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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "The Most Cowardly Word in the Bible." Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. What is the most cowardly word in the Bible? What is the most craven word? What is the word

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that has no respect for justice, which both ruins and kills? What is the word that topples governments, promotes headaches, heartaches, and heartbreaks? What is the word that spawns suspicion, that leads innocent people to sob into their pillows at night? What is the softest word in the Bible, but also the word with the hardest echo? The word is "whisperer." Proverbs chapter 16,

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"A whisperer separates chief friends." Or Psalm 41, "Those who hate me whisper together." Sometimes whisperers out and out lie. They're clever about it, but it is still a lie. I remember early in my ministry, the minister of a Presbyterian church nearby was under attack within his congregation because of certain lies, and he asked me if I would try to get to the bottom

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of them. And so, enlisting some of the people in that church that I knew, every time they would hear this lie repeated, they would ask, "Where did you hear that? Where did you hear that?" And eventually, they brought it down to the one person who had started the story, and I went to call upon that one person, and I said, "Why did you do that?" And she said, "A lie." She said she didn't do it

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at all. It's as old as Eden. Satan said, "Surely God hath not said." The whisperer lies. The whisperer also sometimes, rather than lying, simply insinuates. There was a captain of a ship who sadly wrote in the log of his vessel one day, "First mate drunk today." He was quite surprised the next morning when he approached the log and found that the mate had written in the log, "Captain

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sober today." Of course, the captain was sober every day. But the suggestion was made, you see, that this was not the case. This is insinuation. It's the kind of technique which was used against Nehemiah. He was seeking to rebuild, you will remember, the walls of Jerusalem. First, those who were opposed to the plan ridiculed him. Then they sought to attack him. Then they tried to

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murder him. And at last, they resorted to a whispering campaign. The words in the scripture read like this, "It is reported and Gashmu says that this is a rebellious plot." Gashmu says. "They say." Have you heard what I've heard? "They say." When Aaron Burr was lying on his deathbed, a friend of his seeking to comfort him said, "They say that," and Burr interrupted him. "Never use

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the words 'they say,'" he said. "They have broken more hearts than any others." I bring before you today one of the saddest stories of the effect of whispering in all the pages of scripture. David has fled the court of King Saul because Saul wishes to kill him. He goes under cover of darkness with a few friends. He comes to the village of Nob. They have no food. They have no weapons. And so

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he goes to the old priest in that village, a man named Ahimelech, a man of honor and decency, and he says, "Please give us food and arms." And Ahimelech says, "Well, you're the king's son-in-law. Why is it that you do not have food and arms?" And David says to him, "Well, you see, we're on a secret mission and we didn't have time to gather those things." Now, this was not true, but let us

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not too quickly brand it as a lie. For we all know that in times of war, lying sometimes becomes very appropriate. What would you think of the soldier who was captured and questioned and immediately told the truth about where all the troops, the tanks, the ammunition dumps were hidden away? Well, David is being pursued at his life's risk, and so he says, "Well, you see, we had to leave in

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a hurry," and so he didn't have a chance. And Ahimelech, knowing David to be the king's son-in-law, never having seen in David anything which he did not honor, gave him the food and the sword he requested. But there was a man standing there whose name was Doeg, and Doeg was a whisperer. Now, back at the court, Saul was accusing some of his courtiers of attempting to help David in his

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escape, and that was probably true because David was very popular with many of the people in Saul's court. And as he accuses these people, and they deny it, Doeg steps forward. Doeg, the whisperer from Nob, steps forward, and he tells King Saul, "Ahimelech has given weapons and food to the escaping David and his men." He leaves out, you see, the fact that David deceived Ahimelech. He

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makes no reference to that. He slanders the old priest. David was absolutely right about Doeg. He was a whisperer. Perhaps David had Doeg in his mind when he wrote later in one of his psalms, "They bend their bow in the darkness, and under their tongues is the poison of asps." Why, you say, would Doeg do a thing like this? Why do all whisperers whisper? Well, it's a basic axiom of

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both history and psychology, that troubled people cause trouble. It's failures who start whispers about the successful. It is those who are unsure about their own sexuality who start whispers about others' supposed homosexuality. It is the thief who is the first one to cry out, "Robber!" It is the liar who is the first one to challenge the veracity of what someone else has said. It is

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the person who has no theology who is first to jump upon the theology that belongs to another. Jesus speaks of people like these. "You hypocrite," he says, "first take the log from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck from your brother's eye." During the last years of the Civil War, specifically in 1864, Abraham Lincoln went to visit the battlefield at Antietam,

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and General McClelland, who was the commanding officer of the Union forces at that time, reported to the newspapers that when Lincoln stood upon this blood-soaked ground, he called upon some young soldier with a pleasant singing voice to sing a comic song. And McClelland said, "I pleaded with him not to desecrate this solemn place with such a cavalier song." But it still

