He
said to me, O mortal, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll,
and go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he
gave me the scroll to eat. He said to me, Mortal, eat this scroll
that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it; and in
my mouth it was as sweet as honey. He said to me: Mortal, go to the
house of Israel and speak my very words to them.
(Ezekiel
3:1-4)
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= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
It's
not a biblical proverb, but it is a very old proverb: “silence is
golden.” Apparently this proverb may go back to the time of ancient
Egypt. Perhaps Pharaoh, dealing with the incessant demand of Moses to
“let the people go,” looked at him and said, “Moses, silence is
golden,” or whatever the ancient Egyptian version of the proverb
was, in an attempt to shut him up. In English, the words “silence
is golden” first appeared in a writing by the poet Thomas Carlyle.
He actually translated the phrase from a work in German called Sartor
Resartus in 1831. In that
work, the words are put on the lips of a character who speaks at
great length about the virtues of staying silent:
Silence
is the element in which great things fashion themselves together;
that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the
daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. ... Speech is
too often ... the art ... of quite stifling and suspending Thought,
so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the
greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: Sprecfien ist silbern,
Schweigen ist golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I
might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity."
Silence
does have its virtues. Of that I have no doubt. Silence is sometimes
– and perhaps even most often – how we encounter God most
powerfully. But silence can also be a way of avoiding tough issues;
of staying away from those things that make us squirm. Because of the
M&S Service two weeks ago and last Sunday's Father's Day service
led by the Men's Group, this is the first Sunday that I've preached
since the horrible mass shooting in Orlando, Florida. On the morning
that it happened, I had only heard that there had been a shooting in
Orlando, and without any of the details I'm sorry to say that my
first response was “another one” - a common reaction I admit to
the regular cycle of mass shootings in the United States. At church
that morning, Ruth Webster offered a prayer for the victims but it
wasn't until I got home later in the day that I discovered the
details of what had happened. And I wondered – what would I have
done or said in church if I had known about it and been leading the
service? Probably, I suspect, exactly what Ruth did so well: remember
the victims in our prayers and then move on. After all, Orlando is a
long way away, and this is Canada – such things don't happen here.
But it kept pecking away at me. We should say something. This needs
to be addressed in some way. This needs to be spoken about. And I was
especially taken with the words of Katherine Clark, a member of the
United States House of Representatives from Massachussetts, who
refused to take part in a moment of silence on the House floor, and
explained her decision this way: “a moment of silence is an empty
gesture that accomplishes nothing.” She's right. And staying silent
accomplishes even less, perhaps – or may even add to the problem by
giving the impression that no one cares. In this case, silence isn't
golden. We have to have something to say. The church has to have
something to say. The people of God have to have something to say. If
we can’t speak out against one of the most horrific acts of hatred
ever against an obviously targeted group, then something’s
seriously wrong. And then I thought about the Prophet Ezekiel.
I
love the Prophet Ezekiel’s equation of the word of God with honey.
I think there’s an important comparison to be made there.
Unfortunately, I think most people in the modern world don’t really
understand what Ezekiel was saying. We tend to think of honey as
simply a sweetener. Sometimes I put it on toast or bagels, or in a
cup of tea. And because of that we sometimes interpret Ezekiel’s
words to mean that the word of God is simply sweet and pleasant and
unchallenging and shouldn’t disturb us too much. It should just
make us happy and comfortable. It should be nothing more than a
feel-good word. And, yes, Ezekiel does say that the scroll he was
given (which would have been a part of the word of God) tasted as
sweet as honey. But sweetness wasn’t the only thing that mattered
about honey in the ancient world. That image of honey would have
brought forth a lot of images in people’s minds in Ezekiel's day.
In the ancient world there was something called “mad honey.” It
was made by bees from certain types of plants and it would affect the
brain and the central nervous system of those who ate it. So it
wasn’t uncommon for ancient armies to put enticing looking chunks
of mad honeycomb in the path of their enemies – who, after
consuming them, would be virtually paralyzed and helpless. Mad honey
was also used in small amounts by prophets who would use it
essentially to get high, which would enhance their prophetic
utterances. (Not that I’m accusing Ezekiel of that!) Setting mad
honey aside, regular honey was commonly used as a medicine in the
ancient world. It has anti-bacterial properties, so smearing honey on
cuts and wounds is actually still a useful thing to do. Raw
unprocessed honey was also a major source of nutrition for many
people in the ancient world. It’s full of vitamins and minerals,
and honeycomb back then was relatively easy to find. The other great
thing about honey is that it literally doesn’t spoil. Not long ago
archaeologists opened an ancient Egyptian tomb and found honey that
was over three thousand years old – and was still edible! So honey
had a lot of uses. When Ezekiel makes the connection between the word
of God and honey, he’s not simply saying that the word of God is
sweet and comforting. He’s saying that it’s challenging; it can
defeat the forces arrayed against us; it can push us to speak the
word of God; it can strengthen us and heal us; it is eternal and
ever-lasting. This is honey and this is the word of God. This is what
we need when hatred raises its ugly head.
