The Cost of Silence--June 17, 2020

The Cost of Silence--June 17, 2020

"Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, 'Do not think that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father's family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.' Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, 'Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish'." [Esther 4:13-17]

I need to learn courage from this Jewish beauty-pageant winner-turned-queen. She has the kind of courage that saves lives by speaking up.  And the date on the calendar reminds me that there is a terrible cost for staying silent.

Five years ago, today, a young man sat in a Bible study in a church in South Carolina, and then stood up, pulled out a gun, and proceeded to murder nine people gathered there for the discussion of Scripture, because they were black, and because in his own words to his victims, "You're taking over our country--and you have to go."  The shooter, a 21-year-old white man named Dylann Roof, had posted a manifesto attempting to explain his motivation for this horrific act at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and amid the Confederate flags and other symbols of white supremacy that were also on his website.  And he made it clear that his actions were the deliberate, pre-meditated, calmly planned conclusion of a mindset rooted in terror and fear of those he thought threatened his (and other white people's) position in the world.  This is all old news by now, and you surely have heard these details in the five years since Charleston became one more name in the litany of places where mass shootings and racist-instigated violence have happened.  And certainly, I hope and expect that if you are reading these words, you, too, decry and condemn Roof's actions, mindset, and motivation.

But what we are slower to acknowledge, I confess, is the terrible silence that preceded Roof's cowardly and hateful racist killing spree.  And the terrible silence is, in part, mine.  Roof had been a confirmed member of a Lutheran congregation--even in the very same denominational body, the ELCA, of which I am a member, and in which I serve as an ordained pastor.  And that fact, although it is no secret, either, and has been known for the past five years since the shooting as well, still brings me up short every time I think of it.  Dylann Roof sat in church, a church not all that different from the one I grew up in, and not all that different from the ones I serve.  Dylann Roof went to catechism class, had to learn what were decreed to be the "essentials of the Christian faith," and would have promised at his confirmation that he would "strive for peace and justice in all the world."  And yet... there had to have been a terrible silence proceeding from the Christians around him that allowed him to think his faith in Jesus was in any way compatible with both the racism and the violence to which he was driven.

That's what gets me. It is the horrifying thought that no one--seriously, no one?--spoke to him in a way that got through to him to say that white supremacy is antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ?  It is the terrifying possibility (probability?) that, for all the sermons he heard in his two decades of life, no message had gotten through to him.  Or maybe, there is the even more damning possibility that no pastor, no teacher, no mentor in the faith ever actually said it.  And who knows?  Maybe all his pastors all assumed he knew that white nationalism was a despicable evil.  Maybe they all were convinced it went without saying.  Maybe his pastors were afraid <gulp, wrote the fellow Lutheran pastor and religious professional> that if they spoke up in a sermon about the evils of pervasive racism, they would be called out for being too political, or for saying something everybody already knew was "bad."  I can think of a million reasons why no one ever said anything.  Maybe it wasn't just one.

The thing is, the silence from voices of faith in his life had a price.  Because no one made it clear to him that his faith in Jesus was incompatible with his commitments to white nationalism and racial hatred, his thoughts became habits, and his habits became a mindset, and his mindset became a plan, and his plan became a nightmare.

Silence has a terrible cost.

I know these are not peppy, upbeat, happy words to start off your day in a daily devotion, but maybe on a day like today, we cannot let ourselves off the hook with a quick and light-hearted pick-me-up and a prayer.  Maybe we need to spend a moment thinking about this, because it is painfully obvious to me day by day that there is still this nonsense floating in the air around us from some that says, "Racism isn't really a problem anymore, and if we would just not talk about it, it would die out altogether."  There is still an attitude that says, "Don't go riling people up by talking about it, because as long as I'm not wearing a white hood or burning a cross, I can't be part of a racism problem (which I don't even really think we have anyway)."  And there is still a mindset that says, "If I have a black friend, that's my contribution to making the world a better place--just the honor of my company for my one black friend."  And all of those, even when they are meant harmlessly enough, become permission for silence.  And when people who mean well are silent, the Dylann Roofs around us get the impression that their fear-based hatred are ok--because no one has ever spoken up to tell them otherwise.  Maybe none of us northern-European church-folk (like me) "mean" to be racist, or "mean" to harm others whose skin color and ancestry are different from our own, or maybe we don't "mean" to be cowards who are too afraid to speak.  But our silence has a price. And most cruelly of all, it is possible for us to think that price doesn't matter because we don't think "we" will be the ones to have to pay it.  And that is a most-grievous sin.

