"I Am"

Exodus 2:23-25; 3:1-15; 4:10-17

John 8:58

Psalm 46

World Communion Sunday

 

What are some of the ways that you come to know God?  Scripture, nature, worship, prayer, meditation, fasting, spiritual disciplines such as lectio divina and clearness committee and ....  Do you have one or two ways that speak to you more than others?  That you tend to gravitate towards?  Are there other ways of knowing God that are less comfortable for you?  Or ways that you avoid?

               You know the familiar story about the blind men and the elephant.  I read it to you in January.  But I think it’s a story we should all be remembering on a regular basis, especially as we seek to cross our differences, to be in relationship despite our disagreements, to work to love those who don’t see things the same ways that we do.  So here it is again:

It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined,

Who went to see the elephant (though all of them were blind),

That each by observation might satisfy his mind.

The first approached the elephant, and, happening to fall

Against his broad and burly side, at once began to call:

"I see," said he, "the elephant is very like a wall!"

The second, feeling of the tusk, cried, "Ho! What have we here?

So very round and smooth and sharp? To me 'tis mighty clear

This wonder of an elephant is very like a spear!"

The third approached the animal, and, happening to take

The squirming trunk within his hands, thus boldly up and spake,

"I see," said he, "the elephant is very like a snake!"

The fourth reached out his eager hand and felt about the knee:

"What most this wondrous beast is like is mighty plain," said he,

"'Tis clear enough the elephant is very like a tree!"

The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, said, "E'en the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most. Deny the fact who can,

This marvel of an elephant is very like a fan!"

The sixth no sooner had begun about the beast to grope,

Than, seizing on the swinging tail that fell within his scope,

"I see," said he, "the elephant is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong,

though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!

So oft in group endeavors, the members of the team

Rail on in utter ignorance of what each other mean,

As if it were an elephant not one of them has seen.

               So, too, I think we are all limited in our knowledge of God by many things.  For example, our circumstances in life limit what we see of God.  The limits of our experiences, the limits of the time that we can give over to our spiritual lives, these limit our understanding of God.  We are limited by our beliefs in seeing the whole picture of God.  The really wise person is the one who recognizes they lack knowledge because that is the person who is open to learning and experiencing more.  Our "knowledge" of God can often limit what we see of God, what we hear of God.  Let me give you a specific example - those who "know" that God is only male miss seeing the feminine or even binary or fluid aspects of God.  Those who "know" that people are made in the image of God may miss seeing aspects of God reflected and alive in nature or in other ways that are beyond human. 

               We see this with scripture too: if we only take scripture as literal and historic, we frankly miss the deeper messages within it.  When we miss those layers and layers of wisdom and meaning, we also miss out on deeper and different ways to see and understand God. 

               We also limit God by what we leave God out of in our lives, or what parts of our lives we keep separate from our faith.  Can you think of areas people hide away from God?  Can you think of areas that YOU keep separate from God?  Or areas of our lives in which it might be a challenge to include God in?   

               Besides all of these things that limit our relationships with God, I would also say that spending time with God only in the ways that are familiar and make us comfortable also limits our understanding of God.  We only see the part of God that we are touching, that we are exploring in those moments.  For example, when we only know God through prayer, we may come to see a God who listens, a God who loves, but we may miss that God also instructs, also guides, also has words to speak to us.  We have heard some people say they don't come to church because they find God better on their own.  Well, I suggest that only finding God in church, and conversely, only finding God outside of church - both of these limit our vision and understanding of God.

               The scriptures we heard today present two ways that people might meet God.  Moses met God in a burning bush.  The Psalmist tells us to meet God in silence.  Both are important.  Both give us information about God.  God appearing in the burning bush tells us that God is amazing, can do anything, can appear in any form, and that God does speak to us, does come to us, does have instruction for us.  It shows us the drama and wonder of God, the ways in which God can be so obvious, so hard to ignore, so beyond our expectations.  God telling us to be still to know God tells us that God is also gentle, and at times is not dramatic, but calls us into a stillness and into a place of listening and being present in the quiet and stillness.  That God is as close to us as our own breathing and heartbeats, if we but quiet down for a moment to experience God.

               In the book Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert takes a year "sabbatical" or pilgrimage to explore her spirituality.  This was not always a comfortable experience for her.  She found herself confronting difficult parts of herself within her spiritual journey.  And some of the things she tried - extended periods of meditation for example, were downright frustrating and uncomfortable at first.  But she continued to try them, to work with them, to give them a chance.  It took time, it took commitment, it took a real desire to see God, to know God in a different way, in a fuller way, in a more complete way.  When we strive to know God in a different way, she discovered, we cannot just try something new for a minute or an hour, a day, or even a week.  It took months, but she was blessed with a deeper, broader, new look at God.  And she found that not only did she encounter God in new ways, but through her encounter with the Divine, she came to understand herself better, to heal some deep brokenness within and to find the courage to heal some brokenness outside of herself, in relationships, as well. 

               This is not surprising.  When we come to know God in a new way, we also come to understand ourselves more deeply, because we are made in God's image.  Similarly, we can come to understand those around us more deeply as well.  We can grow in our capacity to love and to care as we encounter Love itself, as we strive to know God better and in different ways.

               On this, World Communion Sunday, we remember that other Christians around the world, Christians who experience and celebrate God in different ways than we do, are also part of our faith family, part of the family of God.  In their different ways of worshiping and celebrating their faith, they have things to teach us about who God is and where God can be found.  In hearing and learning and experiencing the ways others do worship differently, and understand God differently, we come to see more aspects of God, more nuances to the face of God, more parts of who God is.  I would say this also expands beyond Christianity.  When we encounter and talk and interact with people from different faith traditions, even atheism and agnosticism, we can also learn from them.  Even those who say there is no God or that they don’t know if there is or they don’t care if there is, there are still things we can learn about God even from them!  As I worked on my doctoral dissertation, I interviewed a number of atheists and learned that those I interviewed had a very specific vision of God as a white bearded man sitting in the clouds, literally making the world in 7 of our human days, that they couldn’t accept.  Well, I can understand that.   I tend to agree with them on that.   

