"Theopraxis"
SUnday, August 30th, 2015
Song
of Solomon was my first favorite book of the bible. As a teenager I found it compelling, not just
for the poetry of it, though it is good poetry, but as I entered the season of
my life when I began seeking romantic companionship, here was this holy book all
about such a relationship.
Listen to today’s scripture as printed in the New Jerusalem Bible
10 My love lifts up his voice, he says to me, 'Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come.
11 For see, winter is past, the rains are over and gone.
12 'Flowers are appearing on the earth. The season of glad songs has come, the cooing of the turtledove is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree is forming its first figs and the blossoming vines give out their fragrance. Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come.
14 'My dove, hiding in the clefts of the rock, in the coverts of the cliff, show me your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely.'
Who, in the awakening of romantic sensuality, would not be stirred by this? Who would not be coaxed from the cleft in the rock by the voice of their first love beckoning them in this way? It is an invitation to witness and take part in the becoming of the world, the blossoming of creation, the fruiting of both nature and oneself. For your voice is as sweet as the blossoming vines of the first figs, it is your voice the beloved longs to hear. This poetry is meant to compel you to venture out from the rocks- to bring you into blossoming and fruiting with the rest of the world.
When I preached about the metaphor for our relationship with God as that of husband and wife, some felt uncomfortable. It was too different than how the relationship had been understood. Song of Solomon has this metaphor as its root. God is the lover calling us to love. This is different from the ways we have thought about God in the past couple of hundred of years. We have tended to do theology- thinking or studying about God- in our heads.
In deed the western world invented something called systematic theology, in which Christian scholars systematically lay down in words definitions of God, Spirit, Jesus, Grace, Baptism, etc. Song of Solomon is theology- not in our heads, but in our hearts and in our loins. It calls us to love in an active way, not a metaphoric way.
We see a parallel to this in the beginning of our text from James “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift is from above.” What is a more generous an act of giving than the giving and receiving of love? “In fulfillment…he gave us birth… so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” James tells us that God is calling us out of our hiding places into action, that we ourselves are God’s offering to the world and it is our actions that God offers.
Action is a theme throughout James. He speaks so often of the actions of faith that some wonder if it was written in response to Paul’s words that one is justified by faith alone. In chapter 2 James asks us to wonder what we would do if two people walked into our worship service, one richly clothed and another in dirty clothes, to whom would we give a seat of honor?
The word for what James calls us to, what Song of Solomon calls us to, is theopraxis. It means doing in response to God. In Song of Solomon the doing is loving. In response to God’s love of us, we love God back and it comes with all of the sensuality of a first romantic love, that awakening that is part of our growth from childhood to adulthood, from receiver of care to creator of life. In James it is the way we think of ourselves and the way we treat others that is the measure of our faith. James calls religion what we do in response to God- to care for orphans and widows, to keep oneself unstained by the world, to not deceive yourself- o understand yourself as you actually are in the world.
Many believe that the book of James is a condensing of a series of sermons. When I preach from it, I am always tempted to just read it as the sermon. One of the things I like about it is that it does not tell us what to believe. In chapter three James says “Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and you say Go in Peace;… but do not supply their needs, what good is that?”
This is the stuff of progressive Christianity. James is speaking our language here. Let us together not get hung up on theology- how we perceive God, but rather what we do in response to our perception. If you look in the bulletin there is, each week, a reckoning of how well our offering matches the funds needed to run the church. Quite often we are a thousand dollars or more below our need. But there is never a week with no benevolent giving. This is theopraxis.
In 1910 in Macedonia a woman named Agnes was born. She was baptized into the catholic church and by the age of twelve was obsessed with the idea of being a missionary. Her belief was that God is so full of love for all people that, as Christians, our job was to express love to each person. At the age of 18 she committed herself to a religious order. Hers is a story you likely know well because Agnes became Mother Teresa. In 1949 she was sent to live and serve among the poorest of the poor. She was sent without any means of supporting herself or her ministry.
She wrote in her diary:
"Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today, I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in body and soul, looking for a home, food and health. Then, the comfort of Loreto [her former congregation] came to tempt me. 'You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again,' the Tempter kept on saying ... Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard. I did not let a single tear come."[41][1]
At this point in her ministry she was still filled with the theology of God as a force of love in the world, of God as the lover of each individual person, and of her role in the world as the doer of God’s love. She was to show people God’s loving essence by loving them. She had the strength to endure being in poverty with those she served because she felt God’s love for them- she suffered with them- and served in response to the suffering she felt as a result of by the empathy God’s great love created in her. This is theopraxis- what she did in response to her experience of and her belief in God’s love. This is what the Song of Solomon calls us to, meeting the beloved in the fold of the mountain and loving enough to coax them out into God’s creation.
