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.
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