Lent 4 -- Talking Across DIfferences

Lent 4A 2017

Ephesians 5:8-14; Psalm 23; John 9:1-41

                                                           Rev. Adam T. Trambley                                  

March 26, 2017, St. John’s Sharon

This morning’s gospel talks about how a man born blind comes to increasing faith and sight, while those born seeing become more and more blind.  Jesus performs the incredible miracle a healing his sight, and the religious leaders are totally unable to accept it. They have already made up their minds about Jesus, and about how and when miracles are supposed to take place.  They can’t see what is right in front of them.  Their blindness would be unbelievable, except that we see it all the time.  So many people in so many contexts make decisions about so many things, and even the starkest reality right in front of their own eyes won’t convince them otherwise. 

If anybody would have reason to be secure in their beliefs, it would be the Pharisees.  They studied the law of God, and most of them practiced it.  Pharisees were the religious folks who made sure that normal people still heard about God.  They were also the ones who tended to be concerned with public morality when the Chief Priests and scribes and Sadducees were concerned about the expensive temple rites and the politics the Roman occupation.  Yet, even the Pharisees, who should have been so right, in this case were so wrong.  All they had to do was listen to the testimony of the man born blind and to hear his story, but for whatever reason, they couldn’t.  They claimed to see, and, as Jesus said, their sin remained.

In today’s society, a whole lot of people aren’t able to listen to each other.  Our minds are filled with the stories we have already written about people or groups.  These stories are at best partially true and can keep us from hearing and seeing what is really going on with people.  We all have in our minds pictures and characteristics of all sorts of people and groups formed from messages we’ve distilled from whatever media we are exposed to, as well as input from parents, peers and others.  We know what people who live in Sharpsville are like, or that live in Hermitage, or Sharon, or Farrell.  We know about liberals or conservatives, democrats or republicans, white folks or black folks, Mexicans or Arabs, Muslims or agnostics, millennials or baby-boomers, Catholics or Baptists, poor folks or half-way house residents or business people, or social workers.  The Pharisees already had a story in their minds about people who violated the Sabbath—they were ungodly people who were dangers to the Jewish way of life.  The Pharisees were wrong, or at least they were not all the way right.  We are in the same situation with all the stories already formed in our minds.

A few weeks ago, the clergy from our Diocese had a training done by a group called Visions, Incorporated to teach us skills to go beyond the stories in our heads to be able to actually see and hear each other.  We did a lot of exercises, which I won’t make you do this morning, but many of them were good and they were hard work – and we were in a room full of people that already knew each other and were pretty much the same.  As a church, part of what we need to be able to do is talk to people that are different, because even if we all seem the same, eventually we make up new differences to stop talking with each other about.  That’s part of the reason we have all the denominations that we have – somehow we always find ways to stop listening and understanding each other.

The trainers gave us some guidelines for effective dialogue. 

Guidelines for Effective Dialogue From Visions Inc.

• “Try on”
• It’s okay to disagree
• It is not okay to blame, shame, or attack, self or others
• Practice “self-focus”
• Practice “both/and” thinking
• Notice both process and content
• Be aware of intent and impact

These should help us in our congregational life if we use them, but they are also tools that we can use in all aspects of our life.  If we learn to listen to each other better as a church, we can offer that gift to a society that desperately needs it.

The first guideline is “try on”.  Trying on means that we listen to someone else’s story or perspective and try to try it on.  How would it feel to walk a mile in their shoes?  I need to set aside my own existing judgments about people and their motivations and experiences so that I can understand what is actually going on in their lives.  When I am listening to someone who has very different opinions and I “try on” their story, I often find that I might end up thinking or acting a lot more like them if I had their life.  Trying on doesn’t mean that we give up our own thoughts and feelings and experiences.  We just set them aside for a minute to understand someone better so that when we pick our own up again we have a more complete, and a more loving, perspective.  

