This past weekend, I attended a lovely wedding and reception. The bride and groom danced their first dance to the same song Donna and I danced to almost 25 years ago, although it was a different rendition. Many of you probably know the song, whose refrain includes, “you say it best when you say nothing at all.” It’s a romantic notion conveying the truth of a strong love that simply being together, and sharing looks and touches, is enough. I still love the song, and, more importantly, the woman I danced with all those years ago. I’ve also learned that the truth of the song’s lyrics doesn’t mean that we never have to say something, even if our words are clunky and decidedly insufficient. Sometimes words matter.
Many of us have also heard the saying, “Preach the Gospel: use words when necessary.” It’s often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, but there’s no historic record that he said or wrote it. It’s probably linked to him because of a section of Chapter XII in the rule he drafted for his monks, which invited them to “preach by their deeds.” Scholars and historians think he meant it as an encouragement for his followers to be sure that what they said and did was aligned. As I learned in my travels to Assisi earlier this month, Francis was a tremendously gifted preacher who used his words often. Everyone listened when he spoke, apparently even the birds and animals (a testament to the power of his preaching more than an indication that he was a holy Dr. Doolittle).
We’ve often used the phrase about necessary words to gently endorse our tendency not to want to talk about our faith or engage in evangelism. Talking about our faith can make us uncomfortable, and many of us don’t have the words we think we ought to have. It may also be because some of us also worry that our words and deeds won’t actually be aligned. Frankly, I think we tend to hope that folks aren’t paying attention, and if they are, they’ll catch us in the moments when our life does reflect the Gospel…which isn’t always the case.
We may think that lovers can say it best when we say nothing at all, but that isn’t true of the Church. Preachers, in particular, are tasked with using words, so we don’t get a pass. History is full of examples of moments when the Church changed the world by using its voice – its words – to say things that the world needed to hear. History also contains now-regrettable times when the Church didn’t use its active voice to speak healing words, call for repentance, or seek reconciliation. When I speak of the Church in this regard, it’s also helpful to remember that the Church is and always has been diverse. The Church can’t say anything – only its people can. That certainly applies to leaders, but also to her members. The Church speaks (or doesn’t) when Christians of any rank and order open their mouths (or hold their tongues).
Currently, there are competing theories of what words the world needs from the Church. Some yearn for a clear clarion call in response to today’s woes. Others have a powerful sense that much of what’s going on in the world around us should be off limits. Ultimately, the Church needs to be the Church, even though we don’t always know exactly what that means. When we began to use different words to describe the community of first Christians, one word spoke about and shaped the reality and role of what we now know as the Church. One word used by the early church (and in scripture) was a Greek word, “ekklesia,” borrowed from the Greek civic culture of their day. It meant “called out from,” and the idea was that a group of citizens stepped away from the routines of everyday life to deliberate on the issues that affected their lives so that they could reenter their everyday life with a different attitude. Vitor Westhelle has written about this and suggested that the “discontinuity with the quotidian” (breaking from the ordinary) was not an end in itself, but about intentional efforts to make a positive change.
Westhelle, writing more than fifteen years ago, also noted a connection between the church and speaking the truth, although, as he admits, it’s not always self-evident. The Church might represent the truth for which it stands, but as it lives out its life in the world, it can inadvertently conceal it. The Church has to be intentional in its truth-speaking, which matters greatly when it comes to transforming this world. The Church is tasked to be prophetic, but more importantly, to engage in parrhesia. Prophecy is the word of challenge and truth-telling from an outsider. We’re not always outsiders anymore. Parrhesia, which means “to say it all,” often understood as “boldness of speech,” is the work of insiders speaking to one another. Martin Luther, the reformer who certainly didn’t mince words, suggested this meant “to call the thing what it is.” As dangerous as it is to be a prophet, Westhelle warned that parrhesia is even more so. Jesus engaged in this truth-telling, and we know what happened to him.
For my part, I’m living and preaching in a space in which I preach the Gospel as faithfully as I know how. I try to call the thing what it is in many different ways, and it’s an ongoing conversation between me and God about how specific I need to be. There were times Jesus stepped to the edge of boldness of speech in his teaching and added, “let those with ears hear,” trusting they could fill in the gaps. Other times, he “said it all,” leading to near misses with crowds until the powers he threatened held him to their account. At least Jesus could say that his words and his deeds matched up.
I hope it’s not just preachers wrestling with this tension. All of us who follow Jesus are called out from the ways of the wider world (its culture, economics, politics, etc.) in order to reflect on the world. That’s the space the church invites us into and provides. That is how our faith presents us with a different vision and attitude - precisely to reshape our world as followers of Jesus. We’re all called to preach the Gospel, intentionally using words and telling the truth about what we see around us, because one thing is clear: we don’t say it best when we say nothing at all.
***Note: I very much enjoyed an ecclesiology class this summer. We read some meaty theological texts. Vitor Westhelle’s book, The Church Event: Call and Challenge of a Church Protestant, is one. William T. Cavanaugh’s Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church is another. I’ll use some of Cavanaugh’s work for the Dessert and Learn Wednesday sessions next month. I don’t plan to “say it all” in those sessions either, but rather to look to the Church’s longstanding idea of its place in the world, being tied up in the political realities of every age – not just this one. I hope it will be a good and helpful conversation that will inspire us, and I will do my utmost to avoid being divisive – we already have too much of that. Look for the dates and times in the announcements if you’re interested.
