What You Look At & What You See

Several years ago a Washington newspaper set up a social experiment by getting the world renown violinist Joshua Bell to dress up like a street musician and with his three million dollar instrument to play incredibly intricate pieces of music in a crowded metro station during rush hour.  The results have been widely disseminated and discussed.  No one recognized Bell, even though he has played for audiences all around the world.  And though his music was of the highest quality, very few people seemed to notice or stopped to listen.  Those who dropped money into Bell’s basket as they walked by never realized that a ticket to hear him play the same music at the symphony would cost at least one hundred dollars.  One child stopped to listen, but was yanked away by his impatient mother who did not want to miss the next train.

I am not critical of all those commuters because in life there is way too much reality for us to take in.  Even now in this place at this moment more is happening than our conscious mind can assimilate.  The human brain has developed fascinating ways to filter out what it deems unimportant so that it can hone in on what is significant.  Most of the time this works very well for us, but sometimes it betrays us.  Magicians are keenly aware of how the brain perceives reality and they use this knowledge to manipulate events in order to create the illusion of magic.  Ultimately what they do is nothing more than harmless entertainment.  

The Joshua Bell experiment points to something more significant.  It suggests that we see what we expect to see.  We expect one thing of a person standing on stage dressed in a tuxedo surrounded by a full orchestra but something totally different from a starving street artist.  We have a lot of different words to describe this: pigeon-holing, stereotyping, labeling, profiling, snap judgments.  The challenge comes when this process migrates from the head to the heart; when it deeply infiltrates the human soul; when it moves from perceptions to value judgments based on superficial qualities.  Over time other people can become little more than caricatures of our own creation based on quick, limited observations.  Some of our caricatures elevate people far higher than warranted.  Others reek of a contemptuousness no human being deserves.  

This morning we encounter another one of Jesus’ parables.  It is a story about two individuals who go to the Temple to pray.  One is an esteemed religious professional, the other a dreaded tax collector.  You know the details – how the Pharisee stands before God and proudly announces in his prayer his gratitude that he is better than other people and how the tax collector begs for mercy on his many sins.  

The Pharisee is a prime example of a person who sees what he expects to see.  He takes in outward, visual clues about another person and then makes negative assumptions about the morality and worth of that person.  If any one of you was preaching this sermon and I was in the pew listening, at this point I would be thinking, “you don’t have to go into great detail describing this because I know just what it is like.  I do it all the time!”  It is that process whereby we feel better about ourselves by being judgmental and critical about another person.  If we take Jesus at his word, then this is not how we are supposed to be.

During my typically copious sermon research, I came across this little ditty:

I was shocked, confused, bewildered

as I entered Heaven’s door,

Not by the beauty of it all,

nor the lights or its decor.

But it was the folks in Heaven

who made me sputter and gasp--

the thieves, the liars, the sinners,

the alcoholics, the trash.

There stood the kid from seventh grade

who swiped my lunch money twice.

Next to him was my old neighbor

who never said anything nice.

Herb, who I always thought

was rotting away in hell,

was sitting pretty on cloud nine,

looking incredibly well.

I nudged Jesus, “What’s the deal?

I would love to hear Your take.

How’d all these sinners get up here?

God must’ve made a mistake.”

“And why’s everyone so quiet,

so somber?  Give me a clue.”

“Hush, child,” said He, “they’re all in shock.

No one thought they’d be seeing you!

The journalist Sydney J. Harris summed it up pretty well when he wrote, “We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.”

Henry David Thoreau famously wrote that in life it’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.  That is what the DC commuters and the Pharisee didn’t understand.  They looked, but they did not see.  In a few moments we will renew our own Baptismal Covenant.  As we do so take special notice of these promises:

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Will you… respect the dignity of every human being?

And noitice the prayers who offer for the baptismal candidate; prayers which were offered on our behalf at our own baptism:

Teach him to love others in the power of the Spirit.

Send him into the world in witness to your love.

Give him an inquiring and discerning heart… and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.

