Christ Cathedral

I clipped an article from the newspaper several months ago that said that there ought to be a law against letting children watch opera on TV. I was just skimming the news articles and at first thought it said Oprah. Well, that didn’t make sense, so, I went back and read more intentionally - and it was a law against children watching operas. The rationale was that in operas, they are always singing in some foreign language, which was to infer that they were talking dirty. And what’s more, we can’t have kids growing up, thinking that it’s ok to dress up like a Viking and go around hollering all the time. In my mind, this qualifies for the pinhead award.

If you have ever been at Wal-Mart on a Saturday morning, you will encounter several children in shopping carts hollering at the top of their lungs. They must have been watching too much opera.

But, sometimes hollering is a very necessary thing. For instance, when a baby is having a problem, yelling is the only way the baby has to get help. A six month-old child doesn’t have the ability to say: "Oh mother, my diaper has become soiled. Would you please correct the situation?" No, a baby isn’t able to communicate like that. Instead, a baby gets what it needs by hollering.

There seems to be a lot of hollering going on in the Bible. Our Gospel reading is just such an example. Old blind Bartimaeus didn’t just sit beside the road and speak in a quiet voice: "Oh, Jesus, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, if you have some time, could you help me?" That is not what Bartimaeus did. The Bible says that Bartimaeus called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" And when the crowd around him told him to hush up and be quiet, Bartimaeus got even louder and screamed: "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" And that screaming got Jesus’ attention.

That is something we discover time and time again in the Bible. I did a little research. In the New Testament, there is a record of 26 different healing miracles that Jesus performed. Of those 26 healings, Jesus took the initiative in only 5 of them. In other words, in 21 of those healings, the people had to go to Jesus, they had to yell, and they had to do what they could to get Jesus’ attention. And then, and only then, did Jesus heal them.

I think what that shows us is that silence can be a very deadly thing. As those stories in the bible show us, if we remain silent, then we don’t have any hope. If Bartimaeus hadn’t had the courage to speak up, if he had just remained silent, then he never would have had his sight restored.

Too often Christians are silent. We just don’t yell, even though deep down we know that we should be yelling. The Christian church was silent when the Nazis were rounding up all the Jews in Western Europe during World War II. It is said: "In Germany they came first for the communists. But I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn’t speak up because I was a protestant. Then they came for me, but by that time no one was left to speak up."

So often we hesitate to speak up. But why is that? Because all around us the voices of evil are shouting as loud as they can. When Jesus came upon a man possessed by a demon, the demon would scream, "Jesus, what have you to do with us? Go away, Jesus, leave us alone."

The voice of evil got louder and louder when the crowd went to Pilate and demanded that Jesus be crucified. The people shouted - they yelled: "Away with Him. Crucify Him. Crucify Him." The evil powers in the world have good, strong vocal cords, and they use them. But what about us? As Christians, do we speak up like we should? Or are we quick to just accept things like they are?

We look around us at the world that we live in, with all the sin and evil that takes place, and we sort of shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh, well, that’s life. What can we do?" But here in the story of Bartimaeus we are reminded that Jesus gives us a fresh set of eyes. We have restored vision to look not just at the world the way it is, but a new set of eyes to see the world the way it can be. To see the world the way God wants it to be.

The question for us is; are we just going to accept the world the way it is? Or are we going to be brave enough to speak up, to yell? To let the rest of the world know that we are not going to play by their rules.

Consider the incredibly huge problems that face the children of our nation. Every 47 seconds a child in this country is abused or neglected. Every 67 seconds a teenager has a baby. Every 7 minutes a young person is arrested for a drug offense. Everyday 135,000 children bring guns to school. Everyday 100,000 children are homeless. Those facts make me want to scream. Do they make you want to work toward changing the way things are? Or are we more concerned about what we are going to have for lunch or dinner today? Or whether the service is going to run a little over an hour?

Maybe we need to holler about all the people who aren’t even here today. Oh, sure, often we have the attitude that religion is a personal choice. And if a person chooses not to be a part of the Church, that’s their decision, and we need to respect that. And those are the rules that the world tries to get us to play by. But maybe it’s time that we started challenging those rules. Maybe it’s time we started shouting, and letting people know that we want them to be a part of the Church. Some people travel to a football game (KU or K-State) and wipe out the major part of a day, but some can’t seem to find any time for God. And that’s wrong.

Maybe it’s time we started yelling, and letting people know that being a part of worship with the faith community is important. We should be shouting at the top of our lungs that there is a God who loves us and cares about us. You would be amazed at how many people don’t know that.

There is so much that is wrong in this world. At times it seems to be more than we can deal with. And so sometimes we are tempted just to keep quiet. But we need stand our ground. We need lift up our voices and say: "Jesus Christ is Lord." After all, if we don’t lift up our voices for Jesus, who in this world will? We need to shout for all the world to hear: "Jesus Christ is Lord!"