The second guideline is that it is okay to disagree.  Many of us don’t believe that it is actually okay to disagree.  We can feel threatened if people hold other opinions or want different things.  Alternatively, we might have been raised to be nice and told that we weren’t allowed to disagree or that it was impolite, so instead of being ourselves, we hold back.  I’m not saying that we have to say everything we think.  But disagreements are usually signs that we live in a bigger world and worship a bigger God than we can comprehend and control.  Since people do see and experience their lives differently, then the places where we disagree are places where we can learn from each other and deepen our understanding and appreciation of the depth of God’s creation.  Even if we disagree because someone is just misinformed or wrong, and sometimes that happens, they still get to have their opinions and it is still okay to disagree. Only through honest disagreement can the truth come forward.

It is okay to disagree, but it is not okay to blame, shame or attack either ourselves or others.  We can’t have a dialogue or be in community if we are moving to blame, shame or attack.  These actions are often the result of applying the story in our head to the complex, particular human being standing in front of us.  Not all white people are responsible for slavery and not all people with Black Lives Matter signs are unconcerned about the lives of police officers and their families.  People who like traditional hymns are not the reason young people don’t come to church and people who like more contemporary music aren’t trying to throw out our Episcopal heritage.  We are called to listen to what the people with us are actually try to accomplish, what their dreams and aspirations are, what the barriers and threats they see are, and why they believe or do what they are doing. 

We also can’t slip into blaming and shaming ourselves.  If we are people who start to say something and then end with phrases like, “but that’s not important” or “don’t worry about it”, we are devaluing our own perspectives and opinions.  Who we are is as important as who others are.  Sometimes the story we tell about ourselves is that we are not as good or as smart or as capable or as whatever, or that we aren’t supposed to be involved in certain things because it isn’t our place.  We need to bring fully who we are if we are going to have a loving, respectful relationship with others.  They actually need us as much as we need them, and we both really do need one another.

The next guideline is to practice self-focus.  Self-focus has two components.  The first is that when I speak, I speak for myself.  I can only really talk authoritatively about who I am, what I think, what I feel, and what I’ve experienced.  I really don’t know what “everybody” thinks, or what “all sane people” know, or what “anybody who is really a Christian” does.  I only know what I mean as I talk about those things.  The other piece of self-focus is that when I’m talking to people in ways that are difficult or challenging, I need to pay attention to myself.  When am getting angry, when am I happy, when I am relieved.  Those feelings in our conversation tell us about where our own resentments, pains or prejudices may be lurking.  When we know that information, we can deal with them, instead of projecting them on others. 

Practice “both/and” thinking.  So often we decide that if one thing is right, then everything else is wrong.  Often, seemingly opposite things are both true from certain perspectives or in certain ways.  To emphasize this during our workshop, the facilitators always said “and” instead of “but” as they were making points or summarizing discussion.  Can we allow our ideas to be filled with “ands” instead of “buts”?  A person can really want to volunteer AND also be totally swamped this week.  A person can really love you AND forget to check their phone messages.  A person can know something is for the best AND still feel scared or hurt enough to resist changing.

The next guideline is to be notice both process and content.  How we are getting somewhere is important AND so is where we are going.  Maybe after a discussion, everyone has said they agreed, but one person dominated the conversation.  Probably that person agreed, but the process issues point to other problems to be addressed.  Or maybe after a long, difficult conversation, everybody still disagrees on what to do, but everyone felt heard, said what they needed to say, and, in the end, feels more comfortable with each other.  That situation could actually be a huge win.  To build a community requires that we deal with the issues and questions we need to deal with, but that we also ensure that we do it in a way were people feel supported, loved, and respected.  Speaking the truth in love means ensuring that we are both speaking the truth in our conversations and that we make sure people still feel loved afterwards.  

The final guideline is to be aware of intent and impact.  Often, the effects of what we say and do turn out differently than we thought they would.  One part of this guideline means that we have a responsibility not just to mean well, but also to make sure that what we say and do has the impact we mean it to have.  Often ensuring our that our impact matches our intent means getting to know someone well enough to understand how they will feel about what we do, and then to be willing to change our behaviors to match.  The book, The Five Love Languages is a great study for our family life about how even the most loving relationships can get thrown for loops when two people don’t feel the same way about actions like gift giving, or service, or words of encouragement, or quality time, or physical touch.  We might think we are doing one thing, but someone else perceives it very differently.  We need to find out how they will feel about what we will do and then act accordingly. 

