The Right to Remain Silent
Town hall meetings are a format that was once very popular… particularly in the New England area… where the people got together and tried to reach consensus around important issues that confronted the community. It has worked since the time this land was first settled … even before we became a nation. In fact, it has often been described as pure democracy… where each person can speak for themselves… as opposed to a representative democracy… where we elect others to speak for us. But, in recent weeks, I have watched with growing dismay the trap that I see many of my fellow Americans falling into… the trap of taking our right to free speech into new realms of rudeness and profanity aimed at fellow Americans. In the grass-roots debate that is now taking place over health care, it does not warm my heart to see adults crowding into town hall meetings and shouting each other down without taking time to hear what other persons are saying.
In this age, with the advent of the internet… email… blogs… and a combination of instant videos made by our cellular telephones and instant broadcast of those videos by YouTube and other internet sites, we can have town hall meetings with the entire world listening in… and joining the debate. Everyone is their own expert… and they all have access to the worldwide web. There is no filter to discern truth from fiction. In the words of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, the internet has empowered the individual and flattened the entire world.
And all of that is good, for I believe in free speech. But am I proud of the way in which our nation is carrying on this debate over health care? No. I have actually been embarrassed at watching grown men and women behave like immature children. Are we not called to a higher standard of behavior? Would we not condemn this behavior if we witnessed it in any other nation? As James exhorts us, in the text that Raymond Kenny read for us earlier, "Let everyone be quick to listen… slow to speak… slow to anger… for your anger does not produce God's righteousness." Can you imagine what our national debate would be like if all Americans took such advice to heart? But, if that is not possible, then perhaps the best way for us to remain “righteous” as Christians, is for us to stay above the fray… and to remain silent.
We do have the right to remain silent. If there is one thing that we have all learned from television in the past generation, it’s that we have the right to remain silent. Wasn’t it Jack Webb himself who first taught us… week after week… on the television series Dragnet, that even criminals have the right to remain silent… to not condemn themselves with their own words? Haven’t all of us who watched that program… or the endless number of police and detective shows it spawned, like Hawaii 5-0, the seemingly infinite variety of CSI shows, and others… memorized our Miranda rights: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…" and so on. We know that our own words can condemn us. So, perhaps, to be an authentic Christian, the best choice is to be a silent one. At least then, no one would know what was really in our hearts… and our true intentions would remain hidden. No one would be able to accuse us of avarice… deceit… envy… slander… pride… or the other evils that Jesus spoke of to his disciples. Even Abraham Lincoln himself said that it was “better to remain silent and be thought a fool… than to speak out and remove all doubt”… a thought that has its origins in the seventeenth chapter of Proverbs.
But, of course, we know that we, as Christians, really don’t have the right to remain silent. We are charged with the responsibility to speak… and remaining silent would be an abdication of that God-given responsibility. In the first chapter of Acts, Jesus told his followers that they would be his witnesses “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." When Peter and John were on trial, as reported in Acts 4, the authorities “commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God; for we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." In yet another example, the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, tells us that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” But, he asks, “How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?” And we, indeed, have been sent, if we take to heart the words of Jesus’ Great Commission at the end of the Gospel of Matthew: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." We cannot remain silent. In fact, as Jeremiah says in chapter twenty, “if I say, "I will not mention him or speak any more in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.”
Thus, remaining silent is not an option. We must speak. At the same time, however, we recognize the weightiness of our speech. While the world around us may be so filled with words that their value is discounted, we know that the Judge to whom we answer takes words very seriously indeed. Long before the language of Miranda, Jesus offered a similar… though stronger… warning as reported in Matthew, chapter twelve, "I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified…and by your words you will be condemned."
But there is more to it than that. At one point in the Broadway musical “My Fair Lady”, Freddy begins to sing a beautiful love song to Eliza Doolittle. She interrupts him in the middle of a sentence, exclaiming, “Words! Words! Words! I'm so sick of words! I get words all day through… first from him, then from you. Is that all you blighters can do? Never do I ever want to hear another word. There isn't one I haven't heard.” She goes on to berate him, telling him that his words are empty… meaningless… without the actions that demonstrate their authenticity. She urges him to dispense with words and demonstrate the truth of his intentions with actions.
We have heard the same exhortation many times in our lives as Christians. It is all well and good to talk about Jesus Christ and our commitment to him, but where are the actions that support our words? A little later in his epistle, James wrote, “If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” Legend has it that St. Francis of Assisi once told his followers, “Preach the Gospel at all times and, if necessary, use words.” While it is doubtful that St. Francis actually said that, the idea itself is very Franciscan in its stated intent… that words without action make us hypocrites.
Scot Jackson will stand before us today and take his vows as an elder in this church. At the same time, all of our current elders will hear again the vows they took when they became elders. The words that Scot speaks today will change his life… and will change our church. In speaking these words, Scot will become one of over 100,000 ordained elders in the Presbyterian Church (USA). With these vows, he becomes a ruling elder… so named because he takes his place on our session as one of the few who are authorized by the church… by the call of God and the voice of God’s people… to make decisions about our mission and ministry in this place. But is it the words that he speaks alone that matter? No. His actions as an elder of the church will speak louder than the words he speaks here today. His actions will bear witness to what is truly in his heart… and that, according to Jesus, is where all good or evil resides. In our text today, Jesus tell us that “there is nothing outside us that by going in can defile us… what can truly defile us is what lies within us… what lies within our hearts… that comes out from us in our words and our actions.
Therefore, says James in his letter, “get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves,” he says, “Do what it says.” I could not have said it better myself… nor could I pray a better prayer than the one that David prayed after he was confronted by Nathan the prophet: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” If everything is right within us, then everything that comes out of us… whether words or deeds… will also be right. Let us surrender to God the task to make everything right within so that the witness we give to the world is one that truly reflects God’s love and God’s grace for all. Amen.
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23