If
my comments today are inspired by the Orlando shooting, I want to
make sure that we don’t become complacent and think that hatred and
violence and groups being targeted is just an “American thing.”
In 2013 there were 186 hate crimes against the LGBT community
recorded by police in Canada, and just in the news over the last few
days there was a report of a pig’s head being left at the door of a
mosque in Quebec City and of a Muslim woman wearing a hijab who was
shopping with her four month old son in London only to suddenly and
without provocation be spit upon and punched out by an angry white
woman who apparently didn’t care much for Muslims. When people hate
and they start to target others because of their hate then the
powerful, inspiring, strengthening and eternal word of God needs to
confront the haters. And all sorts of groups get targeted in our
society. Muslims are called terrorists; gays are called perverts;
blacks are carded by police; aboriginals are dismissed as drunks; the
poor are blamed for being lazy; women are told they asked for it when
they get sexually assaulted. And too often the church stays silent
and does nothing except perhaps offer a few prayers for the victims.
I’m a big believer in the power of prayer but I think we have to be
a lot more outspoken when confronting hatred and when standing
alongside those who find themselves targeted by haters. But too often
Christians can find ways to avoid that responsibility and to simply
stay silent at best because it's the easy thing to do or to encourage
the hatred at worst because there are some who warp the teachings of
Jesus to serve evil ends.
It
always astonishes me that there are Christians who seem to think that
when Jesus said “love your neighbour,” he only meant the
neighbours that you like and agree with and get along with. It never
ceases to amaze me that there are Christians who seem to think that
when Jesus said “love your enemies,” he must have been misquoted.
It never ceases to amaze me that after everything Jesus taught about
love, and after John wrote in his first letter that “God is love,”
there are Christians who seem to believe that those teachings about
love give them the right to hate those they disagree with. Jesus must
sometimes weep bitter tears when he looks at his church and sees at
least some of his people engaging in the most vile acts and speaking
the most vicious and hate-filled words. There were preachers after
the Orlando shooting who expressed the opinion that the only bad
thing that happened was that the shooter didn’t finish the job he
had started of mowing down gay people with a semi-automatic rifle.
And the infamous Westboro Baptist Church brought their vile message
of hatred to Orlando, as they picketed the funerals of some who had
been killed, hoping to scream at grieving family members that their
loved ones were hated by God and had gone to hell. (Thankfully, those
families were shielded from this obnoxious group that shouldn't even
be called a “church” by some who chose not to simply be silent.)
Where
does such hatred come from? How does such a warped understanding of
the gospel take possession of people’s hearts? It surely comes from
hearts that have hardened themselves to the truth of God’s word and
to the reality of God’s love to the point at which, in an Orwellian
sort of turn, hate becomes love; hate becomes what God is about.
But
it isn’t. God is love. Always. That is not conditional. God is
love. And we are to love. Jesus taught love. That was not
conditional, either. And real love isn’t easy. We need all of the
strength and help of the honey-like word of God that Ezekiel wrote of
to enable us to truly love and to encourage us to speak out. After
the Orlando shooting, the National Council of Canadian Muslims
released a statement that said in part “As Canadians we stand
united against violence and discrimination against any human being.”
And the Reverend Rob Oliphant, a United Church minister and also a
Member of Parliament, said that “Hate has to be met with love.”
And the point is that love cannot be silent. Love must be spoken;
love must be expressed; love must be acted upon. When we – any of
us – see or hear hatred being directed at people we –
individually or as a community – need to speak up and speak out,
because we we who believe in a God who is love must find ways to
actively love those who are the targets of hatred, discrimination,
oppression, fear-mongering and violence. And if there are those who
don’t like us doing that and who prefer to wallow in either hate or
indifference toward the hatred we sometimes see around us – well,
that’s tough! We must loosen our tongues and be heard.
In
1382, John Wyclif translated the Bible into the English of the day
for the very first time. His translation of Revelation 8 included the
words, “silence is maad in heuen” – meaning in modern English:
silence is made in heaven. Perhaps, but this isn't heaven, and the
things that happen in the world around us aren't always heavenly. And
when those unheavenly things happen, the people of God need to speak
up and to speak out and to be heard loud and clear, lest our own
faith be drowned out by the voices of hatred that so often surround
us.
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