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was sung. Well, the real truth of the matter was that Lincoln went to Antietam two weeks after the battle, and he was so overcome with sadness that he sat there in deep melancholy of spirit, and the tears ran down his face. And seeing a young man who was known to have a beautiful voice, he said to him, "Please sing for us 'Twenty Years Ago.'" And "Twenty Years Ago" was a popular ballad

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of that day. It was a song about a man who comes back to his home only to discover that all of his friends have been killed. They've all been lost in the war, and he sits there heartbroken. This is the song that Lincoln called for. It echoed the hurt that was in his own heart. Now, when the lad saw how deeply moved Lincoln was, he began to sing on his own a more cheerful song, trying to raise

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the president's spirit. But why would General McClelland tell the newspapers that Lincoln had called for a comic song in such a sacred place? I'll tell you why. Because McClelland was a coward. McClelland was a failure. He was sick, and he was ashamed of himself. It's the troubled people who cause trouble, and one wonders what Doeg's trouble was. Of course, as guilty as the one who whispers

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is the one who listens and passes on the whisper, and that's what Saul does. He accepts what Doeg, the whisperer, says and accuses the old priest Ahimelech. Now, no one else standing there questions Ahimelech. They know him to be an honorable, upright man, and when Ahimelech says, "Well, he left out the most important part. You see, David told me he was on a secret mission for you,

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King Saul. I only helped him because in helping him I thought I would be helping you. I was deceived, and this is the reason that I did what I did." And everyone there believed Ahimelech when he said this except Saul. Saul wanted to believe Doeg, the whisperer, and so he ordered that Ahimelech be put to death, and he called for someone to take upon himself the task, and no one there

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was willing to take up an arm against this honorable old man except Doeg, and Doeg, with his weapon, killed Ahimelech and 85 of the priests who worked with him. Alexander Solzhenitsyn says in Volume 2 of his Gulag Archipelago, "Violence does not exist of itself, and it cannot do so. It necessarily is interwoven with lies. Violence finds its refuge in falsehood, falsehood its

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support in violence, all because of a whisperer, violence and death, all because of one who was willing to listen to a whisperer, violence, deceit, and death." Behold Ahimelech lying in his own blood, cut down by the sword of slander. Never again will he pray for his people. Never again will he lead them in the rituals of their holy worship. Never again will he proclaim God's

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truth to them. His race is over. His counsel is gone. His leadership has been lost, not because of his crimes, but because of a whisperer. Ahimelech, your loyalty did not help you. Your sincerity, fidelity, and faithfulness to your king and your country profited you nothing. Your desire to help only served to make you a more shining target at which the wicked could shoot their evil

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words. How many Ahimelechs have fallen because of whispers. Jesus, Jesus speaking of this, says, "On the day of judgment you will render account for every word that you utter, for by your word you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." Well, what are we as Christians to do in the face of these hard and ugly realities? Well, obviously we must begin by examining ourselves

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and repenting, if that is appropriate to us. We share the fallen nature of humankind. We're quite capable of hideously twisting and deforming the image of God that is within us, and so we need to examine ourselves. Do we criticize in order to justify our own ideas? Do we wish ill upon others because of envy? Do we repeat the ugly instead of proclaiming the beautiful? Do we listen to that

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which debases instead of talking about that which exalts? Is our speech cruel and hard and loveless? Are we whisperers? We need to remind ourselves of those words which appear in the Old Testament, "Who shall abide in the tabernacle of the Lord? He that walks uprightly and backbiteth not with his tongue." And if we find ourselves to be guilty of whispering or listening to whisperers and

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spreading their stories, then we must confess, repent, and promise never to make such a mistake again. There was a Chinese woman who showed up once at one of our mission stations, and the missionary in charge asked her why she had come, and she said, "Our mayor was a cruel and bad man. He had an evil tongue, and his house was filled with hurt, but he came here, and now he and his

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family are full of joy and peace. I have," she continued, "I have an unhappy mouth. Do what you did for him for me." And they led her to Jesus, and in her coming to Jesus she was cleansed. But we come to Jesus by way of repentance and confession. The second thing we need to do, of course, is to use our common sense. You know, much of Christianity is little more than good

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sense. Carl Menninger, the great psychiatrist, has pointed out the power that there is in words. Words can inspire. Churchill used them to summon up the strength of little England to stand against the Nazi hordes. But words can also destroy, as the words of Doeg brought to death a Himalak. There is awful power of degradation in accusation. The marks of the tongue are hard marks, or at

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least they can be. And that is the reason that James' writing in the New Testament says that the tongue can be like a raging fire. And so we need to have for ourselves, it seems to me, certain rules. First, we will not speak unless we know all the facts. Second, we will recognize that it is impossible for any of us to be impartial. There is some degree of subjectivity in every

