Showing Up
Sermon
Sermons on the Gospel Readings
Series II, Cycle B
No less a commentator on the human condition than Woody Allen has said, "Eighty percent of success is showing up." About success, he may be right, but he's surely right if we apply his comment to compassion.
Firefighters have a tradition that when one of them dies, especially in the line of duty, not only that person's squad and department, but also firefighters from the region show up for the funeral, out of respect for the deceased and in support of the grieving family. With the large number of firefighters' funerals in New York City following the 9/11 tragedy, and with so many emergency personnel occupied on the disaster site, it became a strain to keep that tradition going. But then New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani put out a call for citizens to go to the firefighters' funerals, and many did so. Those citizens didn't personally know the fallen firefighters, but they came anyway. And somehow, their being there meant something to the families and firefighting squads. If nothing else, the citizens showed up to help the fire department do its mourning.
It's like the little girl who was sent to the corner store to get a loaf of bread. When she did not return promptly, her mother became anxious. Finally, however, the child did return, and her mother questioned her about the delay. The girl explained that she had come upon her friend who had just broken her favorite doll. "Oh," said her mother, "you stopped to help her fix it?" "No" said the girl, "I stopped to help her cry."
That's actually quite a noble thing. There are times when we feel totally inadequate to help someone in pain or grief, and yet there is still a ministry we can perform. We can show up, and we can help them cry.
For example, consider the Old Testament story about the time when David, as a young man, was serving in the court of King Saul. Saul was insanely jealous of David and sought to kill him. David's best friend was Saul's son, Jonathan, and this young man tried to intercede with his father on David's behalf, but he was unsuccessful. Finally, the only thing left for Jonathan to do was to warn David to flee for his life. The two friends met for the last time on an archery course, both feeling very bad about parting, and, as the scripture records it, "they ... wept with each other" (1 Samuel 20:41).
Or consider the New Testament incident from Acts 9 where a good Christian woman named Tabitha had died, and some friends asked Peter to come over. When he got to Tabitha's house, he found a group of widows there. They stopped weeping long enough to show Peter some clothing the good woman had made and given to people in the community. These women were friends of Tabitha's from the neighborhood. With Tabitha dead, there was not much they could do, but they showed up anyway. While waiting for Peter, they were probably doing the few dishes left in Tabitha's sink, giving her house a quick dusting, and some tidying up. Maybe they swept her sidewalk. It wasn't much, but they showed up to do what they could, and to cry with Tabitha's family.
Haven't we all had times like that where we've felt absolutely helpless to aid or comfort someone?
¥
What can we do that will make a difference in the outcome when we are waiting in a hospital corridor with a friend while his wife is receiving emergency treatment following a terrible accident?
¥
What can we do that will make a difference in the outcome for a friend who has just been told he has terminal cancer?
¥
What can we do that will make a difference in the outcome for parents whose grown child has just committed a serious crime?
¥
What can we do that will make a difference in the outcome for friends that have just lost a child?
¥
What can we do that will make a difference in the outcome for an acquaintance whose marriage has fallen apart? (Many of us Christians who don't do too badly reaching out to someone who has lost a loved one to death, often fail miserably when it comes to empathizing with someone whose marriage has died.)
Most of the time there isn't anything we can do that will change the outcome, and yet if we care, we show up anyway. Maybe we look for some little things that the grieving person has overlooked, and do them. Maybe we bring cookies. Maybe we offer to watch the children for a few hours. Maybe we hold our hand over our heart as the flag-draped casket goes by on the back of a fire truck. We say a prayer. Or maybe we just sit with the grieving person and cry with them. Tiny gestures have a huge importance to someone who is grieving. What we do seems like almost nothing, and yet it means almost everything.
Of course, feeling compassion does not always mean actually weeping with someone. It means making ourselves available to the one who is suffering, putting aside our own concerns long enough to, in some measure, go through the suffering with them.
I read somewhere about a woman who was having marital problems, and it looked like she and her husband were headed for a divorce. The woman confided her hurt and anger to her best friend. The friend listened and even cried with her. A week later, the friend was hospitalized for a serious surgery. When the first woman went to see her in the hospital she asked her friend why she hadn't mentioned that she was seriously ill. From the bed the friend said, "I forgot I was. I was thinking of you." That's showing up for someone.
