A Whisper in the Noise--November 20, 2019

A Whisper in the Noise--November 20, 2019

[Jesus said:] "...they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your mind not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to contradict." [Luke 21:12-15]

I am tired of the constant deluge of rottenness around. No, not just tired--I am wearied by it.  I am wearied, some days almost to the point of exhaustion, just of the dissonant chorus of voices that runs, non-stop, like a grating hum in the background all the time, selling a vision of a way of life that runs counter to the way of Jesus.  

It is a constant angry babbling, and it is punctuated by bursts of hatred, of self-centeredness, of endless avarice, and of arrogant bragging.  

It is the noise of the unending news cycle, reminding me how to keep track of the days by where the latest mass shooting was (Monday's was a Walmart in Oklahoma; Sunday's was in a Hmong neighborhood in Fresno).  

It is the din of pundits and politicians on the radio and TV, tying themselves up in knots as they bend over backwards to say the opposite of the thing they said yesterday, and telling us to forget that we ever heard anything different.

It is the dull roar of angry voices demonizing whatever group of people they see as "the other," and casting "those people" as the enemy.

It is the unnerving shouting of TV preachers and Respectable Religious folks posturing for attention and clamoring for positions of prestige and influence, but sounding less and less like the message of Jesus of Nazareth the more they talk.

I don't know about you, but that constant racket of noise in the background of life sometimes feels overwhelming, and I am just about exhausted by it.  I am no longer surprised by it, but it still wearies me.  And sometimes it is just so tempting to turn it all off and look away--to ignore the news reports of body counts, or to just give caring about the shouting-matches between the talking heads with a nihilistic shrug to say, "It doesn't matter who wins this debate anyway."  It is tempting, too, to feel like our only options in response to all that noise are either to shout even more loudly and angrily, or to give into apathy and say nothing.

Sometimes, we can even feel like the question forming on our lips is a defeated, "In the face of all this, what's the point of even trying?"  And maybe we struggle to come up with a solid answer to that unspoken question.

And yet, over against that daily babel sound, there is this whisper of a voice that says to us--to you and to me--"You are my witnesses in the midst of this.  I will give you words.  I am here with you now."  It is the voice of Jesus, who has promised to give us wisdom to share when it feels like the world around us has lost its mind, and an authentic word to speak when it feels like the world around us has sold its soul.

I am reminded by these words of Jesus from late in the Gospel of Luke that Jesus' promise to be among us now is not merely a sentimental thing, or a warm and fuzzy feeling.  Jesus promises to be with us right here and now because he knows we'll need it.  We'll need it to keep our sanity in times that feel deeply troubled, and we'll need it to speak a different message--what the book of Hebrews calls "a better word"--than the angry and anxious and fearful cacophony around us.  Jesus' promises to be with us to give us words, because he has appointed us to be witnesses to another way--his way.

Jesus reminds his followers, even in the late days of his earthly ministry, that he is commissioning us to be a sort of counter-cultural witness.  We will be the minority report that can both tell the emperor when he is wearing no clothes and also can speak of the amazing grace of God that clothes us in the righteousness of Christ.  We will be the voices who say a firm but loving "No!" to the transactional thinking of the world's powerful, in which everything is reducible to "I do X for you, and you do Y for me in return," and who speak instead about God's economy of grace.  We will be ones who risk being rejected, who risk being called "losers," who risk getting lumped in with whatever group is being cast as "the other."  This is what Jesus calls his followers to do and to be--in other words, we are called to be an alternative to the endless noise in the background from all those other sources.

And to do that, Jesus has promised to be with us--in order that he can whisper to us a different message than the yelling and posturing on our screens and speakers.  Honestly, we need nothing less than his presence, because without him, we will just fall back into the same fearful and selfish shouting of everybody else. We are good at that by nature.  But Jesus enables us to be an alternative.

Today, we are given a calling--we do not have permission simply to stick our heads in the sand, nor do we have authorization to answer immature and petty yelling with more of the same.  We are called to speak the good news that there is an alternative to the wearying flood of the world's messages, and we are called to listen for Jesus (rather than our own inventions of what we would like Jesus to have said) to know what the alternative is.

Before you give up, just pause. Just hold on for a moment.  Don't throw the radio or tv against a wall when the voices that drive you crazy are at it again.  Listen, but over their noise, listen for the whisper of Jesus who, like the Creator in the beginning, speaks a word that makes new worlds come into existence.  Listen for Jesus, who will give us a wisdom to answer the noise of this moment.

And dare trust that he will speak.

Speak, Lord Jesus, your wisdom to answer the nonsense of the day and times in which we live, and give us the grace to be your witnesses and your counter-cultural option for the world which you yet love.  Touch our ears to hear you whisper.