Mother Teresa’s story is more complex than this, though. Sometime along the way, in her suffering with those suffering, she lost her faith. She lost the feeling of love and connection with God- she lost her belief in God’s very existence. This foundational piece of her commitment- this relationship with God- grew so thin over years of serving in poverty and witnessing the suffering of God’s beloved, that it broke- and she ceased to believe because she ceased to feel God’s love.
But she never ceased to do. And, I think, this is what James gets at. James argues against those who claim right speech and right belief, but do not act. He describes those who act in service of others as being blessed by their actions.
The last night of the Mission Trip we pondered the difference between volunteer work and Mission work. Both can make us feel good about ourselves- helping others gives us an emotional boost. Both can make the world a better place. But Mission is in response to our faith. Mother Teresa joined an order and founded an order in response to her belief in God’s love for each individual. This was mission.
In the end, the work itself is what blessed her. Her beliefs faded. Her experience of God’s love grew so distant as to be absent from her life, but she kept on acting as if. The work became her faith. She acted as if God’s love was real. She acted as if her actions were God’s expression of love. And, indeed, those to whom she ministered felt God because of her actions.
Gandhi once said that sometimes one is so hungry, God can only appear as bread. Mother Teresa understood this. Even though God was not showing up for her, she knew that those she served were so hungry that the only chance they had of experiencing God was through her care of them.
I heard a story from Alexia Slavatierra, who is a faith rooted community organizer. There was a group of hotel maids who wanted to lessen their work load because the speed at which they had to work was causing them health problems with their feet and their backs. One of the tactics that Alexia’s coalition took was to wash the feet of the maids. It was a faith response. An action that grew out of the belief that each of us is a beloved child of God. That in humbling ourselves at the feet of those who are the least in a situation, we exalt the power of God. A group of ministers setup outside the hotel and as the maids came to work they washed their feet, just as Jesus had washed the feet of the disciples. This is not theology- this is theopraxy, acting in response to faith. Believing these maids to be beloved children of God, the pastors publically treated them as such, which seemed to be the catalyst hotel management needed to begin to change their policies to something more humane. There is real power in acting in faith in the world.
The measure of our faith, as James would say, is not so much about what we believe, but about the power we unleash in the world by the actions we take in response to our experience with God. For Mother Teresa, in the end, the actions were what kept her going.
Do not be afraid toact in the world in response to your faith. You can unleash real power. Blessed Be.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa 8-26-15
Listen to today’s scripture as printed in the New Jerusalem Bible
10 My love lifts up his voice, he says to me, 'Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come.
11 For see, winter is past, the rains are over and gone.
12 'Flowers are appearing on the earth. The season of glad songs has come, the cooing of the turtledove is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree is forming its first figs and the blossoming vines give out their fragrance. Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come.
14 'My dove, hiding in the clefts of the rock, in the coverts of the cliff, show me your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely.'
Who, in the awakening of romantic sensuality, would not be stirred by this? Who would not be coaxed from the cleft in the rock by the voice of their first love beckoning them in this way? It is an invitation to witness and take part in the becoming of the world, the blossoming of creation, the fruiting of both nature and oneself. For your voice is as sweet as the blossoming vines of the first figs, it is your voice the beloved longs to hear. This poetry is meant to compel you to venture out from the rocks- to bring you into blossoming and fruiting with the rest of the world.
When I preached about the metaphor for our relationship with God as that of husband and wife, some felt uncomfortable. It was too different than how the relationship had been understood. Song of Solomon has this metaphor as its root. God is the lover calling us to love. This is different from the ways we have thought about God in the past couple of hundred of years. We have tended to do theology- thinking or studying about God- in our heads.
In deed the western world invented something called systematic theology, in which Christian scholars systematically lay down in words definitions of God, Spirit, Jesus, Grace, Baptism, etc. Song of Solomon is theology- not in our heads, but in our hearts and in our loins. It calls us to love in an active way, not a metaphoric way.
We see a parallel to this in the beginning of our text from James “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift is from above.” What is a more generous an act of giving than the giving and receiving of love? “In fulfillment…he gave us birth… so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” James tells us that God is calling us out of our hiding places into action, that we ourselves are God’s offering to the world and it is our actions that God offers.
