Silenced

Indigenous populations. Women. People of color. Victims of poverty, injustice, abuse and white supremacy; their voices are  drowned, ignored and dismissed. They are the faceless, nameless ones; silenced, invisible.

Thus, it is intriguing to discover that two recognizable and significant leaders in Biblical history were initially silent and blind. More than simply memorable, each changed the trajectory of the Judeo-Christian story and in so doing, of the Western world. Both were men with power.  But they didn’t start out that way. Far from it.

First was Moses, who, although he grew up as a prince in Pharaoh’s palace, was an alien, a Hebrew. He belonged to the tribe of Israelites who had been, for generations, slaves in Egypt.  One day, years after settling in a country east of Egypt, Moses experienced a theophany, that is; a vision wherein he heard God’s voice, calling him to go back to Egypt and lead the Israelites home to freedom.  “No,” Moses pleaded, “please don’t ask me, Lord. I’m not very good with words. I never have been, and I’m not now, even though you have spoken to me. I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled.”   “Not a problem,” mused God. “Just because you have a speech impediment, you’re not going to get off that easily. I can get your brother to talk for you until you’re ready.” And that’s what happened. And Moses did learn to speak, loudly and clearly.

Many years later we meet the second man, in a scene from the Book of Acts.  “The witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul”. It’s the first encounter with the Jew who would later rename as Paul. Then he was just a bystander at the stoning of a follower of Jesus named Stephen; actually he was the coat-check boy who later became a man that persecuted the followers of Jesus.  That is, until he experienced his own conversion. He became convinced that he had been chosen to carry the message of the risen Christ from Jerusalem to Rome. And, like Moses, he at first was disabled, not by speech, but by blindness.

Moses led an enslaved people from bondage to freedom in a promised land. Paul established the Christian Church.

What can we learn from their stories? Simply that those whose voices are silenced and dismissed are the very voices that can change the world. They are the voices of protest in the street. They are the people we would rather not see, under bridges, in detention camps and starving at the border; they see the world as it is and it’s not pretty. Somewhere in those teeming crowds are the voices we need to hear that can change our world. Somewhere are the eyes who see beyond what is. A child who stutters, a blind man in his wheelchair: listen and look to them. Someone who has been silenced for too long has more to teach us than all the politicians and the pundits. She is a woman, abused and threatened, whose story is dismissed, mocked, and silenced. He is a young black man, blinded by tear gas, gagged by racism.

And the children, whose future we hold in our hands?  Listen to them.  There are Malalas and Greta Thunbergs in all children’s voices crying out about the devastation of society and the planet.

Listen, listen to those silenced too long. Come and see through the eyes of the suffering throngs. They are the prophets of today.