Reading and Sermon, Sunday, February 23, 2025
Reading
By Karen Oliveto, Missoula 1st United Methodist Church
For many years, I joined a wonderful group of Love warriors-queer couples, activists, and clergy, who, on each Valentine’s Day, would walk into the San Francisco City Clerk’s office and wait while the queer couples requested marriage licenses. When the clerks (often tearfully) replied they were not allowed to issue to queer couples, we al sat down and sang, “What the world needs now , is love, sweet love” until we were finally led out in handcuffs.
What the world needs now, is love, sweet love.
We need to be singing that song loudly and boldly. When trans folk are denied their humanity (and erased from history), when BIPOC folks are suspect due to the color of their shin in a time of immigration sweeps, when the very institutions that provided safety, education, and health for us all are under attack, we need to put our love into acts of resistance.
Each of us has a role to play. There can be no sitting on the sidelines.
What will your acts of love look like in public? How will you help return love to the public aware
What the world needs now is love.
Sermon: Unwise Silence
Good morning beloved friends. Today’s topic is unwise silence. But before we can talk about the unwise silence, I think we need to talk about the wise silence, or the sound of wisdom.
One of my favorite scriptures to preach from, back when I was a UCC minister, was the story of Elijah on the run from Jezebel after defeating the prophets of Baal. God tells him to find God in the mountain. A mighty wind came and shook the mountain but God was not in the wind. And then a mighty fire came and God was not in the fire. And then came sheer silence. God was in the silence.
From this comes a whole religious tradition of seeking the divine in silence- chief among them, the monastic orders who take a vow of silence, or the Quakers who sit together in silence as long as it takes from someone to speak truly from the Spirit. Silence is there in many meditative traditions as well, from Hinduism to Buddhism. Silence is definitely a part of the Unitarians own transcendentalist tradition. Silence can be wise, and it is worth seeking.
But here’s what I think: I think silence is really more like the sound of wisdom. In my experience as a meditator- even when I went on 10 day silent meditation retreat in the Grand Tetons, is that there really isn’t silence at all, its more a matter of developing a spaciousness around sounds, thoughts and emotional structures, that create a sense of oneness of everything within the moment of aliveness that can only be now. We are only alive right now in this moment, but we spend most of our time in a substitute story, as if we are engrossed in a novel or a smart phone while we are driving or talking to someone else, or working, or tragically, even loving. In other words, wisdom is the experience that there’s more to life than being distracted by the noise.
The sound of wisdom is being here now this instant- awake, and alive, real; it is not so much about whether one should be quiet, or speak out, or protest, or not- but being open to the flow anchored in the now, and doing things and saying things in the most efficient, and articulate way possible. In my experience wise silence, is really wise sound, the wise knowledge of the full wider reverberations of everything around you. The sound of wisdom is the sage knowledge that your thoughts are not you, your heart states even the most difficult ones, when compassionately recognized and thanked, are not permanent, nothing is; all things rising and falling just as they are, are perfect in this one moment.
So what of this unwise silence? The unwise silence is the kind of silence that comes from censorship. And we are seeing this now. Silence is a tool of oppressors to stifle dissent. Silence in this way might be an attack on Diversity Equity and Inclusion ideas; like how this administration has attempted to get rid of the letter T from LGBTQ. It might be an attack on woke. It might be the banning of books. In this case we must be vocal to not ban books. We must speak up about Trans rights. We must speak loud so that everyone can hear.
But how do we does one deal with the cacophony of foolish noise, which intends to overwhelm and silence us? On a given week, should we defend federal employees rights, defend reproductive freedom, advocate for trans rights, the Palestinian state, research grants given to institutions, immigrants targeted even in churches or schools? The Ukrainian people? Or should we just be focusing our attention on the misinterpretation of Article II that has since the Nixon administration handing over more and more authority to the presidency? I mean these executive orders go way beyond the separation of powers…
On this theme, I met with US representative Jake Auchinclose this week, who had wanted to talk to me about immigration issues. While our differing views on Palestine, provoked some disagreement, we had a far ranging, fantastic conversation of many issues. I asked him what the climate was really like in DC. He said that all of these million initiatives, is about flooding the zone, to distract attention from the primary goal of cutting medicaid and medicare this week. Now, if news media really understood this, and word could get out to the many republican voting regular people, that absolutely rely on medicaid, these cuts probably wouldn’t pass. But because there are so many things happening and the media is so intentionally distracted- it probably will pass.