Action is a theme throughout James. He speaks so often of the actions of faith that some wonder if it was written in response to Paul’s words that one is justified by faith alone. In chapter 2 James asks us to wonder what we would do if two people walked into our worship service, one richly clothed and another in dirty clothes, to whom would we give a seat of honor?
The word for what James calls us to, what Song of Solomon calls us to, is theopraxis. It means doing in response to God. In Song of Solomon the doing is loving. In response to God’s love of us, we love God back and it comes with all of the sensuality of a first romantic love, that awakening that is part of our growth from childhood to adulthood, from receiver of care to creator of life. In James it is the way we think of ourselves and the way we treat others that is the measure of our faith. James calls religion what we do in response to God- to care for orphans and widows, to keep oneself unstained by the world, to not deceive yourself- o understand yourself as you actually are in the world.
Many believe that the book of James is a condensing of a series of sermons. When I preach from it, I am always tempted to just read it as the sermon. One of the things I like about it is that it does not tell us what to believe. In chapter three James says “Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and you say Go in Peace;… but do not supply their needs, what good is that?”
This is the stuff of progressive Christianity. James is speaking our language here. Let us together not get hung up on theology- how we perceive God, but rather what we do in response to our perception. If you look in the bulletin there is, each week, a reckoning of how well our offering matches the funds needed to run the church. Quite often we are a thousand dollars or more below our need. But there is never a week with no benevolent giving. This is theopraxis.
In 1910 in Macedonia a woman named Agnes was born. She was baptized into the catholic church and by the age of twelve was obsessed with the idea of being a missionary. Her belief was that God is so full of love for all people that, as Christians, our job was to express love to each person. At the age of 18 she committed herself to a religious order. Hers is a story you likely know well because Agnes became Mother Teresa. In 1949 she was sent to live and serve among the poorest of the poor. She was sent without any means of supporting herself or her ministry.
She wrote in her diary:
"Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today, I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in body and soul, looking for a home, food and health. Then, the comfort of Loreto [her former congregation] came to tempt me. 'You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again,' the Tempter kept on saying ... Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard. I did not let a single tear come."[41][1]
At this point in her ministry she was still filled with the theology of God as a force of love in the world, of God as the lover of each individual person, and of her role in the world as the doer of God’s love. She was to show people God’s loving essence by loving them. She had the strength to endure being in poverty with those she served because she felt God’s love for them- she suffered with them- and served in response to the suffering she felt as a result of by the empathy God’s great love created in her. This is theopraxis- what she did in response to her experience of and her belief in God’s love. This is what the Song of Solomon calls us to, meeting the beloved in the fold of the mountain and loving enough to coax them out into God’s creation.
Mother Teresa’s story is more complex than this, though. Sometime along the way, in her suffering with those suffering, she lost her faith. She lost the feeling of love and connection with God- she lost her belief in God’s very existence. This foundational piece of her commitment- this relationship with God- grew so thin over years of serving in poverty and witnessing the suffering of God’s beloved, that it broke- and she ceased to believe because she ceased to feel God’s love.
But she never ceased to do. And, I think, this is what James gets at. James argues against those who claim right speech and right belief, but do not act. He describes those who act in service of others as being blessed by their actions.
The last night of the Mission Trip we pondered the difference between volunteer work and Mission work. Both can make us feel good about ourselves- helping others gives us an emotional boost. Both can make the world a better place. But Mission is in response to our faith. Mother Teresa joined an order and founded an order in response to her belief in God’s love for each individual. This was mission.
In the end, the work itself is what blessed her. Her beliefs faded. Her experience of God’s love grew so distant as to be absent from her life, but she kept on acting as if. The work became her faith. She acted as if God’s love was real. She acted as if her actions were God’s expression of love. And, indeed, those to whom she ministered felt God because of her actions.
Gandhi once said that sometimes one is so hungry, God can only appear as bread. Mother Teresa understood this. Even though God was not showing up for her, she knew that those she served were so hungry that the only chance they had of experiencing God was through her care of them.