The other part of this guideline means being aware that the impact of other people’s behaviors on us may not have matched their intent.  If the impact of something someone did is harmful to us, then we should do a couple of things.  We can keep an open mind about their intent. Maybe they did want to harm us, but probably they didn’t. Their intent may have been completely different.  Then we can talk with them directly about the harm.  If their intent was good, that conversation is an opportunity for them to learn, and for healing and reconciliation to take place.  If their intent was about something else entirely and we were just some sort of collateral damage, that will be helpful for both them and us to hear and understand.  Finally, if they were actually trying to cause us harm, then we know who really needs our prayers and we can start taking steps to protect ourselves in the future.

None of these guidelines are meant to say that we don’t act, or vote, or work to do the things that we believe and that matter to us.  Hopefully, however, by engaging with others in discussions even across our differences, we can be better informed about decisions we make and find ways to be more effective in what we are doing.  More importantly, these guidelines, and the other aspects of developing loving relationships we have focused on during Lent, should help us build a church and a society that are better able to include a wide range of people that love God and our neighbor more like Jesus would have us love them.  

Resentments -- Lent 3; Romans 5:3-5

Lent 3A 2017 – Resentments

Romans 5:1-11; Psalm 95; John 4:5-42

                                                           Rev. Adam T. Trambley                                  

March 19, 2017, St. John’s Sharon

This Lent, we’ve been talking about dealing with conflict.  Today, I want to look at the importance of what we are thinking when we are hurt, angry, resentful, or facing conflict.  In many cases, we will never find a satisfactory resolution to the issues we are having with others until we change how we are reacting to a situation.   

In his letter to the Romans that we heard this morning, Paul says that, “We also boast in our sufferings.”  Paul’s use of “we” is interesting, since I think we tend to whine about sufferings, not boast about them.  But Paul offers this powerful explanation for why he can boast.  He knows that “suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.”  In the end, Paul can boast about his sufferings, instead of resent them, because he knows, trusts, and hopes in God.  Paul knows that God is more powerful than all his sufferings. 

Think about Jesus on the cross.  “Father, forgive them.”  Very few people have experienced the suffering that Jesus did.  Jesus could have called down an army of angels to fight for him, or balls of fire to smite his enemies, or any number vindictive responses that from a worldly perspective would have allowed him to “win.”  But he didn’t.  Instead, Jesus accepted his suffering and forgave the people who were murdering him.  His forgiveness wasn’t superficial, either.  He didn’t say, “Father, forgive them,” so that when they wrote the gospels people would think he was a nice, spiritual person, but he was really going to go home, eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and complain to his disciples about how unfairly he’d been treated.   Jesus saw people with all their flaws, recognized that they needed his forgiveness, and knew that he could rely on his heavenly Father for all that he needed, even during something as painful as crucifixion and even in something as seemingly final as death.  Jesus decided that his suffering wasn’t going to define him.  His relationship with God was going to define his sufferings.

Paul and Jesus show us that even in the most extreme cases of suffering, we can get to the place where are suffering does not keep us from expressing the love for other people that we are called to show.  We also can hold onto the truth that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.  We just have to get to the root of the things that keep us from living into that hope.

Twelve-step programs have practical techniques to look at where we are allowing our resentments about sufferings to interfere with our ability to live a sober, righteous, and godly life.  Some of what I’m saying today is based on their fourth-step process, which is itself based on Christian spiritual disciples. 

Note that our sufferings are not the same as our response to our sufferings. Even when our sufferings are caused by mean, nasty, horrible people who have decided to harm us, we get to respond.  We can have three basic responses.  The first is a neutral response like, “OK, that hurt,” and then we go about our business.  We respond that way all the time concerning stuff we feel isn’t worth worrying about. 