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one of us. It is stupid to think otherwise. Third, we must remember that our sins disqualify us from the privilege of the judgment and the condemnation of others, for with the judgment we give, we will ourselves be judged. And finally, we must ask ourselves before we speak these key questions. Is it true? Is it needful? Is it kind? Does it break, or does it bless? There was a woman of

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the Roman Catholic faith who was visited by her priest, and he came to see her quite frequently, two or three times a week, and he always came when no member of the family was home except this woman. And the neighbors saw this, and they began to whisper, "What was this man who had taken vows of celibacy doing calling upon this woman, and always when she was alone?" And they spread

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that story until one day, to their profound embarrassment and shame, they discovered that this lady was dying of terminal cancer, and she didn't want to burden her family with the truth of that and the pain of that, but she had to have someone with whom to share, someone with whom to pray. And so her priest would come faithfully, and they would pray together, and so it continued

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until the fact could be concealed no longer. Then, and only then, did she announce her sad secret to her loved ones, and they gathered round her till she was gone. But the whisperers had already done their work. As Christians, we must recognize also that we will be, because of our faith, whispered about. I think of the man who was a head of a large organization, and some of the

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members of his organization began to receive obscene telephone calls, and so they put these tracing mechanisms on the telephones, and they were able to trace the call. And they found that the person making the calls was another person who worked for that same organization. Now, the telephone company will not trace a call for you unless you are willing to prosecute,

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to the fullest extent of the law, those who are apprehended because of the trace. But this good man, the president of this organization, went to the telephone company and he said, "It's not going to profit anyone if we announce what she has done. It will only make her more sorry than she already is, for it will add shame to the burden of her bitter guilt. So please, can we not keep this

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between ourselves, and I will simply dismiss her from our organization's service." And the telephone company agreed, and the woman was dismissed. But you know what she did? Knowing the man who headed that organization to be the kind of man he was, knowing the mercy that was in him, knowing the love that was in him, knowing the concern that was in him, knowing how he had pushed aside his

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opportunity, indeed his obligation, to prosecute her to the fullest extent of the law, knowing all of that, knowing how he had let her go, simply dismissed her and told her to disappear away. Knowing he wouldn't say anything, she proceeded to attack him. She called him everything she could call him, and some of her friends in the organization who did not know the story joined

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with her, and they began to attack this man as well. This one who, because of his faith, had done something that was merciful and grace-filled, was whispered about, because he had done it. But never once, never once did he tell what she had done. He just stood there and bore the punishment he did not deserve. Jesus says of such ones, "Blessed are you when men will revile you and

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persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake, for great will be your reward in heaven." And finally, "If we're going to whisper, then let us whisper about our Savior." A young boy who had a bone deformity that gave him both pain and some disfigurement put himself under the hands of a very talented orthopedic surgeon who did a wonderful job. The injury was

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repaired, the pain and the disfigurement disappeared away, and the boy was thrilled. And the last day that he was in the hospital, when the surgeon came in to see him, the boy looked at him and said, "Hey, Doc, my friends are never going to hear the last of you." What he was saying, of course, was, "I shall never stop telling others of the goodness I have received at your hands,

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and shouldn't that be the spirit that motivates us? Those of us who bear the name of Christ and who have been forgiven by God through the grace of Christ, should we not always be speaking, whispering, and shouting from the housetops about that?" O. B. Buell, the great Scandinavian violinist, performed once in New York City, and a bitter criticism appeared in the New York Times,

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so bitter that the New York Herald offered O. B. Buell space in which to write a response. But Buell replied, "No, let them write against me. I shall play against them." What he was saying, of course, was that he would defeat ugliness with beauty. And as we think of the mercy of our Savior, should we not be speaking of that mercy and never of hate?

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When we think of how Jesus dealt with us in great grace, should we ever be passive listeners, or should we be active listeners, who when we hear a whisper, "Damn it!" to its insidious face, shouldn't we be the ones who never say, "They say," but always say, "God says?" May it be so. May it so much be so that the song of prayer will become so central to our life,

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that for us to live, we'll make great words our own. "O Lord, let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable unto thee, for thou art my strength and my redeeming." Let it be so. Our Father, we thank thee that we can gather in this place, that we can sing songs of praise,

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that we can greet and be loved by one another, that we can hear thy word and be reminded that it is a word that a whole world waits to hear, that we can hear thy word open and explained, and brought into our sight. O God, we thank thee that we can offer ourselves to thee here, and we pray that in each aspect of our worship this day, we have drawn closer to thee. And we

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pray that throughout the days of the week ahead, that reality will show that if we live close to Christ and his infinite grace, O yes, we tell it, that it also shows in your face. That's what we pray about. For Jesus' sake. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]