These beautiful passages in which God says God’s name is “I am” or “I will be who I will be” or “I am becoming who I am becoming” tell us that God is so very much bigger than we can imagine.  God IS, and in that BEING we find God.  It is not just God’s name.  It is who and what God is.  God IS being.  God IS.  We find that God in the burning bush and in the stillness and in so many ways.  Jesus, too identifies as “I am” repeatedly, “I AM the bread of life,” “I AM the way, the truth and the life,” etc.  Jesus also says this BEING existed from the beginning.  But we humans, we have a hard time with just “being”.  We want to define things more tightly.  We want to assign qualities and attributes.  And those qualities and attributes limit who God really is for us.  If you are happy, you are not sad.  If you are a democrat, you are not a republican.  If you are an athlete, you are not a coach potato.  Whatever it is: our attributes, even of God, limit in our minds not just who we are, and who other people are, but who God really is.  But God IS.  God IS.  And so, we expand our understanding by taking the time to intentionally see other sides of God that may not be as comfortable or easy. We expand beyond the boxes and the attributes and into the BEING of God.

               And so, my challenge for all of us is that we take the risk, and take the time, to try to know God in a way we haven't encountered God before.  I encourage us to try something that we may not have tried before.  We can try a classic spiritual discipline such as daily meditation for a month, or we can try a 24 hour fast.  You can invite someone to be your prayer partner, especially someone you don’t know very well, or someone you’ve had issues with.  This doesn’t necessarily have to be someone you pray with, but someone you can check in with about your prayer life and that can help hold you accountable to daily personal prayer.  You might try a Taize service, or attending one Sunday a service that is completely different.  You could help serve a meal with Winter Nights, or volunteer to help with our laundry program.  You can commit to reading a part of the Bible with which you are unfamiliar, to study it, to discuss it with a small group.  I would be happy to help you form that group.  You might take a journey or pilgrimage to Israel/Palestine.  You might talk to someone that you don't think you like.  Or simply make a commitment to take the time to be still, even amidst the crazy business of our lives.  But the challenge is not to just try this new thing one time, but to really give time to whatever you are trying that is new.  Give it time, give it space, give God time to talk to you through your new experience and to reveal God-self to you in a new way.  Whatever it is, I invite you to seek to feel more of the elephant...or rather, to seek to see more of God and who God is in your life, and in the world.   God is waiting to be known more fully by you, and God promises that in return you will know more of yourself as well.  Amen. 

Making One Out of Two

 Mark 6:30-44, Ephesians 2:11-22 

            Today we continue with our second week study of the book of Ephesians.  And while we didn’t focus very much on Ephesians last week, today we will spend a little more time with it.  Today we hear these words of unity, of reconciliation, “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,… His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.  He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.”

            What is interesting is that, biblically speaking, we usually talk about God’s “peace” as something God creates between us and God, or something that we find within ourselves.  But the promise here in Ephesians is extraordinary.  The promise is that peace will be created between divergent and even fighting peoples, as it was between the Christian Jews and Gentiles of that time.  When I think about the many generations of racial strife and fighting in our country, when I think about the Israelis and Palestinians currently, when I think about the divisions along political lines in our own country, the words of not only disagreement, but frankly hatred that I have heard people speak for those who disagree… when I think of ALL of this, to hear these words from Ephesians which speak of Christ’s sacrifice, his death, as a bridge that will create PEACE and reconciliation between these different groups, it is truly almost beyond hope.  How big and different from what we know will God’s realm, God’s reign have to be for us all to be in it together in peace, for us to come together as diverse people to love and care and connect to one another, to be “one”?

            But this passage from Ephesians promises this.  It says that Christ’s cross has destroyed and will destroy three things: a barrier or wall, the law of commandments and decrees, and most importantly enmity.  According to Ephesians, by dying on the cross, God breaks down a wall that separated humanity from God.  This is not about atonement, according to the author of Ephesians.  This is about experiencing and living fully our humanity.  As the NIV commentator said it, “Humans are too trapped in the deadly effects of sin to return to God on their own – or even to notice the wall that is keeping God out?  People still need to be convinced of God’s unconditional love for them….  People have to be loved into forgiveness.”  And it is from that place of being convinced of God’s unconditional love, of God’s unimaginable forgiveness, that breaking down of the barrier between us and God that all barriers between humans, between dividing forces are also being broken down.

            So how is this possible?  And since the cross has already happened, if the cross unites us, why are we not united?  Why are we still so very divided, still separating ourselves into “us” and “them”, still estranging ourselves from people who think differently, rather than being one, being reconciled, working towards healing, wholeness and the living into the new and full humanity that the cross has created for us?

            The thing is, as I have said so many times before, what we do for ourselves affects greatly what we do for others.  If we cannot accept God’s unconditional love for us, if we cannot accept in forgiveness, or grace, how can we extend that to others?  We can’t.  Period.  We can’t. 

            But I want to say again, that I think culturally the cards are stacked against us stepping into that.  Which is why faith is countercultural.  Faith calls us into a very different way of being than we see modeled and even idolized in our culture.  Faith calls us into a different set of values than what we have presented in our culture.  The cross, and the reconciliation it offers calls us to be very, very different in this world than what we are told is the best and right way to be.

            One of my lectionary friends told us this story this week:  there was a congregation down the road from her own congregation: a predominantly African American congregation and they ran a food pantry for many years.  But there came a point at which they needed help.  So they called on my friends’ congregation and asked if they could partner together to keep the food pantry alive.  After one week of working together, my friend asked the folk in the originating congregation how the food pantry work was going.

            “Terrible!”  one woman said, while all the others nodded in agreement. 

            “Terrible?  Why?” my friend asked.

            “Well, the folk from your church show up, they quickly load up the bags, they put them into the cars of the guests who are coming, they clean up everything perfectly and then they leave.  The whole thing lasted from 8am-10am and then it was over.”

            My friend was stunned.  This sounded wonderful.    But she had enough wisdom to ask, “What did it look like before, when it was not terrible?”

