Sermon at the Beach

Reverend Billy delivers a sermon at the beach: 

"Why do I shout? Why do I preach? I’m looking out at you and there are hundreds of you and thousands you and why do I shout?

"I sense a silent common shout like an aquifer beneath us...We are a crowd and we are trying to rise past something that muffles us. We are gagged without a physical knot on our mouth. We feel a shout coming up. But what is silencing us?

"It is the world’s largest economy. How bizarre. That a feeling rising in our body from the deep - is it sex? Or a cry for Peace? Or a shout to God? -- yes any release of hot words out into the public air must be commodified, valued and packaged and traded, silenced for the quarterly earnings report. Oh, let me preach. Does anyone hear me?

"Oh I remember good shouts. There is the tender one when a beautiful friend turns and faces us in that unexpected moment and we let go with “I love you.” Then a pre-emptive echo explodes in our ears. What was THAT? Our three words are taken by the world’s largest economy and sold back to us as glossy boxes of powders, lingerie, cars, frequent flier miles and mood-adjusting purple pills from the Amazon shelf.

'I love you!' could be the shout of our physical embrace and it could be the shout of our rage for social change, or an aching connection with a supreme being, too. But if we begin, as a crowd of consumers, to hesitate... If we pause because we’ve tried to shout earlier in our lives and it came out as merely “style”... If we hold our silence protectively over the shout down inside because all this retail screaming is crashing on us like a war zone. If we look around and suspect that the world’s largest economy is ready to force a duet on our oldest personal music. Well then – there is something that we are really keeping when we “keep our silence.” We don’t shout.

"We want to! We want to shout! Just a good old clumsy crying out! Oh - I sense roaring waters running deep inside this crowd today! Do you feel it? Is there forceful language waiting within our breath? Do I have a witness? Yes? Let’s stand up. That feels better already. Some of you think I’m shouting. I know I am but you try it now - shouting back, you know, like we do when we are loving, like at a political rally, like they shout in a church. Amen? We ARE in church! We’re safe from shopping here. And it’s funny how quickly our shouting will turn into singing..."