Theses prayers and promises, at least with regard to how we approach others, call and commit us to be more than lookers – people who make snap-judgements based on superficiallities and generalities.  They call and commit us to be people who see others as they truly are.

I came across this piece by Sam Bristow on a blogsite called Higher Powered:

You have not walked in my shoes

You have not been down my road.

You have not cried my tears.

You have not carried my load.

Why do you judge me?

You think you know my story.

You think you know my pain.

You think you know my future.

You don’t even know my name.

Why do you judge me?

You were not there to see me stumble.

You were not there to see me fall.

You were not there to pick me up.

You were not there at all.

Why do you judge me?

Did you know there is a website that gives advice to writers about how to be better at people watching?  It suggests that this activity can help them discover and develop characters for their material.  It offers tips on such common things as how to choose a good location, how to observe a person without being spotted, and how to record your thoughts and observations.  What intrigued me most was this insight:

“People watching is not about feeling superior to others or judging them; more than anything, you’re a non-judgmental observer with a penchant for unearthing life’s stories as an art of love and empathy.”

The site counsels that every person has a story to tell and encourages writers to look for the infinite worth and wealth in common, everyday people.

I think the parable we hear this morning suggests two very important spiritual truths: one I have explored at length, the other I will only mention in closing.  What I have explored is this: When we make shallow and superficial judgments about other people we fail to recognize the complexity of their lives, the richness they have to offer, and the basic dignity they carry by virtue of being God’s child.  It is common sense, but it is true: if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.  When you seek the presence of Christ in another you will begin to see that person in a new way.

What I have not explored with you, but will note for you to ponder, is this: if you continually measure yourself against the negative impressions you formulate about others, you release yourself from doing the work you need to do on yourself.  When we hear the Pharisee’s prayer we realize something he does not.  We realize that he is far from perfect.  But he doesn’t realize it because he is so preoccupied with looking at thieves, rouges, adulterers and tax collectors that he never looks at himself.  Sage advice says don’t compare yourself to others – either positively or negatively.  Compare yourself to the person you were yesterday and work toward the person you hope to be tomorrow.  

Two people went to the Temple to pray.  One was justified through his prayers, the other was not.  The one who was justified looked at himself and saw himself for who he was.  The other person scanned those at prayer, but never really saw them and certainly never really saw himself. 

So If It's Not Okay...

The reading we just heard from the Gospel of Luke, like so many gospel readings, comes to us without a specific context.  What motivated Jesus to tell this story at this time?  The text offers no clues.  But keep in mind the nature of that society.  It was an age when the many were onerously burdened to the benefit of a privileged few.  For those many, of which Jesus was one, the longing for justice would have been intense.  And it would have been frustrating.  And it would have been infuriating.  And it would have been disheartening. 

So Jesus tells one of his stories to emphasize why it is important not to get discouraged and why it is important to keep praying.  Look at this miserable, rotten, no good judge, Jesus says.  If a scoundrel like that relents because the widow refuses to give up, how much more will our loving God respond to our prayers?

Who is our God?  What is our God like?  In my readings this week I came across this beautiful passage from a homily delivered by 4^th century bishop Gregory of Nyssa:

Charity lives in the intimacy of God and it is God who by his hands shaped the first works of love and philanthropy in creating everything that is.  For God is the first and foremost lover of good deeds who nourishes the starving, waters the thirsty, and clothes those who are naked.

That is who God is and what God is like.  God cares about injustice and God cares about our suffering.  This concern is rooted in the very heart of God and the call for justice in the Name of God permeates all of Scripture.  Still, we are left with a nagging question: if God cares so deeply about injustice, and if God loves us deeply, why do our prayers for justice – prayers for our entire social order as well as prayer about the specific wrongs we endure – why do these prayers seem to go unanswered?

