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Welcome to Hillsboro United Methodist Church! If you are searching for deeper meaning in your life that includes lasting relationships, spiritual growth and service to the world you have come to the right place. We offer a safe place in which to ponder important life questions within an atmosphere of support. Our hearts, our minds and our doors are open. We hope that as you visit with us that you will find a place to call home.
Sermon - January 24th, 2010
Showing Kindness: Part 2
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: 1 Cor. 12: 12-31a; Luke 4:14-21
Prayer of Preparation: We give thanks, O God of sacred stories, for the witness of your word today. Through Scripture you challenge our assumptions, increase our awareness, nurture our imaginations, and touch our feelings. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.
The Apostle Paul was on to something big when he started talking about body parts in his letter to the Corinthians. He knew everyone could relate. They had before. This metaphor is not original with Paul. He was applying it to the church, a newly formed body of Christ, a brand new community. We know what he was saying. We need every part of the body to be whole. We need diversity within to body to be strong, healthy and vital. Healthy parts make a healthy whole. When one part is not well, the whole body is affected. Brilliant and profound and easy to understand. Still, we struggle to get it and live it.
Jesus began his ministry in Galilee. He began teaching and people praised him. He was off to a good start. Then he went to his home town, Nazareth. He stood up to read from the scroll, as was his custom. He said, “Today, the Scripture has been fulfilled.” He was reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, from the Prophets. He had said what he was about—bringing good news, releasing captives, recovering sight, and liberating the oppressed. He only had to say a little more and the crowd’s mood shifted from amazement to rage, driving him out of town to hurl him off a cliff. Jesus escaped and this story becomes a foreshadowing of what was to come for Jesus. If we were listening to this for the first time and didn’t know the end of the story, we might wonder, does Jesus stay true to his mission? Does he do all that he set out to do? Do people accept him? Are people changed by him? Here he is, preaching to the people who watched him grow up, who know him best, and they want to kill him! They no longer see him as theirs. He doesn’t belong to them. He says he has this higher purpose. Honestly this is a very disturbing story. I wonder if Jesus walked away that day, wondering what am I part of, where do I belong?
We all need a sense of belonging. We live in an era of individualism, a time of competing with others, wanting to be more special and creative, a time of comparing ourselves to others. We want to stand out. We want to belong. We want to be part of a support network. We want to have friends we can count on. It is a deep part of us as human beings to have a sense of belonging, to be part of something.
Jesus saw everyone, even those who rejected him, as part of the whole, no one was on the outside unless they chose to be on the outside. I wish I knew why the church didn’t get this message from Jesus. To me, it comes through loud and clear, all are included and all means all. The church is taking a long time to learn this. We can be rigid and closed without even realizing it. Do we look at others with suspicion, or with indifference? When will we learn to look at others with curiosity knowing that we all belong to the human race, have similar hopes and dreams, different experiences, and a common destiny?
Everyday, Jesus walked and taught and influenced people’s sense of belonging. The circle got bigger and bigger. It included more and more people. Samaritans, adulterers, tax collectors, lepers, to mention a few. Some thought this was not right. Their particular sense of belonging was about following certain rules and being religious in a certain way. Jesus didn’t stay within the circle. He took people beyond their comfort zone. He included people who weren’t supposed to be included. He turned the world upside down. It began by enraging those who knew him the best. He still does that today. He keeps pushing the boundaries out in the church who claims to know him best. And someday, someday, the whole world will be included in a circle of kindness. We will no longer live in the past, we will no longer hold onto resentments. We will know the power of kindness. That’s my hope and dream for the world. And it starts with me.
This is my second sermon in a series of three sermons on showing kindness. Piero Ferrucci wrote a book on The Power of Kindness which I will be referring to, getting stories from. Today I’m talking about respect and a sense of belonging as two more qualities of kindness, adding to honesty which I talked about two weeks ago. Ferrucci writes: “Every element of a human being influences every other element. Emotions affect the body; the functioning of one organ affects all other organs; the past influences the present and the present the future; the relation with one person influences the relation with another; and so on.” Sounds a lot like Paul talking about body parts.
We all know how it feels to be seen for less than what we are. Even worse is when we are not see at all—treated as if we are invisible. The opposite of this is being recognized and acknowledged and valued as our real selves. What a wonderful feeling it is when someone notices us, sees our worth, sees that we exist. This is respect. It’s a word that comes from a Latin word meaning “look back, regard, consider.” Ferrucci says, “I feel respected if I am seen for who I am. But who am I really? Am I what others see in my everyday life?” Then he explains that there is a whole lot to us that we don’t allow others to see like our hopes, our dreams, our most vulnerable self. And then there is our shadow side, our unconscious self—the part that we don’t know about ourselves.
A story from the Middle East tells about a man who was a victim in his own family. He felt tormented and abused, a total victim. One day he walked away from it all to find Paradise. After much searching, he met an old sage who gave him detailed directions on how to find Paradise. He told him you have to walk a long time. The man set out. During the day he walked, and when night fell he stopped at an inn to sleep. Now he was a very precise and methodical man. He decided before he fell asleep to place his shoes pointing toward Paradise so he wouldn’t go the wrong way in the morning. During the night, a mischievous little devil came quietly into his room and turned his shoes around in the opposite direction.
