Trinity Metropolitan Community Church of Gainesville (Trinity MCC)

A Voice Released

Deut. 18:15-20 & Mark 1:21-28

Rev. Vickie Miller

I. Many of you remember the year 1968. It was a year of so many voices. Voices were released into history and at the same time many voices silenced.

Across Europe and North America, young people rallied to end the war in Vietnam. In Poland, college students for the first time took to the streets to protest a repressive government. In April of that year, a young Martin Luther King, Jr., himself not yet 40, was felled by a sniper. Less than two months later, a youthful Robert Kennedy, whose U.S. presidential campaign was on the rise, was also dead from an assassin's bullet. In 1968, young athletes from every corner of the globe gathered in Mexico City for the Olympics, and it was also the year that Metropolitan Community Church was founded by a young Troy Perry.

As an either-year-old in 1968, some of the voices that I recall are those of the astronauts - Apollo 8. They were heard live over television airways for the first time in history as they orbited the moon.

I remember that on this particular evening, in our family room the only light was from the glare of my family’s console T.V. set. I sat on the tiled linoleum floor in along with my sister, and the two neighborhood brothers (who were my favorite playmates since I was a tomboy), watching this broadcast with my mom and my dad.

The newscaster warned us that when the astronauts traveled to the back side of the moon, they would lose contact with the control center. We listened and watched nervously. I knew it was coming, but still the silence drove me nuts. I was afraid for them. I was on pins and needles, waiting on the astronaut’s voice to return. I now know that it was 45 minutes of silence. For an 8-year-old, 45 minutes is an eternity! When the voices were released again over the television airways, how relieved I was!

II. It is scary when we lose the voice. It is especially frightening when we lose the voice of God.

The Hebrew people in our Deuteronomy reading today must have felt that they had lost the voice of God. Previously they had encountered God face to face in the fire at Mount Horeb, when they received the 10 commandments. But, just a few chapters later in our scripture reading today, they had asked instead for a prophet to speak on behalf of God. Maybe it was out of their own fear, maybe because of sin and guilt that they carried. For whatever reason, they could no longer bear to hear the voice of God. They needed and pleaded for a prophet to bring that relationship back, to once again hear the voice of God.

III. How does that happen? How does God’s voiced get silenced to the point that we can no longer hear? How do we end up on one side of the moon and God on the other and we just ask to hear the voice of God again?

V.   Another young man, Carlos, in 1968, encountered the same struggle. He could no longer hear the voice of God. Carlos cried tears to his friend, Troy Perry. Carlos said, “Come on, Troy, God doesn’t care about me.”

You see, Carlos had been arrested just for being at a gay bar.   Though Carlos was simply there having a drink and visiting with friends, the police came in, booked him, took him to the police station and charged him unjustly with lewd conduct. The police threatened to tell Carlos’ family and his employer. It was the way the police harassed the gay community, the way they tried to silence the voice of the gay community. A young Troy Perry spent all night getting his friend released, and then in the midst of Carlos’ deep despair and fear, Troy tried to convince Carlos that even though he felt no one cared, at least God cared. And all that Carlos could do was laugh bitterly and say, “God doesn’t care about me.”

In translation, Carlos was saying, “I am a nobody. My voice is not heard.

Even God does not hear me.”

When voices are silenced, like that of Carlos, of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Robert Kennedy, or young people crying out for peace and justice, what often happens is in the midst of oue voices being silenced we also lose the voice of God. When we cannot proclaim the truth of our own hearts and souls, we come to believe that we are not heard. And maybe we believe that even God does not hear or care. And so, what often happens is that the voice of God is shut out. I truly believe that there is a link with finding our own voice, expressing it, and hearing the voice of God.

VI. I am here to remind you today that God does care.

God does hear your voice today.

In our gospel reading today, Jesus goes into the synagogue, and he encounters a man whose voice had been silenced for who knows how long.