An American tourist sat at a table at an outdoor café near Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall.  As he sipped a coffee he observed a man praying at the wall.  While others came and went, this particular person prayed all morning long.  After what seemed like hours, the man left the wall, walked over to the café, and sat at a table next to the tourist.  The American decided to strike up a conversation: “I saw you praying at the wall all morning.  Do you mind me asking what you were praying for?”  “Not at all,” the man answered.  “For the first hour I pray for peace around the world; that goodwill might rule in every human heart.  For the second hour I pray for people who are hungry or naked or homeless; that no person should ever have to go without the basic necessities of life.  For the third hour I pray for the sick and hurting; that there might be an end to disease and suffering.”  “May I ask how long you have been coming to the wall to pray?”  “Every day for twenty-five years.”  “That is incredible,” the tourist said.  “What does it feel like to offer such important prayers day in and day out for that many years?”  “Well,” the man said, taking in a deep breath, reflecting, and then letting out a sigh, “Sometimes it feels like I am talking to a wall.”

Surely you know that feeling.  Surly each one of us here, at one time or another, has felt as if our prayers not only go unanswered, but, even worse, go unheard.  Pray all you want, work for justice as hard as you can, and still nothing seems to change.  This, I think, is the experience Jesus encountered in some folks that motivated him to tell the parable we heard this morning.  It is tough, he says, but you must not give up and you must not give in.  You are never praying just to a wall.

It strikes me that praying for justice is very different from other kinds of prayer.  When you pray for forgiveness, your prayer hinges largely on your own ability to accept the forgiveness God extends.  When you pray for healing – either for yourself or for another – the answer depends on many factors; some we can control and others we can’t.  With healing prayers, ultimately, either we are encouraged by what we see or we resign ourselves to another path of prayer.  But when we pray for justice, we are praying for a change of heart that leads to a change in action and behavior.  Whoever or whatever is perpetrating injustice must undergo deep, spiritual transformation before the wrong can be righted. 

Changing a cold human heart takes time.  Pharaoh endured ten horrific plagues before he reached a point where he could let the Hebrews go.  In today’s Old Testament reading, we heard the prophet Jeremiah’s vision of a time when God’s covenant with the human family would be written on the human heart.  It is a vision of a time when right behavior is not dictated and directed by external laws, but rather emanates from within; of a time when God’s very life would so dwell within each of us that we would know and do what is right and just. 

Christians believe that some six hundred years later this vision found its fulfillment on Pentecost Day with the coming of the Holy Spirit.  But even we admit that it is at best a partial reality.  Because God honors the freewill of every human being the quest for justice can be a very long haul indeed.  That is not good news for us who are more and more the product of a short-term, quick fix world of instant gratification because the quest for justice is not a short-term, quick fix kind of problem. 

So here are two things you can do.

First, do not give up.  Stay at it.  Persevere.  That is what Yvonne Pierre did.  As a child she endured terrible, unspeakable abuses and the murder of her father.  As a result she fell into self-destructive behavior, but eventually determined to turn around her life.  She graduated from an alternative school and, over time, earned four undergrad and graduate degrees.  She has written a play, a film, and a book.  The mother of two children, one who has Downs Syndrome, Pierre works tirelessly with the special needs community.  Thinking about all she has endured and overcome, listen to this passage from her book, The Day My Soul Cried:

For every person who closed the door in my face, thank you.  For every person who told me I wasn’t good enough, thank you.  For every person who laughed and told me that I was wasting my time going to college, because I was going to fail, thank you.  For every person who tried to break me, thank you.  For every person who took my kindness for weakness, thank you.  For every person who told me I was wasting time chasing my dreams because I would fail, thank you.  It could of broke me.  From the core of my heart, I thank you.  I truly mean it, because if it weren’t for each of you I wouldn’t be who I am today.  I wouldn’t of spend hours and loss sleep studying.  I wouldn’t developed tough skin.  You pushed me to think about what I “really” want out of life.  You pushed me to master my craft.  You helped me develop the drive, passion and determination.  You pushed me to not wait for someone to believe in my vision, but to find a way to make things happen.  I know you didn’t “intend” to, but I thank you for teaching me to believe in myself!  AND you taught me to TRUST in God and lean on my faith, not man.  Thank You!