            “Oh!” the woman said with joy as she remembered how the food pantry used to be run.  And then the whole group of them began to quickly talk over each other sharing their past experiences.  “We would gather between 7 and 8, we’d talk, we’d check in with one another, we would laugh and play around as we gathered together the things to put in each bag.  Sometimes we’d stop, pause, sit down and have a drink to talk together and cool down.  Then when people came to get their food, we would talk to them, sit with them, ask them how they were doing, laugh more, talk more, sit again and share a coke for a bit.  We’d spend the whole day at the food pantry, just being together.”

            Different values, yes.  But I think we miss something with our emphasis on efficiency.  I speak to myself here.  I am the queen of efficiency.  I was thinking about this this last week when I went to pick up a book from a parishioner.  When I stopped at her house, she invited me in to sit and talk for a while. After we had talked for some time, she said to me as I was getting up to go, “I needed to grab you while you were here picking up the book because I know you are just so very busy.”  And it hit me differently.  I hear all of you say this, often, to me.  “Oh, I know you are so busy!”  and at some level, I think, I’ve always heard that as a positive: you all know how much I work, how hard I work, and that answers my value of needing to work hard, do well, work harder, do better.  But is that really a godly value?  As I heard one of you speak to me this last week, I realized that it would be more valuable to slow down, to be with people for more time, to dig in more deeply with people.  For the first time I heard “you are so busy” as a critique – not because it was meant to be, not because it was spoken as such, but because I heard it with different ears this time.  I could hear God whispering to me through this parishioner that I had gotten lost, distracted about what really matters, and had forgotten about what I am really here to do.  My job as a child of God, as a follower of Christ, as a person on the way, is not to be rushing around “accomplishing things” or “getting things done.”  My job, as a disciple of Christ, as a person striving to be closer to God is to take the time to be with each person who is in front of me in any one moment.  I think about the comment, “If you’ve ever seen a chicken running around after its head has been cut off, you know that running around is NOT a sign of life.”  We are called to live fully.  But what we are doing by being so busy is not fully living and is certainly not fully living into our calling as children of God.

            I think about Tolstoy’s three questions:  “Who is most important?  What is most important?  When is the most important time?”  He answers it this way, “The one you are with at any moment is the most important one.  The most important thing to do is what is right in front of you that needs to be done.  And the most important time is this moment that you have now, for there is no other.”

            I am not alone in these struggles.  As I was telling my lectionary group, a group of pastors who have committed to meeting every single week for two hours and sometimes more to pray together, study scripture together, check in and support one another: I could not get such a group going here in the Bay Area.  All the pastors here who I know are “too busy”.  Again, we feel our “importance” by filling our time with programs and activities and work.  But that is not what God is calling us to do.

            What does all of this have to do with the Ephesians passage?  Crossing those bridges, building those relationships, reconciliation, the peace with our neighbors – the one that is offered through Christ: these things take time, take commitment, and take intentionality.  If we are too busy “doing” things to sit with people who disagree with us, to talk together, to be in relationship with one another, to do the work of reconciliation, then that peace of Christ, which is what is being offered through these relationships and through our faith – it will never be ours.  

            Our churches are failing in this, maybe even more so than in the bigger community.  Did you know that the most segregated hour of the week is 10am Sunday morning?  Our churches are the last bastion of segregation.  And that is not what God wants from us nor for us. 

            The cross is there, reminding us that God knows all of what we live, all of what we suffer, all of what we struggle against; and it is offering us reconciliation, not only with God, but with one another.  It is a profound promise.  A very deep and full promise.  But we have to step into that.  If we truly want reconciliation, we have to act like we believe the promise that it is available for us.  If we truly want unity and wholeness, we have to step forward in the faith that it is a gift offered to us that we have only to claim.  If we want the peace of Christ in our lives, we have to start by working to trust God’s unconditional and overwhelming love, and more, to trust that through God’s grace it is offered to each one of us.  It’s all that easy, and all that hard.  Amen.

Lord Have Mercy

 Luke 16:19-31, Psalm 41:1-3

               Starting in chapter 15 of the gospel of Luke, all of Jesus parables are about wealth.  Commentators I read said that Jesus spoke more about money and possessions than about anything else in his parables.  And unfortunately for us, his words on money and possessions are condemning of all of us who are comfortable, all of us who have so much more than enough.  And bottom line of his condemnation is this: we have failed to remember that we belong to God and to one another.

               In this story we see the rich man hiding behind his gated estate, his gated community, behind his walls from anything outside that would be displeasing to him.  He, as most people at that time, and indeed as most people in our time, mistakenly assumes that his wealth is due to his own actions and/or to God’s blessing him because he DESERVED it.  As a result, he doesn’t see any need to give a second thought to this poor man outside his gates.  He doesn’t see him, doesn’t think to give him even his left-overs, or anything from his own table.  Just as he assumes his own wealth is because he deserves it, he assumes that Lazarus is poor because that’s what he deserved.  Perhaps he saw him as lazy, perhaps he saw him as just “less than”.  Whatever it was, he gave him no thought at all.  He never saw it as his job to care for this brother of his, he probably never even considered helping him.  We are told that when Lazarus the beggar died, the angels carried him to Abraham’s side.  He was a beggar in life, someone many of us, too, might see as “lazy” or “unworthy”.  But this does not change the fact that he is a valued child of God, and so, in place of a decent burial, he is instead carried away by the angels.  In contrast, the rich man who died was given a proper burial, and then he found himself in Hades in torment.  But even from this place, from THIS place, he still cannot see.  He begs Abraham to have Lazarus, whom he is still seeing as his inferior, come to cool him down.  And when the answer is “no”, he begs to have Lazarus go to his family to warn them.  He still sees Lazarus in the servant role, still sees him as the inferior who should do this for him.  This is especially emphasized by the fact that he never talks directly to Lazarus, but only to Abraham, someone he sees as “on par” with him in terms of level.  The rich man sees himself as one of the elite, able to talk to those who are the fathers and founders of the faith.  The rich man also wants help for his family.  The rich man never asks for forgiveness for his actions, he is still not thinking of the poor people whom he shunned or whom his family still shuns.  He considers that maybe they should change their behavior, but it is still for their own personal gain.  “Send Lazarus to my family so that they will not also come to this place of torment,” he says.  After everything that he has lived through, and everything he now suffers, he remains unable to see beyond himself, beyond his family, beyond his own personal cares.  He has failed to remember that we belong to God and to one another.