This kind of silence is not the silence of that comes from the lack of noise, but the silence that comes with so much noise, you can barely hear the person you desperately want to hear from in that crowded room. In this kind of environment the antidote is not always to say more, or do more things, but to think what it is that really sustains you and you are really passionate about and speak about that one thing, and place priority on being centered and grounded as you do so. The antidote to the cacophony of foolish, dangerous noise is wise, grounded, centered speech.
This is not the first time that culture has had to struggle with what we are struggling with. I turned to James Luther Adams the pre-eminent twentieth century Unitarian theologian a little this week for inspiration to cope with my fear for our nation. I wanted to know what he had learned from his time in Germany when Hitler began to seize power. Listen to what he wrote:
I saw that the people in the anti-Nazi movement were willing to go to jail or to a concentration camp. I had the good fortune to have an old friend in Germany, Peter Brunner. He had secured his degree at Harvard in the same year that I received my bachelor’s degree at the Divinity School. A few years later he was sent to Dachau concentration camp by reason of his anti-Nazi activity. But the minute he got out of Dachau he began making speeches in various churches (I sometimes accompanied him), every day ruthlessly attacking the Nazis, even though they had just released him. Now that takes courage!
However, the attempt to state the basis for the objection to Nazism was frustrating. I wasn’t the only one to make this criticism, but the position of the Confessing Church was formulated in a way that could appeal only to a small segment of the population. They insisted on formulations that only a narrow section of the German Lutheran public could accept, and thus they alienated those who had moved in the direction of liberal theology[1].
Adams lifts us an example of an extremely courageous person, who had the ability to reach many more people, but kept his argument so narrow that most people in Germany just couldn’t understand him. The wise speech in this instance is this: Do talk to everybody. Don’t get pigeon-holed into a very small echo-chamber. Speak simply so that everyone can understand. Be bold.
But more important than boldness, or broadness, or simplicity, is love. You know we have this thing we say at Murray right, love is the spirit of this church…? Well, when I was new here, and trying to memorize this covenant- with your help… I mean there was a couple of months where at every meeting it seemed like you would have me recite the covenant. But here’s the thing- I’m a little hard of hearing, and when it says seek the truth in love I thought you were saying speak the truth in love. Finally, somebody caught me, and you know what that very kind loving person said, “Um, its seek the truth in love, not speak the truth in love, though speaking the truth in love is, I must say, a very admirable goal too!”
Wise speech, wise silence (versus unwise speech and unwise silence) is about speaking the truth in love. Sometimes you don’t speak. Sometimes you do speak. But whenever you speak you do so with love.
The reading I shared before this sermon models so well- that kind of deliberate, joyful, love-filled speech coupled with action that matters. The methodist bishops Karen Oliveto, going to the courthouse every day, asking to marry same-sex couples, every day being denied, every day provoking sympathy from the clerks behind the counter, every day singing, every day being hand cuffed… It’s nice to be reminded what speaking the truth in love takes. It’s nice to be reminded that its not hard actually. That it is meaningful; that it in fact pierces the veil of the unwise silence. But also notice how much time she devoted to a single issue. Probably wasn’t speaking and acting on marriage equality, at the same time protesting foreign wars, greenhouse gas, and the trammeling of immigrant rights. I mean as a minister preaching to a church on a Sunday, I’m sure she did have the chance to talk about all those things, but as far as her public life of civil disobedience was concerned, she probably just focused on one thing.
Unwise silence is tempting right now, especially in this atmosphere of unwise, destructive noise. But we are also a people of wise speech, and wise action, grounded in centered living, and a loving community. Together, we can do whatever is necessary, to be true to our commitment to being a beloved community, that seeks the truth in love, even as it so wisely speaks the truth in love to unwise, scared silence, and lifts a clear, ringing note, to the cacophony of foolish proclamations. Blessed be.
[1] James Luther Adams A Time to Speak, Conversations at the Collegium