In their cultural understanding of the day, the Gospel of Mark says that demons had taken over this man. When this man encounters Jesus, even his own voice is replaced instead by a voice of pain and bitterness and emptiness flowing from inside of him.

This possessed man’s voice had been silenced and instead a rage comes out in a confrontation with the very Messiah who had come to save him. “Jesus what do you have to do with us? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are!”

Thankfully, Jesus recognizes that this was not the man’s true voice. Something had over taken him to the point that he was not even speaking for himself, and Jesus rebuked the spirit and the man was healed. I wonder, what did the man say next? What voice was released that had been pent up inside him all these years?

This act of Jesus reminds us that God wants to hear our true voice. Some of us need to speak up. You know, I am not talking about a lot of words here.

Some people seem to have no problem releasing their voices, sometimes quite often and sometimes quite loudly.   We all know a lot of people who do a lot of talking but don’t release the real person inside of them.

There was a woman at a church that just talked and talked and talked. She often needed rides to church but was difficult to get her rides for her because she talked so much. Well, one kind soul picked her up one day for church and as her luck had it his driver was pulled over by a police officer. The officer said, ma’am, didn’t you see that your passenger fell out of the car at the last block? The church volunteer replied, “Thank God, I thought I’d gone deaf.”

When I say to release your voice, I mean to release your heart and release who you are to the world. That does not require a lot of words or chatter or speaking. What it does requires that we be true to ourselves and true to others.

I believe that those of us in a minority status or because of family conditioning especially have a challenge with this. For example, racial minorities, women, the GLBT community, children of alcoholic parents, have been conditioned for so long to believe that our voice is not appreciated or accepted. So we have been conditioned to believe that our voice is not important.

I personally have had to work on believing that my voice is valid and worthy of expressing. And as I have gotten better at releasing my true inner person, instead of hiding the person inside of me, it has affected my relationships – with my family with co-workers who have even expressed to me how appreciative they are with how much more open I have become. And, mostly, as I have learned to release my own inner voice, it has affected my relationship with God in a positive way. When I don’t spend so much energy protecting myself and hiding my voice, I am more open to everyone, including God and better able to hear God’s voice speaking back. God no longer feels like a God on the back side of the moon.

This week I came home from work and was looking for my sermon. As I went into the bed room I started to see shreds of paper and then there it was all over the floor. My sermon was torn up into little small pieces all over the room. Carol wanted to blame Baylie, but I said that I am sure Skipper got involved also. Sometimes that happens to us. People take our words and they rip them up. But, I had to get down on the floor and pick those words up and piece them back together. We have to keep speaking our voice.

There’s a story about the Seminole Indians. (Not the Florida State Seminoles. I know better than to use them as an example in Gainesville). I mean the original, Native American, Seminoles. This tribe had experienced so much loss. Because of European invasion into their land, the Seminoles experienced loss of leaders and older men dying from war or removal from their land. As a result the Seminole customs were threatened. The remaining young men were left to carry on the voice of the Seminoles. One of their customs was sing the Seminole songs. One day the young men began asking each other, “Do you remember how the song went?” They knew only bits and pieces. The voice had been silenced for so long. Then they heard someone say, “I remember the song,” and a woman stepped forward.

The young men asked her, “You’ve never sung with us. How could you know the song?” You see, women were not allowed to sing the Seminole songs. But the woman said, “Women don’t sing with you but we listen, and it stays with us for a long time and the story goes that for the first time in Seminole history a woman sang that special song.”   A silent voice was released, and, as a result, the tribe regained their songs and part of their identity.

When we speak, when we release the inner voice inside of us, things happen!

Even when it is a voice of anguish, things happen. Like when Troy Perry heard the voice of Carlos, a new denomination was born.

We must always believe that Jesus wants to hear our voice. May we be in prayerful conversation with God, dig deep into our very selves and speak what is on our hearts. Not only will we be changed, but the world will be changed. May you find new ways to release your voice today. Amen

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