One of my favorite lines in the “Brief Statement of Faith” occurs in the last section on the work of the Holy Spirit. It reads: “In a broken and fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage … to hear the voices of peoples long silenced.” It was my great privilege to serve on the Committee of 15 that proposed the final version of the Brief Statement to the General Assembly and the church. I will never forget our discussion of that evocative sentence. The statement asserts that it is not only individuals but “peoples” … groups or classes of people whose voices have not been heard. And it is not only that they have been silent – not speaking, but silenced – not able or permitted to speak.
As the committee debated that line, one member told a riveting story. Henry Fawcett is a long-time member of the faculty of Dubuque Seminary. He is a Native American from Alaska and a third generation Presbyterian. Some years previously, Henry’s father had died and as the oldest son, it fell to him to close up the family home in the village where he had been raised. As he worked his way through furniture and boxes long-stored away, he eventually came upon a trunk in the very back of the attic. On the top were old blankets and bedding. When he got to the very bottom, he found something else: a carefully folded, beautifully beaded ceremonial robe.
Henry knew immediately that it had belonged to his grandfather who had been the religious leader of the community. He had been among the first to embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and he went on to raise generations of his family in deep Christian faith. But, as was the custom of the time, all who converted were instructed to burn all the costumes and paraphernalia of their former religious life. This robe escaped the fire and had been carefully preserved. Henry said that as he put it on his own shoulders, he could hear his grandfather’s voice and the voices of those who had gone before him – voices once silenced that were silent no longer.
It has occurred to me this year, as we come to this General Assembly with all the troublesome issues before us, that it is not only people – human beings – that have been silenced down through the years. It is also the case the voices from the tradition and even the Bible itself have been silenced and that it is the work of the Holy Spirit among us that gives us courage to hear those voices as well. Whenever we listen and really hear, we are led deeper into our discipleship of Jesus Christ.
I am convinced that one of the most important contributions of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church is found in a grid between lines 699 and 700. The section is entitled “Resources for Constructive Engagement.” Here (and in the wonderful background paper that accompanies it), the authors argue that Presbyterian life is held together by maintaining a dynamic tension between various theological principles or “points of balance.” At first glance, these ideas or principles may look contradictory or even mutually exclusive. But the genius of Presbyterian life and thought has been to see that truth often resides in more than one place at the same time. One of the hallmarks of our tradition has been to resist the simplistic either/or answers in favor of a more complex both/and.
So, in the examples from the Task Force Report, we believe that the community/the church together discerns God’s will and we believe that God alone is Lord of the conscience. We affirm that there are necessary beliefs and practices that make the church truly Christian and we respect freedom of belief and practice in nonessential matters.
Why is such an approach to Christian faith important? We live in a culture of either/or thinking – either you support the Chicago Cubs or the Chicago White Sox. Either the Palestinians or the State of Israel has justice on its side; but not both. Either you affirm the dignity and value of all human life or you acknowledge the possibility of abortion and end of life decisions. Either congregations and Presbyteries have the right and responsibility to ordain or there will be a national standard approved and followed by all. In these cases, either/or thinking is dangerous … it does not lead either to unity or peace because the desire is for one side to impose its will on the other. It may end up with a kind of purity but it will be a purity of the like minded. In the long run, this kind of thinking silences thoughtful voices in the community. In doing so, it does damage to the truth.
The truth is that often, more than one thing can be true at the same time; in fact failing to hold various truth claims or ethical values in tension can lead to theological as well as ecclesial disaster. I am convinced that the Task Force did not invent this idea of theological “points of balance.” Rather, as they sat together and listened to one another, they listened as well to voice of the Reformed tradition and in the process heard a voice long silenced.
One of the principal examples of hearing the voices of peoples long silenced is what we are celebrating in 2005-2006 in the anniversaries of the ordination of women in the Presbyterian Church to the offices of deacon, elder and minister of Word and Sacrament. In order for the church to change its mind on this matter, the church had to learn how to listen not only to the voices of women but to the tradition itself. For centuries, the church looked primarily to selected passages in the writings of Paul for the answer to the question: are women called to governing and pastoral leadership in the church? In order for the church to change its mind, I would suggest that the church had to listen to the whole tradition. Once the church stopped reading Jesus through the lens of Paul, what we rediscovered was the important roles that women played in Jesus’ life and ministry and by extension in the life of the early church.
I have always loved the fact that when noted biblical scholar, Elisabeth Schuessler-Fiorenza wrote her ground-breaking study of women in the New Testament, she titled it In Memory of Her. Surely, this story of the woman who anoints Jesus in Mark 14 is the most ironic in all the church’s history of thinking about the role of women. Here, Jesus commends a woman for caring for him in anticipation of his death. He commends her because she (unlike the rest of the disciples) gets it about what is going to happen. And in commending her uses the phrase that appears again only in the institution of the Lord’s Supper: “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” The irony, of course, is that first of all, the community forgot her name and then forgot her story. But there it is and there it has been all along, like Henry’s grandfather’s robe wrapped up carefully in the trunk in the back of the closet, waiting for the right moment to be rediscovered.
In both cases, I believe that we see something of the essential nature of the Reformed tradition. The Brief Statement calls it “hearing the voices of peoples long silenced.” Our ancestors in the faith called it “ecclesia reformata sed semper reformanda” … reformed and always being reformed … open to change as the Spirit gives us wisdom and courage. I call this an “essential” because I am coming to believe that it is not particular doctrines that are essential to our tradition. Rather, what makes the Reformed tradition what it is, is how we do theology and how we do church. When you come right down to it, there is only one Christian essential: that Jesus Christ is Lord and through him, we believe in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All the rest of doctrine is commentary. To be sure, there are different developments and diverse ways of being Christian. Ours is one, and it is (among other things) one that is open to hearing the voices of peoples long silenced.
In both examples I have discussed here -- the idea of theological ideas held in tension or balance and the conviction that God calls women as well as men to all offices of the church – in both cases, we Presbyterians are by far the numerical minority among the world’s Christians. But that does not make us wrong. Doctrine and practice cannot finally be determined by majority votes. They are determined by communities of believers who listen for the Spirit’s leading.
The Covenant Network has been together for nine years now in the belief that God can and will use the lives and gifts of God’s people regardless of sexual orientation in God’s service. We are committed to hearing the voices of gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and children and neighbors and colleagues and friends. We also believe that in coming to this conviction, we have heard the Holy Spirit opening the scriptures and the tradition to us in new ways.
But this cannot be the extent of our listening. As the Theological Task Force reminds us, gay and lesbian people are not the only ones who feel that their voices are or have been silenced. And so as we live through this week and these challenging times in our church, let us recommit ourselves to disciplines of humility and openness, to genuine listening, to a ready willingness to work with one another, and above all to God who has called us to be God’s people.
It is still my favorite section: In a broken and fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace. Amen.
