Finding Your Voice
Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Mark 1:21-28
OK; here’s an oldie but a goodie: A priest and a taxi driver both died and went to heaven. St. Peter was at the Pearly gates waiting for them.
“Follow me,” said St. Peter to the taxi driver and led him to a huge mansion. “Wow, thanks,” said the taxi driver.
Then St. Peter led the priest to an old shack with no amenities.
“Wait, there must be some mistake,” said the priest. “Shouldn't I get the mansion? After all I gave my life to the church and preached God's word.”
“True,” said St. Peter. “But when you preached people slept. When he drove, people prayed.”
I wouldn’t put too much stock in that joke’s eschatology, but it does pretty much nail the question of vocation. Finding your voice is a tricky thing, and it is central to the challenge of discerning your calling in life. If, when you speak, no one listens, then either you are a parent or you are in vocational crisis.
I don’t mean the occasional frustrations that each of us encounters in life, but rather the feeling of utter isolation and viocelessness that comes when you are simply in the wrong place. I will remember with shame for the rest of my life that Halloween night when I was 17 years old and found myself in the back seat of a car with a group of teenagers when the driver said, “let’s go down to 9th Street and yell at the blacks” – only he didn’t say it so politely. And I sat silently wondering how I had wound up there and where my voice had gone to say, “no.” Thanks be to God, we never encountered a soul on the street, but I’ve lived with the shame of that silence ever since.
Voice and vocation share a linguistic connection, but they are far more intimately connected than a shared root word. That befits the idea that we are “zoon eschon logon,” or “animals that speak,” as Aristotle defined human beings. We can speak, and we are called to do so. Vocation and voice share more than a linguistic connection. At some level, they are about the same central concerns and questions. What is the word that you have been given to speak to the world?
Last week’s gospel story recalled Jesus calling his first disciples and promising to make them fishers for people. In other words, Jesus promised to give them a word – a message, good news – to share that would compel and invite followers.
This week’s reading from Deuteronomy contains a revealing and challenging promise from God: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.”
So, what is your word? And, perhaps more to the point, are you living in the right place to speak it? Is your life shaped in such a way that you can speak the word that you have been given for the world?
Mark describes Jesus speaking as “one with authority,” and we might rightly ask about the nature of that authority? Was it tied up in his messiahship, or was it something else? In other words, did his prophetic voice come from within his human being – his existence as a rational animal, a being with speech – or did it derive from a unique relationship with God?
It’s impossible to answer that Christological question on the basis of the text, because it simply doesn’t tell us. What is does tell us, however, is simple: when Jesus spoke things happened that brought the community around him closer to the kingdom of God. In the passage we just read, Jesus speaks and healing happens. Throughout the gospels this pattern is repeated: Jesus speaks and people are healed; Jesus speaks and people are liberated; Jesus speaks and people are fed.
Jesus was given a healing, freeing, sustaining word to speak and he spoke it with authority no matter what the risk. Moreover, he shaped his life such that he would be always in the places where such words were most desperately needed: among the poor, the imprisoned and the sick, the marginalized and the powerless.
He also seems to have shaped the community around his in such a way that the people could not only listen, but could also learn to find their own voices and speak their own words of healing, liberation, and sustenance.
That was and remains the test of vocation. When John sent his disciples to inquire whether or not Jesus was the messiah, Jesus says, “well, I don’t know about that; but tell John this: wherever I go the blind get new sight, the deaf get new hearing, the poor hear good news.”
The word is spoken and things happen – good news brings good results.
So, where in your life would good news be welcome? Where might a good word open the way to new hope, new promise, new life?
Can you speak a word of comfort to those who mourn?
Can you speak a word of welcome to those who feel left out?
Can you speak a word of encouragement to those who are distressed or depressed?
A word of uplift to those who are oppressed?
A word of healing to those who are sick?
A word of peace to those whose lives are broken by violence?