The next morning the man woke up and off he went, in the direction that his shoes were pointing, the opposite direction. As he walked, he noticed how familiar everything started to look. He arrived at the town where he lived, and exclaimed, “How much like my old town Paradise looks!” It felt good, he felt good. He saw his old house and exclaimed: “How much like my old house Paradise looks!” And he found his house very enjoyable. His family came to greet him and he exclaimed: “How they are like my wife and children! Here in Paradise everything looked the way it was before.” However, because it was Paradise, everything and everyone was beautiful and full of qualities that he, in his daily life, never would have suspected to exist. He said, “Strange, how here in Paradise everything resembles so precisely what was in my life before, and yet everything is completely different!” The only thing that had changed was the man’s way of seeing his situation, his home, his family.
Jesus walked around Galilee proclaiming that the Kingdom of God had come. Sometimes people were transformed by his words, his new way of seeing helped them see in a new way and free them from the old. He was able to see a person’s soul, the true essence of a person. This was respect, to see truly.
Wouldn’t it be truly amazing if that’s what we did as a church? I know we are an amazing church in so many ways. We deeply care for each other. We do outstanding outreach work. We responded with generosity to the crisis in Haiti. I am honored to be your pastor. I also challenge us to do even better. I challenge us to see the best and the deepest essence of people. I challenge us to be good listeners, to truly listen to each other without our own thoughts and agenda getting in the way. It is a noisy world out there. It is a noisy world inside our minds too. Listening is respecting. Spacious respect is one of the easiest ways to open up a relationship: Letting other people be what they are without surrounding them, not even in our minds, with judgment, advice, pressure, and hopes that people be this way or that.
I trust you, all of you, to be able to create your own destiny. My hope in all my preaching is that I give you the space to transform yourselves…sacred space. We all need trust and space from each other, all the time, holding each other lightly, knowing that we are connected, knowing that we need each other, knowing we really are not separate from each other, we are one, we are what Paul said, the body, the body of Christ. We belong together. This sense of belonging, along with respect for each other and trust in each other gives us the space we need for kindness to live and breath. This is the respect we want to receive. This is the respect we can learn to offer. And we will thrive, I believe. We will enable others to thrive. And what will happen is our world will be transformed, slowly and steadily.
My last story is one I have heard and told many times. It is about a monastery that was slowly dying and getting more and more run down. A rabbi lived down the road, in a little hut. In desperation one day the Father Abbot went to the rabbi for advice. What will we do? Our community is dying. They commiserated together awhile and the Father got up to leave. The rabbi said good bye and then said, I have no advice to give you. Remember though, the Messiah is one of you. Father Abbot went back and told the monks about his conversation with the Rabbi, including the comment about one of them being the Messiah. As their daily life went on, they started looking at each other differently. It couldn’t be John, he was the one who was always right. It couldn’t be Samuel, he was crochetty in his old age. And James, maybe it was James who was so quiet, hardly said anything at all, when he did it was usually good. And in the days that followed they started treating each differently just on the off chance that the rabbi might be right. And they started treating themselves with deep respect and care, just on the off, off chance it might be them. A transformation slowly started to take place. Visitors passing through noticed something special about the place. And then one day a young man came to them wanting to join the monastery. The change began in the sacred space that the Rabbi offered them…a gift of seeing, a gift of being heard, a gift of extraordinary kindness.
The power of kindness is transforming the world. Look for it, listen for it, speak it, and be it. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer:
Gracious and mysterious God, We are here, together, sharing space and grief and concern and joy. The world is in great need and we feel small and distant and helpless. We don’t understand. We want to know why. We want to feel safe. We want to fix the world. We want a superhero to push back time and make everything better. That’s what we want. It’s not the way the universe works. So we gather to see each other, getting comfort from each other, from being together. We know you are so present here, and even more present where there is suffering. We pray for miracles. And we witness the outpouring of help and wonder, is it enough? Is it enough? This is our prayer, O God. Our humble, confused, what can we do, prayer, and we offer it as our not enough prayer…trusting, hoping with every fiber of our body that you are present, that you are One with all of us….and we cry, knowing you cry with us, for all your children, all over the world who are suffering. And in the midst of knowing what we know about life and death and unbelievable tragedy, we see beauty, we experience kindness, we feel love, we see a new born baby, the sun comes out, a friend shares an encouraging word. And we realize, that in the midst of tragedy, life is amazing, life is good, life triumphs. And that’s the miracle. And deep inside of us comes a well of gratitude, a moment of grace. And we know, we just know, that is from you, O God. If only for a moment, we know it. And we say, thanks. And we take a deep breath and know that you are close, you are present, you are One with the world. O mysterious and gracious God, we pray this prayer through Jesus who prays with us and for us as we pray together Our Father….