Article Republished from The Morning Call. Article published April 27, 2024 here.

There is something that is called “the boiling frog theory.” Some advocate its accuracy. Others claim that it is scientifically unlikely. So let us call it a myth. The myth goes like this: if you were to place a live frog into a boiling pot of water it would immediately leap from the pot because of the temperature. However, if you were to place the frog into a pot of cold or tepid water and slowly raise the temperature the frog would remain in the water as it regulates the heat until ultimately it dies as the water reaches its boiling point.

The point of this myth, this experiment, is that people like our frog can grow accustomed to circumstances that are actually evil or detrimental to our well-being. We can grow accustomed to our ethical lapses, our intolerance, our addiction to the status quo and even our quest to hold on to the power or position that we enjoy. We can also be so beaten down by our life circumstances that we simply give up and succumb to the overwhelming pressures that lock people into socioeconomic desolation.

Jesus’ call to discipleship emerges in his wilderness encounter with Satan. It was in the wilderness where Satan offered Jesus all of the power that he could grant if only Jesus would succumb to Satan’s authority and power. There is another kind of wilderness that speaks to our call to ministry — the wilderness of status quo, the wilderness of fear and the wilderness of accommodating evil.

Jesus enters a land where there is a great deal of upheaval. As soon as he arrives, he is met by a man who is tethered to the tombs and has an unclean spirit. This man recognized Jesus and bowed down before him, even in his altered state. This man with a demonic spirit recognized Jesus’ authority and asked that he not torment him. Jesus, as the story tells us, allowed the unclean spirits to come out of the man and into a herd of swine that stampeded down a steep bank running headlong into the sea. The swine perished. The people of the town came to witness what had taken place. Jesus was there with the man who was now “clothed and in his right mind.” Eyewitnesses saw what occurred. People rushed to the scene after learning of the story. The possessed man was freed and his demons transferred to the swine. Then, in what I think is the key verse to this passage, the people asked Jesus to leave their neighborhood. Get out Jesus, you are disrupting things, get out Jesus we have grown accustomed to living with this possessed man and it was in our best interest that he stays that way. Get out Jesus you are messing up our money; all our swine have drowned because this man has been set free.

How often have we been in the wilderness because we spoke truth to power, we stood up to the powerful. We broke with the status quo so that we could change our lives. Have you ever been told to leave the neighborhood because you were not willing to compromise? Jesus was not a get along future; he was about the business of salvation and justice. I can hear it now, “get out of our neighborhood, we are wedded to our weapons of mass destruction, even though they maim the innocent. Get out, we are not interested in gun control, although our nation is awash with weapons, and we are gripped by its military industrial complex. Get out, we have a pecuniary interest in promoting redlining, even though it maims communities of color. Get out of the neighborhood!

In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave an address at the Riverside Church in New York, about a year before his assassination. The title of his address was, “A Time to Break Silence.” His purpose was to speak out about America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Dr. King used a theme created by the group Clergy and Laity Concerned which sponsored this event, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” This speech also highlighted what he understood to be a tripartite foundation of oppression: racism, materialism and militarism. When Dr. King gave this address it disrupted the nation. Colleagues criticized him for speaking out against the war. Others chided him suggesting that he had gone from civil rights to thinking that he was now a peace activist. Dr. King was told to stay in his lane. It could be said the public was telling Dr. King, “Get out of our neighborhood.” Dr. King was in the wilderness, speaking to power, an apathetic nation and conformist thinking, and he was being invited to leave the neighborhood. But there is an inner truth that demands our fidelity and attention to do justice even when we are invited to leave the neighborhood.

We are struggling in this wilderness ourselves. It is easier to go along to get along. It is easier if we do not ruffle any feathers. However, discipleship, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer would tell us, is not about cheap grace. We have been called to break the silence. It can be a vocation of agony, but we must speak. It is a call to transformative life. It is a call to do and say the words that breathe life into the souls of God’s people, freeing them from their chains.

Sometimes the only way that we can show love for a brother or sister is to eradicate the structures and systems that maim their bodies and spirits. In this case our faith is not concerned with amassing power but in empowering people to fulfill the mandate of God’s purpose in their lives.

James Russel Lowell puts our charge eloquently in his own anti-war song responding to the Mexican-American War which was centered in the expansion of slavery into the state of Texas :

Once to every man and nation,
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision,

Offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever,
’Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet the truth alone is strong;

Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own.

The Rev. Larry Pickens is the executive director of the Pennsylvania Council of Churches.