               In what ways is this familiar to us? Materialism makes people very selfish.  We become owned by our stuff, and it causes us to be more and more self-focused, and focused on only gaining for self.   A friend posted this on Facebook:

            John Bogle, the Vanguard founder who passed away in 2019 told a story: “at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informed his pal, Joseph Heller that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day that Heller had earned from this wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history.  Heller responded, “Yes, but I have something he will never have… enough.” 

         Those who are just accumulating more and more for themselves never feel they have enough.  They are always focused on gaining more for themselves and their close family.  They fail to remember that we belong to God and to one another.

      When we think about the growing discrepancy between the rich and poor in this country, we see the reality of this story.  Did you know that during this COVID pandemic, while people are losing their jobs, losing their livelihoods, losing everything, that the wealth of the billionaires in this country alone increased just during the pandemic by $1.9 trillion!!  And yet, many of these are the same people who declare that we should not have a minimum wage of $15/hour, which, by the way, is nowhere near a living wage in the Bay Area.  The rich have so much more than they can ever, ever use.  The poor don’t have enough to feed their families, but the rich still cling to the idea that they somehow deserve it, somehow need to cling to it for themselves, while the poor do not deserve to eat, and should be okay with the “dogs licking their sores,” as we are told that Lazarus experienced.  We think that God blesses us so that we might have wealth.  But the truth is that God blesses us so that we might bless others.  And we forget this.  God doesn’t bless us to hoard our wealth.  What we have is not ours, it is lent to us to use for the good of all by the God who loves all of God’s children.  But we have forgotten that we belong to God and to one another. 

               The rich man did not see Lazarus as part of his family.  But we are called to “Love our neighbors as ourselves”.  I want to point out that this is not “we should love those people that we like”.  And it is also not “we should give a little of what we have to those other people.”  What does it truly mean to love our neighbors as ourselves?  How would you treat yourselves?  We know how we would treat ourselves.  We pay for our houses, we buy nice things for our children.  We pay for our cars.  Do we treat our neighbors this way?   No, we throw a ten at a homeless person, but loving them as ourselves would mean inviting them in, sharing our home with them, including them in the same abundance that we have.  Is this hard?  For all of us.  For ALL of us it is hard.  I had a conversation with someone this week who said that she invited a good friend who had lost a job to live with her.  It was hard for her to even invite this very good friend into her home, but she did.  And it didn’t end well, for any of them.  It ended with the friend stomping out of the house in a rage, the friendship broken.  She said, “well, so what are we supposed to do?  Just keep taking those risks?  When do we get rewarded for caring for those who don’t even appreciate it?”   The answer is that we don’t.  Not in this lifetime, or at least not in the way that we expect.  We probably won’t be paid back in terms of money.  We might lose friendships, we might lose sleep.  But we are not in charge of “what happens out there”.  All that we are in charge of is what we will do with the time that is given to us.  All we are called to do is to remember that we belong to God and to one another.  The reward for that?  Again, it won’t come in the way we think of rewards.

               The reward for doing what God expects of us is wholeness.  It is not material gain.  It is not comfort.  But it is a memory that we belong to God and to one another.  It is the reminder that we are all God’s children, all family to one another, all deeply loved beyond our imaginings.  It is the vision of what it truly means to love our neighbors AS OURSELVES and to live into that. 

               Admittedly, it is the rare saint who can do that.  But that is what we are called to try to do.  There is a wonderful phrase, “If you’ve come to ‘help’ me you are wasting my time.  If you’ve come because your freedom is bound up in mine, let us work together.”  This is not top-down.  This is not parochial.  This is not “charity” in the common sense of the word.  This is about serving one another because we remember that we need one another, that our wholeness is bound together.

               The rich man in this parable got it wrong in so many ways.  He got it wrong because he never helped Lazarus.  He got it wrong because he thought Lazarus was beneath him.  He got it wrong because he assumed that people have what they have because they’ve earned it and God has blessed them to use it for their own good.  He got it wrong because his attitude about it never changed from one of superior hoarding, to one of repentant giving.  He got it wrong because instead of living a life of gratitude, he lived a life of greedy accumulation.

               As you know a group of us continue to study racism in the United States.  We are looking at history in new ways, searching for deeper truths about how we came to be as we are, and what needs to change.  This last week I listened to a podcast about Affirmative Action.  It started by asking when Affirmative action began in this country.  Most people said sometime in the 70s.  And then we started looking at the facts.  Back in 1618 the Headright system gave 50 acres of land, or to some 100 acres of land, only to white people, to anyone willing to migrate here.  In 1705, statute in Virigina required masters to give WHITE indentured servants 50 acres of land, 30 shillings, 10 bushels of corn and a musket.  160 years later there was a ruling to give freed slaves 40 acres and a mule.  But that ruling was then overturned, unlike the ones for white folk.  1785, for every 36 square acre units, one was set aside for the education of white children.  But not African Americans or Native Americans.  And it went on and on.  We have a history of taking for “our own” whatever that means, of not allowing others the same opportunities, and then blaming THEM for not having as much as we do.  We have failed to remember  that we belong to God and to one another.

               In the parable for today, Abraham talks about the growing chasm between heaven and hell which prevents any kind of interaction across the divide.  We are creating that here, and a lot of how we do that is our failure to remember that we belong to God and to each other.  Crossing divides is not easy, but I believe that Lazarus will not be whole without the rich man, just as the rich man will not be whole without Lazarus.  Just as Lazarus needed saving from his extreme poverty, the rich man needed liberation from his wealth, his greed, his tunnel vision of only caring for his own needs.  We need God, and we need one another and that means working hard to cross those divides.

               So my question for all of us is who is just beyond our gates that we fail to notice?  Who are we failing to treat as we treat ourselves?  Who is it that we divide ourselves from, and how can we start to remember that we belong to them, too.  And then, what do we do with what we have?  Do we give thanks?  Do we use it to care for others? 

