Tell It In the Light

June 22, 2008

Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:26-39

So I was in the car last week listening to an NPR show that featured an interview with a couple of guys preparing to get married in California in the wake of that state’s decision to honor and give legal sanction to the marriages of same-sex couples. The show’s host asked for listener comments, and I figured it would be appropriate to have a voice from the church giving support to the couple, so I sent an e-mail saying something to the effect of, “best wishes and blessings on the couple.”

From that small well-wishing came an invitation to record some comments for the show on Thursday.

None of which is any big deal, but it did strike me as particularly interesting in the midst of a week in which I was wrestling with a text that invites us to take the sometimes enigmatic teachings of Jesus and try to make them plain for our time.

“What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops,” Jesus tells his followers just before sending them out into the world to share the good news.

While we here at Clarendon do not perceive Jesus’ words of love and justice as a whisper in the dark, the truth is, most of the church has yet to hear them with any kind of clarity. Thus it is incumbent upon us to speak them clearly, and to speak the truth in the light as plainly as possible.

What’s important in this is not that we get in the papers or on the radio, but that words of love and justice get spoken as often as possible in as many ways as possible to be heard by as many ears as can be reached.

Thus the overture from the session at Clarendon – a congregation of only about 70 members – will be heard by the entire Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a denomination of more than 2 million members in more than 10,000 congregations. Moreover, because what we do as a denomination remains news in the broader culture, our voice will be heard in the next few days by millions of people in this nation, many of whom have seldom heard a word of authentic welcome from Christian communities.

All of which is simply to say what we already know: Clarendon Presbyterian Church is a small, rare thing in this world, and one of vital, urgent importance. It’s not us – you or me – who are important in all this, rather it is the gospel message of love and justice that we share.

What are these words of love and justice? And why does it seem that they so often fail to find their way into the light of day?

The gospel story is large and complex, to be sure. But Jesus himself, in Matthew’s account of Holy Week, reduces it to this: “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

In other words, life is meant to be a weave of spiritual richness, ethical kindness, and right relationship. Or, in still other words, “do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God.”

We are not the first small community to hear in Jesus’ words an invitation, a calling, a command to push against the bounds of our culture. The abolitionists here and in England heard the quiet urgency of Jesus’ call to love the neighbor – and to redefine neighbor – even when the vast majority of their fellow citizens found Biblical warrant for the status quo in scriptural passages telling slaves to be obedient. Successive waves of feminists found in Jesus’ boundary-breaking ministry with women a powerful calling to insist on the rights of women in the church and broader culture even when the vast majority found Biblical warrant for the status quo in scriptural passages telling women to keep silent. During the height – and, more pointedly, the depths of the Civil Rights Movement, the image of Jesus at the welcome table brought encouragement to fear-filled groups watching churches burn across the South, even as so many powerful voices cited scripture to defend “a way of life” that oppressed millions.

In each case, small groups of faithful people lifted their voices to speak truth to power, and to tell in the bright light of day what they had discerned in the depths of their souls and in the quiet gatherings of their communities.

We stand in that same line of gentle, faithful people – trusting God’s never-failing love and boundless grace as we stand together to proclaim that love for all.

Of course, if we are to stand in the public square and proclaim this basic truth, we ought also stand before the mirror and be truthful with ourselves.

As Yvonne Delk wrote in Sojourners a while back, “Truth is the grasp that we have on the world around us; it is the understanding of who we are and who others are. If we are to boldly proclaim the good news, we must be armed with the authority of truth. This requires a clear analysis of our political, economic, and social situations and our personal conditions. If the diagnosis is not deep enough, not full enough, we will heal the wounds lightly. We will cry "peace, peace" when there is no peace.”[1]

That is why we begin worship in confession in our tradition. It reminds us that we cannot get from here to there but by the grace of God and by responding to that grace. We cannot get from the world as it is to the world as it could be except by the grace of God and by responding to that grace. We cannot get from our lives as they are to our lives as they could and should be except by the grace of God and by responding to that grace.

In the final analysis, this is the singular truth that we must lift to the light of day. So, as much as I’d like to see the General Assembly act favorably on our overture this week in San Jose, I am trusting the outcomes to God’s grace knowing that the arc is long but it bends toward justice.

God is not finished with us yet – individually or as a church or as a broader culture.

So I’m giving thanks this morning for the couples in California who’ve been able to get hitched this month; I’m asking God’s blessings on them; and I’m asking God’s blessings on us as we try together to lift up to the light of day the small, quiet truth that the love and justice of the gospel of Jesus Christ knows no bounds.

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[1] Yvonne V. Delk, “The Authority of Truth” Sojourners.