Whistleblowing

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 17, Year A

September 3, 2017

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

Maybe it’s just inevitable, a simple fact of life: You stand up, you get knocked down.

Take whistleblowers for example.

• A black woman police officer calls out her labor union for it’s racist culture. The union loudly insists they are not racist, before showing her the door. 
• A woman reports an accounting abuse in a large corporation, her manager praises her for her courage, then downsizes her for no apparent reason. 
• A priest reports another priest for sexual abuse. The bishop says he’ll take care of the matter, then takes care of the priest who blew the whistle, assigning him to a remote parish where his voice will no longer be heard.
• Many counter-protestors confronted armed white supremacists in Carlottesville a couple of weeks ago. As a result, several of the counter-protestors were injured, one was killed.
• Last weekend, I had to deal with this myself after several of those same white supremacists had planned a rally here in San Francisco. Several leaders from the Mission and I had decided we needed to directly confront them and the hate they were promoting. Although we were committed to nonviolence, we were pretty sure from the videos that the other side was not. We knew we could be physically in harm’s way.

Because that’s how the world works. If you stand up, you can expect to get knocked down.

Jesus was a fierce whistleblower. He pointed out the hypocrisy of the religious leadership. Whited sepulchers he called them. “You lay heavy burdens on people’s shoulders and will not move a finger to lift them.” Jesus saw clearly the organizational abuse, and he blew the whistle.

And his prediction in today’s gospel that he himself would soon suffer and die as a result of his whistleblowing was not exactly a stroke of genius. It was obvious. Those in power try to eliminate those who question them. Anyone who questions the status quo will be treated harshly by those sitting on top of the status quo.

This was hard for Peter to understand. Poor guy. In last week’s gospel, he was the rock on which Jesus would build his church. This week, he’s a stumbling block. What happened?

Peter doesn’t get it. For him, a messiah is the one who is victorious and inflicts suffering and death on all the bad guys. But a messiah who puts himself in harms way, eventually being tortured and executed? For Peter, this is no messiah at all. He doesn’t get it.

So why do people decide to confront evil, putting themselves at risk in the process? Different people have different explanations like, “I just decided enough was enough!” Or “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do something.” Or “I saw what was once a great country, and it still means something to me.”

Underneath each of these explanations lies a sense that something deeper is at stake, a life deeper than everyday life. Sometimes we call this deeper life our soul. If we ignore it or silence it, it will die.

It’s a profound spiritual irony that Jesus is getting at here: “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”

In Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More sees a man who has perjured himself and is now wearing a chain of office, he has just been promoted to attorney general of Wales. That high-ranking, prestigious job is his reward both for keeping quiet and for lying. Thomas More says to him, “Richard, it does not profit a man to lose his soul for the whole world, but for Wales?”

Sometimes moments arise when a deeper life, our own souls, are at stake. This deeper life is more important than anything--even than our everyday concerns, our careers, our reputations, even our own physical safety.

When such moments come around, some might like to think speaking out is an option--”Go ahead and speak out, if that’s your thing.” If that’s your thing. But the gospel is not so blasé. In fact, it’s very clear: Not speaking out when you see injustice and evil can cost you your soul.

So the gospel encourages us to shoulder the cross freely--because the cross is the price you will pay, it’s what predictably will happen to you when you pursue justice in an unjust world.

Dr. King got this. The cross, the willingness to relinquish your life in order to find it, lies behind his words when he confronted his own enemies at the height of the civil rights struggle:

We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children; send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities and drag us out on some wayside road, beating us and leaving us half dead, and we will still love you. But we will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And in winning our freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.

In fact, Dr. King put it even more baldly: “If a man or woman has not discovered something to die for, they’re not fit to live.”

Not speaking out when you see injustice and evil can cost you your soul.

Letting go of the surface of things for the sake of something deeper. Losing your life in order to find it. A type of death that leads to resurrection.

It’s this mystery, this great irony, of a kind of death that leads to life that we enter once again at this table where we share bread, Christ’s body, broken, and given. And it’s this great irony we must each try to live out after we leave here this morning.