Silence is golden

For someone like me, an evangelical born and reared with the words of the Great Commission ringing in my ears and soul, the whole scenario was perfectly understandable. A man/woman, a "trans" as people say, rather pointedly dressed as such, is sitting in a park somewhere when a few Christians interrupt her/him, and ask, politely, if he/she will allow them to pray with her.

It's call witnessing, and it's almost a sacrament among evangelicals, who believe (as I was reminded thrice yesterday in sermons in separate churches of separate denominations) that witnessing is our mutual calling, something we do out of love. I get that. I even believe it. As recipients of His grace, it's our joy to bring others into His love. There's something sort of automatic about it--we can't stop.

I get all of that, and, ironically, so did the trans woman sitting in the park. She'd spent her entire childhood in an evangelical church, and is still a Christian, although not a Mike Pence-type. She says she understood very well what those sweet Christians were doing: they'd determined, on the basis of what she looked like, that she needed their prayers.

"These people did not want to know more about me," so says Charlotte Clymer in yesterday's Washington Post. "They wanted to talk at me and pray at me."

As they likely would have at anyone sitting in the park yesterday. The whole mission of that species of cold evangelism is to "bring the good news," under the twin assumptions that those we pray with don't know what the good news is and, thank goodness, we do. So, let us tell you. 

What's more, the prophets in the park receive the added benefit of fulfilling, personally, the Great Commission. They're doing what Jesus--and preachers--tell them to do. And if you get rebuffed, so what? Christians suffer indeed for His sake, you know; so you win that way too. Welcome to the surely blessed.

To many evangelicals, Charlotte Clymer looked for all the world like someone whose obvious brokenness meant he/she was standing in need of prayer. But, this Charlotte Clymer is a Christian, and someone who knows very well what the Bible says about prayer. When she referred them to the book of Matthew, they seemed stunned. Then she tells them, "Yes, a prayer would be nice. Let me begin"--or something to that effect.

She says she started in, being "wholly honest with God about how I hoped She would bless my new friends, encouraging them to affirm, and be inclusive, of others. I was hopeful that their community would honor all as God made them and value the strength of diversity."

That wasn't exactly the prayer they'd rehearsed. Once the amen was sounded, she says, they scurried off.

On Saturday, at a conference, I listened to a Lakota woman detail the wisdom of her uncle's life in a memoir he'd written. One of the attributes of wisdom, he explained in that memoir, was the discipline of earnest listening--not preaching, but simply listening. Silence is, we like to say, golden.

Seems to me that the Great Commission is spacious enough, divine enough, eternal enough, to hold a place for listening, don't you think? 

Occasionally, the Washington Post can put together a pretty good sermon.