SIN OF SAYING NOTHING Part II

Point number two; there are times when we are silent because we persuade ourselves that what we say will count for nothing; so why say it. I know because I have felt that way. If you are not in the minority at least it seems that way when so many voices are raised, you feel yours will be lost in the clamor. Dr. Fosdick deals in one of his books with the parable of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. He throws the spotlight on a boy with five loaves and two fishes and the question, “What are these among so many?” It is true that it did not seem much but it worked wonders. You and I may not be much but when we put the strength of our personality behind an idea “whose time has come,” when we are the instrument through which the idea finds a voice, who can estimate the changes that can be rendered? If we think it is useless for us to speak, there is no reason why others should not feel the same; so no one speaks. In a famous speech in 1969, President Richard Nixon used the phrase; “Silent Majority” calling upon the American people for public support in opposition to what he considered was the vocal minority. Harriet Beecher Stowe might have thought it was of little use to speak but she did and when President Lincoln met her he said,”So this is the little woman who started a war.” My third point; sometimes we will be silent because that for which we feel we ought to speak seems naïve. We want to be sure we are not going to be thought of as strange. When it comes to our religious faith and convictions we fail to speak because we do not want the label “Jesus freak.” It may be true that religion is something you go into heart first, rather than head first, but that does not mean that you check your intelligence outside the door of religion. There are people who are religious for the very reason that the religious view seems more sensible that any other. Perhaps some of you have visited the Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History, during the Christmas season. I have not but my dad did. He remarked how the lights went off and for an hour you sat under a Bethlehem sky—just as it was the night Joseph and Mary stopped at the inn. I do not know if this is still done but I do know that how orderly are the stars. Consider to have their courses so dependable in the circling of their orbits in order to make sure reasoning possible to make possible for us today to duplicate a first century sky. Such an experience confirms that there is a God behind it all regardless of what others might try to label you as for expressing those beliefs. Then, we have so much evidence of love and loyalty on the part of family and friends that we know something is more responsible for those qualities than mere matter that they just exist for no reason than they just do. How do such qualities come to a human being? The answer of religion is, they come from God who posses them. If we believe that, then we ought to say so. If we speak out, others may just speak out too. If Joseph and Nicodemus had spoken instead of keeping their mouth silent, who knows, there might not have been a crucifixion. If they had spoken against it, they might have been surprised how many others would have run the same kind of flag to their masthead. The people behind stretching a man on a cross, or setting off a deadly bomb, are always few in numbers; but they carry out their horrendous deed because of the silence of the majority of good people. A few brave words from just one person and those who are bent on cruel deeds might be deterred. It is quite unlikely we will ever be involved in the nailing a man to the cross although our sins make us equally co-conspirators in Christ’s death. There are lesser Cavalaries. At the conclusion of a meeting, a group of four people were talking about an absent member. A few days later, the person who had kept silent said, “I knew perfectly well what they were saying was untrue and I should have spoken up.” Just the same way Joseph of Arimathaea should have stood up for Jesus. People believed in Him but they would not say so and a Cross was erected on a lonely hill and a man was stretched on it. Christ had to die so that we might live but that should not allow you to lose sight that today what when we choose not defend our faith we are guilty of the sin of saying nothing.