Speak with Boldness

Scripture Lessons: Esther 7: 1-6 and James 5: 13-20 Sermon Title: Speak with Boldness Preached on September 30, 2018 During seminary, as I trained to become a pastor, my first internship was at the old Georgia Baptist Hospital where I was to learn from their chaplains about visiting people in the hospital. By the time I was in seminary it had been renamed the Atlanta Medical Center, and once a week I was charged with visiting patients on the ICU floor, so I went from room to room, introducing myself to strangers and asking them about their personal struggles. It was a role I felt completely unqualified to fill. I couldn’t believe they just let me do that. I’d walk right in and meet people in the middle of whatever medical crisis they were facing. I’m sure it was the worst day of many of their lives. Then here I come. Sometimes they seemed to tolerate my efforts, other times they were glad to see me go. For me, all of it was terrifying, because I had in my mind an idea that these poor people might want to talk with me about the great theological issues of life. That one might ask me: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Or, “Why, young chaplain intern, is there suffering in the world?” Of course, it got worse after my friend Fred told me about his experience. He was called into a hospital room where a man had just died. He asked the man’s wife if he might pray with her and her sister, which Fred did. He asked God to comfort them in their time of grief, and gave thanks for this man’s life, but at the end of the prayer the man’s wife looked like she was expecting something more out of Fred, so she said, “Well, aren’t you going to try to raise him from the dead?” This story basically confirmed all my worst fears about visiting people in the hospital as a chaplain intern. However, in reality, the most I was ever asked to do beyond say a simple prayer, was to give someone a backrub, so thinking of Fred’s story on the one hand and the reality of what I was ever actually asked to do, I realize that my fears built up so much that I was nearly afraid to do anything at all. Do you remember as a child, being nervous about talking to your friend after he’d lost his grandmother? Were you nervous, wondering: What will I say? What if he cries? And were you so nervous that maybe you waited until the time had passed to say anything at all? I remember the pastor who preached my great uncle Jim’s funeral. He told the story of being a 9 or 10-year-old boy. His father had just died, and his house was full of people. So full that he couldn’t really make out much of it. His memory of the day was of a bunch of men and women wanting to say some words that would make this young boy feel better. The only vivid memory this preacher had of that sad day was climbing the steps, and as he did, someone took his hand and squeezed it. That was all – but that was all my Great Uncle Jim needed to do, for despite all the years that had passed between the day of his father’s funeral when he was a child and the day of my Great Uncle Jim’s death, that preacher, now retired, remembered that simple gesture which told him he wasn’t alone on one of the worst days of his life. You see – it is a scary thing to do what James is calling us to do. From this book of the Bible that we’ve been dealing with all month, I just read another passage with plain and clear instruction that pushes many of us beyond our comfort zones: Are there any among you suffering? Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.” Doing such a thing as that sounds scary, but it’s only scary because our imagination can convince us that in the presence of our suffering or sick friend, we’re going to be asked to do some huge thing, and maybe we will – but more likely, they’ll never even remember what we said, they’ll only remember whether or not we were there. I remember going to visit Roy. He was on oxygen and rarely left the house, except to go and eat at the Red Lobster. His wife Dodie asked me to come over to bring him communion, but when I got there I walked in the house and realized I had forgotten the home communion set. Years later when I left that church to go to Tennessee, you know what Dodie gave me as a going away present? A home communion set. And when Roy died I called Dodie, even though by then I was serving a different church in a different state. I called just to tell her I was sorry. And she cried. Not because I knew the perfect thing to say but because I took the time to call. Think about that. Have you ever waited and waited to call a friend who is going through a time of chaos for fear of saying the wrong thing? That happens. People do say the wrong thing. We had a friend in Tennessee who didn’t know what to say to a mother who’d just lost her son. But she knew her son had played football for Alabama, so to fill in the silence she said to this grieving mother: “Roll Tide.” And that’s not the worst thing anyone’s ever said at a funeral. Worse to say are those empty platitudes like: “God must have needed another angel in the choir.” We say those kinds of things because we don’t know what else to say, but we have to remember how much power to heal there is in just showing up in an authentic and honest way. There is plenty of strength in standing before the power of death fortified with the truth of the Gospel and the truth of ourselves. We don’t have to know what to say. And we don’t have to know what to do – but we do have to show up. I remember when Joanne was dying. Hospice arranged for a nice hospital bed to be put in her dining room, so she wouldn’t have to go up and down the stairs. Her husband slept on the coach in the next room, and even though it was Christmas time they hadn’t bothered with a tree, hadn’t