Thursday’s "Liberating Word" most often contains a preview of the upcoming Sunday’s sermon. That’s because it is what I’m thinking about every Thursday, and I’m hoping it might motivate you to join us on Sunday at 5 p.m. EST at BroadwayUCC.org/online-worship. If I am completely honest, it also forces me to put down in a couple hundred words just what it is I hope to communicate in my sermon. 

During January, our theme song at Broadway UCC was "When You Believe," so I preached on the music’s message last Sunday. Because I generally follow the assigned readings for each Sunday, last week’s message threw me off schedule, so I’m using those lessons this week. 

I’ve always loved the Gospel lesson from Luke 4, so I had to go back to it. Two weeks ago, Jesus went to his hometown synagogue and read from Isaiah what it was God anointed him to do. People spoke well of him because they were proud to think the Messiah/Christ was, perhaps, one of them. Then, like most preachers, Jesus just wouldn’t stop. He went on to use two illustrations that caused his hometown friends to try to throw him off a cliff. 

Now, you will have to join us Sunday at 5 if you want to know what he said that elicited such a strong reaction. I love this passage because I often have said things in sermons that made people angry. Some even quit the church, but nothing I’ve said has made people want to kill me. Well, there were times at the Cathedral of Hope when I received death threats and bomb threats, and the police always were warning me about one thing or another. Maybe I was lucky there were no cliffs nearby. The real blessing of my life, though, is I am missing the fear gene. My mother used to say I didn’t have sense enough to be afraid. Maybe. What I hope, though, is the Word simply wouldn’t let me be quiet, so I spoke what I believed to be true.

Keeping silent makes us complicit, and, maybe, that is what we really should fear. As the great poet Audre Lorde said, "Our silence won’t protect us."