroud of grief, emerged with new
life and new relationships and new communication in which love was
shared and life flourished.
How can we tame our
tongues? If we have a truth that needs to be told, how can we tame
our tongues to tell it and how can we tell it, so it can be heard?
If we talk too much, how do we know and how can we shut our mouths?
If we are introverts, how can we get ourselves to share a little bit
more? If we like to gossip, how do we keep that in check? If we
tear down other people with our words but worship God, how do we get
our mouths and hearts to be consistent? How can we waken our ears to
be better listeners?
Maybe the
confession of who Jesus is will remind us of who we are. Maybe when
we are more grounded in who we are as children of God and know that
we are safe within that framework, we don't have to be afraid, which
is where a lot of forest fires of gossip and misunderstanding start.
Maybe if we understand communication better, we can use it better to
listen to those who never get a chance to share their story. Maybe
practice makes perfect and that's why we keep on coming here to
practice each week. Sometimes we offend each other. Sometimes we
have completely different styles. Sometimes we keep the
communication superficial. Sometimes we just can't seem to work
together. But we keep working on it. And we keep practicing
listening. We hold periods of silence within worship to provide time
to listen. We listen to different pieces of music by the choir or
Karen. We listen to each other's prayers. We try to respond in
helpful ways. And we try to tame our tongues to match what God has
placed in our hearts, so that what we say matches our values, and use
our power to give voice to the voiceless.
Peter is walking
with Jesus in Caesarea. There are some ominous clouds on the
horizon. The authorities are trying to trap Jesus. He's already in
a lot of trouble. But Peter is starting to get it. Jesus is the
Messiah. Peter finally says it. He looks at Jesus to see if it is
true. It is. Peter has confessed what he knew in his heart. He
stands in the presence of God. But Peter doesn't understand about
God's values. God is not going to try convincing everyone with words
or violent strength or even self-defense of who God is. God is
showing in vulnerability who God is. God's values are in sharing
power and love and life, not destruction and weapons and force.
Those must be our values, too. When we are powerful, we must share
that power by listening. When we are less powerful, we must share
our stories of being persecuted and suffering, not to whine, but so
that the world knows we are all out of synch with God's values and
the world can change for the good of everyone.
When I was in
Nicaragua, I remember one Sunday School lesson with the kids, they
were asked, “What is prayer?” And these elementary school kids
answered, quite profoundly, “Communication with God.” I don't
know that I could have summed it up so simply. To pray is to
communicate with God, both talking and listening. When we
communicate with each other, we know that God is with us, listening.
Our communication with one another might be characterized as prayer,
especially when we share something deep and profound and real. Some
have argued that the Earth is God manifesting God's self to us in all
God's complexity. And some have said that Earth is now trying to
communicate something urgent to us. That is, that Earth is ill and
her illness is caused by human action. There are things we can do to
provide healing, not only for Earth and the creatures that are dying
off, but for human kind, the Earth creature that God made on the 6th
day that suffers greatly because of the ill health of our home
planet. Perhaps the cry and groan of the earth is a kind a prayer, a
communication with God, asking for our most deep listening yet, to
hard truths about death and resurrection, about giving something up
for the sake of the healing and thriving of all life on Earth. Jesus
is the Messiah, the anointed, the powerful one sharing power with us
and showing us how to share power with others so that all might
thrive, teaching us to bite our tongues so that others can tell their
stories and remake ourselves and this world more in line with God's
values of life and love for all.
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