Searching for Community, and God, Through Humility
I’ll confess- these readings today seem… intense. David is established as King. He establishes a city of his name. In the Psalm– “in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God; God has established her for ever.” Second reading- “on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth.” And in the Gospel– “He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”
A common theme did not immediately come to mind- but I have had this phrase in my head for a few weeks now…. “Be impeccable with your word”. It’s actually not, as far as I know, from the Bible but rather from a book called The Four Agreements. I had to read it for my yoga teacher training classes. And if I were to distill down our readings further, along with that phrase, the common theme I hear is humility.
Preaching in a pulpit feels different than any other speaking that I’ve done but maybe it shouldn’t be? I can’t help but wonder as we head into our election season- how different would our world be if we all behaved as if we were speaking with humility?
Growing up I often heard people say “I’m just preparing “ whoever “for the real world” as an excuse or reason for being harsh or even cruel. But what if we behaved otherwise?
What I hear from these readings is that God is our refuge- God is where strength lies and even then we should not boast of it. I can’t help but think of people who speak with such conviction of what God is saying and I just have to say- how? How can you know? How can any of us know?
There’s a theologian, and I’m not 100% sure if she would call herself one but I am- and her name is Heather Thompson Day. I first ran across her because of a viral story she shared about a professor who would not round up her grades. And how now she’s a professor and she gets to practice radical empathy. She gets to be the person who grants mercy. Now yes, there are times when the most valuable lesson is allowing someone – maybe not just a student- but someone to fail. I often learn more from failure than I do success. But I also learn from those who practice radical empathy and love towards me.
Heather has a book she wrote with her husband, Seth, who is a pastor. And I won’t lie- I looked a little sideways at it at first when I noticed the woman had written the forward. If you don’t know who Beth Moore is look her up- she is someone who was once of the Southern Baptist Church and now is Anglican. I haven’t always agreed with Ms. Moore, I’ll be frank. But I dug into this book and flew through it in a day.
Heather and Seth talk about all the times we have written people off. The times when we abandon them. And the times when people come back to us. If you’ve ever experienced the painful, unexplained loss of a friendship then you might know what this feels like. The title of the book is “I’ll See You Tomorrow- Building Relational Resilience When You Want to Quit”. Now, it could be that I relate so much to this book because Heather, or rather even Dr. Day- because she does have her PhD, is a Communications scholar- as am I. She uses theory in the book in non academic ways that make me smile.
Seth also writes in a way that resonates with me- he is the product of a single mother household. He says of his mother “[s]he showed me that God can make beauty from ashes and mountains from dust. Faith for me wasn’t a man in a pulpit; it was a woman getting three kids dressed and using her last five dollars for gas…. People argue over a woman’s place in church, which I think is odd considering how many women have single handedly brought entire families to heaven…. My Mom was my first pastor and God ordained her.”
This book goes on to to talk more and more about relationships- not just the romantic kind but the ones we have with each other. Ordinarily, small moments of grace. I could have easily missed out on this if I didn’t look past the person who wrote the opening, and my initial thoughts of her based on a few news articles. If I hadn’t had the humility to realize, God wants us to love everyone- even the ones that are hard for us to initially love.
And this brings me back to my initial thoughts. Of where we are as a country. I don’t know many people who don’t think we’re heading towards some kind of catastrophic end. For me, I specifically worry about the rights of others. The people I love who’s marriages might be declared to be an enemy of the state- to be illegal to simply love who they love. I’m sure there are others who worry about their finances- I worry about that as well. It’s so easy to make those who think differently from us the enemy, especially when our ways of life are threatened.
Going back to God- to these passages- what does seem clear is that God is establishing their word as authority. Not mine, not yours, not whomever down the street. Not even our politicians. Possibly especially not them. But what if we truly treated each other with love. With radical empathy.
I realized some of this as I was around a group of people recently who think very differently from me- and I didn’t realize it until after I had (gasp!) already grown to like them.
We have forgotten how to be in community with one another- which is something else I got from Heather’s book, and Father Ben’s sermons, and Bishop Wright’s podcast, and talking to Sally and so many others. It’s a continuous theme that comes up around me. There was a headline yesterday about how a group of middle schoolers pranked their teachers by creating fake social media accounts about them but making these wildly inappropriate allegations. One of the teens said in response “it’s just a joke”. Now, I’m not one to espouse the evils of social media but if there is one thing that is evil it is this: it is too easy to isolate ourselves from others, to allow ourselves to sit in our own comfortable echo chambers and not have our views challenges by others or to be made to feel uncomfortable. I have to wonder has this teenager been around anyone who would challenge his or her beliefs? Growth comes in the challenge. In the discomfort. Much like how we now say in the Prayers of the People “disturb us oh lord”- there is growth in what makes us uncomfortable. It makes us respect the shared human dignity granted to all of us by our Creator.
Speaking with vulnerability and the responsibility of being humble seems to hit me more here in the pulpit- but perhaps it shouldn’t. At least, not just here. Perhaps if we all spoke with this humility, with this weight, even in our everyday lives. I can’t help but to wonder how different, how better, things would be. How many people and relationships would not be left behind, and how much better our world would be. I had a conversation with Heather over Instagram and she said something interesting to me- that we must stay in relationship with each other.
We have to stay in relationship with each other to challenge one another’s beliefs- to show each other that people who we might stay away from- or even the ones we fear- from might actually be the ones to love us the most.