Yvonne Pierre is a present-day widow from Jesus’ parable, isn’t she!  Her life, with all of its challenges and struggles, gives witness to the fact that when we pray more than a wall hears us.  With faith and determination, she overcame her challenges.  If she could do it so can you.

Here is the second thing you can do while you wait for justice: examine your own heart and your own actions and your own life.  Where are you a perpetrator of injustice?  When are you the very thing you detest?  While you hunger and thirst for a wrong to be made right, allow God’s covenant to be written on your heart.  The easiest heart for God to change is yours.  There is much to be said for being the person you are praying for another to become.

There is an anonymous quote that says “Everything will be okay in the end, so if it’s not OK, then it’s not the end.”  And we Christians would add, if it’s not okay then we still have work to do; work on our knees, work in our heart, and work marked by determination and perseverance that one day will get us to the ‘okay end’ we long for and know will come.

Present Yourself to God

A man with a terrible stuttering problem applied for a job selling bibles door-to-door.  The boss was not sure the candidate would be at all successful, but decided to give him chance so he sent off the stuttering man with a case of bibles.   A few hours later, the salesman returned and asked for a second case.  Two hours after that he was back for a third.  By the end of the day he has set a company record for most bibles sold in a single day.  “How did you do it,” the boss asked?  “Weeellll,” said the stuttering salesman, “IIIII assskkked iffff theyyyy wanttttted toooo buuuuyyy aaaa bibbbbleee orrrr havvveee mmmeee rrrread itttt toooo themmmmm.”

The church where I grew up gave a bible to each youngster in the third grade.  I still have mine.  It is the Revised Standard Version.  On the cover is printed “Holy Bible” and my name is engraved in the lower right hand corner.  The second page is a fancy looking certificate on which is printed:

The Holy Bible

presented to

Someone took the time to fill in a dedication.  It reads,

Keith Emerson

by Westminster Presbyterian Church

II Timothy 2:15

May 25, 1969

II Timothy 2:15 reads, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed.”  I suppose whoever filled in the page on my personalized bible could have cited any other number of verses, but because he or she chose this one it has always been one of my favorite in scripture.  Ever since third grade, it has served as my personal mission statement.  I have spent a lifetime trying to figure out what it means to present myself to God.  Here are a few things I have learned over the years.

Early on I figured out that it is important to present yourself to God by going to church.  That seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it!  I was fortunate as a young person and as a college student in that I enjoyed Sunday worship.  Ever since graduation I have worked in a church in some capacity, so I have had a little more incentive to show up than most people.  But even when I am on vacation I try to find a church to attend.  Since being given that bible I have not gone more than three weeks in a row without going to church. 

As a boy I remember absolutely hating two things about Sunday mornings: having my father put a tie on me and then brushing back my hair.  He was a little rough doing both, probably because he enjoyed it even less than I did.  I am not sure when “dressing up” for church began to wane as a practice, but certainly it has.  The old standard was that you presented yourself to God by putting on your “Sunday best.”  By the time I joined the Episcopal Church I realized some other standard was in play.  It was easy to spot the folks who only attended at Christmas and Easter because the women wore mink coats.  Church, I learned, was not a place to show off.

Today I say that if you want to present yourself to God, the best way to do it – at least in terms of what you wear – is to dress neatly and modestly.  Several years ago I was a chaplain for a senior high youth conference.  One chaplain’s session we got into a very interesting discussion about clothes as it relates to living out the faith.  A very attractive young woman wearing a very tight fitting spaghetti-strap t-shirt announced that she was proud of her body and wanted to show it off through what she wore.  I pointed out that tight-fitting and revealing clothes had a certain affect on the opposite sex.  “Well, boys just need to get their minds out of the gutter,” she said.  “Young woman,” I replied, “that is not how the male brain works.”  If you want to present yourself to God, the best way to dress is neatly and modestly.