          We don’t know what is the greater problem in this parable: the rich man’s wealth or his attitude.  But both call us to look in a different way at what we have and our attitude as well. 

       Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, said in his speech on how to change the world that the first thing we need to do to change the world is to get closer to those we would serve.  To spend time with the poor, the hungry, the homeless.  There is power in proximity and the solutions will come in that dynamic of closeness.  He tells the story of his grandmother who would hug him so hard and then ask, “Do you still feel me hugging you?” Amd of he said “no” she would hug her again.  But as she died, she said to him, “Bryan, I will always be hugging you.”  And he realized we can all hug someone, embrace and hug the people you are called to serve.  He got close to prisoners and in doing that found his own power to change the world through his actions, his writings, his speaking, his remembering that we belong to God and to one another.. 

         As always, we come here to hear the good news.  And the Good News is this: we will keep being given those opportunities for wholeness, those chances to serve and love one another as the brothers and sisters that we really are.  We will continue to find those chances to remember that we belong to one another.  And when we finally learn that we belong to God, and to one another, we will also, in fullness, remember what it is to be children of God, loved into being, loved into “enough”, loved beyond measure.  Amen.

Disagreements and Conflicts

5/10/20

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Mark 12:1-17

It is not easy being a person of faith in this time.  I would say this is the case in many different ways.  We hear about Christians being judgmental, we hear about Christians being really stupid.  We hear about Christians doing really dumb things, and personally, I find myself embarrassed by many of the other people of faith who call themselves Christians.  For example, you’ve probably all heard about the pastors in California who sued the governor for his “shelter in place” ruling because they feel this restricts their ability to worship together.  This kind of non-feeling, refusal to care for the people in their communities and the people around the world embarrasses me and makes me afraid to call myself a Christian in some places.  And this behavior is frankly just the least of the embarrassing things that people of faith have said, done, or proclaim in the name of a loving God that I find horrifying, unkind, and certainly unloving.

But the truth is that all of us, ALL of us who claim to follow Christ are in the process of becoming Christian.  What I mean is that none of us, not one, has perfectly learned yet to love God with all our hearts, soul and minds, let alone learned to love our neighbor as ourselves.  None of us has yet perfected healing one another with our listening, with our touch, with our love.  None of us remembers in every moment to thank God, and to be God’s completely faithful servant.  We are all learning to feed the hungry, love each other, see each other person as the brother or sister that they are, give beyond ourselves.  Becoming a Christian, having a relationship with God, going to church every week: no matter how far we are on our journey, none of these things makes us perfect - none of these things makes us as Christ-like as we strive to become, once and for all.  But they are all a start, a part of our journey as Christians.

We continue to strive and struggle to be loving, giving people.  As Jesus himself said, he did not come for those who are well, he came for those of us who are not yet there.  Church, faith, is not a haven for the righteous.  It is a place where people who know they are limited and that they have failings come together in mutual support, in love, in service to one another and to the greater community.  Throughout my life I have had many different people tell me that they don’t go to church because of the hypocrisy they find there.  When pushed on what that means, they tell me that the people they met in church were like everyone else.  They weren’t better than other people.  They made mistakes, did things wrong, did not always even see that they did things wrong.  Sometimes they were unkind, sometimes they were unloving.  As a result, people stopped attending church.  I have to admit, I find this responses very confusing.  Of course, we are not better than others, and you will find unkindness and lack of love everywhere.  We are here because we are on a journey, striving to love God and one another.  We will never reach that perfection, and, truthfully, neither will they.

This struggle to be whole, this struggle to be Christ-like, this struggle to love and be in relationship with one another is not anything new for Christians of any age.  The passage we read today from 1 Corinthians addresses that. While our struggle to become Christian takes many forms, in this passage Paul is talking about the challenges Christians had at the very beginning, and that we still have,  to be in loving relationships even within our Christian community.  We hear Paul admonishing a congregation for failing to get along with one another, for fighting with each other.  Paul’s solution is simply to tell them all to agree with one another. But we know that is not so easy. Even before Paul, we see in the gospel lessons for today people of faith who were struggling with Jesus.  And Jesus is telling us parables of conflict, of anger, among people who should have been loving to one another, should have seen their dependence and connection to one another, should have shared, and been kind and loving to those sent to collect for the master.  But they couldn’t.  They didn’t.  And the same remains true for us today.

I read an article this week by Karoline Lewis in which she wrote,

“We are no strangers to the kind of division in communities of which Paul speaks -- racial, denominational, and political. And our strategies for negotiating these divisions leave much to be desired. It often comes down to choosing sides, as if the spectrum between the two poles did not exist. It would be better if we only chose sides. Instead, we choose which side we are on and then, to make ourselves feel better or justified about our decision, we proceed to suspect, demonize, and tear down the other side. But as Elias Chacour (Father Chacour is the Archbishop Emeritus of the Melkite Catholic Church for Akko, Haifa, Nazareth, and all Galilee, an advocate for non-violence, working toward reconciliation between Arabs and Jews with whom our group had a chance to meet) says, “The one who is wrong is the one who says ‘I am right.’”

We are also no strangers to the kind of division that the gospel provokes. And sometimes we forget just how divisive the gospel can be. Choosing regard over rejection, respect over diminution, love over hate, peace over conflict is not as easy as we hope it could be, as we wish it would be. It seems like it should be easy -- and that’s the problem. Why is it that we find it so difficult to make what appears to be a rather obvious choice? A choice for love? What stands in our way? What is at stake for us that we are reluctant to admit or to say out loud?”

She went on to talk about a group that she is with of Palestinians and Israelis who’ve lost loved ones in the conflict and she said one of the fathers of those who had died said this: “No wall, not matter how high, can stop two kinds of people, one determined suicide bomber and the one determined peacemaker.”  http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4249

Paul and Jesus are both calling us to be the peacemakers who cannot be stopped.  But we know from personal experience that getting along with one another is hard.

Truthfully, even hearing one another accurately is not easy.  Most of you, no doubt are familiar with the childhood game, which we called “operator” when I was a kid.  A group sits in a circle and one person whispers a message to the person on their right.  That person then passes that message on to the person on his or her right.  The message passes all around the circle until the last person finally repeats the message out loud.  It has usually become something very different from what it was originally.  As this simple child-hood game shows us, even hearing clearly the words of one another can be challenging. 

