It’s another beautiful
Saturday morning, a perfect summer day in Wisconsin, the sort of day to write
about something lighthearted and fun. In
Dallas and Baton Rouge and suburban St. Paul the weather conditions are
meaningless. They are engaging in or planning funerals for people who were
killed this week: men shot and killed by police and police killed by a lone
sniper/murderer. “For whom does the bell toll?”
At dinner last night one of
my companions asked, “What is going to have to happen before we all just go to
Washington and march until something gets done?” None of us had an answer. I didn’t have an
answer because, first, I don’t know what will change the pattern of violence
which leads to new horrors each week, from Orlando to Dallas and who knows
where next. Second, I don’t know that I
have the motivation to march, to speak up.
It is too easy, sitting here in
the upper Midwest on a spectacular sunny Saturday to just try to forget about
it, to say, “what difference could I really make?” Third, I don’t know if I
have the courage to speak. This is the part which troubles me the most. Have I
lost my voice?
The problem I have in my role
as pastor of a church is that the “church” doesn’t have a “position.” It would be my role to help the “church” find
a message and a voice, but if I do that I risk “blowing up” the church. Our nation is so divided that there is no one
“position” that represents a consensus view of what God would have to say about
this pattern of violence. Am I willing to risk my job and to risk the cohesiveness
of the community I serve over a problem that has (not yet) affected our city
directly? Am I willing to march, to
speak up, when the people who have called me to speak may not follow?
Elie Wiesel, in his 1986
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech said this, “Neutrality helps the oppressor,
never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Sometimes we must interfere.” Sometimes,
I conclude, silence is a sin. “God, forgive me.
Help me to find my voice. Fill
the silence with your Word. Amen.”
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