So, one thing I did from an early age to present myself to God was to go to church.  Another thing I did was to read the bible.  Our church’s youth minister offered a weekly bible study, which I attended faithfully.  In addition, I read the bible on my own every day, and I mean every day!  I think I went something like 12 years without missing a single day.  Don’t get me wrong, there were times that I just went through the motions, but at least I had a consistent discipline.  It is a discipline I maintain even to this day, although there is usually a day or two each week that my schedule overtakes the time I try to set aside.

Very few things nurture the Christian faith and life like reading the bible on your own and in a group setting.  I am particularly pleased that so many of you attend the monthly women’s study group, the weekly Wednesday bible study, or have expressed an interest in the upcoming Alpha course.  I am excited to hear stories about how our children are taking to the weekly bible stories they are learning in the Godly Play class.  Scripture and prayer are like oxygen for of a healthy, vital, dynamic faith community.  Without them as a consistent and substantive part of our common life, we are just running on fumes. 

Today’s Gospel reading highlights another important aspect of presenting yourself to God – gratitude.  Are you thankful for what you have?  Are you even aware of the many blessings in your life?  No poetry today, but I continue to enjoy reading Mary Oliver’s poems.  She has an amazing ability to notice everything that is going on around her and to take it into her soul: poems about turtles and moths and oak trees and a cup of tea.  Nothing is too small or innocuous to escape her notice and all of it elicits in her a sense of gratitude. 

Perhaps her witness was with me on Thursday.  It was my 54^th birthday and I spent the entire day at an exhausting meeting in Williamsburg.  I lost count of the people who wished me a happy birthday and then asked what I was going to do to celebrate.  “Well,” I said, “I am going to go home and collapse.”  And that is what I did.  To be honest, there was a part of me that was very sad I was not going to do something special, and as a result I was nursing a good case of the blues.  Well, when I got home I found waiting for me multiple birthday cards handmade by the children in our Sunday School class.  One had handprints and names of all the children and it now graces my refrigerator.  Holly pulled this off and told me how excited the kids were to make cards when they found out it was my birthday.  I have to tell you I felt like the luckiest person on the planet!  What a blessing it is to have children in our parish who want to do something special for me.  So today – like every day – I bring to God my gratitude for life’s many blessings.

As I have grown in the Episcopal tradition I have come to appreciate how the Baptismal Covenant articulates what it means to present yourself to God as a worker who has no need to be ashamed.  Through the covenant we turn away from Satan, the evils of this world, and our own sinful desires and pledge our allegiance to Jesus Christ as our Savior, our Lord, and our Guide.  We commit ourselves to a Christian community – its worship, prayer, and study, to being an ambassador of the faith wherever we are, and to serving the needs of others.  If we live into this covenant than we will have no need to be ashamed when we present ourselves to God.

The problem is we often miss the mark.  The Greek word for sin comes from a term used to describe an archer shooting an arrow.  Sin has to do with missing the target.  Sometimes we simply aim at something other than the bull’s-eye, other times we miss what we aim at; our actions, while well-intentioned, have unintended consequences.  But there is another way to miss the mark.  You can draw back the bowstring part way, but not enough to get the arrow all the way there.  You aimed at the target, but you really didn’t try all that hard to hit it.  You did it half-hearted.  You just went through the motions.  Your effort was not your best, not even close.

Do you remember how II Timothy 2:15 begins?  “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved.”  We in the Christian tradition hold that we are saved by grace apart from works.  It is comforting to know that, rather than standing or falling on our own merits, we rest in God’s love and mercy.  Doing your best is not about earning a heavenly reward, but rather a reflection of what you want to offer to God in response to who God is and what God has done for you.  When Paul tells Timothy to do his best he is saying don’t let the arrow fall short of the mark.  Miss high, miss wide, but don’t miss because you really didn’t try.

What are some things you think are important in presenting yourself to God and are you doing your best to do them?

 

Jeremiah & Images of Hope

For the past few Sundays our Old Testament readings have been taken from the Book of the prophet Jeremiah.  His public ministry spanned tumultuous years in Israel’s history which culminated in the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 586 BC. 

