The Sin of Silence

This week the world celebrated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. As much of the nation relived those past events in memory… I draw your attention to a lesser-known fact from that march 50 years ago. The speech just prior to Dr. King’s famous closing address was given by Rabbi Joachim Prinz, head of the American Jewish Congress. He said, “When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.”

A few short years following the “I Have a Dream” speech Dr. King told NBC News reporter, Sander Vanocur, on May 8, 1967 that his dream had become a nightmare. Kennedy was gone, Johnson had us embroiled in the war in Viet Nam, a war Dr. King vehemently opposed, and the Civil Rights movement of non-violence was being co-opted by the “Black Power” movement, which urged the oppressed to fight back.

So much in our world has changed since those turbulent years, and yet so much remains the same. Technology and media gave faces to the struggle for equality, which resulted in repulsion by viewers who could not believe the extremes of violence occurring in our world. Many believe the movement would not have been so successful had we not seen it played out on our television screens night after night.

I have no recollection of the Civil Rights Movement. I learned the events after-the-fact in school history classes. And today, I sit stunned in front of my television set at the needless violence played upon innocents across the globe. Media has made our world smaller and yet the carnage still seems surreal. Three million refugees have poured over the border of Jordan, one-third of whom are children. News reports focus on young boys giving us their stories of narrowly escaping death as they crawled along ditches, ducking mortar-fire to find safety across the border. They have no news of their father or other missing family members.

I thank God that neither I, nor my children, have ever known those realities, but my heart still grieves for so many who do. Can our society tear themselves away from the Kardashians and Miley Cyrus’ disgusting display of inappropriateness at the VMA awards long enough to see the hurting world of which we are a part? Will ours and the next generations suffer the sins of silence because there are so many opportunities to turn away to something more trivial, less surreal? We all want so much to protect our children from the ugliness of the world. Are we doing so at tremendous costs to their character? Are we creating a generation of serial narcissists? How can we find balance between protecting our own innocents and creating individuals aware of the world’s injustices who are willing to walk as Jesus walked and radically call humanity into a new way of living? I have no answers here, only a heart troubled by so much hurting in the world. I am willing to walk with you as we consider these things. My greatest fear is that the answer to building a world of peace lies within our abilities…yet beyond our reach.

When the people of God call out their despair, God’s answer is to walk among us. May God lead us all to a place called Shalom…and may we recognize it when we arrive.

Blessings,
Tracy