Finding Your Voice.

 

One of the movies nominated for an Academy Award this year is called “The King’s Speech”. The King’s Speech is a dramatic look at how King George the Sixth overcame his terrible stutter. He developed the stutter as a consequence of a strict and intimidating father, and a bullying older brother. The king tried many times to overcome it, with no effect. Eventually he meets an unconventional Australian speech therapist who breaks all the rules. In the end they develop an unlikely friendship, and the king learns how to control his voice. It is a dramatic moment when he discovers he does have a voice, and he does deserve to be heard. The climax of the movie comes as he is able to address the nation as war is declared. Everyone knew of his speech impediment, so his transformation into a capable speaker at a time of national crisis helped inspire the people to face the challenge of the Second World War.

 

It can be a great challenge to learn to find your own voice. To speak the truth. To declare what is on your heart. To share what you really think. But there are many things which keep us from finding our own voice. There are personal and social factors, such as those faced by King George the Sixth. Some times our voice is denied because of labels people put on us. The labels of race, gender, nationality and sexual identity have often been used to silence people who are different from the majority. Sometimes it is the beliefs we hold which can deny others their chance to speak.

 

As religious people, we often speak as if the Kingdom of Heaven is something we will only encounter after we die. As a result, many feel there is a disconnect between how we live our lives each day, and the life we will one day live in heaven. If the only thing that matters is getting your ticket to Heaven, then will we miss out on the opportunity to have a positive impact on how we should live every day. We are left with a confused message as to how or even why we should care about things like politics, economics, wars and conflicts.  We often hear the criticism that religion has nothing to say to the real world we live in every day.

 

As a result of this disengagement, we do not have a helpful voice when it comes to the challenges of secularism, poverty, ethical directions for scientific research, or gender theory.

 

Jesus proclaimed in his first public sermon that the Kingdom of God is at hand. That God is fully present in the world right now. That our daily lives do have eternal significance. That God has a role to play in our world. That God does provide for us in this life.  On some levels, it is not a message we have taken to heart.

 

When you look at our behaviour, most Christians are very secular when it comes to money. We earn and spend and save our money like most everyone else. We worry about our bills and mortgages just like everyone else. We chase after the biggest, fastest and latest trends like everyone else. As a result, we are anxious, we worry and we lose sleep at night just like everyone else. Which is odd, because we have something no one else has.

 

We have Jesus. We have Jesus telling us not to be anxious about these things. He says quite plainly “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink. Do not worry about your body or what you are going to wear tomorrow.” He is telling us not to let these things distract you from who you really are. Do not let all your stuff trick you into thinking they are what matters. Because it is God who provides. It is God who gives us life. It is God who feeds us. It is God who sustains us. We don’t’ need to be limited by the labels others put on us, because we are first and foremost children of God. If someone wants to steal your stuff, let them! Your stuff doesn’t define you. If the bank wants to repossess your house and your clothes, let them have it all. Who you are is not defined by what car you drive, the computer you use, or the size of your television screen. Your self-worth comes from God, and no banker can take that away from you.

 

Jesus is not giving us licence to do whatever we please. He is not advocating a form of non-violent anarchy where we are free to do whatever we want. This is not a mindless call to join in singing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”.

 

When we are freed from the constrictions that the powers and principalities of this world, then we are free to live like we are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven which has come down here on earth.

 

A few years ago I attended a conference in New York City at the Riverside Church. As part of the conference, they were commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s speech against the Vietnam War, which he had given at Riverside. It was a controversial speech for King. He lost a lot of public support for the civil rights cause the day he first spoke out against the war in Vietnam. He knew it was going to be difficult. King had found it hard to tell people not to use violence to resolve their differences, when his country was using massive doses of violence to solve its problems abroad. He found it difficult to accept “the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools.” King said it was hard to “watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, (only to) realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. King said he “could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.”

 

It was only when Martin Luther King was able to let go of his fear of what others would think about him that he could speak the truth about how the war was a civil rights issue. King found his strength first in God. This gave him the ability to speak the truth which eventually did help to change the public perception of the Vietnam War.

 

Like King George the Sixth, and like Martin Luther King, we can find our own voice. We claim our voice, not to advance our own personal prestige or power. We find our voice when we learn from Jesus how to reject the limiting labels which have gained power over us. We find our voice when we discover who we really are in God first and foremost. When we know who we really are, we find we are not consumed by the worries of the everyday world. This frees us to live out of our true selves, and live as part of God’s Kingdom of Heaven, which is all around us. Amen.