Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, January 2, 2022.
Our worship theme for this month is “The Way of Interdependence.” And it’s true—we are connected to one another, and affected by one another—this way of interdependence is a fact of life these days—whether we like it or not.
And the other day, I wasn’t very happy to realize I’d be preaching on this particular theme. And I was one of the people who chose it! But these days I’m struggling with the fact that our progress out of this pandemic is being held back by people who refuse to listen to science and get vaccinated, who put their personal beliefs and biases above the common good.
But here we are, in this together. When we made the decision to stop gathering in person and move our worship to Zoom for a while, Tori reminded me that this is one way we are honoring our interdependence: in trying to keep one another safe, we’re also showing care for overworked and stressed healthcare workers and hospitals, and for the more vulnerable folks in our midst. We’re trying to do what we can to build the common good.
I’m not proud to admit it, but the last few years have made me less hopeful about the future of the human project. We’re living in some trying times, and it seems like people are showing more bad behavior than they used to. That more people are ok with being mean or obnoxious or selfish. What happened to a sense of community? What happened to a sense of caring and responsibility for others?
I read an essay the other day by a doctor named Daniela Lamas; she’s a pulmonary and critical-care physician at Brigham and Women’s, which is a tough job, especially these days. She writes,
“We are not where we thought we might be a year ago, but there is reason for hope. We have the tools and the knowledge that should allow us to stay safe and to protect others despite the ongoing presence of this virus. The greater challenge might be in maintaining our collective humanity during what could become yet another surge of illness among the unvaccinated.” (here’s the link to the entire essay)
This is where the rubber meets the road, isn’t it? And this is the call I need to hear: maintaining our collective humanity. Particularly in hard and trying times.
In these days when it’s easy to be frustrated and angry with those whose actions we don’t agree with or understand, the challenge is to remember that these people, they are our fellow human companions, traveling with us on this blue/green planet. That, for better and for worse, we are in this together. Traveling this way of interdependence, we should be careful not to judge too quickly.
I haven’t lost my faith in the days since Christmas Eve, when I preached about the gift that we each have within us, the gift that is our own—the holy with us and in us. Each of us a home for the holy. On that night, I quoted Garry Wills, who takes an unsentimental view of the nativity story. He says too often people pretty up the story, and turn it into a Disneyland scene, but that the gospels paint a more realistic picture: “of a young couple driven out in hiding, of a king plotting murder.”
“Becoming human is itself a kind of high wire balancing act.” Garry Wills writes, “Becoming better human beings always involves suffering. Those are the truths of Christmas, yet they are just the ones some defenders of Christmas would have us avoid.”
This seems to me a challenge and an invitation of these days: becoming better humans. Working through the struggle and the suffering, practicing being the kinds of people our world needs right now, the kinds of people we are meant to be. Make no mistake, I already think you are pretty great humans! Maybe I’m the only one who needs to hear this sermon!
But isn’t this a good project for these trying times? To take our interdependence seriously, and work on expanding our circle of care to include even those we dislike and disagree with? For those of us who have the time and space to consider these things, who have the awareness to work on our spiritual lives, who are fortunate enough to be cared for, and to care for others in community, isn’t this a righteous calling for these days: to work on loving our enemies?
This is what Jesus offered up 2000 years ago, in his sermon on the mount, which includes a few jaw-dropping, impractical admonitions like “turn the other cheek,” but the prize has to be the one I chose for our reading this morning: “love your enemies.”
Has anyone among us accomplished that yet? It’s hard, it may seem impossible even. But it’s worth a try, isn’t it? And certainly a way to become a better human.
Listen again to this outrageous preacher named Jesus:
“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the supple moves of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves.”
Let your enemies bring out the best in you, not the worst. How would our world be different if more of us would work on that? What if you learned to smile and wave at those who cut you off in traffic, and say a prayer for those who criticize you? Can you imagine expanding your heart to rise above the need to get back at someone who’s wronged you, or to let go of the desire to prove that you are right?
Our world lost a great soul last Sunday, when Archbishop Desmond Tutu died. This beautiful man was a witness to so much evil and suffering in his lifetime, but he was never poisoned by it. In his 90 years, he never hardened his heart; he continued to assert his hopeful view of our human nature: “We are made for goodness,” he’d say. “We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness.”
Years ago my mom sent me a recording of a sermon she heard Archbishop Tutu preach at a conference in North Carolina. He said we each are invited go through life seeing ourselves as here to share the holy with others, to imagine ourselves as blessing the people we encounter in our daily lives. I can still hear his voice from that cassette tape, saying that we are here to be blessing those we meet: “blessing them, blessing them,” Archbishop Tutu said.
And this is what Jesus is saying in our reading today. That when you are able to change your heart, and start trying to love your enemies; when you start praying for them, wishing good things for them, blessing them, then you are changed too. You become the kind of person who really is helping to heal and bless and transform our world. And in the process, you are yourself made more whole, more happy, more alive. Like the way Desmond Tutu was so alive.
This way of interdependence is not an easy path to travel. You probably won’t like all of your companions on the way. But can you still try to love them?
This way of interdependence, it is a transformative, life-changing journey that is good for us, and necessary for the future of our world. It’s central to what we are trying to do here, in this faith community: being changed for the better, so we help to heal and bless and transform our world. And you know we’re not alone in this—there are so many good-hearted souls out there: they are with us here in the communities around us and they are all around the world; people who are dreaming of and working toward the same thing: becoming better humans, and building a better world.
There’s a hymn that lifts up this vision, using the image of the garden of Eden, but imagining it through a feminist lens, which is certainly needed as an antidote to all the toxic masculinity in our world. Do you ever wonder, what would it have been like, what would our world be like, if thousands of years ago people had imagined God not as an angry and judging man, but as female: as mother, as healer, as giver of life, as all that the divine feminine evokes?
It’s not too late. Not too late for us to imagine new ways of being, and new images for the holy. It’s not too late for our world to embrace a more life-giving order. Like these lines we are about to sing—may they be our prayer:
Bless the earth and all your children, one creation: make us whole,
interwoven, all connected, planet wide and inmost soul.
Holy mother, life bestowing, bid our waste and warfare cease.
Fill us all with grace o’erflowing. Teach us how to live in peace.
Let us do our part, my friends, to bless this earth and all its’ creatures. Let go about our days blessing them, blessing them, while we are here.
Amen.