SILENT VOICES
Preached on April 19, 1998
by The Reverend Dr. Thomas C. Sheffield
Scripture readings: I John 1: 5-10 and
John 20: 19-29
The disciple, Thomas, was a very fortunate fellow. He
got to see in order to believe. He was given the
chance to observe with his own eyes the proofs he needed
for believing that the resurrection had occurred. The story of Thomas,
usually, is centered on his doubting, on his demanding
that famous proof, on the resurrected Lord's appearing
to him.
But, there are other layers to the story. At another
level the story is also about the relationship
between Thomas and his comrades, the other ten disciples. It
is about his denying not Jesus' life and power but his denying his friends.
It is about disbelieving not Jesus, but what they said
and believed about Jesus. He denies the relationship
he had lived; he sets aside the power of what they had experienced
and done and meant to one another. He, in essence, calls his friends
liars.
Jesus' words, "Blessed are those who have not seen and
yet have come to believe," are affirmation, chastisement
and warning. "It is fine," Jesus is saying, "for
Thomas to need and receive such proof. But others will believe
not by what they see, but by what they are told by others."
Believing, therefore, inevitably depends on believing.
It depends on believing what others say. It depends
on others telling the truth and on our accepting what they say as truth.
Truth-telling and truth-believing are essential in becoming
Christ's disciple, in becoming the people of deep,
life-changing faith, in knowing Christ as the Risen Lord,
and in becoming the people that God desires us to be.
From the earliest times of our faith tradition this
reality was recognized. We already heard the command
this morning: "You shall not bear false witness." Preserved
in the ten commandments, the order not to lie has been a sign of
obedience to God and again an element of critical importance
in keeping together as a faith community, a nation,
and as a people. Without trust and truth there can
be no reliable living, no mutual understanding, no common bond in faith
or in all of life. At every level of our lives,
we must be able to count on what people say. We
must be able to believe them.
Why, then, asked a recent column in the New York Times,
are the voices of morality, righteousness and
truth, silent in the face of months of half-truths, misleading
statements and lies that have come from our national leadership, from
those who work with them and from those who speak for
them? President Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Linda
Tripp, Kenneth Starr, Paula Jones, have been accused, counter-charged,
and countered with counter-charges. In the midst of it, the one
clear thing is that people are lying, someone is lying,
some ones are lying. Why are preachers not preaching,
why are Christians not outraged, why are people of faith,
again who know believing and speaking the truth are essential for all
life, not demanding that truth be spoken? Why do we treat
the doing, whoever the doer is, as having minimal
moral impact and meaning? Granted that we do not know what
precisely has occurred and who has done what to whom or when, still
we do know that truth is being avoided, manipulated,
distorted and destroyed. We do know something
is terribly wrong.
Perhaps, we have become so confused about truth, about
who carries and expresses truth that we no longer
know what it is. ãI believe the last thing I read,ä a friend
of mine says. There is something to that, some truth, that reveals our
confusion and our willingness to make truth a thing of
the moment or the person or the situation.
We also recognize that those situations can be extremely
complicated. Take this little incident reported
in the book Not the Way It Is Supposed to Be: ã Suppose
you are a dinner guest of a beaming but shaky hostess.
As the evening progresses, you discover that her
tastes and achievements in cookery lie at a discouragingly
low level. At some point she asks you in front of six other guests
how you like her Velveeta, Spam, and lima bean casserole. The table
falls silent, faces turn to you, and your hostess
waits expectantly. Now what? On the spot, you
have to make a decision, so you do. You do not tell the brutal truth.
Nor do you evade (ÎI didn't know a casserole like this
was even possible!â). You lie. Indeed, you lie
winningly."
So, now, was the lie wrong? Was it necessary to lie
in order to do a longer term good? Was it sin
or was it an act of kindness, also a biblical mandate of both
testaments?
Take another example: "What if you were in Nazi Germany
and you were sheltering Jews in your home. The
Nazis come to the door and ask if you are sheltering Jews.
Should you lie or tell the truth?" That example was reported in a
seminary classroom that also was struggling over the
meaning of lying. Here, they said, was a situation
where compassion took precedence over telling the truth.
"Eventually, one of the quieter students in the class
intervened. She asked, 'Could it be that the problem
is less in the questions than in ourselves? We like
to talk about sheltering Jews from the Nazis, because we see ourselves
as basically good people who occasionally tell
lies for good, or at least harmless, reasons.
But that really lets us off the hook too easily. Most of us find it
all too easy to lie, and we don't even tend to notice
how destructive our lying becomes.' (From "Truth
and Lies" by L. Gregory Jones in Christian Century, March
ll, 1998)
Perhaps we have not said anything about THEIR lies in
Washington because they come too close to our
lies. It isn't that we are so above them. It is that they
are so much like we are and we are so much like they.
Again, from Not the Way It Is Supposed to Be: Of course,
people often use lies to slip the noose of accountability
("Officer, I have no idea how that man's wallet
got into my sport coat"), but they also use them as weapons. People
use lies to assault other human beings, to squelch, mock,
slander, or accuse them: "You've never amounted
to anything, and you never will." "He 's dumber than a post."
"Martin Luther King Jr. was nothing but a Communist!" "Ronald Reagan
thinks that Hawaii is one of the nation's most important
allies." Sticks and stones can break our bones,
but lies can break our hearts and our careers. They can
ruin reputations, wreck marriages, and start riots.
Where does it all come from, this way of relating that
can destroy everything? It comes from families
trying to keep an image. It comes from envy of what another,
another person, another group, another nation, has. It comes from
wanting to get attention or power over another at any
cost. It comes from greed and a belief that power
and possessions define a life. It comes from a desire simply
to stir up controversy and enjoy the result. It comes from fear that
one's life-long lie will be found out and one will be
discovered as incompetent and weak and not what
one has worked so hard to make everyone believe after
all.
Ever-growing, multiplying, extending through lives and
cultures, we find ourselves caught in them, but
denying, lying that they exist, until .... until some
series of events begins to unravel the tightly-wound fabric and we all
stand exposed.
Some have said that the latest series of lies and misconduct
in Washington, DC will bring about Americans wanting
character again to count in their leaders. That
may be so. But it is not what Christ sees or wants. Putting off onto
others our own desires and failings is not enough. This
moment must also be about us. It should force
us to look at ourselves, examine our own lives, how we lie
in marriages, in families, to children, to parents, within work, as
citizens and neighbors, to ourselves and, oh,
yes, to God.
Even though we are coming close to the end of the sermon,
the tangle is so complex that there are no tidy
ways to clean up the problem and have everyone feel good
about the solutions as we all go on our ways. There are these, however.
There is a call to confession that must be heard
in each life and for each day we live. "If we
say we have no sin, we lie ..." There is the need for courage and hard
work in daring to say what is on our hearts and minds
and what has been dormant and, perhaps, hurting
in our hearts for a very long time. There is the risk of looking
foolish and losing out and being taken advantage of because we will
not play by the rules of fear and destruction.
But there is also this: there is the possibility
of blessing. There is the possibility that in the midst of confessing
and speaking and living the truth we will know that there is no lie
or truth that can withhold Christ from giving
us all we need. There is a chance that when we
speak the truth we, as Thomas did, will see and know Christ in our
lives. And in that moment nothing else will matter.
Prayer: O Christ, it is hard, and sometimes impossible
to see you and so it is hard to live for you.
Now, even though we are not sure where it all will lead, help
us to live the truth of your life. Help us be the people you seek. Help
us be people who know that nothing in life or
in death can separate us from the power of your
love. Amen.
