TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

1 Kings 19:4-8

Psalm 34:1-8

Ephesians 4:25—5:2

John 6:35, 41-51

Prayer of the Day: Gracious God, your blessed Son came down from heaven to be the true bread that gives life to the world. Give us this bread always, that he may live in us and we in him, and that, strengthened by this food, we may live as his body in the world, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.” Ephesians 4:25.

I have told this story previously, but it bears repeating in these days of “fake news,” “false narratives” and “gattcha journalism.” Not so many years ago, I was leading my confirmation class in a discussion of the Eight Commandment (Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness). In so doing, I posed the following hypothetical. Imagine, I said, that you are on the school board. The board is planning to hire Mary Smith to be its treasurer. In that position, she will, of course, be responsible for managing school district funds. You learn that Mary was formerly convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to ninety days in prison. Should you inform the board about Mary’s conviction?

Under these circumstances, the class unanimously agreed that the board should be made aware of this event in Mary’s past. As treasurer, Mary would be responsible for managing a substantial amount of public money critical for the operation of the schools within the district. It would be a breach of duty for a member of the school board to turn a blind eye to the facts and allow the board to place a person with a history of financial dishonesty in this important position of public trust.

But then I added to the hypothetical. Mary was a foster child who aged out of the system when she turned eighteen years old. At that time, she was informed that she could no longer live in the group home where was staying. At just eighteen years of age and not yet out of high school, she had little in the way of savings, but desperately needed a place to stay. She finally found a room for rent, but the landlord insisted on a $300 dollar deposit. Mary was working part time at a convenience store during this period of her life. One evening, when her employer left early and asked her to close up the store for the night, Mary took three hundred dollars from the cash register to cover the deposit. She had intended to pay the money back again once she got established, but her theft was detected and Mary was arrested shortly thereafter.

Upon release from prison, Mary found a job at a restaurant. She put aside as much money from her meager salary as she could each week. As soon as she had saved enough, she went back to her former employer at the convenience store and repaid the three hundred dollars she had taken with interest. Her former employer was impressed with Mary’s offer of restitution and offered to re-hire her. Mary soon became her employer’s assistant and has been managing the store’s finances faithfully for over twenty years. In addition, Mary has been doing volunteer work with an agency helping first time offenders newly released from prison to find work and integrate back into society. She is currently serving as treasurer for her church.

The class agreed that having this additional information made the decision a great deal more difficult. Is something that happened so long ago in the life of a desperate and inexperienced young girl relevant to the woman she had become? There was some lively discussion over what obligation a school board member had under these circumstances. Some of the kids felt that there was no need to disclose Mary’s conviction and that doing so would be unfair. Others expressed the view that, although duty bound as a member of the board to disclose the conviction, they would also be obligated to provide the context and relate the exemplary nature of Mary’s subsequent life of integrity and service. All agreed that simply disclosing the conviction, without more, would be wrong.

Speaking the truth to our neighbors, as St. Paul would have his churches do, is not as simple and straight forward as it might seem. A single fact taken out of context can distort the truth, ruin reputations, reinforce prejudices, incite rage and generate unfounded fear. For example, many Americans believe that undocumented immigrants are a criminal threat to society. The Republican party, led by their presidential nominee, former President Donald J. Trump, has leveraged this false assumption to inflame the rhetoric around immigration from the U.S.-Mexico border. In so doing, Republicans[1] and their allies have highlighted cases such as that of the recently murdered twelve-year old Jocelyn Nungaray. Two undocumented Venezuelan men have been charged with capital murder in the killing. The case is, without a doubt, horrific and a great tragedy for the families involved. But the party and its leaders care less about those involved than the “rage value” this story has for feeding this nation’s racist hysteria and supporting their false narrative to the effect that America is being “invaded” by criminals, insane asylum discharges and other assorted “vermin.” As in the case of my hypothetical, so too in this instance, this one isolated fact is being exploited in support of a lie.[2]

Saint Paul knew well that the truth is more than the sum of the facts. For this reason, he goes on to tell his audience the manner in which the truth is to be spoken. “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths,” he says, “but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.” Ephesians 4:29. Thus, there are three considerations to be made in contemplating when and how to speak the truth. First, is it necessary to speak this truth? Just because a particular assertion of fact is genuinely accurate does not mean that it needs to be shared. It might arguably have been necessary for a member of my hypothetical school board to disclose Mary’s criminal conviction for the greater good of the public. But it would be quite unnecessary and wrong to share it with fellow members of the mall walking group, thereby needlessly damaging her reputation.

