bold proclamation

i'm giving a sermon tommorrow in chapel. it's going to be on 'bold proclamation'.

A good example of bold proclamation is a story that my Old Testament prof. tells about his time as a student in Romania. At the time Romania was under the communists, and they were often very aggressive, especially to people who wore clerical attire in public. So, the Patriarch made a ruling. Priest cannot wear any clerical attire in public, nor can they keep a beard. It would get them harassed, it would endanger their families, and it also was preventing them from getting to their churches on time.

But the monks had a very different ruling. The Patriarch issues orders that monks had to wear their Cassocks and had to keep a beard. In other words, nobody pushes this guy around.

Now that makes a statement. That’s difficult for a persecutor to come to grips with, and it’s even more difficult for a sympathetic person to ignore.