Ain’t No Stone Goin’ to Shout for Me
The Physical Education teacher had lost it. He lined us up against the gym wall. We were a bunch of 11-year-old-boys who had been acting like 11-year-old boys. He yelled at us for several minutes. Finally, one kid couldn’t take it anymore. He said something, and the gym teacher hit him – hard. I keep telling myself that I honestly didn’t see it, because I had my eyes closed. I got the message, though. Don’t say anything.
Later, when the assistant principal called me and a couple of other kids who had been in the gym class into his office and asked us what happened, I told him the truth, I guess. I hadn’t seen anything. I knew what had happened, but I didn’t feel like I could tell the real truth.
As we were leaving the meeting with the principal, one of my friends said to me, “Why didn’t you say anything?” It never occurred to me to ask him, “Why didn’t YOU say anything?” Why is it my job to say something? But over the years, his question has haunted me, especially on those days when history repeated itself.
I’ve heard people unfairly judged and run down and I didn’t say anything.
I’ve heard people spouting off half-truths that wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so dangerous and I didn’t say anything.
I’ve been in groups where decisions were made that I was not comfortable with and I didn’t say anything.
I cringe at the memory of the times when I could have, should have, said something and didn’t.
Maybe you’ve never had experiences like that. Maybe you didn’t grow up in a world that told you that you were too stupid or too uninformed to have an opinion. Maybe you didn’t grow up in a world that kept telling you to mind your own business. Maybe you don’t operate in world that says to you, as it so often says to ministers, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about how the world operates. Just keep talking about heaven and keep your mouth shut about how things are run on earth.”
It’s our job to bury the soldiers when they come home in boxes and visit the ones who sitting in underfunded VA hospitals without their hands or feet or eyes or sanity, but if America wants to go to war, that’s none of our business, so we have to shut up about it.
The point I’m trying to make is that this repression of speech goes on more than you might think. And a lot of that repression takes place inside of us – or at least most of us. I am sure you know people who say whatever comes to mind. My friends who do that tell me that they are constantly receiving disapproving looks and often are not invited back to wherever it is that they said what they said.
I am not one of those people. I learned what I like to call “discretion” at an early age. Discretion is simply the ability to follow the rules and to carry on a pleasant conversation about everything except the elephant in the living room. It’s an invaluable skill for anyone who wants to become a successful preacher.
Jesus never learned the art of discretion – at least not the way the world defines that term. The world believes discretion is to ignore and never question the way things are. Jesus was always questioning the way things are. He questioned why religious leaders were so big on people washing their hands, but not their hearts. He questioned why rich people were patted on the back for giving big bucks that cost them very little and poor widows were ignored when they gave all they had. He questioned whether people who let you know they were religious or claimed to be honest weren’t protesting a bit too much. He questioned our acceptance of invalidism and insanity, our quickness to dismiss the possibility that we can live lives of heroic faith, and our despair about our ability to forgive, when nothing is impossible for God.
It is on Palm Sunday, in Luke’s gospel that the representatives of the powers-that-be, the religious and political leaders, say to Jesus “Tell your followers to be silent!”
And Jesus answers them, “I tell you the truth, if they are silent, the very stones will shout.”
The truth, says Jesus, will come out, even if the rocks have to tell it – or the rock heads, or the rock and rollers, it’s amazing where the truth comes from – the truths that counter the false claims of the powers that be.
One of the characteristics of the powers is how they corrupt language. George Orwell pointed this out in 1948, when he wrote the book 1984. in that novel, the world is ruled by combinations of political and economic and social power that no one dares question. And the slogan of this power is
War is Peace
Slavery is Freedom
Lies are Truth
It just happens that, in 1948, Harry Truman renamed the War Department, established by George Washington, calling it the Department of Defense. Today, the Powers-that-Be do that all the time - finding nice words to describe ugly things - and most of us don’t say anything.
We claim to follow Jesus, but we don’t really want to say to the world what He says to the world: ”If you know the truth, the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
We can keep our mouths shut if we want to. It appears we do not have to tell the world about this man – this person who was constantly questioning both the Powers-that-Be and The-Way-Things-Are. Because the Word gets out, somehow. Maybe the rocks are shouting the news. But everywhere people are praising him: in mud huts in Africa, in tin roofed sheds in
South America, in Cathedrals in Europe, in slums and brokerage houses, in peasants’ homes and presidential palaces.
Wherever anyone speaks the forbidden words, “Jesus is Lord”, meaning: Jesus is more important to me than money; Jesus is more important to me than power; Jesus is more important to me than security; Jesus is more important to me than life itself, then all the powers in this world are brought to their knees and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord.
