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07543 August 31, 2007
Dangerous truth
Weems to elders: 'Can't cover up Jesus'
by Mike Ferguson Presbyterian News Service
NASHVILLE - Poet Ann Weems thinks Presbyterian elders must do something that King Lear's daughter said she couldn't do: heave their hearts into their mouths.
In Shakespeare's play, Lear's three daughters are asked to tell their father how much they love him. Two girls do as they're told, but the third daughter is silent. She blurts out her famous but anatomically difficult line only after her father gets angry with her.
Like Lear's daughter, elders also need to find their voice, Weems said Thursday (Aug. 30) during the second day of the PC(USA)'s first-ever National Elders Conference. The event has drawn more than 300 elders from almost every state.
"How can we heave our hearts into a statement of faith?" she asked. "We heave our hearts by voicing astonishment at the wonder of God's grace."
She defined prayer as "a yearning after the heart of God. We just open our hearts and the Holy One waits."
But when we do pray, it ought to be something worth praying.
"I am concerned," Weems said, "that in our prayers we confess rule-breaking instead of heart-breaking."
On Wednesday night, Weems worshiped with other conference-goers at the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, a church her father served as assistant pastor and pastor in the late 1930s and early 1940s. On Thursday morning she told the story - from her then 7-year-old perspective - how he was driven from his pulpit.
"It was strange sitting in a pew where I sat as a little girl, my mother telling me to sit still," she said. "I went back in time to when I though King Jesus and King James were friends."
One Sunday afternoon she walked into the kitchen to see her mother "polishing the sin out of the silver." Her father had an unexpected meeting after church and would be late to lunch, explained her mother, whom Ann called by her first name, Gladys.
"My brother told me daddy was in big trouble," Weems said. "I wondered how can a daddy be in trouble, especially our daddy, who never caused any trouble to anybody at any time."
It turned out a prominent church member had decided to try to get rid of the pastor for preaching sermons about racial equality, peace and higher pay for poor workers.
"He had to preach what he thought was the gospel of Jesus Christ," she said. "He told me, 'I wish I could preach something that would make everybody happy, but I have to preach what I think God wants me to preach. I have to know in my heart that it's about Jesus, not about me. Do you understand?'"
"Not really," she replied. "Just that it's about Jesus." "That's enough," her father replied.
The young Weems, who that week had been memorizing the 23rd Psalm ("Red-letter King James Version" she said proudly), told her father that if he asked, God would restore his soul. The pastor told his daughter he was grateful for that.
Her father would face a heresy trial at synod and be exonerated, but resigned his position at the Nashville church anyway.
"I won't preach at a pulpit that's not free," he told his daughter.
His personal strength and strong belief in Jesus' teaching - and the impact those had on a young girl - were apparent during Weems' recital of that long-ago story. By the end of her talk, every elder in the room was listening hard.
"No matter how we dilute the word of God," Weems concluded, "it's about Jesus.
No matter how we cover up the dangerous truth of the gospel, it's about Jesus."
Mike Ferguson, a Presbyterian elder, is a reporter for the Baker City Herald in Baker City, OR.
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