Prior to that, Israel underwent significant religious and political reforms under King Josiah.  Jeremiah was critical of both, saying of the religious reforms that they changed things on the surface, but did not emanate from a changed heart.  His most scathing words were aimed at the politics of his day.  Swept up by a sense of nationalism, Israel sought to take advantage of what it perceived to be the weakness of other major powers in the region – Egypt to the south, Assyria to the north, and Babylon to the east of them.  Josiah sought to regain land lost 100 years earlier.  Jeremiah was highly critical of what he saw as over-reaching.  After Josiah died in a battle with the Egyptians, successive Israeli kings, severely weakened, vacillated between going it alone or making a pact with one power over and against another.  With great consistency Jeremiah was critical of these moves.

As a reward for his words, the prophet was ignored, ostracized, ridiculed, beaten, imprisoned, and even dropped into a well and left to die.  Last week’s reading found Jeremiah under house arrest because he proclaimed loud and long that the besieging Babylonian army was going to destroy Jerusalem.  Apparently his cousin Anathoth took these words to heart because he came to Jeremiah with a proposition.  He wanted Jeremiah to buy his family’s ancestral land.  In essence, Anathoth wanted to liquidate everything he could and get out while the getting was good.  Jeremiah bought the land through a very public transaction process and used the occasion to proclaim that a time would come when houses would have value and fields would be harvested: bold words from one whose city was under siege.

All of this brings us to today’s readings from the Book of Lamentations – a series of poems attributed to Jeremiah written from the depths of despair and anguish after the fall of Jerusalem.  If you had a chance to glance at Friday’s e-news letter you might have seen a painting of Jeremiah by the Russian artist Ilya Repin.  In it Jeremiah is leaning against the only part of the Temple wall not to be destroyed.  All around him lay fallen stone and snapped timbers.  In the background we see billows of smoke rising from various parts of the city that are on fire.  There is a look of shock, of horror, of terror on Jeremiah’s face that mirrors the look we saw on peoples’ faces at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon twelve years ago.  Not only did the Babylonians destroy Jerusalem and the Temple, they led off into captivity anyone who had any value; leaving behind only the elderly and the infirmed. 

It is from this awful experience that today’s readings come from the Book of Lamentations.  Just five chapters long, it is comprised of a series of poems that constitute a mournful cry.  But even in this dark time through his dark words, Jeremiah manages to proclaim one of the greatest articulations of hope in our faith tradition: 

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

his mercies never come to an end;

    they are new every morning;
       great is his faithfulness.

Alexander Pope famously wrote that hope springs eternal in the human breast, but in the Christian tradition, hope (like faith and love) is a gift from God; something implanted in us that emerges in us when we are cast down to the depths.  Like Jeremiah, perhaps you know what it is to have everything stripped away, to be down to nothing, and at that moment to know within you a spark, a flicker, an unwavering light that tells you this is not the end, but rather is the bedrock from which will rise a new beginning.

In the Jewish calendar, last Tuesday at sunset began of the ninth day of the month of Av – Tisha B’Av.  It is the historical date for the destruction of the Temple.  It is a day of mourning marked by reading the Book of Lamentations, eating an egg dipped in ashes, and fasting for twenty-four hours.  It is also a day grounded in the hope that from the temple ashes will rise a new, magnificent edifice.  As the prophet Isaiah wrote, “One who mourns Jerusalem will merit seeing her happiness” (66:10).

All week long I have been meditating on the image of an egg dipped in ashes and then eaten.  The egg represents life.  The ashes stand for the Temple ruins, but ultimately for any and every precious thing in our lives that has been lost or destroyed.  In life there simply is no way to remain immune from suffering and loss.  No one’s egg remains unsoiled forever.  The process of eating the ashened egg suggests that we cannot walk away from life’s challenges and defeats, that we somehow must take them into ourselves, that we must acknowledge them as part and parcel of who we are.  But I think the act of eating life and death also does another thing.  It takes both to that place inside us where hope abides, where hope endures. 