               Hearing the message within our words is even harder.  I have found myself reflecting during this time when there is more quiet for reflection, on a relationship I’ve had with someone I’ve known now for 30 years.  This is someone who simply never understands what I say to him.  I will think I am telling him the sky is beautiful and he will become offended thinking I am telling him that he is not beautiful.  I keep trying to have conversations with him, but he is always offended by what I say, and always insistent that I am being uncaring with my words.  I don’t know why my words affect him like this.  I will probably never know.  But I know that communication is just hard.  Today is mother’s day, and we know that even within our families, it can be so hard to hear and understand one another.  Communication is challenging.  We are all watching this service today because we believe in a marvelous, amazing, wonderful God who has called us to be here, whatever that looks like for you, to be on our spiritual journeys, to be in a state of prayer and praise together.  But that wonder, that gift, that awe does not mean that it suddenly becomes easy for us to really communicate, to understand one another, or to then choose to be in relationship with one another.  Our churches have struggled with understanding one another and with divisions between us from the beginning.  That continues as we move through time.

I’m also not convinced that all disagreements are bad things.  When we can be in the place of hearing the different opinions, hopes, dreams of one another, we can grow from the experience.  Without those challenges, growth is not as forthcoming.  Hearing only our own thoughts and feelings, we can fail to see the amazing places God would show us and move us.  But getting to that place where we can hear those differences and share them is not easy. 

I have to admit, even for pastors, though part of my job is to love the entire congregation and to be able to listen, hear, and support every person in a congregation who seeks that support, there have been times when this has not always been easy.  It has not always been easy for me to be in a community of very differently minded people.  And it can be especially hard when those differently minded people are very vocal about those opinions, and sometimes are unkind in the expression of those opinions, as some people in our churches tend to be.  For a year, many years ago, I served as an interim music minister in a congregation that was in a difficult place: many parishioners were elderly and dying, the congregation was very diverse in ways that brought both gifts and, in their case, much conflict into the fellowship, they were a redevelopment church that wasn’t quite ready to make the radical changes necessary to keep it alive, and they had gone through a series of challenging relationships with previous pastors and music directors.  Because of all they had been through, they did not trust others easily and were especially suspicious of people they didn’t know, especially if they had been hand-picked by outsiders to the congregation, and had been “assigned,” as I was, to serve in that particular church.  When I was hired on there was, predictably, a lot of hostility thrown my direction.  One example that might illustrate the point -  I came on board about a month and a half before Easter.  At our first choir rehearsal, I brought out Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus to see if it was an Easter possibility and to get a sense of the abilities of the choir.  We ran through the piece one time, after which I began to make suggestions, as choir directors are supposed to do, on ways we might improve our performance.  But just as I got the first sentence out of my mouth, one of the choir members demanded of me “How old are you?”  Stunned by the interruption, I answered that I was 30, which at the time, I was.  She responded, “Well we’ve been singing this longer than you’ve been alive so we don’t need you telling us how to do it!”  A fine start to our friendly Christian community relationship.  As I said there was a great deal of hostility and it came from several corners.  It was not long before I could identify my self-appointed “assistant choir directors” and could count on their “suggestions” and other comments as one might count on the structure of any organized group.  But I also began to try to befriend the especially hostile members of the choir.  And, also predictably, their hostility lessened in almost direct proportion to how much time I took to hear them, how accurately I listened, and how deeply they felt I understood.  Unfortunately, there remained a couple women that would not let me in.  In the end, their continued hostility probably formed part of my decision to leave at the end of that first year, though I was an interim music director and at the time I told myself I was leaving because the interim work was finished.   I look back on that experience with sadness.  It was hard to get close to these women.  It was hard to want to get close to them in light of their hostility.  But I wish I had tried a little harder.  As their personal stories were revealed to me by others in the church, I learned that they were in a lot of pain, pain it was not easy for anyone, within or without of the church, to break through.  But in that painful place, these parishioners needed others to hear them, they needed friendly caring faces to acknowledge them, they needed someone to say, “even when you hurt me, I still love you, accept you as my sister and will stand with you.”   Instead, I allowed their anger and hostility to drive me out, and in so doing, I added, I learned later, another layer to their feelings of abandonment and pain.

 Even in Christian community there will be times when we cannot work through differences and find we have to worship and love God in separate places.  But we are called to love and to work at wholeness in all our relationships, no matter how they end, with everything we have. Perhaps if I had worked harder, if we had worked harder, even with my leaving, there might have been healing that happened for myself, these women and the community.  Perhaps, had we worked harder, we might have seen God’s action in this situation, God’s movement in each other, God’s face in one another. 

I don’t think that we are required to always agree with one another.  Sometimes being in relationship with each other looks like agreeing to disagree after we have heard and loved one another.  Sometimes being in Christian fellowship will mean we have to work, searching even harder for solutions that are acceptable to everyone involved, despite our differences.  But God is in the challenging people of this world and in their work, as much as God might be present in our own work.  God loves those we do not understand as much as God loves us.  And God calls us to love and to be in community with all of our neighbors, even those who make us see red, those who hurt us, those whom we feel we cannot agree with. Maybe God presents God-self most firmly in people we struggle to hear and know.  For in that struggle we grow in our patience, we grow in our ability to see God as bigger than we knew God to be before, we grow in our ability to love and therefore we grow in our process of becoming Christian.  It is part of our Christian call to sit in those uncomfortable places with those people who anger us and look for where God’s face and God’s words are even in their words, even in their messages. 

Brian Peterson said, “True love is not measured by how good it makes us feel: it would be better to say that the measure of love is its capacity for tension and disagreement without division.”

Psalm 27 ends with the words, “‘Seek God’s face!’  Your face, O God, I will seek.”  In the end this is our call.  When we seek God’s face in each other, even in those we struggle to love and understand, our struggles with one another will be different.  For in listening to each other, we open the space for God’s words to come in, for God’s face to shine, for God’s help in our journey to become Christian.  Amen.