The second response is Paul’s.  We actually use whatever has been given us to push us forward.  More suffering increases endurance.  Less resources means more reliance on God.  A shortened lifespan means we’re with God sooner.  None of this makes suffering good or says we should seek it out.  Blissfully ignorant and happy is OK.  But a good model for reacting to being harmed comes from Northwestern Pennsylvania driving – steer into the curve.  When you lose a bit of traction, if you try to turn away from the skid, you end up in a snowbank.  If you turn into the curve, you can regain control. Paul steers into his suffering for endurance, for character, for hope. 

The third response to suffering is when we lose control over suffering and let suffering gain control over us.  By gaining control, I don’t mean the physical pain, which may or may not be present.  But have our resentments over our injuries overwhelmed our emotional and spiritual life?  One way we know that our injuries, real or imagined, have grown too large in our heads is when we have imagined conversations with people who aren’t in the room.  We start imagining what we wish we would have said, or we come up with the perfect response to make them suffer, or admit we are right, or apologize, or whatever.  These conversations can keep happening and take up hours that we could spend thinking about spring flowers, or cute kittens, or ways to feed the hungry.  Or maybe the conversations aren’t in our head, but we find ourselves talking about whoever or whatever we think has done us wrong to anyone who will listen.  Or maybe we avoid people or do self-destructive things out of spite or otherwise do dumb things we otherwise wouldn’t.  All of these behaviors indicate that we have handed over control of our life not to God, but to our resentments. 

To deal with these resentments and give control back to God, we start with prayer, and then we pray at every other step in the process.  We ask God to show us what we need to know and then to be able to do what we need to do.  Only by God’s guidance can we change for the better, and God is eager to answer these prayers.

Once we’ve prayed, we need to acknowledge that the resentments are there and identify who or what did it and exactly how we feel harmed. Maybe someone got a job promotion that I wanted. Maybe they weren’t paying attention and my favorite dish broke or my grandchild got hurt.  Maybe their potato salad got eaten before mine at the church supper. Maybe they passed legislation that made my life worse.  Maybe they dress in ways that I think are ugly or inappropriate.  Maybe they physically hurt me just because they could. 

After determining what they did, we look at what specifically in us their behavior affected. Usually resentment behaviors affect either my pride and self-esteem, or my security, or my personal relationships.  Actions affect my pride when they threaten the way I think about myself or when I am not treated the way I think I should be, or when I am shown in a bad light.  Actions affect my security when I feel like my physical or economic safety and stability, or that of my family, is threatened.  Personal relationships are affected when I worry that actions will make others think differently about me or that I will lose relationships that I want to keep.  Often the same action will affect more than one thing.  The person getting a promotion instead of me might threaten my pride because I wasn’t treated the way I thought I should be, my security because I’m not getting the raise, and my personal relationships because my co-workers won’t think as highly of me.  If I’m complaining about someone dressing inappropriately, they are probably affecting my self-esteem because they are not dressing how I think they should and therefore not making me feel as important as I want, and they might be affecting my relationships if I am afraid that they will be getting attention that I want coming to me. 

After identifying how we are affected, we need to flip the situation in our heads.  Instead of focusing on what people have done to us, we look at what we are doing that is contributing to this particular resentment and hatred.  I am not saying that our suffering was our fault.  But if we have a resentment that is bothering us, then we are contributing to the situation, at least the situation in our own head.  Turning around the resentment will help us stop worrying about what people did to us, which is out of our control, and let us focus instead on what is in our control.  If we let go of the part that we are bringing to the situation, we will be able to let go of our resentment.  We might also get a better sense of the other people involved as broken human beings that need our love and help. 

I’m not saying we should let people keep hurting us that are actually hurting us.  Getting out of abusive or other destructive situations may require a lot of work and not make the person hurting us happy.  That’s OK.  Taking that action is good.  The problem is being resentful and not taking action, or allowing the resentments about the harm continue to control us after the fact instead of doing the work to heal and get fully free.