really bothered with much of anything other than soaking up ever second that she had left. Her friends in the choir – they all wanted to do something, but Joanne and her husband didn’t want visitors, so one of them called and asked her husband just to open the windows in the dining room, and right outside those windows the choir, they sang Christmas carols. That’s an incredible thing, isn’t it? It really is. That’s what her church did for her. And a church is an incredible thing. Churches are just full of people, but life changing things happen here most every day when people have the courage to step out in faith as James implores. If you read your newsletter, and if you haven’t you should – there’s an article in there about a couple who’s moving to France to be closer to their daughter. The only problem is that their dog is too old to make the flight. Their daughter, a former church member, sent us a message, wondering if there was any way we could help place this dog in a home. The dog’s name is Charlie and Martie Moore adopted him, and the daughter who contacted us initially, she wrote me a note saying “Thank you so much for helping us find a home for Charlie. He is so happy with Martie. It was meant to be It has also meant a lot to my parents who have had a tough time with ALS and this gesture has given them some peace along the journey.” Consider that! The difference that can be made with such a simple act of kindness! Something else. There’s someone who’s been sliding a candy bar into my mailbox every Sunday. This morning it was a whole bag of York Peppermint Patties. I don’t know who it is that’s doing it, but it means so much to be thought of I don’t even know what to say. I suppose it’s a simple thing, but it doesn’t feel simple. It feels like somebody loves me, and that’s never small. Even in the face of evil – a simple act of authentic kindness is enough to defy the power of sin and death. Listen to this – we were in Boston this week. Flights on Southwest were just $50, so we decided to make the trip since the girls were out of school, and we like to show them parts of the world that expand their horizons. Boston is a city in a way that Marietta’s not. It’s big – so big that while Dr. Ken Farrah taught us to pray every time we hear the sirens of an ambulance back when he was our Sunday School teacher, in Boston you hear sirens so often you’re pretty much praying all the time, wondering what good a little prayer’s going to do. We walked the Freedom Trail, which was wonderful, and right next to the Freedom Trail is a noteworthy Holocaust memorial. One simple glass tower dedicated to each of the concentration camps, numbers on the outsides etched in the glass of all the people murdered at each one. The numbers reach to the sky, but on the inside of the tower, where you walk through, there are quotes from survivors. This one was especially profound: Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend. The world might make us feel small. Like our actions have no meaning. That there’s nothing really to be done. “Who am I to make a difference,” we’ve learned to ask. Surely that’s how it was with Esther. Who was she, but the Jewish girl who had somehow lucked out and made it into the palace. No one there knew she was a Jew, and they didn’t need to know, for if she hid her true identity she’d be spared from all the hardship her people faced living as an oppressed minority under the Persian Empire. This is how it is sometimes. Some people can pass, and they learn to get by. That was Esther. She was beautiful and so she was given a pass. The only price you have to pay when you get such a pass is always living with the fear of getting caught and accepting the reality that you can never really be yourself. Such a life teaches you to keep silent, pretend you’re not who you are, and look pretty doing it. Many women living in a man’s world know what this is like. Esther’s life was given value by the Emperor, not because of her mind or her talent, but because of the way she looked, so she knew to wake up every morning, put on her makeup, laugh at the Emperor’s jokes, and keep her authentic self covered up. None of this feels very good, but people do it all the time. However, the only father she had ever known needed her. Her people needed her, so she spoke out against the evil Haman to prevent a genocide. She took a risk and voiced her convictions. She risked her life and was honest about her identity – and look what happened? She saved her people. Of course, it must have been hard. Nearly impossible. To no longer hide, but to really show up with your truth. It’s not easy but doing so changes things, so while there will always be powerful men who benefit from the silence of women, the message from Scripture is clear – show up and “speak with boldness,” from the truth of your heart because within us all is the power to topple tyrants and change the world. We may not have the power to raise the dead – but within us is the power to testify to the God who can. Within us is the power to comfort a friend in grief, just by reaching out and squeezing his hand. To bring the promise of Christmas to a home in the valley of the Shadow of death. Within us is the power to bring peace along a difficult journey. The world may always be the kind of place where it feels prudent to keep silent. But Scripture is clear – Speak Up! Not with empty platitudes – but with the truth of your heart, for while it’s so easy just to keep quiet and to hope that trouble will pass like a storm cloud in the sky, better yet is to remember this: My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. With that James ends his letter – and with that he challenges us to begin living our lives with faith, hope, and love. Amen.