I heard a story from Alexia Slavatierra, who is a faith rooted community organizer. There was a group of hotel maids who wanted to lessen their work load because the speed at which they had to work was causing them health problems with their feet and their backs. One of the tactics that Alexia’s coalition took was to wash the feet of the maids. It was a faith response. An action that grew out of the belief that each of us is a beloved child of God. That in humbling ourselves at the feet of those who are the least in a situation, we exalt the power of God. A group of ministers setup outside the hotel and as the maids came to work they washed their feet, just as Jesus had washed the feet of the disciples. This is not theology- this is theopraxy, acting in response to faith. Believing these maids to be beloved children of God, the pastors publically treated them as such, which seemed to be the catalyst hotel management needed to begin to change their policies to something more humane. There is real power in acting in faith in the world.
The measure of our faith, as James would say, is not so much about what we believe, but about the power we unleash in the world by the actions we take in response to our experience with God. For Mother Teresa, in the end, the actions were what kept her going.
Do not be afraid toact in the world in response to your faith. You can unleash real power. Blessed Be.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa 8-26-15
"Tender Hearted"
Sunday, August 9th, 2015
When
I was a righteous liberal college student, studying in the only school of
Ethnic Studies in our country, learning from a former Black Panther and the
head of the FMLA, a liberationist organization in El Salvador, my Grandfather
liked to tease me that I wouldn’t exist without the conquest of the Americas,
the slave trade, or the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He could’ve added I wouldn’t exist without
the war in Vietnam.
You see, I am of European and Native American decent. Without the English and French settlers who intermarried with my Cherokee ancestors, I could not exist. I am also of Bermudan ancestry, my family likely includes both English and African ancestors. My grandfather was on his way to the Pacific theater in WWII when he was re-ordered to Bermuda because the atomic bombs took the place of his unit. There he met my Grandmother. And my father, during his time in Vietnam, clarified what was important in his life as family. He went from what my mom described as a “drunken sex-craved maniac” she wouldn’t date to the loving, gentle man she married. As a young person this legacy seemed like a burden.
But this is what we inherit in this country. Perhaps me more than you, not many of us can trace our existence back to so many different historical tragedies. Or perhaps you more than me, because my legacy is so diffuse- I am only 1/8th Cherokee, which matches Norwegian as my dominant ancestry, and even less African and present to the world like any other white woman. Many feel the brunt of our history of racism and sexism more concretely on a day to day basis.
Inheriting history such as this wounds us- and not just those marked visually or psychologically as the children of the losers of history, but all of us. There was a comedian on TV the other night, a show called last Comic Standing, who did a joke about being a failure as a white man, failing in life with the difficulty setting set as low as it can go, he put it. He was naming one of the ways a culture of stratified prejudice injures even those it means to benefit.
But there are ways to heal ourselves and our communities from these injuries. Our text from Ephesians today says, “putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members one of another.” This is the healing process, making evident the truth of what our world is actually like, highlighting the lies that make prejudice possible, and recognizing that we are essentially we- not us and them- that all children are our children.
The text also calls us to “put away…all bitterness and wrath and anger.” This is not a simple thing to do. It is a process that happens over and over. When I was studying in the Black Studies Department at SF State, I came up against bitterness and wrath and anger all the time. I was typically the only white student in the Black Studies classes and so was an easy target to be called to task for everything white people have done throughout history. Part of the issue was that my classmates were learning the true history of their ancestors for the first time. And becoming aware of the truth of our inheritance can, likely should, make one angry. But we have to do something with this anger. We can’t just “put [it] away.” It will come back.
I hope many of you have seen the move “Inside Out.” As soon as I heard about it, I knew it was a movie we had to see. It’s about a girl, close to Jerri Lane’s age, who moves from Minnesota to San Francisco and is emotionally set adrift by the change. The movie is a brilliant way of talking about emotions. Most of the movie takes place inside the head of the main character, Riley. The set is a control panel where five emotions vie for control of Riley’s actions. Only one of them can be in control at a time.
For Riley Joy always wants to take the lead, which becomes problematic as Riley experiences the intense emotions of moving to a new state- sadness from missing everything and everyone familiar, anger at her lack of control over the situation. When Anger is in control, it just pounds on all the buttons on the control panel. So Joy just keeps trying to force herself to the panel. That’s kind of what we have done as a country, when confronted with anger or sadness over the history we inherit; we focus instead on the winners of the historical events, or the ways in which our country is awesome. It is somehow unpatriotic to be sad or angry or anxious about our culture.
This doesn’t work well for Riley, in fact as Joy refuses to allow Riley’s memories to be colored with sadness, Riley looses her connection to the things that made her who she was. She looses the warm fuzzy feeling she had associated with her family. She looses the ability to be unselfconsciously silly. In the face of so much change, such deep emotional distress, it is not the big loud emotions, like anger or joy, that Riley needs.