That is one symbol of hope that I encountered this week.  Let me tell you about two others that crossed my path.

One came from an article by Heidi Grogan where she described the raku angel her husband gave to her and the particular process this type of pottery goes through in order to produce its brilliant, liquid-looking colors.  At its creation, the angel was fired in a kiln heated to 1800⁰F.  Glowing hot as it was pulled from the oven, it was transferred into a metal can filled with combustible materials; things like newspapers, old leaves, and even garbage.  The heat of the angel caused all this material to catch fire, and there sealed in the burning debris it remained until it cooled.  When it emerged from this process the paints that had been applied prior to kilning shown forth in unpredictable, metallic-looking colors and patterns.  The brilliance of the finished product would not have come to life without the horrific process it went through.  What does that suggest about hope in the midst of challenge?

But this angel’s journey was not finished.  Grogan relates that one day while dusting, she accidently knocked it off the mantel where it graced the room, sending it crashing to the floor below and shattering it into many pieces.  She came home the next day to find her husband patiently at work gluing the pieces back together.  “When I am done,” he said, “I will paint all the fracture lines.”  “No,” she responded, “I want to let her scares be.” 

It seems to me that hope does not look like rushing forward to restore what once was.  Rather, it is intertwined with waiting; waiting for what will be to emerge.  A sense of hope allows us time to discover what God imagines for us – be it from the fire of a kiln and refuse or from the restoration of brokenness. 

The other image of hope I encountered this week comes from a Wendell Berry poem called The Sycamore:

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

“It bears the gnarls of its history healed over.”  “It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.”  It stands as a powerful symbol of hope.

In the coming weeks we will see how the surly and contentious prophet Jeremiah himself becomes a voice of hope.  He will send this message to those taken captive:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.  But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Jeremiah will proclaim that there is a way to be God’s people in this new and alien place.  He detects the hand of God present in all that has happened, is happening, and will happen.  God’s people are the egg dipped in ashes and eaten.  They are the angel made brilliant by fire and repaired after shattering.  They are the mighty sycamore whose thriving contains within it mangles of what it has suffered. 

Hope is good company when you are entertaining lament.  It gives us the courage we need to dream of a better day.  From the depths we may cry out words that express our deepest pain.  But from that place we also find these words:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

       great is his faithfulness.

Empathy in the Heart & Sympathy from the Head

There is a genre of humor known as the “reversal joke.”  It begins with a statement about what life is like in one place and then a second statement about how life is exactly the opposite somewhere else.  The Ukrainian comedian Yakov Smirnoff is the current master of the reversal joke.  Here are three of his best lines:

In America, you have remote controls.

   In Russia, remote controls you.

In America, you try to find Waldo

   In Russia, Waldo finds you.

In America, you can always find a party.

   In Russia, Party finds you.

Reversal jokes.  It might be fair to label the reading we just heard a “reversal parable,” but there is nothing funny about it.  Its premise is pretty straight-forward: everything about this life will be reversed in the age to come.  The rich man will find the tables turned.  He will suffer physical pain and deprivation for eternity while the destitute and diseased beggar from this world will be blessed with all the comforts of Heaven. 

It interests me that once he is in Hades twice the rich man mentions Lazarus by name.  The implication is that he knew Lazarus in the previous life.  He knew his name and surely knew of his plight.  He was not unaware, but rather indifferent.  Dressed in the most expensive cloths and eating lavish meals at every sitting, not once was he moved to help the man laying by the gate of his home; a man whose name he knew.  It truly is ponderous how someone with so much could do so little for a person so close in such great need. 

I am confident that if any of you saw someone laying of the ground propped up against one of our church walls this morning - a person who was in obvious need of food, water, and medical attention – I am confident you would do something to help that person, especially if you knew him or her by name.  Adam Smith, the great Scottish moral philosopher, once wrote, “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”  The flip side of this statement holds none of us could be at peace knowing that a person just outside the door was suffering and in pain.