We all know such people and such situations. They don’t have to be the ones on the front page of the Post to gain our attention. They go to our schools. We work with them. They are in our own families and right here in the pews. What word needs to be spoken? What actions need to follow upon our words? What keeps us from speaking and acting?
Truth be told, each of us, from time to time, find ourselves standing in the need of a good word. That is, in part, why we gather here each week: to hear the good news of the gospel that God so loves the world and each and every one of us in it.
As a friend of mine sometimes says, “God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it!”
That is the good word, the final word, that Jesus speaks again and again and again in the gospels.
He spoke as one with authority. Good words led to healing and wholeness, to salvation. Good words also compelled into the world an everlasting word that resounds again and again whenever the followers of Jesus speak a word of love into the world.
Speak that word with the authority that comes by virtue of being a beloved child of a loving God. That status doesn’t qualify you to be a messiah, but it does qualify you to be a servant. The servant’s word is the word of hope that the world needs just now.
Servants, as Jesus showed over and over again, speak up on behalf of those who have been silenced. Servants, in the mode of Jesus, do not remain silent.
If we remain silent, we cede the field to those who are willing to speak, no matter what they have to say. This is true no matter what field of endeavor is at stake. If, in the political arena for example, we refuse to speak up about the inherent equality of all people in the eyes of God, then those who see it differently and are willing to speak can and will create laws that, for example, restrict the right to marry to straight couples. If, in the family arena for example, we refuse to speak up about the God-given right to safety of all people when a woman is being abused then violence remains unchecked and those who abuse are given the last word. If, in boardroom, we refuse to speak up about the Biblical injunction to treat the poor fairly, then those whose god is the dollar give us subprime mortgages and a financial crisis of incalculable dimension that will count its victims first and foremost among the poor. If, within the church, we remain silent in the face of clergy misconduct we are passive participants in the breaking of God’s shalom, and we give the last word to those who have broken their word. If we remain silent, in whatever field we may find ourselves in, then we cede that field to those who are willing to speak, no matter what they have to say.
This is our calling, our vocation: find your voice – the servant’s voice – and speak a word of love.
Amen.
OK; here’s an oldie but a goodie: A priest and a taxi driver both died and went to heaven. St. Peter was at the Pearly gates waiting for them.
“Follow me,” said St. Peter to the taxi driver and led him to a huge mansion. “Wow, thanks,” said the taxi driver.
Then St. Peter led the priest to an old shack with no amenities.
“Wait, there must be some mistake,” said the priest. “Shouldn't I get the mansion? After all I gave my life to the church and preached God's word.”
“True,” said St. Peter. “But when you preached people slept. When he drove, people prayed.”
I wouldn’t put too much stock in that joke’s eschatology, but it does pretty much nail the question of vocation. Finding your voice is a tricky thing, and it is central to the challenge of discerning your calling in life. If, when you speak, no one listens, then either you are a parent or you are in vocational crisis.
I don’t mean the occasional frustrations that each of us encounters in life, but rather the feeling of utter isolation and viocelessness that comes when you are simply in the wrong place. I will remember with shame for the rest of my life that Halloween night when I was 17 years old and found myself in the back seat of a car with a group of teenagers when the driver said, “let’s go down to 9th Street and yell at the blacks” – only he didn’t say it so politely. And I sat silently wondering how I had wound up there and where my voice had gone to say, “no.” Thanks be to God, we never encountered a soul on the street, but I’ve lived with the shame of that silence ever since.
Voice and vocation share a linguistic connection, but they are far more intimately connected than a shared root word. That befits the idea that we are “zoon eschon logon,” or “animals that speak,” as Aristotle defined human beings. We can speak, and we are called to do so. Vocation and voice share more than a linguistic connection. At some level, they are about the same central concerns and questions. What is the word that you have been given to speak to the world?
Last week’s gospel story recalled Jesus calling his first disciples and promising to make them fishers for people. In other words, Jesus promised to give them a word – a message, good news – to share that would compel and invite followers.
This week’s reading from Deuteronomy contains a revealing and challenging promise from God: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.”
