by Unvirtuous Abbey
Old Testament Reading: 2 Samuel 23:1-7
For Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012—Christ the King Sunday
During a senate debate, Richard Mourdock said, “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” For a moment, it crystallized the division among people about just what is wrong with mixing politics and religion. Despite attempts to explain himself, he couldn’t put the cat back in the bag.
In response to that statement the monks of Unvirtuous Abbey prayed, “For those who claim to know "what God intends" when most of us can't figure out what our cat wants, we pray.”
Famous Last Words
The poet-historian who recorded the “last words of David” records that the king began with these words: “The spirit of the LORD speaks through me; his word is upon my tongue.”
When natural disasters loom, we now anticipate that some preacher from some obscure town will attempt to get his fifteen minutes of fame by blaming the tornado or flood on perceived social wrongs, groups of people, or actions of the government.
When hurricane Sandy was bearing down on the eastern seaboard, our friend, Baptist pastor Alan Rudnick, said, “If God wanted to really punish us, He'd take away our iPhones and Netflix.”
Spoken Through
The preacher’s job isn’t to save the world, but to proclaim the one who can.
Yet there are times when people speak, we can hear the voice of the Spirit in what they say. A friend who is a Methodist pastor, told me a story about baptizing an infant, and the wonderful things that go with that. He was serving in a multi-cultural low-income area. After the baptism, a woman ignored religious decorum and stood up to sing, in a small voice, “This little light of mine...” and the gathered group felt as if these were the very words of God.
Those who are open to mystery have often described a sense of having been “spoken through” and have felt the words and actions of others as of God. But it stings when people who claim to speak for God do so for their own benefit and elevation. While, we aren’t going to give you advice, we will point to a text, today’s Old Testament Lesson: “The spirit of the Lord speaks through me.”
Tuning into the Spirit
Granted, David’s status as monarch adds complexity to the question of what it means to speak with authority. But you can usually tell when someone is building their own case against something and claiming God told them to say it. That’s why we have to be careful with what we say and to whom we listen.
However, the Spirit is remarkably consistent. That God “is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land” is a sharp contrast to Pat Robertson saying that God sent a flood to New Orleans because of Mardi Gras.
The Hardest Question
How can we tell when it is, in fact, God speaking through?
Unvirtuous Abbey appeared on the Twitter scene on August 6th, 2010. They are a slightly sarcastic, yet hopeful, group of monks. They try to elevate the conversation with humorous tweets about the Bible, God, and Jesus. They also pray about geeks, Guns and Roses, and Charlie Sheen. They have been interviewed by The Times -Union, The Practical Catholic and the Virtual Abbey. They consider themselves lucky to be among the guest bloggers of "The Hardest Question" and readily trade chores for the chance to write...anonymously, of course.
