Weary In Well Doing
Sermon
Sermons on the Second Readings
Series II, Cycle C
What makes people weary is conflict. We are torn apart, split in two, we are challenged at our core in large and small ways all day long. We say wryly, "No good deed goes unpunished," running right into the conflict of getting weary in well doing.
Biologists tell us we have two choices in most situations: We can fight or take flight or tend and befriend. The fight and flight response is most often articulated in funny hand motions -- where we both beckon the person close and push them away at the same time. The animal part of most humans knows exactly what this means. We are standing at a party with a beverage in our hand -- we are smiling, but inside we are wishing we could run away. Human contact can be quite scary! Because it is also so wonderful, none of us, including the writer of the book of Thessalonians, is surprised that there is conflict around contact.
The other biological response, being given more evolutionary attention now, is to tend and befriend. Biologists tell us that this response to nurture, care, lick, cuddle, and touch is also a natural one. We who have been hurt by conflict also know about its healing power. We know what it means to be touched on the shoulder and allowed back into the meeting our anger just removed us from. We know what it is like to care so much for someone or something that we can't bear its hurt. We stand close to the one who is hurt. We tend and befriend. We tend and befriend in very small ways -- the handwritten note, the flowers or jar of jelly, the invite to our son's soccer game. We get close after conflict -- as well as fighting and flighting. When we get close again, after conflict, weariness ends. Joy sometimes begins.
The epistle advocates a style of conflict management that is more than biological. It is fundamentally spiritual. It is the strategy of humility. Humility is not so much a strategy as a bent, not even so much a bent as a posture, not even so much a posture as a habit. Christians try to be humble people. Even when someone we love is hurt, we maintain humility. Even when we are scared to death, we maintain humility. This spiritual habit will take us a long way toward positive conflict preparation and resolution.
Many ecologists are teaching us how to think small again. It is a way we have lost. They say that the main reversal in our thinking is to understand just how beautiful small is. Humble is one aspect of small as beautiful. Small interventions make us less weary than grandiose ones. Humility does not tire in the way that pride does.
Many of us find the world trivializing and demeaning. We have tried really hard and we have still been hurt by life. We may act like we know what to do next but we really don't. We may put one foot in front of the other but not know why or how. We all but pant for great direction and guidance.
Many say, "I'm feeling pretty burned out." More truth could be said by those who have never been lit. What Thessalonians describes is the experience of being lit. Of receiving the great light and knowing how to follow it to paths of meaning and purpose instead of life as a real game of trivial pursuits.
How would we look and be different if we refused weariness in well doing? We would be free of worry and fear. We would have no time for despair. We would avoid the gossipy games of putting others down so that we could feel momentarily lifted up. We would not need such crutches. We would get out of bed in the morning eager to love someone and touch something of purpose and value. We would not go to bed at night until we had participated in God's plan to lift up the poor and troubled, blind and lame. We would not say, "I don't know how to help" so much as "How can I help?"
We may need practice. We may have just the flickering of light within us and on our path. We may need help. We may need to find out whether we are spiritually depressed. We may need to get over something that is taking up all the space, like a virus, on our hard drive. We may need to rest. We may be too tired to be lit. We may need to just say out loud, "I am weary."
The destination is what matters. It is the panting, the urgency, the truly wanting to be spiritually alive and awake that matters. If we can't practice, and if we don't want to walk around in the dark anymore, perhaps what we need to do is work on our sense of urgency. Like a great ball player, we may have to learn to want to win the game again. We may have to yield the shields that protect us from hope -- and hope again. Let them go! Being lit is magnificent. It is the antidote to weariness.
Getting beyond weariness in well doing is often a matter of catching the right bug and eliminating the wrong ones. At both the conscious and the unconscious level, these days, many of us are worried about contagion. The threat of biological and chemical warfare remains in our minds if not also on our globe. The threat of the SARS virus remains alive. (One editor friend of mine hates the word we have given this virus -- "Severe" and "Acute": both don't need to be in the same sentence.) We are newly aware that one small piece of foam probably took down a mighty space ship. Small, invisible things are more than carrying their weight. It is almost as if we have all become homeopaths -- that version of medicine that inoculates with the smallest of substances in order to produce the largest of healing.
