A Word from Pastor Nathan

Dear Friends:

This week, the Rev. Dr. Shelly Matthews, Professor of New Testament at Brite Divinity School, and I are co-teaching a course, entitled Transitions in Ministry. We ’re zooming four+ hours each day this week with students who are transitioning beyond Brite to the mystery of what’s next. Dr. Matthews and I will be accompanying these students over the next two years as the students’ post -graduate lives take shape.

No course is complete without textbooks. Dr. Matthews and I selected five, one of which is The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, edited by Roxane Gay. Are you familiar with Lorde? She was the poet laureate of New York and a brilliant essayist, scholar, and activist. In one essay, Lorde writes, “I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.” These famous words were a catalyst for conversation in our class, and they’ve been heavily on my mind. I’ve reflected on topics about which I’m silent, but I’ve also wondered, too, how we’ve subscribed to the false idea that silence protects the church. What are the topics and issues for which we, as a church, have been silent?

Our silence does not protect us. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” I appreciate both Lorde ’s prophetic challenge and Archbishop Tutu’s rejoinder that silence and neutrality fuel oppression. Speech is full of risk, but if we are silent, the rocks will have no choice but to cry out.

There is a cohort of future seminary graduates who are eager to serve Christ’s church. They are ready to speak. I wonder, too, if the churches they serve will choose to amplify the prophetic voice or tame it into silence. As we approach Martin Luther King Day, let us commit to God and to one another to speak out and break our silence as we work toward the future God wants and ultimately will have.

Toward justice and joy,