Ephesians calls us, in the face of malice, to be tenderhearted. Tenderhearted. In the movie tender feelings are nurtured by sadness. Joy had been so afraid to let Riley feel sad, but it was only when sadness was in control that tenderness could return and Riley could heal.
Quite often we think about meeting great violence with anger, and anger has its place, but anger hits all the buttons as once, making it difficult to actually change anything. When we respond in anger we respond with a broad stroke- one that can unintentionally hurt others. Ephesians calls us to “be kind to one another” and to be forgiving, like the relatives of the Charleston church shooting victims, who offered forgiveness to the shooter. Meeting his angry actions with this tender hearted one must have taken the wind out of his sails, especially given his previous admission that he almost couldn’t go through with his plan, the people had been so kind to him. We are called to be tenderhearted like the mom I read about on Facebook this week, who found the words “I’m Gay” spray painted on her garage door in response to her two queer daughters. The mom painted over the graffiti with a rainbow, using artistic expression to show her pride in her daughters.[1]
I learned recently about a Himba tradition. Pregnant women go into meditation and discern their child’s song, which is sung to the child when they are born and will be sung to them again when they are dying. If a member of this culture commits a crime, the community will gather around them and sing them their song to remind them of who they are.[2] This is a great example of meeting a crisis with a tender hearted emotion, instead of the broad stroke of anger or the denial of Joy. Someone may be singing angrily, but they are singing of the mother’s dreams for her child.
Of course we don’t get straight to the tender heart. When there is anger, we must feel anger. When there is sadness, we must feel sadness. This is one of the big a-ha’s in the movie Inside Out. These big emotions do not just go away, even when we are committed to being kind and living in love as Christ loves us. In fact, even Christ expressed anger- he turned over the tables in the temple. And he expressed fear and sadness, “Take this cup from me.” But he always returned to the tender heart, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I imagine this is what the Charleston church and the garage door mom went through as well. Initial anger. Great sadness. And a recommitment to values deeper than their initial emotions.
As a community, as a country, it is possible for us to return to the tender heart, to heal the wounds we have inherited. But it is a process that has to happen over and over.
Working with the confirmation class on issues of justice has taught me this truth yet again. As a justice seeking church, I wanted the confirmation class to address a justice issue. We talked about the injustice in our world that bothers them the most. They decided to address gender inequality. This was such a surprise to me. As a child of the 70’s and 80’s, with a stay-at-home mom, I thought my mom had missed the boat.
She should’ve had a career, an identity outside of the family. It was first wave feminism and I was all about it. The women who fought for gender equality in that era achieved great feats. I have had relatively small barriers as a woman in our culture, compared to my mom and my grandmother. Thank you to everyone who paved the way for me.
But these feats are not enough for the young men and women coming up behind me. They are offended that women make less than men, still, in our country, that women are less likely to be CEO’s, politicians, and when is our female president? This process happens over and over. We become aware of the injustice. We hear the stories of the oppressed. We get angry. We get sad. We find the tender hearted action that will move the hard of heart.
For many generations those who descended from the losers of our history have been treated as objects, not the subjects of their own stories. And the winners of our history have seen themselves as somehow better and more deserving than others. This is the lie that we all buy into when we perpetuate systemic racism. We see this tension that is at play with the discomfort of the #alllivesmatter. We have systematically and fatally oppressed African Americans since we brought them here as slaves, that is nothing new. But we are now willing to see them as the protagonists of their own narratives.
This is why we know their names. Today is the one year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown and we have heard so many other names this year whose stories are similar. This year was not unusual in the number of people whose stories ended this way.
It was unusual in that we, as a country, cared enough to learn their names and allow them a voice in their own story. #alllivesmatter takes away this moment in history, takes away their names. And yet- we must see ourselves as one in order to recover from the wounds we inherit. We need to see the phrase #blacklivesmatter and see ourselves in that statement. When we hear of a black boy, like Raymond Clark who was in my class and lived in my neighborhood growing up, killed by gunshot when we were still teenagers, we can’t think “It’s terrible how we treat black people.” We have to see him as my neighbor, my classmate, my brother, my child. We need to feel all the feels that brings up. Anger. Sadness. Fear. Disgust. We need to explode and depress and come to the tender heart that allows Michael Brown to be the subject of his own story, knowing that it is our story, too.