Being One

Acts 16:16-34

John 17:20-26

There once was a man who was stranded on a desert island for 14 years.  Finally, a boat came to the island and while he was really excited about being rescued and going home, he also wanted to show his rescuers around his island.  He showed them the little cabin he had built and the little store house where he’d put fruit and other food he’d collected.  He showed them the interesting inventions he had made and finally he brought them to a little building he had made that had a cross on it.  “And this,” he said proudly, “is my church where I come and worship God every week!” One of the rescuers said, “Wow.  That’s really great.  But it looks like there is another one just like it over there.  What is that building?” 

“Oh,” said the stranded man with a look of disgust, “that’s the church I USED to attend.”

Hmmm.  It’s hard to find unity – even with oneself!

            Have you ever had the experience of thinking about someone only to have them call you soon afterwards?  Have you ever had the experience of feeling like someone’s spirit was present with you?  Have you ever felt so connected to someone that you almost heard their thoughts on occasion?  Knew what they were feeling or thinking to such a degree it felt like they were talking to you in your head?  Have you ever discovered that you shared a dream with someone?  How about those connections with the larger world?  Have you ever had a feeling that something was wrong and then discovered that it was? 

            On the day my grandfather died, I woke up and thought I saw him standing at the foot of my bed, just smiling to me.  I called my father, and learned that he had passed away, about 10 minutes before I “had seen” him in my room.  Could it have been just a weird coincidence?  Of course many people would say that it was.  But I know differently in my heart. 

            September 11, 2001 I woke up with a strong sense that something was wrong.  Something was off.  I felt a sense of deep foreboding.  It was not my habit to do this, but I got up and turned on the news, just in time to hear what had been happening on the other side of the country.

            I have a friend who seems to know, without fail, when something has upset me and inevitably calls me.  The first words out of his mouth indicate that sense of connection “What’s wrong?” he will say.  “Something shifted and it feels like you’re upset.  What has happened?”

            I know I’m not alone in these experiences.  Some of you have shared similar stories with me.  Or stories that are uniquely your own but show us the same, mysterious connection that we have with one another.  And they just confirm what Jesus tells us in scriptures such as today’s gospel lesson.

            On Trinity Sunday we celebrate and look at the mystery that God is both three and God is one.  It is a deep mystery that theologians study and write about and contemplate.  They find new meanings and deeper important meanings in it all the time.  But still we struggle to comprehend this mystery.  How is it possible that God, the one God, can also be in community with God-self?  How can one God have 3 separate and unique persons who experience life differently, who relate to us differently – above us, among us, within us?  It is profound, amazing, and difficult to comprehend.

            What is less often looked at, though it is just as present in our scriptures is the fact that we, too, as God’s people are many and yet one.  Jesus says in today’s passage from John: “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”  We, too, though we are each unique, though we are each individuals, though we disagree with one another about many things and have different goals, different priorities, different views on the world – even so, together we are the body of Christ.  Together we are one.  Jesus says that just as he and God the parent are one (again, going back to the trinity) in this same way, we too, are one.

            So what does this mean, practically speaking?   It means a great number of things.  The first is that we need to strive for unity even when we cannot be uniform.  We need to strive for unity even when we are very different in our view points.  By saying that I don’t at all mean that we need to agree with each other.  The diversity in our thoughts, ideas, feelings, backgrounds,  and view points adds a richness and depth to life that give it meaning.  But what it means is that we should strive to work together, with one another, across our differences, towards furthering God’s realm here, towards caring and loving all people and all creation. 

            The second thing it means is that when I hurt you, I am hurting myself.  This, too, is part of the mystery of us as created beings, but that doesn’t make it any less true.  When I hurt you in any way – physically, emotionally, or spiritually, the person I am damaging is myself.  This is really hard, I think, to take in in any kind of real way.  Our cultural values tell us that I have to take care of my own and if that is at your expense, so be it because there isn’t enough for all of us.  But this is not what God teaches.  God teaches us that when even one person does not have what they need, all of us are short-changed.  And if we can hang on to that, it will deeply affect our actions.  When someone hurts us, we can remember that they are also hurting themselves and we can try to have some compassion for it.  Additionally, it makes it much harder to strike out in revenge (which is un-Christian anyway – Jesus was really clear that when someone slaps us on the cheek, we are supposed to turn the other one, not slap back).  We cannot strike out without realizing that, again, the person we are hitting is ourselves. 

            It also makes it imperative that we work for the good of all people – again, recognizing that when there is anyone who is hungry in the world, we all are hungry in some way.  When there is anyone who is suffering in the world, we are all suffering in some way.  And that doesn’t just include victims, it includes those who do the harming as well…what is broken in them that they are choosing this harm?  How have we contributed to their behavior?  How can we be part of healing all involved so that we, too, might be healed?   It means not wishing ill for anyone because the person we are wishing ill onto is ourselves.  And it means working, hard, to see the value in each and every other person.  Choosing not to see other people as “other” – as different, as people we can categorize and hate and ban in any way.

            In one episode of Joan of Arcadia, the high school is going through an election process.  The candidate whom Joan supports (because God has told her to) has been trashed by the opposition, a boy named Lars, who advertises publicly that Joan’s candidate has a father who is in jail.  Joan then discovers something potentially very damaging about Lars: she discovers that Lars is gay.  And she is ready to expose him, to “out” him, to cause distrust among his peers, feeling that an eye for an eye is the only way to get her candidate to win.  But just as she is on the verge of betraying Lars’ deepest secret, discrediting him, exposing him and destroying him, she ends up having a conversation with her mother.  Her mother shares with Joan regrets that she has about actions she took when she was feeling particularly self-righteous, and in that place of knowing she was right, she stopped thinking about the other person as a person, she stopped seeing the other, loving the other, caring for the other and as a result, she hurt the other – in a way that would never be forgotten.  Joan is moved by her mother’s story and chooses not to destroy Lars, not to betray him by telling the world his secret.  She gives up her chance for her candidate to win the election in so doing.  She says to her mom afterwards, “No, I didn’t do it, but it would have been so easy.  But then in my head I kept seeing him, looking at me, so scared you know?   Big strong Lars, scared and confused.  And I’ve been there, like, like all the time.  And it was like we weren’t really different people because someplace we aren’t!...  Why is that so hard to remember?”

