When the Truth Must Be Spoken

(March 6, 2015) Most Christian churches use the Common Lectionary to plan their worship services, since there is scripture assigned for every Sunday of the church year. This Sunday’s (March 8) assigned gospel is one that challenges many people. We are so comfortable with the loving, peace-seeking Jesus that the sight of him lashing out in anger at the money changers in the Temple makes us uncomfortable.

 

Then again, when we explore this text for the reasons why, it becomes clear that this anger was a righteous anger. There are times that the truth must be spoken, no matter how uncomfortable. As we learned during last Sunday’s service, keeping secrets out of a sense of shame can be unhealthy spiritually. And in the spirit of righteous anger, there are times when the truth of our righteous anger is the only way that the cause of justice gets advanced.

 

Last year Hanna Bowman helped us understand the extent and impact that bullying has upon youth trying to find their own identity at a critical time. To follow up on this issue, this Sunday in part of our message we may briefly hear from one of our youths, who regularly joins us for services, about the ongoing pain of dealing with his sexual identity in a world that so often is cruel to people like him. The result locally has been a number of suicide attempts on the part of teens. It is, indeed, righteous anger that we will be dealing with.  We are an officially Open and Affirming Church. I hope that all of us who gather Sunday will surround this topic with love and understanding, confront with righteous anger a wrong that is being perpetuated on people brave enough to shed their secrets in order to fully be true to who they are.   --- Pastor Pat