Indeed, there are many negative forms of contagion. You can "catch something" and suffer with it for weeks. Simultaneously there are positive forms of contagion, like in homeopathic medicine or in being around contagious people or in understanding just how this gospel of ours works.
Jesus inoculates the world with his suffering and his love -- and next thing we know we, too, are contagious with hope. We are immune from fear. We are able to spread a love that we didn't know we had. We are wise in ways we did not think were possible. We are the ones who sense that life is sweet.
The small has power both positive and negative. If a piece of foam can bring down a plane, a piece of love can lift it up again.
How do we appear when we are no longer weary? When others are sour, we are sweet. When others are complaining, we are probing for the positive solutions to whatever mess we are in. When others are afraid and mongering fear, we find ways to comfort and calm. When life is too large for us and questions too complex, we stay still. We are not ones who think everything has to be answered now or done today or finished in our lifetime. We know how to wait. We have patience. While we are waiting, we know the joy of a garden walk, a bird at the feeder, and a good piece of chocolate cake. We are waiting for the day when all people have good cake, sweet lives, and great joy. We know it is coming -- and that's why we aren't afraid. We know God is in charge -- and that sweetness is what God has in mind for all.
Also, we know that we are not alone. Imagine God trusting the salvation of the world to a dozen disciples. Imagine the confidence that was placed in something so very small. Clearly, the strategy is a kind of chemical, not physical, warfare. It is an inoculation. It is a contagion. It counts on Jesus being infected by God and Jesus infecting others and those others infecting others. And guess what? It worked. There was no public relations budget -- no forcing of the issue by armies or advertising. One believed, then another believed, and then a third. Today we find Christianity more than a vibrant world religion, just now growing with vigor in Africa and Asia and South America that makes the northern continents look small. Positive contagion is the gospel strategy God used to save the world.
Many people would like to tell you that Christianity is a great world religion that fell into the wrong hands. I beg to differ. Indeed, Christianity is a great world religion. And indeed, some of its spirit did fall into the wrong hands. People have hit each other over the head with Jesus on more than one occasion. I remain consoled that so much of its spirit is in your hands and in the hands of people as ordinary as gardeners and fishermen and single women without a portfolio. That spirit is as strong as any virus -- and it will infect the world, if not sooner then later. The writer of Thessalonians was clearly one of the carriers of the gospel. Today, remarkably, we are reading his tale.
What does it mean to be inoculated by faith? It means that we trust the small. We become like gardeners who know that the smallest of seeds make the grandest of flowers. I think of the great lupine seeds, which are so small you have to scatter them with a mix of sand in your hand. Lupines easily can be a foot tall with an inlay of flowers in several colors that defies the tiling on the great temples in Morocco. We become like a bit of yogurt culture, which can firm up a whole pot of warm milk. Of course, there are negative viruses as well. I think of the way we used to make vinegar, under the sink in a glass jar. The substance used is "mother of vinegar" and I am sure it has a spiritual, as well as a physical, meaning.
Can you remember how that works? A cloud of chemicals is taken from vinegar gone old. It is placed in a combination of water or apple juice or cider or wine, left over from the table after the guests have all gone. As these leftovers become available, we put them in the hidden jar. It all becomes vinegar in contact with the mother.
Congregations and families can be infected that way, too. The smallest amount of vinegar, if allowed to contaminate the sweet, can sour the whole barrel. The folk saying is absolutely right: One bad apple can spoil the bunch. Likewise, infection can be positive. One good apple can improve the whole bunch. My point is that God uses small powerful virus-like seeds to get Jesus launched into the world. We become inoculated positively, with faith and hope and love by Jesus' entry into the world. From there, we become contagious -- and spread the news. We try to stop the vinegar -- and start the wine.
