Today as I prayed the Office, the appointed readings included the marvelous Ecclesiastes passages about there being a time for everything. "...a time to speak, a time to remain silent..." In one of those strange and wonderful comings-together of Hebrew Bible, the writings of St. Paul (to the Galatians), and the writings of the Evangelist, Matthew, we have amazing and scary examples of the consequences of speaking. Paul speaks out, in Galatians, about what he perceives as the hypocritical behavior of his fellow apostle, Peter.
Peter had been talking a lot about the freedom of the Gospel. He had had a formative experience early in his apostleship. He'd been napping before dinner one day, and, perhaps under the influence of hunger and good smells wafting up from the kitchen, dreamed that, lowered down from heaven, foods that were ritually unclean and therefore forbidden to an observant Jew were being offered to him. "Rise, Peter, kill and eat!" said a voice from heaven. How could a voice from heaven possibly command him to break the rules that God had commanded in the Torah? Yet, the dream continued, and, folklorically, he was three times offered the food that he would never have considered eating. And a voice came again and said, "You must not call what God has cleansed 'unclean'." While he was trying to figure out what this dream could possibly mean, a couple of emissaries from a God-seeking Gentile, Cornelius, had arrived at Peter's door. It wasn't just about food. It was about table fellowship and all the cultural baggage that goes with it. The story in Acts says that Peter invited Cornelius's emmisaries in and they ate together. Peter "got it," and his behavior there in Joppa and Caesarea showed it. Something he would never have done before Peter now did without hesitation, welcoming into the fellowship of the Body of Christ a whole category of people, Gentiles, who he'd never imagined could become his brothers and sisters in Christ.
It was a time to speak. Peter spoke by words and actions. But it must have cost him something. Not all of his Jewish-Christian friends understood or appreciated what he was up to. When Peter was in Gentile Antioch, he was happy to eat with gentiles. But when Peter's Jewish friends came from Jerusalem, he didn't want to offend them. He suddenly became a lot fussier about keeping Kosher. And Paul, observing that behavior, called it hypocritical. It was Paul's time to speak. Paul spoke out, even though the man whose behavior he was questioning was one of the key leaders of the Church. Paul wanted to make it totally clear that God's grace obliterates distinctions between Jews and Gentiles that would keep them from sharing meals and fellowship. It was a time to speak. If Paul hadn't spoken, the power of the Gospel would have been compromised.
Then, jumping back in time to the days of the earthly ministry of Jesus, we read in the Gospel of Matthew today the grisly story of the beheading of John the Baptist. John was a courageous prophet, and he sensed that it was time to speak against the hypocrisy of the regime of Herod. Herod was essentially a puppet king of the Roman Empire. He was a Jew, but his behavior was not righteous. His court was famous for excess and depravity. What Herod wanted, Herod took. Even his brother's wife Herodias. For John, this was a time to speak. If he hadn't spoken, if he had remained silent, he would have tacitly been giving approval to Herod's total disregard for Torah. It cost John. He was put in prison. Then, in this reading today, we have the story of how he died. It is a perfect example of wretched Herodian excess, wrong on so many levels. Beyond the horrific killing of this righteous man, what would it do to that young girl to have allowed her to witness that terrible violence, to have some kind of indelible link between violence and young sexuality forged in her psyche?
A time to speak, a time to remain silent...
Then, as the Mission St. Clare editors publish Morning Prayer, what follows is the canticle known as the Song of Zechariah. It is what Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist sings, after the birth of his son, and practically the first words he speaks since nine months earlier he met the angel who announced that he would have a son. The canticle is full of hope and joy.
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel;
he has come to his people and set them free.
He has raised up for us a mighty savior,
born of the house of his servant David.
Through his holy prophets he promised of old,
that he would save us from our enemies,
from the hands of all who hate us.
He promised to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant.
This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham,
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
Free to worship him without fear,
holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life.
You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High,
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
To give his people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins.
In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace."
The contrast between the joy of this Canticle and the tragedy of John's death is indeed jarring. The amazing thing about the Christian faith is that the Canticle of Zechariah expresses our hope, and events like the death of the man who had been the little baby held in Zechariah's loving arms are still the result of the clash between the radical liberty of the Kingdom of Heaven and the fearful "bread and circus" of Rome, the fearful "get enough for me" of our day.
We who follow Jesus long for Paradise--and in our eucharistic fellowship we get tiny hints of that deep and lasting joy and peace.
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