The reason for this is at our core we are moral people.  At a certain point in our development as a species we gained the capacity for empathy and sympathy.  Empathy involves sharing in the feelings of another because you have been there yourself, or at least have been in a similar situation.  Sympathy involves understanding the feelings of another even though you don’t personally share in them.  You empathize with someone because at one time or another you walked the same path they are on.  When you sympathize you stand apart from the other but still appreciate the position he or she is in.  You image something of what it would be like to walk in the other person’s shoes.

I can empathize with a person who is divorced or who lost their father early in life because I have experienced both.  I can sympathize with a person who is homeless or an addict because I have an understanding of each while never experiencing either personally.

Both capacities are important if we are going to live morally in this world.  The most fundamental ethical obligation of the Christian tradition is the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Every great religious tradition teaches this very basic imperative.  It asks us to imagine ourselves as the other.  It calls us to empathy, to sympathy, and to action.

Frans de Waal, a professor at Emory University who specializes in primate behavior, has detected elements of sympathy, empathy, and other forms of moral behavior in many different animals.  He argues that any species with a social arrangement cannot exist without rudiments of sympathy and empathy.  He argues that as animal brains become more complex they acquire additional layers of moral capacity.  de Waal says that we are not selfish spheres covered by a thin layer of moral veneer, but rather more like one of those nesting dolls.  If you open up one moral doll there is another inside it and inside that is another and then another.  At the core is something all social animals share, which de Waal calls the “emotional contagion.”  All the surrounding dolls add to moral capacity and make each species distinct from others, with human beings being capable of mastering complex moral dilemmas.

It is an interesting theory that debunks an earlier view of human nature, often supported by the church.  The old view held that humans are brutish animals kept in line (barely at times) by the teachings of religion; that we are just 10 Commandments removed from anarchy.  de Waals’ work suggests moral and amoral behavior have developed in us side by side.  We are a complex mixture of self-interest and social connectedness.  We can exhibit both selflessness and aggression, cooperation and competition.  Our empathetic nature seeks emotional connection with others.  Our sympathetic nature generates concern for their well-being.  The teachings of our faith, stories like the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, become a significant moral layer added on top of millennia of moral development and point us toward a way of being that is necessary and beneficial to all. 

If we read carefully today’s parable we will see that it has two distinct parts with a transition in between.  The first part is the reversal where the rich man suffers in Hades while Lazarus receives the comforts of Heaven.  The transition comes when the rich man asks Abraham to comfort him and Abraham’s explanation of why he can’t.  The second part of the parable revolves around the rich man’s request to send Lazarus back to his family to warn his brothers what will happen to them if they don’t change.  This too Abraham cannot do.  Besides, says Abraham, they already have the teachings of Moses and prophets.  They have what they need in order to know what to do and how to act, but they choose to ignore it and to do what they like.

The second part of the parable reminds us that if we want to influence the moral life of people around us then we have to be living examples of the morality we hope to encourage.  Do you want your children to be truthful?  If so, don’t lie.  Do you want your children to respect the dignity of every human being?  If so, you must live out what it means to be respectful of every person in every situation.  Do you want your children to be forgiving?  If so, then you must forgive.  Do you want your children to care about the needs of others?  Then you must show them how to act out of empathy and sympathy.

Empathy.  A few years ago a woman was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Ever since, she and her family have participated in The Walk for a Cure.  Sympathy.  We all have access to clean, reliable drinking water.  Upon learning that parts of the world don’t, we raised $1,500 last Lent so that a village could have a well.  Our faith and our nature call us to respond to the needs we feel – to be empathetic.  They also call on us to respond to the needs we know and understand – to be sympathetic.  One is a response of the heart, the other of the head.  The connections we make – no matter how thin or short – matter.  They endure from this world into the next.  The connections we shun – the times we isolate and insolate ourselves from the needs of others – matter too.  They also endure from this world to the next.  May your heart always move you and may your head always guide you to do for others what your would have them do for you if your places were reversed.