Some of us try to inoculate a whole confirmation class for their confirmation of their baptism. We have so little time to tell them the whole Christian story, but we can't worry about curriculum overload so much as worry about what they see when they come to church. You are their main teachers.
This elevation of the small to the powerful is a very hard lesson for people raised in the bigger-is-better world. I watched two men at the hospital the other day. They knew each other only slightly. One said, "I just had three parts of my heart done." The other said, "That's nothing, I had five." I thought, "Oh, boy. Isn't it great just to have one part done, if it is blocking blood to the heart? Why is it better to have more?" But I know that our world is inoculated with the large -- and I know how lethal that largeness is. Bigger says it's better, but it's not. The mightiest nation in the world is at war with several of the smallest, right now.
Weariness in well doing comes from trying to do too much, too big. Forget that. Stick with the small interventions.
Another reversal in our thinking is that of prevention. Old ways of thinking have to do with programmatic moppings up of what has gone wrong. I think of the department of children and family services -- or of most medicine. New ways of thinking have to do with creating the bodies and world and children that we want now. One is preventive and long term and focuses on wellness; the other is palliative and short term and focuses on sickness. The very strategy that God uses in the resurrection of Jesus is a preventive, long-term, wellness-focused strategy. It inoculates the world with hope.
Good leadership understands this strategy very well. Good leadership makes people's strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. We create teams that balance each other's strengths. If some member of our team or family is detail crazed and fussy, and another is so large pictured that she never met a detail she understood, that is a good team. We just have to render their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. We can inoculate each other with this kind of thinking as easily as we can inoculate with the old ways. We must be perfect or we have to be gotten off of the team or out of the family. We must be fixed and improved. Yech! Who wants to be fixed or improved? Indeed who can be fixed and improved? Most of us have fairly permanent warts to which we are very attached. In God's world, these warts are accepted.
Humility joins God in understanding the wart part -- and then ignoring it. We may have warts. We may have made messes in conflicts. We may be exhausted and not just in well doing but also in wrong doing. We are not perfect. Instead we are lifted up by God who sees it all, knows it all, and loves us all.
Biologists tell us we have two choices in most situations: We can fight or take flight or tend and befriend. The fight and flight response is most often articulated in funny hand motions -- where we both beckon the person close and push them away at the same time. The animal part of most humans knows exactly what this means. We are standing at a party with a beverage in our hand -- we are smiling, but inside we are wishing we could run away. Human contact can be quite scary! Because it is also so wonderful, none of us, including the writer of the book of Thessalonians, is surprised that there is conflict around contact.
The other biological response, being given more evolutionary attention now, is to tend and befriend. Biologists tell us that this response to nurture, care, lick, cuddle, and touch is also a natural one. We who have been hurt by conflict also know about its healing power. We know what it means to be touched on the shoulder and allowed back into the meeting our anger just removed us from. We know what it is like to care so much for someone or something that we can't bear its hurt. We stand close to the one who is hurt. We tend and befriend. We tend and befriend in very small ways -- the handwritten note, the flowers or jar of jelly, the invite to our son's soccer game. We get close after conflict -- as well as fighting and flighting. When we get close again, after conflict, weariness ends. Joy sometimes begins.
The epistle advocates a style of conflict management that is more than biological. It is fundamentally spiritual. It is the strategy of humility. Humility is not so much a strategy as a bent, not even so much a bent as a posture, not even so much a posture as a habit. Christians try to be humble people. Even when someone we love is hurt, we maintain humility. Even when we are scared to death, we maintain humility. This spiritual habit will take us a long way toward positive conflict preparation and resolution.
Many ecologists are teaching us how to think small again. It is a way we have lost. They say that the main reversal in our thinking is to understand just how beautiful small is. Humble is one aspect of small as beautiful. Small interventions make us less weary than grandiose ones. Humility does not tire in the way that pride does.