Second, will the information to be shared build up the church, the community and the people involved? As a pastor and as an attorney, I have sat through countless meetings of one kind or another. If I have one regret in life, it is over the hours of my life spent in council meetings, committees and litigation groups I will never get back. I would be hard put to say whether lawyers or pastors are more deeply in love with the sound of their own voices. What I do know is that a lot of what is shared does more to boost the ego of the speaker, vent personal frustrations and impress the rest of the group than further the purpose of the meeting. Speaking is reflexive for many of us. We would, I think, be better served to ask ourselves before we open our mouths, “Will what I am about to say build trust, enhance understanding and move the conversation forward in a helpful direction?”

Sometimes painful truths need to be spoken. Essential truths are not always welcome. The Hebrew prophets frequently exposed the painful truth about Israel’s injustice and betrayal of its covenant with God. But they did so always with the purpose of returning Israel to faithfulness and restoring its covenant relationship. As Professor Gerold O. West points out, sometimes the good news of the gospel needs to be experienced as bad news before it can be heard as good. Sometimes you must learn to hate what you most love before you can learn to love it properly. Luke 14:25-26.

Finally, one must ask whether the information to be shared will “give grace” to those who hear? In the final analysis, the truth is not facts, information or opinions. The truth is a person. “I am…the truth” says Jesus. John 14:6. Jesus came, John the Evangelist tells us, not to condemn the world but to save it. John 3:17. Everyone to whom one has opportunity to speak is a person for whom God sent the only Son. Thus, before speaking, one must ask: 1) whether the truth one would tell needs to be told; 2) whether the persons to whom one speaks need to be told this truth at this time; 3) what tone, tenor, words, images, parables or analogies can be used to tell this truth to these persons at this time faithfully, courageously and compassionately so as to move all involved toward the restoration of justice, reconciliation, peace and the strengthening of community. Speech that does not further these sacred objectives is not true, however factually accurate it might be.

Here is a poem by Robert Hayden about Fredrick Douglass, a man whose truthful speech still pierces the darkness of racial injustice with both judgment and promise.

Frederick Douglass

Source: The Collected Poems of Robert Hayden (c. 1966 by Robert Hayden; pub. by Liveright Publishing Corporation). Robert Hayden (1913 –1980) was an American poet, essayist and educator. He was born in Detroit, Michigan where he was raised by a foster family following his parents’ separation. The Haydens, his foster parents whose name he eventually took as his own, were contentious and abusive. Short of stature and visually impaired, Hayden was unable to participate in sports like most of his peers. He became a voracious reader, however, and developed a keen interest in writing. Hayden attended Detroit City College where he majored in English and Spanish. He left just one credit short of graduation in the midst of the Great Depression to serve in the Works Progress Administration Federal Writers’ Project. There he researched black history and folk culture. Hayden served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1978, a role today known as US Poet Laureate. He was the first African-American writer to hold this position. You can read more about Robert Hayden and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] Some have complained that my association of Republicans generally with the MAGA ideology of hate is unfair. In response, I can only point out that your party nominated as its presidential candidate the chief mouthpiece of racist MAGA ideology and sidelined everyone in the party who has had the courage to speak out against him. It is clear where your party is headed and if you are not down with where that train is going, the time to get off is now. Otherwise, you cannot complain about being known by your associations.

[2] Immigrants are actually 30 percent less likely to be incarcerated than are U.S.-born individuals who are white. See The Mythical tie Between Immigration and Crime, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, July 21, 2023.