A young woman in her late 20’s had a question for Amy Dickinson of “Dear Amy.” She wrote: “Lately it seems I have been hearing people say obnoxious, racist, and/or just ‘wrong’ things more often. I’ve always been a very quiet person. I’m terrible at speaking to strangers. However, whenever I hear something and don’t say something, I feel awful….I’d really like to get better about this, because I feel like I am not only not helping, but my silence is making things worse. Could you help me?” The experience she’s describing isn’t unusual. It doesn’t happen only to people who are shy. We can call it ‘bystander guilt’ and cover a whole host of circumstances, like failure to challenge a rude comment, or stand with someone who is being verbally abused. This young woman recognizes her silence as a betrayal of values she holds dear, such as tolerance and respect for others. Saying nothing makes her complicit and she desperately wants to challenge the degrading words. In her urgency perhaps we can hear the spirit within her nudging her toward speech. The God who calls Isaiah in our first reading is also calling her, helping purge her guilt and shame, so she can find and use her voice.
Her question underscores the words of Isaiah as he stands before God wrestling with his own failures. “Every word I’ve ever spoken is tainted! blasphemous even!” he says. “I am a person of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips. I’ve used words that corrupt and desecrate! yet here I am standing before the Just One who created the universe! Woe is me! I am doomed.” Guilt and shame overwhelm him as he recognizes that the disregard and contempt he has shown toward others has, in reality, been directed toward the Creator of the world, the Creator who isn’t separate from creation. Disrespect of others is profound disrespect of the God who made them, the God who is within them, the God who is embedded in all things. Everything and everyone is HOLY because God is HOLY. All the earth and all its creatures are filled with God—God’s glory shines in and through them all. (more…)