Many of us find the world trivializing and demeaning. We have tried really hard and we have still been hurt by life. We may act like we know what to do next but we really don't. We may put one foot in front of the other but not know why or how. We all but pant for great direction and guidance.
Many say, "I'm feeling pretty burned out." More truth could be said by those who have never been lit. What Thessalonians describes is the experience of being lit. Of receiving the great light and knowing how to follow it to paths of meaning and purpose instead of life as a real game of trivial pursuits.
How would we look and be different if we refused weariness in well doing? We would be free of worry and fear. We would have no time for despair. We would avoid the gossipy games of putting others down so that we could feel momentarily lifted up. We would not need such crutches. We would get out of bed in the morning eager to love someone and touch something of purpose and value. We would not go to bed at night until we had participated in God's plan to lift up the poor and troubled, blind and lame. We would not say, "I don't know how to help" so much as "How can I help?"
We may need practice. We may have just the flickering of light within us and on our path. We may need help. We may need to find out whether we are spiritually depressed. We may need to get over something that is taking up all the space, like a virus, on our hard drive. We may need to rest. We may be too tired to be lit. We may need to just say out loud, "I am weary."
The destination is what matters. It is the panting, the urgency, the truly wanting to be spiritually alive and awake that matters. If we can't practice, and if we don't want to walk around in the dark anymore, perhaps what we need to do is work on our sense of urgency. Like a great ball player, we may have to learn to want to win the game again. We may have to yield the shields that protect us from hope -- and hope again. Let them go! Being lit is magnificent. It is the antidote to weariness.
Getting beyond weariness in well doing is often a matter of catching the right bug and eliminating the wrong ones. At both the conscious and the unconscious level, these days, many of us are worried about contagion. The threat of biological and chemical warfare remains in our minds if not also on our globe. The threat of the SARS virus remains alive. (One editor friend of mine hates the word we have given this virus -- "Severe" and "Acute": both don't need to be in the same sentence.) We are newly aware that one small piece of foam probably took down a mighty space ship. Small, invisible things are more than carrying their weight. It is almost as if we have all become homeopaths -- that version of medicine that inoculates with the smallest of substances in order to produce the largest of healing.
Indeed, there are many negative forms of contagion. You can "catch something" and suffer with it for weeks. Simultaneously there are positive forms of contagion, like in homeopathic medicine or in being around contagious people or in understanding just how this gospel of ours works.
Jesus inoculates the world with his suffering and his love -- and next thing we know we, too, are contagious with hope. We are immune from fear. We are able to spread a love that we didn't know we had. We are wise in ways we did not think were possible. We are the ones who sense that life is sweet.
The small has power both positive and negative. If a piece of foam can bring down a plane, a piece of love can lift it up again.
How do we appear when we are no longer weary? When others are sour, we are sweet. When others are complaining, we are probing for the positive solutions to whatever mess we are in. When others are afraid and mongering fear, we find ways to comfort and calm. When life is too large for us and questions too complex, we stay still. We are not ones who think everything has to be answered now or done today or finished in our lifetime. We know how to wait. We have patience. While we are waiting, we know the joy of a garden walk, a bird at the feeder, and a good piece of chocolate cake. We are waiting for the day when all people have good cake, sweet lives, and great joy. We know it is coming -- and that's why we aren't afraid. We know God is in charge -- and that sweetness is what God has in mind for all.
Also, we know that we are not alone. Imagine God trusting the salvation of the world to a dozen disciples. Imagine the confidence that was placed in something so very small. Clearly, the strategy is a kind of chemical, not physical, warfare. It is an inoculation. It is a contagion. It counts on Jesus being infected by God and Jesus infecting others and those others infecting others. And guess what? It worked. There was no public relations budget -- no forcing of the issue by armies or advertising. One believed, then another believed, and then a third. Today we find Christianity more than a vibrant world religion, just now growing with vigor in Africa and Asia and South America that makes the northern continents look small. Positive contagion is the gospel strategy God used to save the world.
