“I. Can’t. Even.” Have you ever heard or uttered this phrase? Perhaps when you are totally baffled about the appeal or audacity of something, or when you are caught up so much in laughter at the ridiculousness of a situation you find yourself in, or when something happens that makes your blood boil to the point you cannot bring yourself to utter a restrained response. This expression, which often stands alone, is a proclamation of a limit or breaking point to a situation, a modern variation of “when enough is enough” to some extent. It’s reserved for those moments in which one’s emotional response is so powerful that you can’t express it in either words or actions. It is beyond comprehension and even beyond words, leaving the hearer to insert the follow-up implications.
“I can’t even” might have been Moses’ response to God if the Bible were to be written today. The story brings us to the end of the narrative begun in chapter 3 with the burning bush. Verse after verse, God’s glory is revealed and the plight of God’s people, the Israelites, is laid bare. As we know, God has big plans for Moses, that sweet baby floating in a basket down the Nile, raised by an Egyptian princess in the seat of privilege, removed from the experience of his native people. God is about to turn the world upside down, deliver God’s people from slavery and oppression and into freedom and the beauty of the promised land – all because of the leadership of the one who stands before God now – Moses. Surely it was a lot to take in, and in the verses we read this morning, it is clear that Moses has hit a breaking point with this news. The call God places on him is enormous. Note, he doesn’t argue with God about it needing to be done. He doesn’t offer that “well, maybe Pharoah isn’t that bad, I mean, I was raised in the palace after all.” He doesn’t suggest that the “timing just isn’t right.” Instead, he stammers an “I can’t even,” for he cannot imagine that he has what it takes to do what God is calling him to do. His primary objection? He lacks the voice, the actual eloquence and force, to deliver such a message. Of course, God doesn’t take kindly to God’s creation informing God what we can or cannot do. After all, God is our creator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and who has given us each a voice to contribute to God’s kingdom.
The week before last, I had the privilege of joining some of our high school youth at Montreat to explore what it might mean for us to lift our voices and respond to the call God has placed on each of us. The presenters each morning and evening challenged us to embrace the passions God had placed on each of our lives, and to bring life to those passions with the help of the Holy Spirit. I have promised not to preach 5 days worth of sermons at once this morning, as the lessons and implications of our time together were many. Instead, this morning, let me focus on one that sheds light on what it means to live in the kingdom of God here and now – the importance of creating space in which all voices can be heard.
1 Corinthians presents a stunning image of the diversity of calls God places upon us with the image of the body, which I would even liken to the different voices we have been given to preach the gospel. While we are all a part of the body of Christ, each of us has different ways of embodying that call. We are woven together, bones and joints, sinews and muscles, tissues and ligaments, and serve Jesus Christ, the head of the body best when we work together, each doing our part. As those who seek to be disciples of Jesus Christ, our job, then, is to find out which part of the body we are called to be next, and to live into that call to the best of our ability.
Like Moses, though, I think we often resist or fight that call to be a voice or body part because we don’t think we have what it takes. We aren’t smart enough, powerful enough, brave enough, to take on the really big stuff in the world. That kind of large scale change should be left to someone else, we reason, with a better skill set. But actually, such a small way of thinking forgets that God has made us to be a part of something bigger. In the case of Moses, God sends a helper, his brother Aaron, who will be a mouthpiece. Working together, as the body does, will bring about the revolution God has in mind. And, as we know from reading ahead, indeed it does. Moses moves from “I can’t even” to “Let my people go,” by the power of God’s Spirit burning in that bush and the support of the community around him.
This leads us to consider that finding our voices, the ones God has placed inside each of us, might not just be a solo endeavor. What if we considered it more the work of the body, a communal activity of mutual support and care for each other? Sometimes, this means that we are active voices and parts, pushing the body in a new direction. Sometimes, this means we are supporting the work of others, and not getting in their way or resisting. Often, it means we have to communicate well and pay attention to what others are doing in order to synchronize our lives in ways that build up the body. Always, I think, it means finding a rhythm of life together in which every voice is truly lifted. It is only then, in the unity and harmony of our voices combined, that we can begin to hear the voice of God.
Listening to God’s voice, we find our own, and are able to move forward into the future God has intended for us, and all God’s children, together. This sense of progress and hope is seen in the hymn that gave way to the Montreat Youth Conference’s theme this year, Lift Every Voice.
In 1899, a young poet and school principal named James Weldon Johnson was asked to address a crowd in Jacksonville, Florida, for the upcoming anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday . . . Instead of preparing an ordinary speech, Johnson decided to write a poem. He began with a simple but powerful line, a call to action: “Lift ev’ry voice and sing[i].”
It was a tenuous time, a mere 20 years passed since the Reconstruction era, with racial tension and lynchings on the rise in the segretated South. The words of the poem captured the struggle and resilience of his ancestors, and the promise of the light of hope he saw in the future. His classically trained brother, John Rosamond Johnson, put his words to music, and it was performed for the first time by 500 school children on February 12, 1900. It was soon embraced as a hymn in churches and performed in countless graduation and school assemblies. By 1920, it was adopted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as its official song, and became a hallmark of the Civil Rights Movement. Today it is still known as the “black national anthem,” giving voice to hopes for equality and a land in which every voice, no matter race or ethnicity or creed, might sing out. In April, Beyonce even included the first verse in her opening sequence at the music festival Coachella, demonstrating the song’s power even in our times. It is a song about the power of voice, and a prayer for a day when all those voices might come together. In that spirit, even as those seeking to find our own voices in the midst of the body of Christ, may we rise and sing together:
~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford
July 22, 2018
**Our Youth Group and Friends shared their voices in worship through this video made in conjunction with the Montreat Youth Conference this summer: https://www.facebook.com/heritagepres/videos/10156185273678429/
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[i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/04/16/lift-every-voice-and-sing-the-story-behind-the-black-national-anthem-that-beyonce-sang/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1a05e4fc5a90
