Cimply Putting It…

The voices of a stewardess, a kid and a king...On a British Airways flight from Johannesburg, a middle-aged, wealthy white South African woman had found herself sitting next to a black man. She called the stewardess over to complain about her seating. “What seems to be the problem Madam?” asked the attendant. “Can’t you see?” she said. “The airline has seated me next to a Kaffir. I can’t possibly sit next to this disgusting human. Find me another seat immediately!” “Please calm down Madam.” the stewardess replied. “The flight is very full today, but I’ll go see if we have any seats available in first class.” The woman took a snooty look at the outraged black man beside her. All the passengers were horrified at the lady’s rudeness. A few minutes later the stewardess returns. “Well, I have good news. We do have one seat in first class.” Then she turned to the black man, and said, “Sir, if you’d like to get your things, you can follow me to your new seat in first class.” At which point, the surrounding passengers stood and gave a standing ovation while the black guy walked up to the front of the plane.

In December of 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to move to the back of a city bus. Leaders in the African-American community organized a city-wide transportation boycott, and turned to the young black pastor, Martin Luther King, Jr. as the leader. King was just 26 years old, and he wrestled with issues of call; call to ministry, call to discipleship, and whether of not his role was simply to be a local pastor. In the end, he concluded that God called him to this new ministry as well—and the rest, as they say, is history.

Art Linkletter used to have a segment on his show in which he interviewed children. He coined the phrase: Kids say the darnedest things. Once there was a priest who was giving a homily to pre-school children, and he gathered all the kids around him in the sanctuary. Before he could even say a word, one little boy asked him, “What does the voice of God sound like?” This was not what the minister had intended to talk about, but it was one of those E.F. Hutton moments as the entire congregation listened in to hear how the priest would handle this very challenging question. He paused for a moment and then said, “The voice of God sounds like…like your best friend, like someone you trust, someone you can really talk things over with. The voice of God sounds like your mother or your father or your favorite babysitter when they comfort you because you are having a bad dream in the night. You hear them next to your bed, saying: “Everything’s all right. Everything’s all right. I’m right here beside you.”

The priest felt pretty good about his answer he had given on the spur of the moment, but after Mass he gave it more thought and began to realize that there was more to our relationship to God than friendship. The voice of God, he reflected, also sounds like the stranger, the alien, the one who cries out in hurt and anger. Sometimes the voice of God sounds like a judge, condemning those who oppress or take advantage of those less powerful, less fortunate, those closer to the margins of society.

How do you and I recognize the voice of God? After all, isn’t one of the symptoms of insanity that of hearing voices when no one is there? For example, Jim Jones heard a voice calling him to lead his followers into the jungles of Guiana and then ultimately to convince them all to drink poisoned Kool-Aide. Mark David Chapman heard a voice calling him to shoot former Beatle John Lennon. David Koresh heard a voice calling him to gather his followers in a heavily-armed compound in Waco, Texas and ultimately to battle federal agents to death.

In 1956, the Montgomery bus boycott was in full swing, and Dr. King and his family were being barraged with threatening phone calls—as many as 40 a day. One night at midnight, he was still up agonizing over a cup of coffee. The phone rang and the caller threatened to blow his home up if he didn’t leave town. Here’s what Dr. King wrote: “I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born...She was the darling of my life. I’d come in night after night and see that little gentle smile. And I sat at that table thinking about my little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute. I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any longer. I was weak—-I discovered then that religion had to become real for me, and I had to know God for myself. I said, ‘Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. I can’t let people see me like this. And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you even until the end of the world…’Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared.”

The voice of God tells us that we should give every person first-class treatment. But sometimes the voices inside us say: “People don’t change. I can’t change.” We even keep saying: “God can’t use me.” But we have a calling. Our workplace, our school, can be a cathedral where we live out the good news of God’s love for God’s people and where we seek to be part of God’s eternal plan. Let’s keep our ears and hearts open to the voice of God, and we may be in for some big surprises.

Make it a great week. clc