Many people would like to tell you that Christianity is a great world religion that fell into the wrong hands. I beg to differ. Indeed, Christianity is a great world religion. And indeed, some of its spirit did fall into the wrong hands. People have hit each other over the head with Jesus on more than one occasion. I remain consoled that so much of its spirit is in your hands and in the hands of people as ordinary as gardeners and fishermen and single women without a portfolio. That spirit is as strong as any virus -- and it will infect the world, if not sooner then later. The writer of Thessalonians was clearly one of the carriers of the gospel. Today, remarkably, we are reading his tale.
What does it mean to be inoculated by faith? It means that we trust the small. We become like gardeners who know that the smallest of seeds make the grandest of flowers. I think of the great lupine seeds, which are so small you have to scatter them with a mix of sand in your hand. Lupines easily can be a foot tall with an inlay of flowers in several colors that defies the tiling on the great temples in Morocco. We become like a bit of yogurt culture, which can firm up a whole pot of warm milk. Of course, there are negative viruses as well. I think of the way we used to make vinegar, under the sink in a glass jar. The substance used is "mother of vinegar" and I am sure it has a spiritual, as well as a physical, meaning.
Can you remember how that works? A cloud of chemicals is taken from vinegar gone old. It is placed in a combination of water or apple juice or cider or wine, left over from the table after the guests have all gone. As these leftovers become available, we put them in the hidden jar. It all becomes vinegar in contact with the mother.
Congregations and families can be infected that way, too. The smallest amount of vinegar, if allowed to contaminate the sweet, can sour the whole barrel. The folk saying is absolutely right: One bad apple can spoil the bunch. Likewise, infection can be positive. One good apple can improve the whole bunch. My point is that God uses small powerful virus-like seeds to get Jesus launched into the world. We become inoculated positively, with faith and hope and love by Jesus' entry into the world. From there, we become contagious -- and spread the news. We try to stop the vinegar -- and start the wine.
Some of us try to inoculate a whole confirmation class for their confirmation of their baptism. We have so little time to tell them the whole Christian story, but we can't worry about curriculum overload so much as worry about what they see when they come to church. You are their main teachers.
This elevation of the small to the powerful is a very hard lesson for people raised in the bigger-is-better world. I watched two men at the hospital the other day. They knew each other only slightly. One said, "I just had three parts of my heart done." The other said, "That's nothing, I had five." I thought, "Oh, boy. Isn't it great just to have one part done, if it is blocking blood to the heart? Why is it better to have more?" But I know that our world is inoculated with the large -- and I know how lethal that largeness is. Bigger says it's better, but it's not. The mightiest nation in the world is at war with several of the smallest, right now.
Weariness in well doing comes from trying to do too much, too big. Forget that. Stick with the small interventions.
Another reversal in our thinking is that of prevention. Old ways of thinking have to do with programmatic moppings up of what has gone wrong. I think of the department of children and family services -- or of most medicine. New ways of thinking have to do with creating the bodies and world and children that we want now. One is preventive and long term and focuses on wellness; the other is palliative and short term and focuses on sickness. The very strategy that God uses in the resurrection of Jesus is a preventive, long-term, wellness-focused strategy. It inoculates the world with hope.
Good leadership understands this strategy very well. Good leadership makes people's strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. We create teams that balance each other's strengths. If some member of our team or family is detail crazed and fussy, and another is so large pictured that she never met a detail she understood, that is a good team. We just have to render their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. We can inoculate each other with this kind of thinking as easily as we can inoculate with the old ways. We must be perfect or we have to be gotten off of the team or out of the family. We must be fixed and improved. Yech! Who wants to be fixed or improved? Indeed who can be fixed and improved? Most of us have fairly permanent warts to which we are very attached. In God's world, these warts are accepted.
Humility joins God in understanding the wart part -- and then ignoring it. We may have warts. We may have made messes in conflicts. We may be exhausted and not just in well doing but also in wrong doing. We are not perfect. Instead we are lifted up by God who sees it all, knows it all, and loves us all.