Our text today calls us to forgive. This is a tender hearted reaction. Surround those who harm with the song of their birth, the person they could be in the fullness of who they are, paint a rainbow over the hateful graffiti. Forgiveness is not about denying the hurt. It is about believing the potential we all see in the face of a newborn is still present in the face of the guilty. May it be so. Amen.
[1] http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2015/08/how-this-mom-reacts-to-homophobic-vandalism-is-amazing/ 8-6-15
[2] Faith Rooted Community Organizing, Salvatierra, Heltzel. Pg. 140
You see, I am of European and Native American decent. Without the English and French settlers who intermarried with my Cherokee ancestors, I could not exist. I am also of Bermudan ancestry, my family likely includes both English and African ancestors. My grandfather was on his way to the Pacific theater in WWII when he was re-ordered to Bermuda because the atomic bombs took the place of his unit. There he met my Grandmother. And my father, during his time in Vietnam, clarified what was important in his life as family. He went from what my mom described as a “drunken sex-craved maniac” she wouldn’t date to the loving, gentle man she married. As a young person this legacy seemed like a burden.
But this is what we inherit in this country. Perhaps me more than you, not many of us can trace our existence back to so many different historical tragedies. Or perhaps you more than me, because my legacy is so diffuse- I am only 1/8th Cherokee, which matches Norwegian as my dominant ancestry, and even less African and present to the world like any other white woman. Many feel the brunt of our history of racism and sexism more concretely on a day to day basis.
Inheriting history such as this wounds us- and not just those marked visually or psychologically as the children of the losers of history, but all of us. There was a comedian on TV the other night, a show called last Comic Standing, who did a joke about being a failure as a white man, failing in life with the difficulty setting set as low as it can go, he put it. He was naming one of the ways a culture of stratified prejudice injures even those it means to benefit.
But there are ways to heal ourselves and our communities from these injuries. Our text from Ephesians today says, “putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members one of another.” This is the healing process, making evident the truth of what our world is actually like, highlighting the lies that make prejudice possible, and recognizing that we are essentially we- not us and them- that all children are our children.
The text also calls us to “put away…all bitterness and wrath and anger.” This is not a simple thing to do. It is a process that happens over and over. When I was studying in the Black Studies Department at SF State, I came up against bitterness and wrath and anger all the time. I was typically the only white student in the Black Studies classes and so was an easy target to be called to task for everything white people have done throughout history. Part of the issue was that my classmates were learning the true history of their ancestors for the first time. And becoming aware of the truth of our inheritance can, likely should, make one angry. But we have to do something with this anger. We can’t just “put [it] away.” It will come back.
I hope many of you have seen the move “Inside Out.” As soon as I heard about it, I knew it was a movie we had to see. It’s about a girl, close to Jerri Lane’s age, who moves from Minnesota to San Francisco and is emotionally set adrift by the change. The movie is a brilliant way of talking about emotions. Most of the movie takes place inside the head of the main character, Riley. The set is a control panel where five emotions vie for control of Riley’s actions. Only one of them can be in control at a time.
For Riley Joy always wants to take the lead, which becomes problematic as Riley experiences the intense emotions of moving to a new state- sadness from missing everything and everyone familiar, anger at her lack of control over the situation. When Anger is in control, it just pounds on all the buttons on the control panel. So Joy just keeps trying to force herself to the panel. That’s kind of what we have done as a country, when confronted with anger or sadness over the history we inherit; we focus instead on the winners of the historical events, or the ways in which our country is awesome. It is somehow unpatriotic to be sad or angry or anxious about our culture.
This doesn’t work well for Riley, in fact as Joy refuses to allow Riley’s memories to be colored with sadness, Riley looses her connection to the things that made her who she was. She looses the warm fuzzy feeling she had associated with her family. She looses the ability to be unselfconsciously silly. In the face of so much change, such deep emotional distress, it is not the big loud emotions, like anger or joy, that Riley needs.
Ephesians calls us, in the face of malice, to be tenderhearted. Tenderhearted. In the movie tender feelings are nurtured by sadness. Joy had been so afraid to let Riley feel sad, but it was only when sadness was in control that tenderness could return and Riley could heal.