So, what is your word? And, perhaps more to the point, are you living in the right place to speak it? Is your life shaped in such a way that you can speak the word that you have been given for the world?
Mark describes Jesus speaking as “one with authority,” and we might rightly ask about the nature of that authority? Was it tied up in his messiahship, or was it something else? In other words, did his prophetic voice come from within his human being – his existence as a rational animal, a being with speech – or did it derive from a unique relationship with God?
It’s impossible to answer that Christological question on the basis of the text, because it simply doesn’t tell us. What is does tell us, however, is simple: when Jesus spoke things happened that brought the community around him closer to the kingdom of God. In the passage we just read, Jesus speaks and healing happens. Throughout the gospels this pattern is repeated: Jesus speaks and people are healed; Jesus speaks and people are liberated; Jesus speaks and people are fed.
Jesus was given a healing, freeing, sustaining word to speak and he spoke it with authority no matter what the risk. Moreover, he shaped his life such that he would be always in the places where such words were most desperately needed: among the poor, the imprisoned and the sick, the marginalized and the powerless.
He also seems to have shaped the community around his in such a way that the people could not only listen, but could also learn to find their own voices and speak their own words of healing, liberation, and sustenance.
That was and remains the test of vocation. When John sent his disciples to inquire whether or not Jesus was the messiah, Jesus says, “well, I don’t know about that; but tell John this: wherever I go the blind get new sight, the deaf get new hearing, the poor hear good news.”
The word is spoken and things happen – good news brings good results.
So, where in your life would good news be welcome? Where might a good word open the way to new hope, new promise, new life?
Can you speak a word of comfort to those who mourn?
Can you speak a word of welcome to those who feel left out?
Can you speak a word of encouragement to those who are distressed or depressed?
A word of uplift to those who are oppressed?
A word of healing to those who are sick?
A word of peace to those whose lives are broken by violence?
We all know such people and such situations. They don’t have to be the ones on the front page of the Post to gain our attention. They go to our schools. We work with them. They are in our own families and right here in the pews. What word needs to be spoken? What actions need to follow upon our words? What keeps us from speaking and acting?
Truth be told, each of us, from time to time, find ourselves standing in the need of a good word. That is, in part, why we gather here each week: to hear the good news of the gospel that God so loves the world and each and every one of us in it.
As a friend of mine sometimes says, “God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it!”
That is the good word, the final word, that Jesus speaks again and again and again in the gospels.
He spoke as one with authority. Good words led to healing and wholeness, to salvation. Good words also compelled into the world an everlasting word that resounds again and again whenever the followers of Jesus speak a word of love into the world.
Speak that word with the authority that comes by virtue of being a beloved child of a loving God. That status doesn’t qualify you to be a messiah, but it does qualify you to be a servant. The servant’s word is the word of hope that the world needs just now.
Servants, as Jesus showed over and over again, speak up on behalf of those who have been silenced. Servants, in the mode of Jesus, do not remain silent.
If we remain silent, we cede the field to those who are willing to speak, no matter what they have to say. This is true no matter what field of endeavor is at stake. If, in the political arena for example, we refuse to speak up about the inherent equality of all people in the eyes of God, then those who see it differently and are willing to speak can and will create laws that, for example, restrict the right to marry to straight couples. If, in the family arena for example, we refuse to speak up about the God-given right to safety of all people when a woman is being abused then violence remains unchecked and those who abuse are given the last word. If, in boardroom, we refuse to speak up about the Biblical injunction to treat the poor fairly, then those whose god is the dollar give us subprime mortgages and a financial crisis of incalculable dimension that will count its victims first and foremost among the poor. If, within the church, we remain silent in the face of clergy misconduct we are passive participants in the breaking of God’s shalom, and we give the last word to those who have broken their word. If we remain silent, in whatever field we may find ourselves in, then we cede that field to those who are willing to speak, no matter what they have to say.
This is our calling, our vocation: find your voice – the servant’s voice – and speak a word of love.
Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
6:17 AM
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