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Saturday, May 24, 2014

Timing

This is the message given in the Wheatland Parish Sunday, May 25, 2014.  The Bible verses used are Ecclesiastes 3:1-13, Matthew 28:16-20, and Luke 12:8-12.


            As we’ve been looking at the third chapter of Ecclesiastes in this sermon series, the one thing we have to say about all these statements is that we know they’re true.  In some cases, we may not like the fact that they’re true.  In some cases, we may not understand why they’re true.  But we know they are.
            Today, though, we’re going to look at one that we don’t particularly dislike, and one that we don’t have a hard time understanding.  What’s hard about this one is just putting it into practice.  We’re told that there is a time to keep silent and a time to speak.
            Now, I think we’d all agree with that.  We know there is a time to keep silent, and we know there’s a time to speak.  What’s hard for us, a lot of the time, is knowing which is which.  When should we keep silent?  And when should we speak?  That can be a tricky thing in all circumstances.  But it can be especially true when it comes to speaking about our faith.
            A lot of us are kind of hesitant to talk about our faith.  I mean, we’ll talk about it here, in church.  But a lot of us, me included, don’t talk about our faith very much outside of church.
            There are a lot of reasons why.  And they’re not all bad ones, really.  For one thing, our faith is a very personal thing.  In fact, there are not a lot of things in our lives that are more personal than our faith.  And so, it can be a very hard thing to talk about with someone else.  
That’s especially true when we don’t know how that someone else might respond when we talk about our faith.  After all, no one likes being rejected, for any reason.  And when the reason is something very personal and important to us, rejection is even harder to handle.  So, if we think there’s a chance someone might reject us because of our faith, we’re hesitant to say anything about it.
And then, too, no one wants to be thought of us as That Guy.  You know what I mean.  We don’t want people to think of us as that religious nut that won’t ever stop talking about Jesus.  And in truth, that can be a turnoff to people sometimes.  I mean, if you’re talking about who’s going to win the NBA playoffs and I start throwing Jesus in there, that’s probably not going to be a very effective witness for my faith.
But on the other hand, it can be really easy to go too far the other way and not talk about our faith at all.  And we come up with ways to justify not talking about it.  We say things like, “Well, I don’t need to talk about my faith.  I show my faith by the way I live my life.”
How we live our lives is important, of course.  It’s important that our lives show our faith.  But we cannot use that as an excuse to not talk about that faith.  Rick Warren once said that when we say that, what we’re saying is that we live such a wonderful, perfect life that anybody who sees us would just somehow automatically know we must be Christians.  And I don’t know very many people, including me, who live that kind of a wonderful, perfect life.
Also, when we say that, we’re going against what Jesus told us to do.  That passage we read from Matthew contains the last words Jesus said before he was taken up to heaven.  In those words he told us we need to go and make disciples of all nations.  He told us we need to teach people to obey everything he said to do.  It seems to me that if we’re going to do that, and especially if we’re going to do what we’ve been praying for, to reach the unchurched children of our parish, it’s not enough just to live a good life.  We also need to talk to people about our faith.  I don’t see how we can do it otherwise.
So, as a practical matter, how do we go about doing this?  How do we strike that balance between, on the one hand, needing to talk about our faith and change people’s lives and, on the other hand, not talking about it so much that we turn people off and do more harm than good?  In other words, when it comes to our faith, how do we know when it’s time to be silent and when it’s time to speak?
Well, as usual, it seems like it’s a good idea to look to Jesus as our example.  How did Jesus know when it was time to be silent and when it was time to speak?
Well, a lot of the time, when Jesus spoke it was because he was invited to.  When he began his ministry, he was asked to speak at the synagogue.  He would sometimes get invited to someone’s house for a dinner party and be asked to speak or asked to answer questions.  Other times, people would come up to him and ask him things.
So that’s one of the ways we know when it’s time to speak:  when someone asks us to.  Now, maybe you say, “Well, nobody’s ever going to ask me to talk about my faith.”  Well, maybe not, but don’t be so sure.  People may not say, “Talk to me about your faith”, but I’ll bet a lot of us get asked for advice sometimes.  I’ll bet a lot of us have times where people ask what we think about something.  Maybe it just happens in a casual conversation, but it still happens.
That’s a chance to talk about our faith.  That’s a chance to tell people what we believe.  We need to be alert for when those chances come up.  And we need to be ready to take advantage of those chances.
Other times, when Jesus spoke, it was because a crowd had gathered and wanted to hear him speak.  And we say, “Well, that’s never going to happen to me.  No crowd’s ever going to gather around me and want to hear me speak about anything, much less about my faith.”
And maybe not, but think about this.  Why did those crowds gather?  Because Jesus had a reputation.  That reputation was that he was a good man, a man who helped people, a man who cared about people, a man who had important things to say and who lived those things out.  In other words, this is how the way we live our lives enters into this.  It’s not a substitute for talking about our faith.  Instead, it’s an entrance point for talking about our faith.  If people see that we’re good people, that we help others, that we care about people, that we live out our faith, there’s a chance they may want to talk to us about it.  And again, we need to be alert for when those chances come up.  And we need to be ready to take advantage of those chances.
But it’s one thing to say that.  It’s another thing to do it.  Even if we notice a chance to talk about our faith, a lot of times we feel like we don’t know how to do it.  We don’t know what to say.  We might say the wrong thing.  So we don’t say anything.
The disciples worried about that, too.  That’s why we read the passage from Luke.  Jesus tells the disciples that even if they get into trouble for following him, they don’t need to worry about what to say.  Jesus said that, at the right time, the Holy Spirit would tell them what to say.  They just needed to be willing to say it.
That applies to us, too.  If we’ll just take a chance, if we’ll just be alert for chances to talk about our faith, we don’t need to worry about what to say.  The Holy Spirit will tell us what to say.  It’s happened to me several times.  Now don’t get me wrong, I still miss plenty of chances to talk about my faith, but when I do take advantage of one, there are a lot of times I’ll say something and then later on I’ll think, “Where’d that come from?  How I know to say that?”  The only answer I have is that in that moment, when I was willing to take a chance and talk about my faith, the Holy Spirit told me what to say.  And that’ll happen for you, too.
Now, there’s one other thing we need to notice about the times Jesus spoke.  I cannot think of a time in the gospels where Jesus went around looking for an argument.  Now, Jesus was not afraid to speak plainly and clearly.  Jesus was also not afraid to say unpopular things.  But Jesus never went around looking for an argument.  In fact, he often sidestepped situations where he knew the Pharisees were trying to draw him into an argument.  Jesus would speak the truth, but if someone did not want to hear it, that was their choice.  Jesus was sad about it sometimes, but he never tried to chase after someone or force faith on them.  Jesus allowed them to make their choice and moved on.
I think that’s a lesson for us, too.  Because if we do talk about our faith, there will sometimes be people who don’t want to hear it.  That’s their choice.  It may make us sad, but it’s still their choice.  I’m not saying we should just give up on people, but we also should not chase after them or try to force our faith on them.  We have to allow people to make their choices and move on.
There is a time to be silent.  But there’s also a time to speak.  We need to be willing to do both in service to God.  We need to be willing to speak when the situation allows it, and we need to be willing to be silent when the situation requires it.
Jesus gave us the example.  If we’re open to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit will show us the time to speak and tell us what to say.

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