Quite often we think about meeting great violence with anger, and anger has its place, but anger hits all the buttons as once, making it difficult to actually change anything. When we respond in anger we respond with a broad stroke- one that can unintentionally hurt others. Ephesians calls us to “be kind to one another” and to be forgiving, like the relatives of the Charleston church shooting victims, who offered forgiveness to the shooter. Meeting his angry actions with this tender hearted one must have taken the wind out of his sails, especially given his previous admission that he almost couldn’t go through with his plan, the people had been so kind to him. We are called to be tenderhearted like the mom I read about on Facebook this week, who found the words “I’m Gay” spray painted on her garage door in response to her two queer daughters. The mom painted over the graffiti with a rainbow, using artistic expression to show her pride in her daughters.[1]
I learned recently about a Himba tradition. Pregnant women go into meditation and discern their child’s song, which is sung to the child when they are born and will be sung to them again when they are dying. If a member of this culture commits a crime, the community will gather around them and sing them their song to remind them of who they are.[2] This is a great example of meeting a crisis with a tender hearted emotion, instead of the broad stroke of anger or the denial of Joy. Someone may be singing angrily, but they are singing of the mother’s dreams for her child.
Of course we don’t get straight to the tender heart. When there is anger, we must feel anger. When there is sadness, we must feel sadness. This is one of the big a-ha’s in the movie Inside Out. These big emotions do not just go away, even when we are committed to being kind and living in love as Christ loves us. In fact, even Christ expressed anger- he turned over the tables in the temple. And he expressed fear and sadness, “Take this cup from me.” But he always returned to the tender heart, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I imagine this is what the Charleston church and the garage door mom went through as well. Initial anger. Great sadness. And a recommitment to values deeper than their initial emotions.
As a community, as a country, it is possible for us to return to the tender heart, to heal the wounds we have inherited. But it is a process that has to happen over and over.
Working with the confirmation class on issues of justice has taught me this truth yet again. As a justice seeking church, I wanted the confirmation class to address a justice issue. We talked about the injustice in our world that bothers them the most. They decided to address gender inequality. This was such a surprise to me. As a child of the 70’s and 80’s, with a stay-at-home mom, I thought my mom had missed the boat.
She should’ve had a career, an identity outside of the family. It was first wave feminism and I was all about it. The women who fought for gender equality in that era achieved great feats. I have had relatively small barriers as a woman in our culture, compared to my mom and my grandmother. Thank you to everyone who paved the way for me.
But these feats are not enough for the young men and women coming up behind me. They are offended that women make less than men, still, in our country, that women are less likely to be CEO’s, politicians, and when is our female president? This process happens over and over. We become aware of the injustice. We hear the stories of the oppressed. We get angry. We get sad. We find the tender hearted action that will move the hard of heart.
For many generations those who descended from the losers of our history have been treated as objects, not the subjects of their own stories. And the winners of our history have seen themselves as somehow better and more deserving than others. This is the lie that we all buy into when we perpetuate systemic racism. We see this tension that is at play with the discomfort of the #alllivesmatter. We have systematically and fatally oppressed African Americans since we brought them here as slaves, that is nothing new. But we are now willing to see them as the protagonists of their own narratives.
This is why we know their names. Today is the one year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown and we have heard so many other names this year whose stories are similar. This year was not unusual in the number of people whose stories ended this way.
It was unusual in that we, as a country, cared enough to learn their names and allow them a voice in their own story. #alllivesmatter takes away this moment in history, takes away their names. And yet- we must see ourselves as one in order to recover from the wounds we inherit. We need to see the phrase #blacklivesmatter and see ourselves in that statement. When we hear of a black boy, like Raymond Clark who was in my class and lived in my neighborhood growing up, killed by gunshot when we were still teenagers, we can’t think “It’s terrible how we treat black people.” We have to see him as my neighbor, my classmate, my brother, my child. We need to feel all the feels that brings up. Anger. Sadness. Fear. Disgust. We need to explode and depress and come to the tender heart that allows Michael Brown to be the subject of his own story, knowing that it is our story, too.
Our text today calls us to forgive. This is a tender hearted reaction. Surround those who harm with the song of their birth, the person they could be in the fullness of who they are, paint a rainbow over the hateful graffiti. Forgiveness is not about denying the hurt. It is about believing the potential we all see in the face of a newborn is still present in the face of the guilty. May it be so. Amen.
[1] http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2015/08/how-this-mom-reacts-to-homophobic-vandalism-is-amazing/ 8-6-15
[2] Faith Rooted Community Organizing, Salvatierra, Heltzel. Pg. 140