Three of the major ways we contribute to our resentments are through dishonesty, self-seeking and fear.  Dishonesty takes any number of insidious forms.  Satan is called the Father of lies for a reason.  One of the common dishonesties that creates resentments is when we decide that we know what other people are thinking.  Based on some behavior, we become sure that we know their motivations, their feelings, and, most dangerous of all, what they think of us.  We can spin out imaginary conversations in our head with someone, telling them all the reasons they did something until they have become some combination of Adolf Hitler and Cinderella’s step mother.  We compare our insecure insides with their calm outsides and assume that they are self-assured, cold and calculating in ways we never could be.  Instead of assuming the best, we decide we know that things are really the worst. In order to let go of those resentments, we have to identify when we are making assumptions about what is going on in someone else’s head.  We have to admit that we are being dishonest with ourselves because we can never really know what another person is thinking.  I barely know what is going on in my own head most of the time. 

Our dishonesty about what we think other people are thinking can get us into bigger issues when we respond to our own fantasies.  A lot of resentments come because we go out of our way to try to control our image and how we think people think about us.  Then when our scheme doesn’t work, we get mad.  The truth is that other people’s opinions about us are none of our business.  Ever.  What people think about us is not in our control and not something we are supposed to worry about.  We are supposed to do what’s right and let people think what they think. Any image control on our part is just a resentment waiting to happen.

We are also often dishonest about our own place in the universe.  We think people should do what we want them to do or what we say they should do.  But we really don’t get to control other people.  We might have reason to influence them and sometimes bad things do happen when they don’t listen to us, but we don’t have any right to expect people to do what we want.  Even when we are in a position of authority where on some level they should listen, any resentment on our part about their decisions are about our pride. We need to let that pride go.  We aren’t the center of the universe, God is.  In the end, God will make sure things come out OK.

Self-seeking also causes us resentments.  We wanted something, and we didn’t get it, and now we are mad.  Usually the more we tried to get something, the more resentful we become.  I’m not saying that we shouldn’t go for our dreams or try to reach our goals or strive to succeed.  I’m just saying that if we don’t, we’re better off mourning our loss and moving on to the next thing than nursing grudges.  God is a God of abundance and we will have enough.  We can let go of our self-seeking and receive everything as a gift from God with thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is a great antidote to self-seeking.

Finally, we come to the base of almost all our resentments, which is fear.  Even much of our dishonesty and self-seeking has its root in fear.  We fear many things, but the antidote to all of them is God’s perfect love. We know that “perfect love casts out fear.”  We cannot overcome the resentments to our sufferings ourselves, but God’s love for us can. Paul ends his statement that hope does not disappoint because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.  If we can recognize what we are afraid of, we can recognize how God’s love can overcome our fear.    

    

Many of our fears stem from our own sense of unworthiness.  We are afraid that we aren’t good enough, that no one will like us, that no one important will like us, that we aren’t important or special or loveable.  God’s answer to all of these fears is that we are God’s beloved children.  He made us, he died and rose for us, and he wants to be with us for eternity.  The more we focus on that love that God has for us, the more we can recognize the dishonesty in our fears when we resent how other people relate to us.

The other broad category of fears are fears for our own security.  We can be afraid of not having enough – enough money, enough food, enough time, enough food for the party, enough anything.  We can be afraid of being sick, or hurt, or injured.  We can be afraid of losing people we love.  We can be afraid of dying.  All of these are very legitimate human fears.  But if we turn our lives over to God, we don’t have to be afraid anymore.  We can trust that God will give us what we need, even if it isn’t what we think we need.  God can also take care of us even beyond death, so that greatest human fear can be overcome by God’s love.  We know that neither death nor life nor anything else can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.   

This firm confidence in God’s love is why Paul can boast in his sufferings.  Every suffering he endures is a chance to root out more dishonesty, more self-seeking, and more fear.  Every suffering he endures is a chance to recognize that he is a beloved child of God and that God’s love is enough.  Every suffering he endures produces a character that hopes in God, knowing that his hope will not disappoint because God’s love has been poured into his heart. So pray for God’s love to fill your heart, and when you are being controlled by resentments, do the work to turn them around.