Such standing by someone in their troubles is the stuff of really loving one another as Jesus loved us. It's a godly thing to do. Allowing ourselves to be touched by somebody else's pain is something that Christ himself did. The shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35, found in our text for today. It's short, but it's also one full of meaning. In the King James Version, the verse is just two words: "Jesus wept." He wept because he was with Mary and Martha who were grieving over the death of their brother Lazarus. He stood with them, and he also wept.
What we are talking about, of course, is empathy, which is something quite different than sympathy. Sympathy means to feel pity or sorrow for someone. It's a good thing, but it still stands apart from the grief-causing event. When I express my sadness for you for what you are going through, I am feeling sympathy. But when I put myself in a place where I allow some of the weight of your agony to fall on me, to feel some of what it's like to be in your position, I am feeling empathy.
A while back, the TNT television network produced a mini-series called Nuremburg, about the war-crime trials in Germany following World War II. It was a dramatization of a real event, the trial of 24 Nazis for the murder of millions of civilians, mostly Jews, in the prison camps. The drama focused on Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering, the ranking Nazi defendant. As the trial moved along, a psychologist from the U.S. watched the proceedings and talked to the defendants, trying to understand what mechanism would enable one group of humans to commit such evil against fellow human beings. In one scene, he tells the lead prosecutor what he'd concluded. "Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy." The inability on the part of the evildoers to put themselves in the place of those they were murdering allowed such an atrocity to take place.
If the lack of empathy defines evil, then the presence of empathy has to be at least one definition of goodness, of godliness.
This is All Saints' Sunday, a time to remember our predecessors in the faith who have now moved on into eternity. What makes so many of them saintly in our memories is not that they were perfect or sinless, but that they showed up for their brothers and sisters in time of need.
Many of us do pretty well at showing up for others, but if we find that we don't, then we should consider what prevents us. Perhaps it is insensitivity, and if that's the case, we need to be in prayer and ask God to open our eyes and our hearts.
But for many of us, it's a feeling that anything we could do is inadequate in the face of the enormity of someone else's pain. Yet time and again, that showing up even when we feel there's nothing we can do, proves remarkably helpful.
Urban Holmes, an Episcopalian priest, tells of a friend of his, a fellow priest, who, one summer afternoon, was called to a home in his parish. The only child of a couple had been killed. Before the birth of this child, the couple had tried for years to have a baby. Now, in a horrible accident, the boy lay dead in his own front yard, under the wheels of his father's car.
The priest felt an oppressive sense of grief himself as he headed for the family's home, but he went anyway. He entered the house where the parents sat clinging to each other. The blood of the son was still on the father's trousers. Before the priest could speak, he broke into uncontrolled sobs, which went on for a long time before the pastor could collect himself.
There is no pastoral counseling manual that says: "First weep uncontrollably." And perhaps some would say that this pastor had "blown it." But some weeks later the couple told this priest that there could have been no more effective ministry to them than what he had done. He had entered with them into the mystery of death, fought the demons, and found the angels.1
We may hesitate to help out of embarrassment. We don't know what to say. We are afraid we might break down. We fear appearing silly. We convince ourselves that the other person really wants to be left alone.
When we go to comfort someone, there are some things we probably shouldn't say, like "He looks so natural," or "Well, you're young; you can have more children," or "Oh well, there are more fish in the ocean."
But aside from not in indulging in insensitive comments like that, we help most not by what we say, but because we make the effort. We put our embarrassment aside, and take the risk of showing up.
While it is true that someone who has experienced the same kind of loss may be better suited to help in a similar circumstance, it is also true that we don't have to have gone through a divorce ourselves, or cancer ourselves, to show up for someone who is going through them now.
Finally, we may hesitate to show up for someone in their pain because the pain of our own wounds from our own losses is still with us. Yet Christ does not call us to reach out only when we are on solid ground ourselves. There is an old legend in the Talmud, which is a collection of ancient rabbinic writings that is a basis of religious authority in the Jewish faith. It goes like this:
Rabbi Yoshua ben Levi came upon Elijah the prophet ... He asked Elijah, "When will the Messiah come?"
Elijah replied, "Go ask him yourself."
"Where is he?"
"Sitting at the gates of the city."
"How shall I know him?"
"He is sitting among the poor covered with wounds. The others unbind all their wounds at the same time and then bind them up again. But he unbinds one at a time and binds it up again, saying to himself, 'Perhaps I shall be needed: if so, I must always be ready so as not to delay for a moment.' "2
Even we who are wounded can be healers when we give the gift of ourselves. That's an act of Christian love. At least eighty percent of compassion is showing up.