            I don’t know why it’s hard to remember.  But it is.  We are so focused on our individuality that we forget how connected we are.  We forget what Jesus says about calling us to be one as he and God are one.  We forget that what we do impacts everyone in the world, that the whole way we look at life and interact with life makes a difference – not just for the person with whom we are interacting, but for ourselves and the world, too.  Every interaction we have matters.  Every time we are kind to someone it matters and every time we fail to be kind to someone it matters.

            I want to share with you another story.  I shared this before a couple years back but I think it is an appropriate illustration.

A father told this story about his child, Shay, who was mentally and physically disabled.

“Shay and I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, “Do you think they'll let me play?” I knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but as a father I also understood that if my son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps. I approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, “We're losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.”  Shay struggled over to the team's bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. I watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my heart. The boys saw my joy at my son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat. At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball. However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay's life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher. The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game. Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman's head, out of reach of all team mates.. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, “Shay, run to first! Run to first!” Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base.. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.

Everyone yelled, “Run to second, run to second!” Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball, the smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher's intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman's head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home..

All were screaming, “Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay”

Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, “Run to third! Shay, run to third!”

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, “Shay, run home! Run home!”

Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.  “That day”, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, “the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world.”

Shay didn't make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making me so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!”

The thing is, those kids who gave Shay that opportunity – those kids understood the connection for a moment.  For a moment, they remembered that we all are one.  Shay’s success was their success – for BOTH teams.  Shay’s success was a success for all people who have heard this story and connected with it.  Shay’s success, and the kindness and caring of those other kids made a difference and makes a difference.

Mitch Album in his book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, said: “… the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.” (New York: Hachette books, 2003. p 208).  Or, as he said in Have a Little Faith, “God sings, we hum along, and there are many melodies, but it’s all one song – one same, wonderful, human song.” 

            Jesus prayed that we all might be one.  He wasn’t praying that we would all be the same.  He was praying that we might see our connections, our unity, our one-ness.  My prayer is that we can honor his call to oneness by remembering our connections to all of creation, to seek unity and love for one another in all that we do.  Amen.

It's all about the other.

           I wrote some time ago that hate connects you more deeply to the object of your hate than apathy ever could, that we care more deeply about those we actively dislike than we do about those we rarely think of.  I said that one of the most painful comments someone made to me was that they didn't care enough to hate me. That was years ago.  But a few months ago I had another similar encounter with a person out here.
           I was at a large meeting of colleagues when I ran into a woman who has actually made a point of not liking me.  We went to school together, sang in a choir together for two years, have served on committees together, been on retreat together many times, and have been in many of the same collegial groups together.  She has always been cold and distant.  More, she has sometimes been blatantly unkind, saying things that are pointedly mean or dismissive, and even blocking my participation in one group.
          In this particular instance, she was with someone who came over to talk to one of the people in the small group that I was with, and one of my friends said to her, "Do you know Barbara?"  Her response was, "Oh, I think I've seen you before once at a meeting of x."   At first I found myself just staring at her.  Really?  We were once at a meeting together?  It is not possible that she could not remember me as someone who sang with her every week for 2 years in a small 16 member choir.  It is not possible that she has forgotten that we served on a small 5 member committee together.  It is not possible that she doesn't remember that we have been to 25 person three day long retreats on a regular basis together.  It is highly unlikely, even, that she forgot we were at school together when the school was a very small, intimate community of people learning and worshiping together.  Does this mean the nasty comments she's made and the decision to block my participation in a group of colleagues was aimed at someone she doesn't even see?  No, her comment of "Oh, I think I've seen you before once in a meeting" was the same comment as that other person made years ago who said he did not even care about me enough to hate me.  It's the same comment.  But this time I don't think it was an honest account of her feelings.  In this case it was another intentional slam.  "You are not important enough for me to remember."  It was an attack.
          But interestingly, it had exactly the opposite effect of what I imagine was the intention.  The pettiness of the comment was just great enough to really help me let go of the discomfort and wonder around her unkind behavior towards me all these years.  I no longer care.  She has moved herself through this behavior into a place where I see her more fully than I have before, and I realize at a heart level that her thoughts, feelings and actions really and truly are about her and have nothing to do with me.  She doesn't know me.  Her dislike has been a gut reaction.  But for a long time I've helped her carry that by worrying and wondering what I could do to fix it.  That's no longer the case.  Now she can carry it all on her own.
         Whenever someone is unkind to us, it is about them and not about us.  Always.  But it can be hard for us to see this, difficult for us to hold, and sometimes it can feel impossible to put that into our hearts in such a way that we can feel compassion for the other rather than pain, hurt or anger.
          When Youngest was about three years old she and I were in a Trader Joe's grocery store, doing our daily shopping one day.  She was skipping and singing along beside the cart, very happy, full of life.  We were coming to the end of an aisle when a woman zoomed around the corner and almost hit us.  She snapped at Youngest, "Watch where you are going!  Stop playing around!"  I was stunned and upset.  But Youngest, my three year old Youngest, looked at the woman like she was a curiosity.  She stared at her with interest, but without any guilt or bad feeling, or shame.  As soon as the woman zoomed down the aisle, Youngest turned to me and said, "Poor woman!  She must be having a bad day!" and then she returned to skipping, singing, playing.  My heart filled with joy and pride to see that my three year old understood that the woman's bad behavior was about the woman.  It had nothing to do with Youngest.  I also felt some envy: I wished I could feel that same way when attacked.
          It is a worth while goal to learn to separate the behavior of someone else from ourselves.  It allows us then to choose our responses.  It enables us to find compassion, even, for those who may be having a hard time, a bad day.  It can encourage more honest interaction as we search for what is going on underneath the behavior, rather than just reacting out of our angst to what has been said.  It stops the escalation of anger and allow a person to respond instead to unkindness with empathy and care rather than revenge and retaliation.
         I am grateful for the moments in which I see the other as the other, someone who is complicated but whose behavior is truly about them.  I pray for more moments of such grace.