This is why I need to learn the courage of a brave and faithful woman like Esther.  Her story is not, despite the attempts of "Christian" moviemakers to re-brand it, the Bible's version of a Disney princess story.  But rather her story is one of honest, open-eyed, struggling, wrestling faithful courage that knows the cost of speaking up and of not speaking up.  Without rehashing the entire plot of this short book, Esther is a Jewish woman who has been chosen as queen to the Persian king, and there is a plot by an enemy (Haman) to wipe out all of the Jewish people.  Esther is in the position where she could bring this to the king's attention and stop this vile action, but there are risks.  It is against the law to come before the king (even for the queen) without having been summoned first.  Esther knows that it could be costly to speak up (in fact, speaking up is what got the previous queen kicked out of her position).  But with some faithful conversation and wise counsel from a mentor named Mordecai, Esther realizes that the potential costs to herself are far smaller than the terrible price of her silence for countless others.  She decides she must be brave, because there is the hope that her courage will save life.

Esther's story both provokes me and gives me hope.  It provokes me because I know a million reasons why it is easier, or less confrontational, or less risky, not to speak up about the ongoing ways that we live in culture that is OK with putting one group over another.  I can say, "Surely, everyone else around sees it, right?  Surely everyone around me thinks that white nationalism, white supremacy, and racial bigotry are anti-Christ, right?" Or maybe I think, "That's really better handled outside of a church setting," or that someone else will come along to speak up.  Maybe I think, "Look, no one I know is actively planning a mass shooting, so the little snide remarks, or the casual bigotry, or the Confederate flags are not worth calling out." Or maybe I think, "Hey, I've just got to preach 'the gospel,' and that means just sticking to talk about souls going to heaven, or I'm likely to be out of a job."  I can come up with a litany of more excuses, too, without breaking a sweat.  And Esther's example jabs me out of that complacency and says, "No.  The cost of your silence is too high.  Now learn to be brave like me and stand up, you chicken-heart."  (She's right, of course--I'm usually something of a chicken-heart.) 

But at the very same time, as I say, Esther's example and story give me deep hope--a hope beyond what I have earned and deserve.  Because her courageous act actually makes a difference.  She speaks up--she uses her position of privilege to call attention to the systemic evil that is at work trying to destroy her people, solely on the basis of their race--and her courageous action exposes the plot and saves the Jewish people.  It means that change is possible, and that life really can be snatched out of the jaws of death, even through something as seemingly weak as human speech.  Courageous words really can bring forth life.  It really is possible--but it requires that those who are in positions to speak actually do so.

On a day like today, I need both the provocation and the inspiration that Esther's story gives so freely. I need to be reminded of the terrible cost of silence, even when that silence thinks it is well-intentioned and innocent.  And I need to be reminded of the life-giving power that can be unleashed when people of faith dare to be brave and use their positions of privilege to reveal the presence of evil and hatred, and to speak up for those who are endangered.  All too often I have been quiet.  All too often, in too many Sunday School rooms and pulpits and online church social media posts, we have been too chicken-hearted to speak out, clearly and courageously, against the ongoing reality of racism in the places where we still live.  And there have been costs to our silence.  The shooting at Mother Emanuel was only five years ago--this is not the distant past, and it is not just "someone else's problem."  The question is whether we will dare to have the kind of courage that Esther has, or come up with a reason to keep our mouths closed.

I believe with all that I am that one day in glory, I will have the chance to look Queen Esther in the eye and talk with her about what she did in this critical moment.  

I hope that I can say to her on that day, "I learned to be brave like you, eventually, your highness."

Lord God, we don't know but that perhaps you have placed each of us where we are, with whatever influence and power and platforms we have to speak against hatred and violence, and to direct wayward minds and hearts back toward your way of love for all peoples.  Give us the courage to use those other gifts, and to speak where it is ours to speak.