____________
1.ÊUrban Holmes, The Priest in the Community (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), p. 135.
2.ÊQuoted by Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer (Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1979), p. 81.
Firefighters have a tradition that when one of them dies, especially in the line of duty, not only that person's squad and department, but also firefighters from the region show up for the funeral, out of respect for the deceased and in support of the grieving family. With the large number of firefighters' funerals in New York City following the 9/11 tragedy, and with so many emergency personnel occupied on the disaster site, it became a strain to keep that tradition going. But then New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani put out a call for citizens to go to the firefighters' funerals, and many did so. Those citizens didn't personally know the fallen firefighters, but they came anyway. And somehow, their being there meant something to the families and firefighting squads. If nothing else, the citizens showed up to help the fire department do its mourning.
It's like the little girl who was sent to the corner store to get a loaf of bread. When she did not return promptly, her mother became anxious. Finally, however, the child did return, and her mother questioned her about the delay. The girl explained that she had come upon her friend who had just broken her favorite doll. "Oh," said her mother, "you stopped to help her fix it?" "No" said the girl, "I stopped to help her cry."
That's actually quite a noble thing. There are times when we feel totally inadequate to help someone in pain or grief, and yet there is still a ministry we can perform. We can show up, and we can help them cry.
For example, consider the Old Testament story about the time when David, as a young man, was serving in the court of King Saul. Saul was insanely jealous of David and sought to kill him. David's best friend was Saul's son, Jonathan, and this young man tried to intercede with his father on David's behalf, but he was unsuccessful. Finally, the only thing left for Jonathan to do was to warn David to flee for his life. The two friends met for the last time on an archery course, both feeling very bad about parting, and, as the scripture records it, "they ... wept with each other" (1 Samuel 20:41).
Or consider the New Testament incident from Acts 9 where a good Christian woman named Tabitha had died, and some friends asked Peter to come over. When he got to Tabitha's house, he found a group of widows there. They stopped weeping long enough to show Peter some clothing the good woman had made and given to people in the community. These women were friends of Tabitha's from the neighborhood. With Tabitha dead, there was not much they could do, but they showed up anyway. While waiting for Peter, they were probably doing the few dishes left in Tabitha's sink, giving her house a quick dusting, and some tidying up. Maybe they swept her sidewalk. It wasn't much, but they showed up to do what they could, and to cry with Tabitha's family.
Haven't we all had times like that where we've felt absolutely helpless to aid or comfort someone?
¥
What can we do that will make a difference in the outcome when we are waiting in a hospital corridor with a friend while his wife is receiving emergency treatment following a terrible accident?
¥
What can we do that will make a difference in the outcome for a friend who has just been told he has terminal cancer?
¥
What can we do that will make a difference in the outcome for parents whose grown child has just committed a serious crime?
¥
What can we do that will make a difference in the outcome for friends that have just lost a child?
¥
What can we do that will make a difference in the outcome for an acquaintance whose marriage has fallen apart? (Many of us Christians who don't do too badly reaching out to someone who has lost a loved one to death, often fail miserably when it comes to empathizing with someone whose marriage has died.)
Most of the time there isn't anything we can do that will change the outcome, and yet if we care, we show up anyway. Maybe we look for some little things that the grieving person has overlooked, and do them. Maybe we bring cookies. Maybe we offer to watch the children for a few hours. Maybe we hold our hand over our heart as the flag-draped casket goes by on the back of a fire truck. We say a prayer. Or maybe we just sit with the grieving person and cry with them. Tiny gestures have a huge importance to someone who is grieving. What we do seems like almost nothing, and yet it means almost everything.
Of course, feeling compassion does not always mean actually weeping with someone. It means making ourselves available to the one who is suffering, putting aside our own concerns long enough to, in some measure, go through the suffering with them.
I read somewhere about a woman who was having marital problems, and it looked like she and her husband were headed for a divorce. The woman confided her hurt and anger to her best friend. The friend listened and even cried with her. A week later, the friend was hospitalized for a serious surgery. When the first woman went to see her in the hospital she asked her friend why she hadn't mentioned that she was seriously ill. From the bed the friend said, "I forgot I was. I was thinking of you." That's showing up for someone.
Such standing by someone in their troubles is the stuff of really loving one another as Jesus loved us. It's a godly thing to do. Allowing ourselves to be touched by somebody else's pain is something that Christ himself did. The shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35, found in our text for today. It's short, but it's also one full of meaning. In the King James Version, the verse is just two words: "Jesus wept." He wept because he was with Mary and Martha who were grieving over the death of their brother Lazarus. He stood with them, and he also wept.
