Speak out and hear the Lord

Excerpts from yesterday’s homily at St. Thomas More Parish in Southeast, delivered by the Rev. Charles E. Pope:

Too many Christians don’t have any sense or anything to say to a world that is so confused about so many things. About morality, about the Bible, about the meaning, purpose and direction of life.

To a confused world, that is not the most awful part. The most awful part is that so few Christians have anything to say about it. For example, I live for the day that when the TV is on in a Christian household and the parents walk by and the TV is saying, “Hey man, you have to drink this beer,” or, “You don’t have to listen to your parents,” that the parents would turn that TV off and make it clear to their child, “That is not the life of God. No, it is not what the Gospel teaches.”

But too many people will let the TV go on, the records, or God knows what they are looking at on the Internet. On and on, all this screaming from the world and yet very little from the mouths of Christians about the teachings of God. … I live for the day when Christians will get over their speech impediments. Brothers and sisters, evil triumphs when the good remain silent. And too many Christians have very little to say.

Now, I don’t think that’s true of everyone in this church. But listen, we’ve seen. All of you can remember a time when we could walk these streets. Most of you remember a time when there wasn’t this kind of promiscuity that you see today. The family values, when families would pull together. Most of you remember, this happened on our watch. This [departure] of America from a Judeo-Christian point of view to a very pagan point of view has happened while we have been alive.

And what do we have to say about it? So, I say to you brothers and sisters, this man with the speech impediment — he couldn’t speak, had nothing to say, and he couldn’t hear. I’ll tell you the truth, everyone in this church collectively, this is us. We’re the ones who need our speech impediment healed by having our feelings and ears healed.

Now, let’s talk about this hearing problem. You see, there is this problem of deafness. And deafness comes in different forms. You know, some people are just deaf because they were born that way. There are people in our world today who know very little of God. They have been baptized, but they were never raised in the church, they know very little of the Bible, and they don’t know a lick about religion or about God.

You know we’ve got a lot of distractions in life, and it’s hard to hear the Lord. When there’s all that background noise — you’ve got the TV going, you’ve got the IPod going … with all that’s going, the cell phone is going, and many of us have an awful difficult time hearing the Lord. And not only that, but what we are hearing creates a lot of the noise in our souls. It disquiets us, makes the Gospel seem a little crazy when we’re supposed to protect and respect authority. … And all that noise is going into our souls and makes it hard to hear the word of the Lord.

Finally, there’s a deafness that’s due to laziness. You know when someone is talking to you, and maybe you’re tired, maybe it’s hard to concentrate and your mind wanders. Now, I know that isn’t happening right now. … But you see, our minds are very weak, and it’s hard to concentrate, and we’re easily distracted. It’s hard when we have lazy minds … a little bit of attention-deficit disorder, because our minds are lazy, weak and hard to focus on. … One of the things we’ve got to work on in the world is developing a rediscovery of the listening skills.