What we are talking about, of course, is empathy, which is something quite different than sympathy. Sympathy means to feel pity or sorrow for someone. It's a good thing, but it still stands apart from the grief-causing event. When I express my sadness for you for what you are going through, I am feeling sympathy. But when I put myself in a place where I allow some of the weight of your agony to fall on me, to feel some of what it's like to be in your position, I am feeling empathy.
A while back, the TNT television network produced a mini-series called Nuremburg, about the war-crime trials in Germany following World War II. It was a dramatization of a real event, the trial of 24 Nazis for the murder of millions of civilians, mostly Jews, in the prison camps. The drama focused on Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering, the ranking Nazi defendant. As the trial moved along, a psychologist from the U.S. watched the proceedings and talked to the defendants, trying to understand what mechanism would enable one group of humans to commit such evil against fellow human beings. In one scene, he tells the lead prosecutor what he'd concluded. "Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy." The inability on the part of the evildoers to put themselves in the place of those they were murdering allowed such an atrocity to take place.
If the lack of empathy defines evil, then the presence of empathy has to be at least one definition of goodness, of godliness.
This is All Saints' Sunday, a time to remember our predecessors in the faith who have now moved on into eternity. What makes so many of them saintly in our memories is not that they were perfect or sinless, but that they showed up for their brothers and sisters in time of need.
Many of us do pretty well at showing up for others, but if we find that we don't, then we should consider what prevents us. Perhaps it is insensitivity, and if that's the case, we need to be in prayer and ask God to open our eyes and our hearts.
But for many of us, it's a feeling that anything we could do is inadequate in the face of the enormity of someone else's pain. Yet time and again, that showing up even when we feel there's nothing we can do, proves remarkably helpful.
Urban Holmes, an Episcopalian priest, tells of a friend of his, a fellow priest, who, one summer afternoon, was called to a home in his parish. The only child of a couple had been killed. Before the birth of this child, the couple had tried for years to have a baby. Now, in a horrible accident, the boy lay dead in his own front yard, under the wheels of his father's car.
The priest felt an oppressive sense of grief himself as he headed for the family's home, but he went anyway. He entered the house where the parents sat clinging to each other. The blood of the son was still on the father's trousers. Before the priest could speak, he broke into uncontrolled sobs, which went on for a long time before the pastor could collect himself.
There is no pastoral counseling manual that says: "First weep uncontrollably." And perhaps some would say that this pastor had "blown it." But some weeks later the couple told this priest that there could have been no more effective ministry to them than what he had done. He had entered with them into the mystery of death, fought the demons, and found the angels.1
We may hesitate to help out of embarrassment. We don't know what to say. We are afraid we might break down. We fear appearing silly. We convince ourselves that the other person really wants to be left alone.
When we go to comfort someone, there are some things we probably shouldn't say, like "He looks so natural," or "Well, you're young; you can have more children," or "Oh well, there are more fish in the ocean."
But aside from not in indulging in insensitive comments like that, we help most not by what we say, but because we make the effort. We put our embarrassment aside, and take the risk of showing up.
While it is true that someone who has experienced the same kind of loss may be better suited to help in a similar circumstance, it is also true that we don't have to have gone through a divorce ourselves, or cancer ourselves, to show up for someone who is going through them now.
Finally, we may hesitate to show up for someone in their pain because the pain of our own wounds from our own losses is still with us. Yet Christ does not call us to reach out only when we are on solid ground ourselves. There is an old legend in the Talmud, which is a collection of ancient rabbinic writings that is a basis of religious authority in the Jewish faith. It goes like this:
Rabbi Yoshua ben Levi came upon Elijah the prophet ... He asked Elijah, "When will the Messiah come?"
Elijah replied, "Go ask him yourself."
"Where is he?"
"Sitting at the gates of the city."
"How shall I know him?"
"He is sitting among the poor covered with wounds. The others unbind all their wounds at the same time and then bind them up again. But he unbinds one at a time and binds it up again, saying to himself, 'Perhaps I shall be needed: if so, I must always be ready so as not to delay for a moment.' "2
Even we who are wounded can be healers when we give the gift of ourselves. That's an act of Christian love. At least eighty percent of compassion is showing up.
____________
1.ÊUrban Holmes, The Priest in the Community (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), p. 135.
2.ÊQuoted by Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer (Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1979), p. 81.
